House Appropriations Committee Approves Funding For Border Security
A House committee has given preliminary approval to about $1.6 billion for 28 miles of a new levee wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and 46 miles of fencing.
The money for border infrastructure construction includes:
28 miles of new levee wall in the Rio Grande Valley, at $498 million
32 miles of new border fencing in the Rio Grande Valley, at $784 million and,
14 miles of secondary fencing in San Diego, Calif., at $251 million
The House Appropriations Committee on July 18 voted 30-22 on a proposed bill to provide the Department of Homeland Security with $44.3 billion in discretionary funding for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, 2017, and ending Sept. 30, 2018.
The proposed funding is in addition to money appropriated in fiscal year 2017 for the replacement of 40 miles of primary fencing in sectors of California and Texas .
The Associated Press reported that Republican leaders plan to attach funding for border security to a spending bill for the Defense Department and other agencies. The House is expected to consider that spending bill soon.
Details on the length and type of wall remain uncertain. In March, U.S. Customs and Border Protection began accepting proposals for the design and construction of wall prototypes solid concrete and other types. In late June, DHS told the New York Times prototype constructions would begin this summer but did not specify when exactly.
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Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., who visited the border in southern Texas with 17 other GOP colleagues, told ABC News that border security officials told lawmakers migrants were taking advantage of the gaps in the wall around the McAllen, Texas area.
Senate Republicans have called on the Government Accountability Office to assess whether the Biden administration violated the Impoundment Control Act – a 1974 law at the heart of the first impeachment case against Trump, that limits a president’s power to withhold funds.
While Democrats and Republicans agree Biden can redirect billions Trump diverted from the Pentagon to fund the project, Republicans argue that unspent wall funds approved by Congress can only be used for their original purpose.
A spokesperson for the White House Office of Management and Budget said Biden’s actions were consistent with appropriations law.
Did Donald Trump Build The Great Wall Of China
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220 B.C. is the earliest known date for this event. During the Second World War, as a First Emperor, Qin Shi Huang was responsible for the reunification of China. masterminded the process of creating the U shaped by the existing walls into one. Massive slabs of earth and wood made up most of the wall at that time.
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The Damage Trumps Wall Causes In Mexico
Editor’s Note:
Vanda Felbab-Brown outlines the harmful effects of the U.S.-Mexico border wall on Native Mexican communities, highly sensitive natural environments and biodiversity, and water sustainability in Mexico. This piece was originally published by La Reforma’s Mexico Today.
The July 8 visit by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to the United States was characterized by a deafening silence about the wall on the U.S.-Mexico border that the Trump administration is aggressively building. Clearly, prioritizing the signing of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement was the crucial strategy for the AMLO administration, as it appropriately would be for any Mexican government. But now that the USMCA is in effect, it is time for the AMLO administration to defend the rights of Mexican citizens and demand compensation from the U.S. government for the damage the pointless wasteful and destructive wall will cause to them and to natural environments and biodiversity in Mexico. Mexican civil society, likewise distressingly silent on the issue, should also take up the cause.
Although Mexico never paid for the wall , the wall has vast harmful effects on Native Mexican communities, highly sensitive natural environments and biodiversity, and water sustainability in Mexico.
Our Rating: Partly False
Based on our research, the Facebook post is PARTLY FALSE because some of it was not supported by our research. More than 3 miles of the border wall have been built under Trump. However, the rest of the claims about Mexico, Hillary Clinton, Obamacare, the deficit, unemployment, and the pandemic are true.
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Prototypes Under Construction For Us
Construction of eight border wall prototypes is under way as the Department of Homeland Security seeks to advance President Donald Trump’s landmark promise.
The construction includes four concrete wall prototypes and four prototypes using “other materials.” Construction began Sept. 26 in San Diego, Calif., close to the U.S.-Mexico border. The prototypes are expected to be finished near the end of October.
The prototypes will be designed to deter illegal immigration in the area where they are constructed and be between 18 to 30 feet high, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a .
“Moving forward with the prototypes enables us to continue to incorporate all the tools necessary to secure our border,” Ronald Vitiello, CBP acting deputy commissioner, said in the news release.
In an announcing contracts awarded for concrete prototypes, Vitiello said officials will examine the prototypes’ aesthetics, how penetrable and resistant they are to tampering, and their anti-scaling or anti-climb features. Those contracts ranged from just under $400,000 to just under $500,000.
“There’s still a lot to do, right. We are going to build four prototypes for concrete and then we are going to build four other materials, and then we are going to make decisions about which is most appropriate for which location,” Vitiello said.
Evaluation of prototypes will take 30 to 60 days, he said.
Companies building concrete border wall prototypes include the following:
What Barriers Were Already Constructed When Trump Took Office
Trumps predecessors George W. Bush and Barack Obama builtmiles of barriers on the southern border while eschewing Trumps anti-immigrantrhetoric. These pro-immigration presidents put a great deal of money intosecuring the border because they believed that doing so would strengthen theircase for passage of comprehensive immigration reform.
The southern border is nearly 2,000 miles long. About 700 ofthose miles are on land the remaining 1,300 miles are the Rio Grande river. Accordingto the Government Accountability Office , prior to 2005 only about 150miles of the border was fenced. Over about eight years and with approximately$2.4 billion, the fencing was extended to approximately 650 miles. When Trumptook office almost all the land border had fencing of some type, such as chainlink, bollard fence , or vehicle fencing thats shapedlike a roadblock. You can see images of the fences, as well as breaches in eachtype of fence, in GAOs 2017 report.
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First Claim Is False Over 300 Miles Of Wall Have Been Built Though Just 5 Miles Are New
It’s true that the number of miles of wall built at the southern border has fallen short of the number promised by Trump. But it’s not quite as low as the post makes it out to be.
