With all the modern tech placement along the Southern Border is a physical wall actually needed or just a great talking point – PB/TK
Despite Opposition to President Trump’s Wall, the Southern Border Is Being Secured – By Daniel Goure / June 16 2017
The White House and Democrats in Congress continue to fight over the president’s plan to build a wall along the border with Mexico. While President Trump initially called for more than $4 billion of funding for the project in Fiscal Year 2018, the actual budget he submitted asked for only $1.6 billion. That said, hundreds of construction companies braved abuse, boycotts, and threats to bid on parts of the project. If approved in the final bill, this level of funding will cover only some 62 miles of the nearly 2,000 mile-long border. In addition, opposition to the plan remains so high that one might wonder if the project will ever be completed.
In reality, even before President Trump announced his plan, a significant fraction of the southern border was already protected by physical barriers. In fact, some 700 miles of fencing currently exists. Much of this fortification is designed to divert prospective entrants away from high-density population areas such as San Diego, California, and Brownsville, Texas.
A physical barrier is only one way of securing the border, but not always the most cost-effective solution. For more than a decade, the Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) had to work through the myriad of challenges associated with building barriers and deploying security systems along the U.S.-Mexico border. As a result, CBP has learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t. Furthermore, the years the U.S. military spent fighting terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan provided additional lessons on physical and non-physical protective means while allowing for field testing of a wide variety of relevant technologies.
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