2-5-2023
Trump's wall is 'morphing'.
Two years after former President Donald Trump left office,
his border wall is "morphing" in strange ways as Republican state governments continue to throw money at it —
all while accomplishing next to nothing,
wrote Francis Wilkerson for Bloomberg.
One of the biggest examples of this, noted the piece,
is unfolding in Texas.
As USA Today reported in 2017, 4,900 privately owned land parcels in Texas 'sit within 500 feet of the border.'
Thus, building a wall provides annuities for an army of lawyers as well as for construction firms.
The Texas Observer estimates that at its current rate, completing the state wall would cost around $17 billion."
Meanwhile, Wilkerson noted, Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) — who — has introduced legislation called the Finish The Wall Act to mandate Trump's plan for construction resume, and just prior to leaving office last month, Gov. Doug Ducey (R-AZ) built an ]illegal "border wall" made out of shipping containers topped with razor wire, right through an ecologically sensitive conservation area. Federal authorities then forced him to take it down.
The one thing all of these schemes have in common, wrote Wilkerson? They can all be defeated by a ladder —
something that also defeated Trump's original border wall design.
"Smugglers with a taste for more elaborate gear can deploy an inexpensive power saw to get through."
"The Washington Post reported last year that traffickers had done exactly that — 3,272 times in the preceding three years.
Some of the openings they created were large enough
to drive a vehicle through.
Occasionally, authorities find a tunnel that enables passage beneath the wall." And a report by the Cato Institute found that
"the border wall was breached 4,101 times —
more than 11 times per day.
____This was far more than the number of breaches in any of the prior six years and double the number of breaches for fiscal year 2016 before any of the Trump wall was built."____
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