Donald Trump’s signature border wall is morphing in strange and costly ways — even as it seems to play little role in stemming illegal migration.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has been busy spending state money — in hundred-million-dollar chunks — to erect his own political statement on the Texas-Mexico border. Abbott’s wall, which the Texas Observer calls a “colossal waste of money,” has generated contracts for GOP campaign donors and a talking point for Abbott’s political future. But Abbott’s wall is running into some of the same difficulties that plagued Trump’s wall. 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.
In Congress, Representative Clay Higgins of Louisiana, a leading Republican defender of those who overran the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, just introduced the Finish The Wall Act. The legislation is largely self-explanatory. It’s designed to complete the Trump wall and stop the “horror” that President Joe Biden is “forcing on America.”
