“Photos show former President Donald Trump’s border wall in deep disrepair after summer monsoon rains literally blew floodgates off their hinges,” according to a new Gizmodo report, showing — in real, physical form — just how destructively reckless that the Trump administration’s antics really were. According to the Gizmodo report, the damage to Trump’s wall unfolded near the San Bernardino Ranch in Arizona. Douglas, Arizona — a nearby town — has recently recorded almost double its average monsoon season rainfall, and Trump’s wall struggled through these intense storms. Presumably, while the floodgates on Trump’s wall remain (or remained) off their hinges, individuals who the wall was supposed to stop could just walk right through.
As Gizmodo put it, “The power and height of the waters can be seen in not just the heavy gates ripped open but the debris that wrapped around intact portions of the wall.” Amid the original construction process for the wall — which in actuality consists largely of replacements for old physical barriers — Trump and his team “sidelined” environmental laws that would ordinarily govern such a process, Gizmodo explains. Besides the basic purpose of environmental protection underlying these laws, the provisions “also serve the purpose of ensuring multibillion-dollar construction projects don’t face catastrophic failures within a few years of being built,” the publication adds — but such a series of failures are exactly what Trump’s wall appears to be facing down south.
As Gizmodo also explains, corporate interests involved in the wall construction efforts have faced intense scrutiny over their actions. One company, called Southwest Valley Constructors, has been sued for their construction practices. Specifically, the litigation targets explosions that the company apparently conducted that left massive boulders on privately owned local land. As Myles Traphagen, who works as the borderlands program coordinator at the environmental advocacy organization known as the Wildlands Network, put it to Gizmodo: “It’s clear that these were not companies that really were taking the long term integrity of the product into account.” Now, Americans are left with the mess that Trump and his team left behind — in more contexts than just this one, too. Read the full Gizmodo report at this link.
