Taxpayers have gotten scant benefit from Trump’s $15 billion border wall
The southern border wall is a fitting monument to Donald Trump’s presidency. It’s a morass of shady contracts and overspending, all for a wall that has been catastrophic for the environment and doesn’t even work.
So it’s ineffective for its stated purpose, but is highly effective as communicating raw hatred, causes all manner of collateral damage, and in all is an angry lie marbled with grift: pure Trump.
As Trump prepares to leave office, his administration has dinged American taxpayers to the tune of $15 billion to expand the pre-existing wall and replace some sections. Yet for all that expense, the concrete bollards of the wall are being breached at least twice a day on average, according to federal documents obtained by The New York Times.
The documents revealed that there had been 320 breaches between October 2019 and March 2020, a span of 152 days. And that was just in four Border Patrol regions in the 405-mile stretch between San Diego and Tucson, Ariz. — not the 1,350 miles between Tucson and the Gulf of Mexico.
Granted, it wasn’t clear how many of those breaches were in new portions of the wall versus old sections, but the inescapable conclusion is that taxpayers haven’t received anything close to airtight border security for their $15 billion.
Contractors sure have come out nicely, however. In a recent investigation, the Texas Tribune reported that Trump has spent five times more per mile on the wall than previous administrations. One reason:
It’s made highly suspicious change orders that amount to no-bid contracts for a small group of construction companies, including some whose executives are heavy campaign donors to Trump and other Republicans.
Meanwhile, the Times also reported allegations by whistleblowers that contractors illegally hired Mexican security teams, overcharged for construction costs and lied about it to authorities.
This from a president who bragged to his supporters that thanks to his experience with construction as a private businessman, he would be able to build the wall at lower cost than his predecessors. Instead, he created a trough where contractors are getting fat at the expense of taxpayers and deliv
ering substandard work.
Keep in mind too that in many areas, the wall wasn’t even necessary. High Country News spotlighted one such section, which is being blasted through the Guadalupe Canyon in Arizona. Quoting local residents and officials, the story painted a picture of an area with little to no foot traffic by undocumented immigrants or anybody else beyond the bands of Apache who live there. It’s 30 miles from the nearest town, tiny Douglas, Ariz.
Yet the government is spending millions to erect a 30-foot wall through the rugged area, dynamiting the canyon walls and permanently scarring the landscape with switchback roads.
For the environment, it’s a disaster. The wall is cutting off an important wildlife corridor for black bears, mountain lions, jaguars and more species, and is causing tremendous ecological damage by pumping groundwater for concrete, destroying natural springs, blasting the rock faces and flattening the ground for access roads.
And that’s not the only previously pristine area that’s being harmed by wall construction. In Tucson, the city council and Pima County officials have sued the government in hopes of halting construction of the wall in three Arizona preserves.
Trump’s supporters will no doubt note that border crossings are down, based on the key metric of arrests by border officials, but the wall’s not the primary reason. Rather, border watchers say, it’s because of the Trump’s administration’s cruel policies for asylum seekers and other border crossers, and his agreement with Mexico in June to crack down on migrants traversing Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala.
President-elect Joe Biden can’t pull the plug on Trump’s project quickly enough.
There’s an ongoing need for border security, no question. But by using technology such as motion sensors and surveillance drones, it can be done far cheaper, more effectively and more environmentally responsibly than building hundreds of miles of fencing, much of it in areas where there are no crossings anyway.
Nobody’s winning from Trump’s wall project, save for the contractors. The quicker Biden can drain the swamp Trump has built on the border, the better for taxpayers, the environment and regional communities.