400 down, 1554 to go.
400 down, 1554 to go.
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The Trump administration is building new wall and doing so faster than ever before. Currently wall construction continues at the southwest border (SWB) with the administration’s goal of 450 new miles of wall system on track for the end of the calendar year.
As summed up below by Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott, the current status of the wall system’s construction is summed up as follows:
341 new miles completed
240 new miles under construction
157 new miles under the pre-construction process
Furthermore, as Acting Secretary Chad Wolf illustrated in his recent State of the Homeland Address, the timeline has been accelerating since construction began:
“In January, we reached 100 miles of new border wall system. In June, we achieved 200 miles. In August, we marked the 300th mile—and by the end of this calendar year we will reach over 450 miles of new border wall system.”
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2020/09/29/dhs-wall-construction-update-september-29-2020
“400 down, 1554 to go.”
221 miles of pre-existing barrier has been assessed as operationally effective, and does not need to be replaced.
So 621 miles down.
338 more are funded, so the Program already is already structured to get 959 done.
After careful analysis, Border Patrol has formally assessed the total barrier requirement to be about 1,100 miles (along with thousands of additional full time positions, and several large Technology Programs). So only about the last (lowest priority) 150 miles or so remain to be funded.
The Trump Administration has identified the funds for those last miles (FY 2020 Military Construction Accounts), but has not yet transferred the money to the Corps of Engineers’ Wall Contracting Account. They seem to be waiting until after the election, to see if there will be a less painful option of getting the needed money from a new Republican Congress, before taking that big hit to the Military.
Bottom Line: The whole Comprehensive Plan for Full Operational Control of the Southern Border has been funded by the Trump Administration in the first Term, but construction will continue for another year or two, for contractors to deliver the finished product.
The massive Technology Programs that have also been funded and contracted, are on roughly the same timeline - this year and next are rapid full scale deployment. It is happening so quickly, that the effects are going to be shocking, once people realize them.
By the end of next year, we will be approaching a fully controlled border, for the first time in history.