Posted on 07/21/2019 6:08:29 AM PDT by george76
The Trump administration has not installed a single mile of new wall in a previously fenceless part of the U.S.-Mexico border in the 30 months since President Trump assumed office, despite his campaign promise to construct a “big beautiful wall.”
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all the fencing completed since Trump took office is "in place of dilapidated designs" because the existing fence was in need of replacement.
The agency said that it had built 51 miles of steel bollard fence with funding that was set aside during fiscal 2017 and 2018. But while the funding was meant both to replace outdated walls and to place barriers where there previously had been none, the government has only completed the replacement projects. The projects to secure areas with no fence are still in the works.
The 50 miles of completed replacement barrier is a 10-mile gain since early April. In Trump’s two and a half years in office, his administration has installed an average 1.7 miles of barrier per month, and none of it in areas that did not previously have some sort of barrier. A total 205 miles of new and replacement barrier has been funded in the two and a half years since Trump took office.
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Army Corps of Engineers moved faster on replacement projects than the new ones because the approval process for environmental and zoning permits was far less extensive than areas of the border with no barrier.
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Roughly 700 miles of the 2,000-mile border has some sort of barrier as a result of the Secure Fence Act
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300 miles of barrier is Normandy style, or a handful of steel beams fastened together to prevent vehicular traffic from getting by. However, the four-foot-tall fence does not prevent people from crossing.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
Trump needs leverage to avoid eating another sheet sandwich compromise with the commie party, whether on debt limit or budget bills.
Ramp up the political dialogue against the USMCA and immigration fix bills.
Force good deals by CIS exposing Ilan Omar fraud/deport and Russia hoax, pay to play Clinton Foundation, and Clinton emails with grand jury action and indictments.
Need Wall money now!
We have none but Congress to thank for that. Credit for that failure rests solely with our useless “representatives”, elected servants who pursue their own agendas at our expense. Yet, people vote them back in, term after term after term.
Trump himself said there would be 400 miles built by the end of this year. Didn’t specify replacement or new but at the rate it’s been going, it doesn’t sound like that 400 will be done.
I saw this article elsewhere, it’s garbage, it tries to equate all barriers with the wall so that when “vehicle barriers” are replaced with wall it “doesn’t count as new wall”.
It also just isn’t true anyway, brand new wall is going up.
Thought for the media and democrats no new border wall was a good thing..?
Look, the troll is back!
You must have to be a Democrat to be confused by this...The old walls which were broken down or insufficient to the point that it was never intended they would stop illegals is being replaced...In anyone’s book other than Dem politicians and the news media, those are new walls...
You are right. The problem is congress.
We need another Contract with America for the GOP.
Build the wall and fix immigration, fix healthcare, and KAG.
Period. If Americans want it they can vote for it. If they want open borders, unchecked immigration, and to revert to socialism they can vote for the DNC candidate.
It’s coming. Have faith.
“What upsets me is every rally, campaign event every time I heard about building the wall, making Mexico pay for it. It’s why many people voted for him.”
Wall or no wall, only a complete moron would vote for Donald Trump in 2016 and then refuse to vote for him in 2020.
In fact, if anyone can find someone that freakishly stupid (which I doubt), please, please, in the interest of science, make a YouTube video of them stumbling around. It would go viral!
“The administration makes excuses but end of day zero new miles.”
The first priority goes to where crossings are the heaviest - the big urban areas along the border like San Diego and El Paso, then the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas.
The urban areas mostly already have some barrier, so that is replacement. The only areas that will get much “new” barrier is the Rio Grande Valley, and nearby Laredo. The first contracts in the Rio Grande Valley for totally new miles have been awarded, and work started (RGV-002 segment, West of McAllen) - the first mile is just not yet complete. The secondary barrier in San Diego is also now under construction, and will include 1 1/2 miles where there was no secondary barrier before (because the terrain was rough). They are scheduled to get through around Christmas this year, on that segment.
