Intruder who jumped White House fence faces 10-year prison sentence

An intruder carrying a backpack was arrested after scaling a fence around the White House and entering the grounds, the U.S. Secret Service said on Saturday, in the latest breach of security at the president's official residence.

President Donald Trump was inside the White House when the intruder climbed over the fence on the complex’s South Grounds at 11:38pm on Friday, and uniformed officers arrested him, the Secret Service said in a statement.

The person “scaled the outer perimeter fence by the Treasury Building and East Executive Avenue”, it said.

The suspect, identified in court documents as California resident Jonathan Tran, 26, is scheduled to appear in federal court on Monday after a judge on Saturday ordered him held without bond, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia said.

No hazardous materials were found during a search of a backpack the person carried, nor on the north and south grounds.

The secret service also says a search of the south and north grounds of the White House complex found “nothing of concern to security operations”.

Tran was charged with entering or remaining in restricted grounds while using or carrying a dangerous weapon, and faces a maximum of 10 years in prison, said Bill Miller, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office.

The Guardian reported that upon being approached by a secret service agent on the grounds and asked whether he had permission to be there, the suspect replied: “No, I am a friend of the president. I gave an appointment.”

The agent then asked how he had entered the restricted area. “I jumped the fence,” the suspect said, according to the report, and security footage corroborated that he had scaled the barrier.

Trump earlier thanked the Secret Service and commended the agents for apprehending the intruder.

“Secret Service did a fantastic job,” Trump told reporters at the start of a working lunch on Saturday afternoon with several Cabinet members at his golf course outside Washington. “It was a troubled person.”

The incident unfolded despite a series of recommendations to tighten security after a 2014 intrusion that led to the resignation of Secret Service Director Julia Pierson.

In 2015, a row of sharp spikes was bolted to the top of the black iron fence around the 18-acre property, making it more difficult to scale. Two years ago the secret service’s leadership was overhauled after a series of security breaches, the most serious of which took place in September 2014, when a former army sniper, Omar Gonzalez, climbed the fence and sprinted down the length of the White House’s East Room.

Earlier this year, a plan proposed by the Secret Service and National Park Service to build a taller, stronger fence with added features to detect and deter climbers won final approval.

Construction of the new 11-foot-7-inch fence, compared with the current 7-foot (2.13 m) barrier, is due to begin by next year, the Secret Service said in January. That timetable is about two years behind estimates made in 2015.