“I am not sufficiently impressed by a mere 11 mile border wall”
It is contracted out in segments, that each have their own contract award dates, and different start dates (groundbreaking).
This story simply reported the start of work on just two of those segments, which just started on Thursday (11 miles in Calexico, and 4 in Tecate).
A lot of work must go into a multi-billion dollar Federal construction project - before any ground is broken. The exact route must be detailed (accounting for flood/drainage and property issues), construction has to be prioritized according to operational need, design specifications must be finalized and certified, contract vehicles need to be established and vendors screened and approved to compete on them, private property must be acquired or condemned under eminent domain, nuisance lawsuits from Leftist Front groups must be defeated, and so on. So the first year is necessarily planning and preparation.
The President issued his Executive order to achieve full operational control of the border, during his first week in office. DHS completed their comprehensive analysis and submitted it to Congress in March of 2018 (calling for $25 billion over five years, 1,100 miles of barrier, thousands of additional full time positions and several technology programs). Congress provided some relatively minor feedback, and the revised plan was finally submitted in December of 2018.
In the interim, there was broad agreement on some barrier priorities, and Congress funded 40 miles in 2017 (since completed) and 80 more in 2018 (including the two segments from this story, that just started work). The loss of Republican control of the House in the Midterms resulted in Congress short-changing the 2019 funding for the large scale deployment for which the program had scaled up - only funding 55 more miles.
The President’s subsequent declaration of an emergency in March (2019) identified several billion dollars from other sources (mostly within the Military), that could fund hundreds of miles of barrier. Nuisance lawsuits are attempting to run out the clock on being able to spend that money - but it is now the main battle in the barrier program. The first miles on the priority list are dramatically more effective than the last, so completing the first few hundred miles accounts for the great majority of current traffic (border cities and the Rio Grande Valley).
The battle is being waged hammer and tong. We are fortunate to have a world class builder leading the effort, who really knows how to drive his staff (or they’re fired!). He has cut through a lot of the complexity, and achieved dramatically short timeframes, compared to Federal construction norms. Construction funds are appropriated as five year money (five years to spend it), because that is the normal duration for such projects. All the money appropriated two years ago for this program has not only been spent, but the segments have been completed and accepted by the Government. The 2018 funding was not received until very late in the year, but was obligated onto contracts even much more quickly than the 2017 funding. This year, DoD reprogrammed a billion dollars and awarded contracts in a shockingly fast matter of weeks (a protest, lawsuits, and a San Francisco judge have delayed groundbreaking on those segments, as of today).
The bottom line is that we started the year building a total of about a half mile of barrier per week, and are projected to end this year building about a half mile per day.
It has been a very hard and unrelenting slog to make progress in the face of all the layers of resistance. Few people could have done it, but President Trump has. He pulled out all the stops, and kept a fire lit under those responsible.