This is what Trump's border wall could cost Kate Drew, special to CNBC.com
Published 10:02 AM ET Fri, 9 Oct 2015 Updated 12:06 PM ET Thu, 26 Jan 2017 CNBC.com
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U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel walk along a section of fence at the U.S.-Mexico border.
President Donald Trump's plans to build a wall along the United States' southern border is inflaming relations between the United States and Mexico. It's a contentious issue, considering the border wall would cost billions of dollars.
On Thursday, Trump threatened to cancel a meeting with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, after Peña Nieto reiterated that Mexico would not pay for it.
On Thursday, Senate leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky, said Congress will follow through on Trump's border wall order, and McConnell estimated it will cost $15 billion at most — he cited a range of $12 billion to $15 billion.
The U.S. border with Mexico is roughly 2,000 miles long and underlines four states, from California to Texas, more than half of it along the Colorado River and Rio Grande. 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.
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.
"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 2015.
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."
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Poster Comment:
It's only money.