The Border Wall

The plans by President Trump to ”build the wall” is the present-day continuation of an effort to control the very porous 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexican border that began in 1994 with the George H.W. Bush administration. It was continued by the 1996 Republican Congress and President Bill Clinton.

At that time three walls were funded for control in California, Arizona and New Mexico. This was a piecemeal program and resulted in poor quality and incomplete protection, so in 2006, President George W. Bush and Congress passed the bipartisan Secure Fence Act, HR 6061. This provided for uniform quality fencing from the Pacific Ocean in San Diego to Brownsville, Texas, on the Gulf of Mexico.

By 2010, 700 miles have been built from San Diego to the Texas Border at a cost of $3.5 million per mile. Some fencing has been built at Brownsville, Texas, but the longest unbuilt section of the proposed wall is from New Mexico through Texas along the Rio Grande River which defines the border in Texas. Forty-seven miles of the original act are still to be built.

In 2017, President Trump signed Executive Order 13767 to continue the wall development and to deal with this longest unbuilt section of the border wall while improving sections which needed rebuilding. These improved walls may cost $15 billion.

In addition to the walls, the Border Patrol has been increased to 20,000 agents, and there have been added 8,000 cameras, 11,000 ground sensors, 107 aircraft, and 84 boats. Plans for the Trump Wall include adding 5,000 more border agents.

Since beginning the wall projects, the illegal alien incursions have gone from 1,189,000 in 2005 to around 170,000 today. The exception was in 2015 when President Obama allowed 800,000 undocumented children and women from Mexico and Central America to remain in the U.S. under DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

The border is being intruded every day by drug traffickers and illegal aliens, and more needs to be done to get it totally under control. Trump’s Wall will help this problem.

Mexico has complained about the wall plan but the U.S. has had walls for over 20 years. Mexico has its own walls to stop hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens from crossing from Guatemala. At that border, Mexico has built 541 miles of walls and has guards. Colombia is building a fence to control the thousands of illegal aliens escaping from the failed socialist government of Venezuela.

So it is necessary to complete Trump’s wall if we are to stem the flow of illegal individuals and drug trafficker intrusions — or “walls forever.”