Debris is caught against closed floodgates on border fencing Jan. 7 in the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Lukeville, Ariz. Such floodgates need to be left open during the summer.
Credit: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)
NACO, Ariz. — President Trump’s border wall probably will require the installation of hundreds of storm gates to prevent flash floods from undermining or knocking it over, gates that must be left open for months every summer during “monsoon season” in the desert, according to U.S. border officials, agents and engineers familiar with the plans.
The open, unmanned gates in remote areas already have allowed for the easy entry of smugglers and migrants into the United States.
At locations along the U.S. southern border where such gates already are in operation, Border Patrol agents must manually raise them every year before the arrival of the summer thunderstorms that convert riverbeds into raging torrents that […]
