The Pentagon not too long ago requested Congress to shift $200 million in funding — initially allotted for tasks akin to barracks, plane hangars and military-operated elementary faculties — to assemble a roughly 20-mile-long, 30-foot-high barrier throughout the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona.
The proposed wall would substitute a smaller mesh barrier at a desert coaching complicated adjoining to the border often known as the Barry M. Goldwater Vary, or BMGR, a 1.9 million-acre coaching space shared between the Air Pressure and Marine Corps, in accordance to a letter the Pentagon despatched to Congress on Could 28.
Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth mentioned that building of the everlasting barrier, replete with gates and a patrol lane, was “needed to acquire full operational management of the border,” including that the civilian heads of the Army, Navy and Air Pressure deemed the challenge “very important to nationwide safety,” in accordance with the letter.
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The request splits the fee between the Division of Protection, Navy, Air Pressure and Army — which additionally makes use of the vary — in $50 million increments from funding appropriated way back to fiscal 2021.
The letter characterised the relocation of funding as “financial savings” from tasks the Pentagon estimated value lower than their authentic appropriation. This follow, often known as reprogramming, includes the Pentagon asking for congressional approval to shift cash that lawmakers initially allotted for particular army packages elsewhere.
For instance, it’s requesting greater than $11 million from a Marine barracks complicated and bachelor enlisted quarters at Kadena Air Base in Japan for the BMGR challenge. The Pentagon can be searching for to reallocate tens of millions from an F-35 Lightning II hangar in California; a V-22 Osprey airfield in Virginia; and tens of tens of millions of {dollars} from two military-run elementary faculties, one in Germany and the opposite in Kentucky.
Navy.com reported in Could that the Pentagon was reallocating $1 billion meant for Army barracks to fund troop deployments to the U.S.-Mexico border because the army turns into more and more concerned in immigration enforcement below President Donald Trump’s administration.
In 2023, Luke Air Pressure Base, Arizona, which owns a part of the BMGR, mentioned in a report that, “on account of its proximity to the U.S.-Mexico border, the complete BMGR is doubtlessly topic to the presence of undocumented aliens and smuggling site visitors,” and was subsequently patrolled by U.S. Customs and Border Safety brokers.
A consultant for the Pentagon acknowledged Navy.com’s questions on BMGR on Monday, to incorporate whether or not such border crossing site visitors was the impetus for the shifting of funds, however didn’t reply by publication.
Earlier this month, the Pentagon requisitioned 140 miles of federal land in Arizona, together with close to BMGR, as a part of its sweeping effort to militarize areas of the border to stop crossings below Trump’s immigration crackdown.
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