US: Speaker Pelosi indicates openness to new fencing infrastructure

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Democrat) on Thursday indicated the willingness to new fencing and border as part of ongoing talks to prevent another government shutdown.

The Hill quoted Pelosi as saying, "There's not going to be any wall money in the legislation. However, if they have some suggestions about certain localities where technology, some infrastructure [is appropriate] ... that's part of the negotiation."

During her weekly press briefing in the Capitol, Pelosi pointed to the proposals tabled this week by Representative Henry Cuellar, who represents a Texas border district, to build low-lying vehicle barriers and levee walls along the Rio Grande River as a compromise to break the budget impasse.

"Many places on the border there are cliffs, there's a river, and there are 600 miles of something. Three hundred [miles] of them are Normandy fences. Three hundred miles of this so that cars cannot go by. If the president wants to call that a wall, he can call it a wall," she added.

Democrats have been fiercely opposing the extension the construction of the wall on the US-Mexico border.

US President Donald Trump on Thursday said that he would not accept a deal unless he gets the money for his border wall.

"If they're not going to give money for the wall ... it's not going to work," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

Citing what he referred to as a threat posed by a new migrant caravan that is heading towards the US border, Trump claimed that Pelosi "will be begging for a wall.