On Sept. 1, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported that 307 miles of the border wall have been completed.
Still, the “3 mile” figure is likely referring to the number of miles of new border wall that have been built.
On June 23, the Los Angeles Times reported that of the 216 miles built since Trump took office, just 3 miles were “constructed in locations where no barriers previously existed.” The rest were replacement walls or secondary to existing walls.
That figure seems to have grown a bit over the summer, too on Aug. 7, the San Antonio Express-News reported that of the then-260 miles completed, a total of 5 miles were new.
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Donald Trump Secures About $16 Billion For Border Barriers
President Donald Trump has secured $1.57 billion for barriers along the southwest border advancing his promise to secure the border but falling significantly short of his desired $25 billion for a wall.
“We funded the initial down payment of $1.6 billion,” Trump said March 23 after signing a $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill into law. “We are going to be starting work literally on Monday on not only on some new wall, not enough, but we are working on that very quickly. But also fixing existing walls and existing acceptable fences.”
The funds, however, won’t be used to construct any of the wall prototypes standing in California near the U.S.-Mexico border, which Trump toured earlier this month.
The designated funds, the bill said, “shall only be available for operationally effective designs deployed as of the date of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2017, , such as currently deployed steel bollard designs, that prioritize agent safety.” U.S. Customs and Border Protection told PolitiFact on March 13, 2018, that the wall prototypes were still being evaluated.
The bill Trump signed specifically called for:
$251 million for approximately 14 miles of secondary fencing along the southwest border in the San Diego sector
$445 million for 25 miles of primary pedestrian levee fencing along the southwest border in the Rio Grande Valley Sector
$196 million for primary pedestrian fencing along the southwest border in the Rio Grande Valley Sector
Dhs Secretary Directs Planning Design Construction Of Border Wall
Department of Homeland Security John Kelly issued a memo Feb. 20 directing an agency within his department, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, to move forward on Trump’s executive order to build a wall along the southern border.
“Consistent with the president’s executive order, the will of Congress and the need to secure the border in the national interest, CBP, in consultation with the appropriate executive departments and agencies, and nongovernmental entities having relevant expertise — and using materials originating in the United States to the maximum extent permitted by law — shall immediately begin planning, design, construction and maintenance of a wall,” the memo said.
Kelly’s memo also called for the use of technology, patrol and access roads to gain operational control of the border.
Kelly directed the Under Secretary for Management and CBP commissioner to allocate all sources of available funding for the planning, design, construction and maintenance of the wall and for other security measures. They were also instructed to develop project-specific congressional budget requests for the current and subsequent fiscal years.
In a Q& A posted on DHS website, the department says it has identified locations near El Paso, Texas Tucson, Ariz. and El Centro, Calif., for wall construction because “fence or old brittle landing-mat fencing are no longer effective.”
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The Border Wall Is Outliving Trump
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Myles Traphagen kept his eye on the horizon as he maneuvered his pickup truck down a treacherous sand road in Cabeza Prieta, Arizonas largest wilderness area. Bordered by Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument to the east, Cabeza Prieta sits on the states southwestern edge. The preserve, which was founded in 1939, is known for its beauty and its desert wildlife, which includes Western diamondback rattlesnakes, Sonoran pronghorn, and lesser long-nosed bats. It is, according to the National Park Service, the loneliest international boundary on the continent. Looming mountains, some made of lava, others of granite, cleave the rugged land. They give Cabeza Prieta its nameSpanish for dark heads.
American Scar, a documentary short by the New Yorker filmmaker Daniel Lombroso, explores some of the border walls unintended consequences.
Asked for comment, a White House official said, On his first day in office, President Biden paused construction of a wall along the Southern border, and every day since we have been working to clean up the mess the prior Administration left behind, including by returning, where possible, the land it seized, returning the money it took from our military, and working closely with border communities, stakeholders, and Tribal communities to address urgent life, safety, and environmental issues.
Federal Budget Shutdown In 20182019
On December 22, 2018, the federal government went into a shutdown due to Trump’s demand for $5.6 billion in federal funds for a wall on the USMexico border. On January 12, 2019, the shutdown became the longest budget shutdown in U.S. history.
The government shutdown ended after Congress passed, and Trump signed, a bill without the billions in funding for the border wall Trump demanded. The next month, however, Trump thereafter issued a proclamation declaring a “national emergency” on the border, and began to divert money from other projects to border-wall construction. This precipitated a constitutional clash over .
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Stop : A Scene One Sheriff Calls ‘foolish’
“About January the 24th everything stopped. … To me, it’s just — just crazy.”
Joe Frank Martinez, Val Verde County sheriff
“I just think it’s foolish to leave this project as it is. My understanding is that they’re going to continue in the near future, but that’s yet to be seen.”
Joe Frank Martinez, Val Verde County sheriff
“If that happens, then we’re going to go back 20-30 years, where you’re going to get masses of people coming through here. Crime rate in my community will go up, because there’s no structure here.”
Joe Frank Martinez, Val Verde County sheriff
Promise: The Wall Would Cost $8
Perhaps Trumps most consistent promise about the border wall was that Mexico would pay for it.
“I will have Mexico pay for that wall, mark my words,” Trump said at his presidential announcement speech, one of hundreds of times he made that promise.
He said during his 2016 campaign that it would cost $8 billion, or perhaps $12 billion, for his 1,000-mile wall. In fact, the federal government has allocated $15 billion for the 453 mile project, according to Time Magazine.
Mexico did not pay for the wall its leaders have refused since Trump first made his promise. After Trump’s inauguration, the president began suggesting that the U.S. would initially pay, but that Mexico would reimburse the U.S. for the wall.
That has also not happened. Taxpayers foot the bill for Trump’s wall.
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