In mid-January, I brought you a border wall update depicting how much “wall” we have at the southern border, what’s been happening with it the past couple of years and the significance of the president’s $5.7 billion request. The US currently has 654 miles of physical barriers on the southern border. That’s 33.8% of the entire southern border that now has a physical barrier. Work is ongoing to replace 280 miles of the existing border wall/fencing. You might recall President Trump talking about the need to fix and modernize parts of the existing wall. That’s what's happening right now and what’s been mostly worked on over the past year and a half.
The president’s priority now is to obtain funding for the actual expansion of the southern border wall. The $5.7 billion would have extended the wall by 234 miles. By now you’ve likely heard that the $1.375 billion would cover 55 miles in the Rio Grande area. If this deal goes down here’s what to consider, at the end of construction, 36.6% of the southern border would have a wall. That’s what this represents.
An additional 2.8% of the total southern border having a “wall”. So, about this 55-mile project. How long will take to build it? The best estimate I found was six to eight months. That’s instructive. Why? Let’s say this is approved. This funding deal goes through September, which happens to be seven months away. In other words, this amount of money should be enough to get the job done just around the time another budget deal comes up. I’m thinking that’s not a coincidence in this process just not something that politically neither side feels the need to discuss publicly. I’d suspect the president knows this too and will likely sign this deal and keep the border wall projects rolling.
Photo by: ARIANA DREHSLER/AFP/Getty Images