It looks as if Congress struck a tentative deal to provide $1.375 billion for the border wall. That would provide 55 miles of wall. While better than nothing, it is hardly sufficient.
AP:
Three people familiar with Congress’ tentative border security deal tell The Associated Press that the accord would provide $1.375 billion to build 55 miles of new border barriers.
That’s well below the $5.7 billion President Donald Trump demanded to build over 200 miles of wall along the Mexican boundary. The money will be for vertical steel slats called bollards, not a solid wall.
Democrats dropped their proposal to limit the number of detained immigrants caught inside the U.S. to a daily average of 16,500. Republicans opposed that demand. There is currently no such limit.
Bargainers agreed to fund 40,520 beds to detain immigrants entering or in the U.S. illegally. That’s the same number funded last year, though the actual figure held is around 49,000.
Trump didn’t sound happy about the proposal. This Congressional group ignored what experts from the Border Patrol requested and as Trump accurately pointed out, it says all you need to know about it. They should be incorporating everything the experts requested to solve the problem but there’s no interest in that because of politics.
In order to make any significant progress on the wall, Trump is going to have to do it unilaterally. Trying to get something done through Congress is a waste of time. He needs to take executive action and let the chips fall where they may. He should also ignore court orders and just use the magic words “national security” to justify his ignoring the orders. If we can bomb people on the other side of the world for Jews in the name of “national security” we can build a wall in the name of “national security.” Only this time, it would actually be a legitimate security mechanism to protect the nation.
To Trump’s credit he has improved existing barriers and additional barriers are about to go up along the Texas border but much more needs to be done.
