President Donald Trump is ordering American soldiers to deploy to the border and paint sections of the fence there to improve their aesthetic appearance.
CBS News reports that the Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday notified lawmakers that an unspecified number of service members were being sent to the California border town of Calexico to spend approximately 30 days painting the border fence.
“While the primary purpose is to improve the aesthetic appearance of the wall, there may also be an operational benefit based on our experience with painted barrier in Nogales, Arizona,” DHS said in its letter to Congress.
Elsewhere in the letter, DHS said that painting the fence in Arizona had helped expose the “camouflaging tactics of illegal border crossers,” thus making them easier to detect.
Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX), chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, slammed Trump for using the military for tasks such as painting his prized barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border.
“These are soldiers, they are not painters,” he told CBS News.
