Fifteen to 25 billion dollars! Those are the most recent estimates for the cost of finishing the US-Mexico border wall.
And it’s not only the cost to U.S. taxpayers. There’s acquisition of privately held property. Most of the already-constructed wall is on public land. Landowners along the border have multiple pending lawsuits against the federal government in protest of the seizure of their land.
The humanitarian and environmental issues are enormous, especially the impact on animal migration routes. Our already-tenuous relationship with neighboring Mexico will get even worse with Trump’s stupid assertion that Mexico should pay for the wall. Then, after the wall is built, yearly maintenance of the wall is expected to run about $750 million per year. And finally, John Kelly, Homeland Security chief, has stated that “a physical barrier will not do the job.”
There’s still time to contact your members of Congress about this.
Sandra Francik
Durango
