ACTING COMMISSIONER MORGAN: So let me answer the latter first. I feel absolutely no pressure from this administration to build more miles of wall. What I do feel pressure from is the men and women of the Customs and Border Protection, because they need this wall. They need the wall to do their job effectively, to safeguard and protect this country and themselves. That’s where the pressure comes for me, to make sure I’m giving them all the tools and resources they need to effectively do their job and do it safely.

Now, for the 71 miles of new wall, make no mistake: If you take a four-foot-high, you know, X-cross steel, you know, vehicle barrier, and you replace it with a wall system that’s 30-foot high, has an anti-climb plate to it, has lighting, technology, and access roads, make no mistake: From an agent out in the field perspective, a leadership perspective, and my perspective, that’s absolutely a new wall.

Now, if you want to differentiate between a new wall, where it replaced those depilated, unacceptable physical barriers and new linear miles, I think that’s the correct way to talk about that. So right now, those 71 miles have not been new linear miles, but that’s part of what’s being processed right now. So, in shortly, we’re going to begin construction, like in RGV.

RGV, a strategic location, right now with 40 to 60 percent of the apprehensions throughout this fiscal year. And we’re getting ready to build a little over 100 miles of new linear border wall down there.

And I’ll tell you, this isn’t easy. If you talk to General Semonite, who’s leading the charge of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, it’s a tough process. You have to act — you have to obtain the land. Land acquisition is a tough thing. Sometimes you’ll go and maybe you’ll only have a couple of miles of linear wall, and you’ve got 600 land owners that you have to deal with. You have some public lands, some federal land. It’s a difficult process to do.

But I tell you what: Seventy-one miles of new wall systems have been built is more than what was built in the previous administration.

Q No new linear wall — no new linear miles have built?

ACTING COMMISSIONER MORGAN: It’s being built in RGV in strategic locations.

So, yes, sir. I guess this is the last one then.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/press-briefing-acting-cbp-commissioner-mark-morgan/

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4433543&forum_id=2#39512205)