There are more than 70 miles of additional new barrier funded in the Rio Grande Valley, between the 2018 and 2019 appropriations. A few contracts have been awarded but have not yet broken ground (like the RGV-003 segments East of McAllen), but most are still in the contracting process - fixing to start dropping this Summer/Fall.
The bottom line is that “new” miles was always just media spin to discourage us. “Most effective” miles is what counts - they are prioritized by operational need. Media folks getting their last misleading digs in (or themselves being misled into doing so), before the “new” miles are finished in the coming months, and their talking point goes away.
The reality is that there is a cascade of wall building work in the pipeline, just starting to hit - the program has finished the planning/prep phase, and is moving into full scale deployment. We started the year building about a half mile per week, are now at about one mile per week, and are on track to finish the year running about 1/2 mile per day.
We will start building some “new” miles through the rest of this year in the Rio Grande Valley, but by next year there will be significant “new” construction there (33 miles were funded in 2018, 55 in 2019, and then some restrictions were placed by Congress, which seem to have removed 8 of them).
The emergency funding that the President authorized, would bring 2019 funding to about four times the total of 2017 and 2018 combined ($8 billion this year). The first of that money, is already awarded on contract (46 miles in New Mexico, and 11 in Arizona, with a bunch more in Arizona identified to follow), and just waiting on a court case to release the money and proceed. That case is already with the Supreme Court, and last Friday (19 July) was the last day for plaintiffs to submit materials. The Court is expected to rule soon (it is on an emergency basis) - likely this coming week, or possibly the next.
That emergency money is enough for hundreds of miles, which will dwarf what we have seen so far. The major actions have already been taken. Even if emergency money is denied, the pace of construction and the total of “new” miles will ramp up significantly, just from the Congressionally appropriated funds already in hand.
Going into the election in 2020, there will probably be over 400 miles built or underway (funded and on contract). Likely 75 or more miles (probably more) will be “new”. Getting the emergency money is the main battle in getting significant barrier in President Trump’s first term. The first 400 miles on the priority list will make a dramatically bigger impact than the last 400 miles - and only 1,100 miles make the list at all.
Pot verrr...." (translation: "What the?")
Careful there, buster! :) We might just resemble that remark!
The only thing that matters are the numbers.
And, by that, I mean the number-of third world aliens, illegal, legal, “refugee” whatever, moving into our homeland and transforming it forever.
Walls, fences, patrols etc are tools to reduce illegal migration. They are not indicators of success. Only the numbers are that.
And by the numbers, the Trump presidency has made zero difference. By the numbers, this is Obama’s third term. Actually the numbers are so awful it is Obama’s third term and half of his fourth. Legal immigration continues at a million a year, mostly family-based chain-migration from the world’s S-holes. No laws have been changed. No reduction has been achieved. Illegal immigration, of course, is off the charts. Only in refugee admissions has there been a been a minor reduction but that’s dwarfed by the spike in illegal catch-and-release admissions.
Now I’m not saying this is Trump’s fault. His passivity his first two years is on him, but most of the blame goes to the hate-America Democrats and the cheap-labor-whore GOPe. But the bottom line, the tragedy is, that Trump’s 2016 election has made zero real-world difference in our headlong rush to demographic oblivion.
That’s it. I’m finished. It’s Pocahontas for me. Or the Indian chick. What’s her name Kali? /s
In Trump’s first two years a 51-49 Senate with McCain, Flake, Rubio, and Grahamnesty still under the spell of Keating 5 McCain made any legislation on immigration a GOPe bowl of turd.
At least in 2018 the never-Trumper Rino’s self-retired. Need to get min of 20 of the seats lost back in 2020. Senate lost Flake, Corker, then McCain finally croaked. Sinema on immigration better than Flake it seems.
Yep
What a lawless dictator...wait what?
I don’t want the border to be totally blocked until a new girlfriend for me comes across, maybe from Venezuela or Costs Rica. Then go ahead and shut it tight.
Where are the pictures of the miles of border wall or fence or anything to stop the mass invasion? Where is the wall? The one thing he promised is a footnote now. Where is the wall?
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