The US-Mexico's Border Walls Don't Work

Описание: The United States has in recent years spent more money on immigration enforcement than at any other point in history. For fiscal year (FY) 2024, the Biden administration has asked Congress for nearly $25 billion for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an increase of almost $800 million over the previous year.

Donald Trump captured the imagination of many American voters with a single campaign promise. “I will build a great, great wall on our southern border,” he boasted in June 2015.

There are about 700 miles of border wall along the US-Mexican border. The reality is that border barriers are not the permanent and impenetrable physical obstacle that some people imagine. Natural events can knock down parts of a border fence. One storm in Texas left a hole for months. Fences and walls can also erode near rivers or beaches, as the one in San Diego did. And they can be penetrated: Some fencing can be cut in minutes, and the Border Patrol reported repairing more than 4,000 holes in one year alone. They neglected to mention whether that number equaled that year's number of breaches.

These barriers do not deter migration. No matter how tall and thick a wall will be, migrants find a way to cross it. Undocumented workers and drugs will still find their way across any barrier the administration ends up building. Such a wall will be irrelevant to those people who become undocumented immigrants by overstaying their visas who for many years have outnumbered those who become undocumented immigrants by crossing the U.S.–Mexico border. We have seen hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers jumping the fence and turning themselves to border agents asking for asylum.
Much of the current fencing can be easily mounted with a ladder or from the roof of a truck. In some cases, border crossers can scale the fence without any additional equipment. One viral video from 2010 shows two women quickly climbing an 18-foot steel bollard-style pedestrian fence in less than 20 seconds.
The Trump administration spent $15 billion on a border wall. The previous administration built 52 miles of wall where no barrier previously existed. Of the $15 billion Trump diverted to border wall construction, $9.9 billion was from the military. Very little of that will return to Pentagon coffers.