THE TR

UMP WALL

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THE TRUMP WALL• Donald Trump wants to build an "impenetrable,

physical, tall, powerful, beautiful, southern border wall" between the US and México.

• But how tall? How powerful? How beautiful? The Republican candidate's big ideas can be small on detail, and the wall is no exception.

• The US-Mexico border is about 1,900 miles (3100 km) long and traverses all sorts of terrain from empty, dusty desert to the lush and rugged surroundings of the Rio Grande.

THE TRUMP WALL• Some 650 miles of the border is covered already

by a confused and non-continuous series of fences, concrete slabs and other structures.

• Mr Trump says his wall will cover 1,000 miles and natural obstacles will take care of the rest.

• This is a wall we are talking about, not a fence - on that Mr Trump has been clear ("a wall is better than fencing and it's much more powerful").

THE TRUMP WALL• That rules out relatively cheap options like tall

iron fence posts or wire mesh.• Concrete is the obvious choice. Ali F. Rhuzkan, a

New York-based structural engineer, estimated in an article for National Memo that a 1,900-mile wall - seemingly Mr Trump's original plan - would require about 339 million cubic feet (12.5 million cubic yards) of concrete - three times more than the Hoover Dam.

• http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37243269

THE TRUMP WALL

THE TRUMP WALL• If Donald Trump were to build a wall along the

United States' southern border, it would cost billions.

• The U.S. border with Mexico is roughly 2,000 miles long and underlines four states from California to Texas. It is a massive stretch of land — the Berlin Wall spanned just 96 miles comparatively, and it cost about $25 million to build in 1961, or around $200 million with inflation.

THE TRUMP WALL• Building a wall to keep out illegal immigrants is

not a novel plan. About 670 miles of fencing on the U.S.-Mexico border was completed in accordance with the Bush administration's Secure Fence Act of 2006. That alone cost about $2.4 billion, for roughly one-third of the entire border and, according to migration experts, some of the easier and less costly areas to fence.

• The Secure Fence Act called for 700 miles of fencing, with a double layer throughout, but much of the barrier isn't reinforced this way. Even before the fence reached its first stage of completion, some argued it was not being constructed properly.

THE TRUMP WALL• "It's a lot more expensive than we expected when we started, and

it was much more difficult," said Ronald Vitiello, deputy chief of border patrol for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, at a Senate Committee hearing in May.

• Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, said in a January 2015 statement to right-leaning publication Daily Caller (founded by Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson and former Dick Cheney advisor Neil Patel) that "In our conversations with outside groups, experts and stakeholders, we learned that it would be an inefficient use of taxpayer money to complete the fence. … We are using that money to utilize other technology to create a secure border."

THE TRUMP WALL• Now it's become a presidential election cycle

issue, courtesy of Donald Trump's bold words.• "I would build a great wall, and nobody builds

walls better than me, believe me, and I'll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border. And I will have Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words," Trump said in his presidential announcement speech.

THE TRUMP WALL• On his campaign website, Trump's immigration

reform plan calls for impounding remittance payments derived from illegal wages and imposing increased visa and entry fees to the U.S. from Mexico unless the latter agrees to finance the wall.

• Mexico picking up the tab is unlikely, and so is doing it cheaply.

• "The cost of it is extraordinary; the terrain makes it impossible — it's a great sound bite, but it's not defensible in terms of a practical policy," said GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush at a town hall meeting in Denver.

THE TRUMP WALL• According to a Government Accountability Office 2009 report,

the cost to build 1 mile of fencing at the border averaged between $2.8 million and $3.9 million. But that figure may be low relative to costs for future sections of the wall. It's based only on the first 220 miles fenced and does not include other factors, such as topography, transportation logistics in harder-to-reach areas (i.e. road-building and earth and drainage work), labor costs, land acquisition costs and surveillance equipment.

• "The first miles of fencing were in the easiest" places, said Marc Rosenblum, deputy director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute. These were fencing areas in or close to cities and accessible transportation, rather than deep in deserts or mountains. Additionally, the first miles were on public lands, while completing a border wall would require the government to acquire land from private holders. The GAO estimate for one difficult section of fencing near San Diego was $16 million.

THE TRUMP WALL• One aspect of the wall debate more important

than the cost is its worth. The migration expert Rosenblum said fencing in remote areas of the U.S. isn't likely to achieve the goal of a more secure border.

