By far the most powerful pledge and symbol of the 2016 presidential campaign was President Trump’s promise to build a “Big Beautiful Wall”. Border security enthusiasts (aka most Americans) haven’t had much to point to in the past four months as far as progress on that commitment, but there may be much more going on behind the scenes than we might think. Peter Brimelow shares an update on wall construction planning, citing an article by Byron York in the Washington Times.
The work is being done under President Trump’s executive order of Jan. 25, which declared the administration’s policy to “secure the southern border of the United States through the immediate construction of a physical wall …” The order went on to set a high standard of effectiveness: “the prevention of all unlawful entries into the United States” along the border. Finally, the order cited an existing law, the Secure Fence Act, which in 2006 called for the construction of “at least two layers of reinforced fencing” and “additional physical barriers” on up to 700 miles of the 1,954-mile border.
“The executive order calls on the authority in the Secure Fence Act for us to begin immediately,” said a senior administration official who recently provided an extensive update on the state of the wall project. In March, U.S. Customs and Border Protection sent out a request for proposals for companies to bid on the construction of prototypes — not little models to sit on someone’s desk, but full-scale sections of proposed wall designs that will be put in place on the border. So far, Border Protection has received more than 100 proposals.
“We are evaluating what started out as a solicitation to industry and request for proposals — 18 to 30 feet high, concrete, impenetrable, hard-to-scale, the correct aesthetics,” the official said. “We’ve tried to capture the intent [of the executive order] in the requests for proposals, and those proposals are being evaluated now.” …
Right now, officials are studying how many “buildable miles” will need a barrier. Whatever the precise number, it will be big. In 2015, the Department of Homeland Security told Congress that, of the 1,954 miles of border, 1,300 miles, or 66.5 percent, have no fencing or barriers at all; 299.8 miles, or 15.3 percent, have vehicle fence; and 316.6 miles, or 16.2 percent, have pedestrian fence. Only 36.3 miles, or 2 percent, have the kind of double-layer fencing required by the Secure Fence Act. (The law was passed by Congress and signed by President George W. Bush, but neither Bush nor Congress really wanted to build the fence. So they didn’t.)
“We’ve asked the nine sectors on the Southwest border, if you have to meet the standards in the executive order and the Secure Fence Act, where is it that barriers are required to complete the task?” said the senior administration official. “We’ve then evaluated those areas where the traffic [of illegal border-crossers] is highest.” Planners are considering those factors in light of the executive order’s “prevent all entries” standard — administration officials are taking that edict very seriously — to come up with areas in which a wall would be the best solution, or where some other type of physical barrier would do the job better.
As the article goes on to state, there’s no guarantee the wall will be built, and both Republicans and Democrats will fight tooth and nail to prevent funding for it in the 2018 budget negotiations in September (hopefully this will make the ongoing treason of of the bipartisan “UniParty” elites evident to even more voters).
It seems like the progress being made is serious however, and the only thing standing in its way would be Trump’s unwillingness to spend the political capital to push it through, he has a vast majority of Americans on his side so the only thing he’s risking is the wrath of an establishment that already hates him and wants him impeached anyway.
BUILD THE WALL MR. PRESIDENT!!
