While the Trump administration is soliciting designs for a border wall between the United States and Mexico, almost 60 House Democrats want to shut down his plans before any shovel goes into the dirt.
Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham, D-N.M., introduced the Build Bridges Not Walls Act last month with 58 other co-sponsors. While much of the bill tries to make the case that enough is already being done to protect the southern border, the bill’s language would prevent President Trump from implementing his executive order titled Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements.
That executive order established the administration’s top priority for border security to be a physical wall along the border with Mexico. Other priorities include detaining illegal immigrants who are suspected of breaking state or federal laws and expediting the deportation of immigrants whose legal claims to stay in the U.S. have been rejected.
Concept designs for the project are due March 10, with formal bids due March 24. The winning company or companies could be announced by mid-April.
Lujan Grisham said the border wall would have devastating effects on natural areas along the border and would require costly property purchases, not to mention litigation with Native American tribes and local landowners loathe to give up their property. About two-thirds of the land needed for the wall is on private land, which would require the use of eminent domain to acquire the land or other forms of cajoling by the federal government.
Trump is the only person who would benefit from the wall, she said.
“The people who know the border the best, whether it’s companies or lawmakers, both Republicans and Democrats, border communities, trade groups, economists and law enforcement officials, all agree that building a wall is unnecessary, impractical, ineffective and a complete waste of time and taxpayer money,” she said.
Trump has made the wall a central part of his presidency, and it’s the most recognizable policy proposal from the campaign trail.
Since declaring his intention to run for president in June 2015, Trump has evolved slightly on portions of his wall policy. He initially declared Mexico would pay for it, but has now said the money likely would have to be fronted by taxpayers with Mexicans paying for the wall over time with increased border fees, taxes on remittances and decreased aid to Mexico.
Estimates for the wall’s cost range between $12 billion-$25 billion. About 650 miles of the border are fenced — which is the part that needs to have a man-made barrier, Lujan Grisham said — but much of the rest of the more than 2,000-mile border has no physical wall.
Opponents of the wall say it would be a nearly impossible feat of engineering to build a wall along the entire border. The Rio Grande makes up much of the border, while the rest travels through barren desert and rugged mountains before reaching the Pacific Ocean.
“The real costs will be at the expense of border and immigrant communities, including the healthy and vibrant environment they deserve. It’s justified by fiction, relying on the notion that our neighbors have somehow become our enemies and that our border communities must become militarized zones,” said Raul Garcia, legislative counsel for Earthjustice.
Trump’s executive order argues that Congress already has authorized the federal government to build additional physical barriers along the border and it’s time the federal government plays a stronger role in border security.
The order states that the federal government has “failed to discharge this basic sovereign responsibility” of enforcing immigration laws. The wall is a central part of Trump’s philosophy, both as a physical structure and as a metaphor with a “big, beautiful” door in it to allow in immigrants who go through the proper process to enter the country.
Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert, one of the few Texas lawmakers who is fully behind Trump’s plans for a border wall, believes critics of the plan overlook obvious flaws in American border security that are putting U.S. citizens at risk.
Gohmert said in a speech on the floor of the House that the wall isn’t only needed to keep out illegal immigrants, but also to stop drug cartels from moving their products into the United States.
The cartels control the border, and no one gets through without their permission, Gohmert said. The drug pushers have gotten smart about how they move cocaine, methamphetamine and other illegal drugs into the United States, he continued. They’ll send a group of illegal immigrants to sneak into the country, getting Border Patrol’s attention and then using that distraction to bring their illicit products over the border.
Trump’s wall would put an end to that, he said.
“You build a wall, then you shut down the drug cartels,” Gohmert said. “And when they only have thousands of dollars to bribe police instead of millions or billions of dollars, then law and order will prevail and the drug cartels will not, and we will have the most extraordinary neighbor to our south.”
Putting an end to the cartels’ easy access to the United States could help bring about the end of their influence over Mexican government. Gohmert said the country has natural resources that could end up turning Mexico into one of the 10 biggest economies in the world, but it is held back by the cartels.
The Democrats need to think about what they’re opposing when they try to stop Trump from building the wall, Gohmert said.
“The power Mexico would have as a nation in any international organization will be extraordinary, and the United States will reach an unparalleled relationship as a neighbor. That is worth building a wall for,” he said.