• "It's not necessary to have a pedestrian fence in places where the infrastructure doesn't support people walking toward the border," Vitiello said in his May Senate testimony.

• Border walls work in densely populated areas — such as Israel's wall in the West Bank — where slowing down a person trying to illegally enter by five or 10 minutes can make a difference to border patrol. But when the migrant trying to enter is traveling over remote mountains and deserts for three days, using a fence to slow them down by a few minutes doesn't have the same effect — it borders (pun intended) on the trivial, Rosenblum said.

• "There is a reason people don't build fences in the middle of nowhere; it doesn't change the enforcement profile in the middle of nowhere," the migration expert said. "The existing fence has worked because of where it is, near populated areas. Both Democrats and Republicans have testified that they have the fencing they need," Rosenblum said.

THE TRUMP WALL

THE TRUMP WALL• The actual cost for the rest of the border wall (roughly 1,300

miles) could be as high as $16 million per mile, with a total price tag of $15 billion to $25 billion. Rosenblum said the $15 billion low-end estimate is "probably an underestimate," because the parts that have yet to be fenced are the most difficult — the most dense and arid. At $16 million per mile and with 1,300 miles to secure, the estimated cost would be $12 billion, and the price of private land acquisitions and maintenance of fencing could push that total cost higher.

• The U.S. government would have to pay to maintain the wall, which could cost as much as $750 million a year, according to an analysis conducted by Politico. And then if it wanted to man it with personnel, that would be an additional cost — border patrol has an operating budget of $1.4 billion for 21,000 agents.

THE TRUMP WALL• "The need to maintain, repair and replace outdated

and aging fencing will continue to be an issue," Vitiello said during his Senate testimony given in May.

• In addition to the 2009 GAO estimate of price per mile, more recent spending data is now available from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). From fiscal 2007 through fiscal 2014, $5.9 billion in total appropriations was awarded by Congress to the Border Security Fencing, Infrastructure, and Technology Account (BSFIT).

• "This is actually the best way to think about the real costs of installing/maintaining fencing," Rosenblum said. "A fence is useless without a camera to tell you when someone has climbed over it."

THE TRUMP WALL• Rosenblum said most of the BSFIT money and fence installation

occurred between fiscal 2007 and fiscal 2010. During that period, DHS installed 507 miles of new fencing, with $4.5 billion appropriated to the BSFIT account. If all the money went to new fencing during this period, the price per mile would be $8.9 million. While there is a discrepancy between the BSFIT high-end estimate ($11.5 million/mile) and earlier GAO estimate ($16.6 million/mile), Rosenblum said that, in the least, the higher numbers from both agencies are more relevant to the sections of border fencing still to be built than the GAO estimate for the initial sections at between $2.8 million and $3.9 million.

• "The cost of building a permanent border wall pales mightily in comparison to what American taxpayers spend every single year on dealing with the fallout of illegal immigration on their communities, schools and unemployment offices," according to Trump's website, though it doesn't put an actual figure on either expense.

THE TRUMP WALL• There's one more aspect to Trump's plan that could make it

even costlier — he is talking about a wall, not a fence. If he really means what he says, "the price would go up quite a bit," Rosenblum said.

• The existing border "wall" is actually fencing and, in some areas, not even fencing but vehicular barriers.—By Kate Drew, special to CNBC.com

• http://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/09/this-is-what-trumps-border-wall-could-cost-us.html

THE TRUMP WALL• Ramo, a former journalist and the co-CEO and vice

chairman of the consulting firm Kissinger Associates, applies network theory to international affairs.

• The fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War helped usher in unfettered globalization, he argues, but now a backlash is underway. Globalization has gradually produced a desire in certain parts of the world for separation—particularly after a series of traumas, including the 9/11 attacks and the global financial crisis, exposed the hazards of freewheeling integration. And separation is increasingly being achieved through physical barriers.

THE TRUMP WALL• The statistic Ramo cites about the spread of walls comes

from a study by the political scientists Ron Hassner and Jason Wittenberg: Of the 51 fortified boundaries built between countries since the end of World War II, around half were constructed between 2000 and 2014.

• Hassner and Wittenberg found that such boundaries—structures like the existing U.S.-Mexico border fence, the Israel-West Bank barrier, and the Saudi Arabia-Yemen border fence—tend to be constructed by wealthy countries seeking to keep out the citizens of poorer countries, and that many of these fortifications have been built between states in the Muslim world.

• http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/05/donald-trump-wall-mexico/483156/