Look at the 2006 Fence Act. Where are all those billions?
—snip—
WIKI-—Although the 2006 Secure Fence law (under GWB) authorized construction of a fence, Congress initially did not fully appropriate funds for it (see authorization-appropriation process). “Congress put aside $1.4 billion for the fence, but the whole cost, including maintenance, was pegged at $50 billion over 25 years, according to analyses at the time.”[10]
A 2017 GAO report noted: “According to CBP, from fiscal year 2007 through 2015, it spent approximately $2.3 billion to deploy border fencing along the southwest border, and CBP will need to spend a substantial amount to sustain these investments over their lifetimes. CBP did not provide a current life-cycle costs estimate to maintain pedestrian and vehicle fencing, however, in 2009 CBP estimated that maintaining fencing would cost more than $1 billion over 20 years.”[12]
Impact and effects
Illegal border-crossings
A report in May 2008 by the Congressional Research Service found “strong indication” that illegal border-crossers had simply found new routes.[13] A 2017 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, citing U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data, found that from fiscal year 2010 through fiscal year 2015, the U.S.-Mexico border fence had been breached 9,287 times, at an average cost of $784 per breach to repair.[14] The same GAO report concluded that “CBP cannot measure the contribution of fencing to border security operations along the southwest border because it has not developed metrics for this assessment.”[12] GAO noted that because the government lacked such data, it was unable to assess the effectiveness of border fencing, and therefore could not “identify the cost effectiveness of border fencing compared to other assets the agency deploys, including Border Patrol agents and various surveillance technologies.”[15]
The fence is routinely climbed or otherwise circumvented.[9] The GAO reported in 2017 that both pedestrian and vehicle barriers have been defeated by various methods, including using ramps to drive vehicles “up and over” vehicle fencing in the sector; scaling, jumping over, or breaching pedestrian fencing; burrowing or tunneling underground; and even using small aircraft.[16] New York Times op-ed writer Lawrence Downes wrote in 2013: “A climber with a rope can hop it in less than half a minute. ... Smugglers with jackhammers tunnel under it. They throw drugs and rocks over it. The fence is breached not just by sunlight and shadows, but also the hooded gaze of drug-cartel lookouts, and by bullets. Border agents describe their job as an unending battle of wits, a cat-mouse game with the constant threat of violence.”[9][17]
Violence
A paper by University of Pennsylvania political scientist Benjamin Laughlin estimates that the Secure Fence Act caused at least 2000 additional deaths in the border region.[19] The “construction of the border fence caused fighting between drug cartels by changing the value of territory for smuggling, undermining agreements between cartels.”[19]