Yes, the U.S. can build a wall or fencing on the U.S. side of
the border, except for that portion of the border that is on the Tohono O’odhom
reservation in Arizona. But the wall will be an expensive
failure.
Donald Trump plans to build a border wall at a
cost of at least $16,000,000,000, more likely $25 billion.
Rather than building a wall that will not
work, we could build 375 schools in the U.S., or 93 average size hospitals.
For every 10 miles of wall built, we could
have 30 schools. For every 50 miles, we could have 4-5 hospitals.
The Border Community is 2,000 miles long, expanding from
California to the Gulf of Mexico. It includes uninhabited desert, small and
large cities, and el Rio Grande.
· The US considers Border
Territory anything 100 miles from ports of entry. This includes the Southern
and Northern Borders as well as all coasts, meaning that about 2/3
of the entire US population live within Border Territory.
· About 200 million people
live within the 100-mile zone; including 11 states that lie almost entirely
within the zone and 9 of the 10 largest cities in the country: New York
City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego
and San Jose.
Border Enforcement
· The United States spends
billions of dollars a year on border enforcement under the narrative of
‘national security’, which is primarily spent on the Southern Border.
· Customs and Border Patrol
is the largest federal law enforcement agency in the country. Today there are
about 22,000 Border Patrol agents, 18,000 of them stationed on the Southern
Border.
· CBP has full authority to
operate anywhere within the 100-mile zone, including stopping and searching
vehicles and persons on reasonable suspicion, regardless of legal status.
· The Department of Justice
exempted Border Patrol from its most recent orders to local and federal police
against racial profiling.
· The budget for border
enforcement increased by 75% in the last decade, to add up to 13.5 billion
dollars per year. This is more than the DEA, FBI, and Secret Service budgets
combined.
· Internal Border Patrol
immigration checkpoints exist all throughout the 100-mile zone, way beyond
Ports of Entry. In New Mexico, these checkpoints are located well beyond urban
locations, forcing all undocumented immigrants to remain within the region.
· The current wall covers
about 650 miles along the border and has already cost the US $7 billion, that’s
about $5 million per mile in some areas.
· Trump’s executive orders
call for the immediate construction of a wall, which is estimated to cost $25
billion, and the hiring of 15,000 more ICE and Border Patrol agents that would
cost up to $15 billion in 10 years.
· An initial $3 billion has
already been requested from Congress to begin the construction of a wall and to
immediately hire 1,000 ICE agents and 500 Border Patrol agents.
The Sacramento
Immigration committee has established a hot line to report ICE activity in the
neighborhoods, at schools, parks, and other areas.
916-245-6773
If you see ICE
activity, please report it. When you report the activity, volunteers
and legal observers will go to the location.
Trump’s demand to build the wall and to impose tariffs is
producing a reaction in Mexico. The U.S. not only imports from
Mexico, U.S. corporations
also exported to Mexico $267 billion dollars worth of
goods in 2015. Mexico is the U.S.’s second largest export
market. A tariff on the U.S. side will likely produce a tariff on
the Mexican side that could cost some 1 million jobs in the U.S.
Arturo Rodriguez, President of the United Farmworkers union
(UFW) asks, “Since some 50 % of agricultural labor in California, Florida and
Texas is undocumented, when they arrest all of these workers, who is going to
feed the nation?” The answer to his question is, if the border is
closed and mass arrests make workers not available, most vegetable production
will move to Mexico and to other countries. Is that progress?
The Trump administration is being reckless and poorly informed
in matters of foreign policy as well as domestic issues. Building
Trump’s wall and threatening to make Mexico pay for the wall built
on U.S. land was a belligerent act championed in the
Trump campaign. This poorly informed effort ignores many of
the realities of the U.S.-Mexico
relationship. Mexico provides the primary security against migration
to the U.S. on our southern border. Mexican police and military
restrict migration and turn thousands of would-be
migrants back each year.
The Mexican army and
police also provide the primary obstacle to migrants from Honduras, El Salvador
and Guatemala from reaching the U.S. border. The U.S.
pays the Mexican forces to do this enforcement. Given Trump’s
provocative statements and acts, they could simply stop serving as a border
security force for the U.S. The end of bi-national police cooperation would
massively increase immigration and severely reduce efforts to restrict drug
cartels from moving drugs into the U.S.
The Mexican political system and the police are corrupt, but the
situation could get much worse. The Mexican legislature is already
considering several bills to prevent Mexico from cooperating with the Trump
surge in deportations. Readers should know that the Mexican
presidency is up for election in 2018, and the current dominant party (PRI) is
in disgrace, in part because it is
seen as subservient to the Trump administration. Nationalism
and resisting Yankee interference is a potent political force in
Mexico and a left populist – Manuel Lopez Obrador – is
currently far ahead in the polls.
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