True to his word, President Donald Trump on Wednesday directed that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) complete construction of a wall along America’s southern border with Mexico allowed under existing law and also hire additional agents to secure the border and enforce immigration laws inside the United States.
Under the Secure Fence Act of 2006 DHS previously completed nearly 700 miles of wall, fencing and related physical barriers along portions of the southern border to make it more difficult for illegal immigrants to walk or drive into the U.S. from Mexico. The law called for 700 miles of fencing.
Exactly how many more miles of border walls Trump plans to build are unclear.
Trump campaigned last year on building more walls to better protect the U.S. from illegal immigration and drug trafficking.
Under the Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements Executive Order Trump signed on Wednesday, he directed “immediate construction of a physical wall on the southern border, monitored and supported by adequate personnel as to prevent illegal immigration, drug and human trafficking, and acts of terrorism.” The order also directs that DHS to “take all appropriate steps to immediately plan, design, and construct a physical wall along the southern border, using appropriate materials and technology to most effectively achieve complete operational control of the southern border.”
No specific funding amounts are contained in the directive but it says to prepare budget requests for FY ’17 and FY ’18 for the wall. Cost estimates to construct and maintain additional physical barriers on the southern border have been put in the billions of dollars, in some cases more than $10 billion.
A spokeswoman for DHS told Defense Daily that the department is not commenting beyond the information contained in the executive orders.
The border security order also directs that 5,000 more Border Patrol agents be hired to enhance border security. It also calls for a comprehensive study on the security of the southern border be completed within 180 days to include the availability of federal and state resources to achieve total operational control of the southern border and a strategy to accomplish this control.
A separate order entitled Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States calls for enforcing existing immigration laws, including the hiring of 10,000 additional immigration officers, which would triple the current number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents assigned to track down illegal immigrants in the U.S.