Description and Details

The Trump wall is an expan­sion of the Mex­i­co-Unit­ed States Bar­ri­er. It’s part of Trump’s cam­paign in his 2016 elec­tion, as he said, “Build the wall and let Mex­i­co pay for it”. As a con­tin­u­a­tion of the Mex­i­co-Unit­ed States Bor­der, the wall aims to pre­vent the ille­gal cross­ing of migrants from Mex­i­co into the Unit­ed States. The wall is not a con­tin­u­ous struc­ture, between the dis­con­tin­u­ous walls there are nat­ur­al deserts, steep moun­tains as nat­ur­al bar­ri­ers, and a vir­tu­al fence built upon sen­sors, cam­eras, and oth­er advanced vir­tu­al equipment. 

Trump’s sign­ing of Exec­u­tive Order 13767 marks the for­mal dec­la­ra­tion of the wall con­struc­tion. Con­struc­tion will con­sist of build­ing new bar­ri­ers and replac­ing the pre­vi­ous fence with a more defen­sive wall. The project is fed­er­al­ly fund­ed with an addi­tion­al five miles of wall being con­struct­ed by a pri­vate orga­ni­za­tion called We Build the Wall using pri­vate prop­er­ty. The con­struc­tion process was ter­mi­nat­ed dur­ing the pres­i­den­tial tran­si­tion between Trump and Biden in 2021. Rather than con­tin­u­ing the wall, Biden prefers to adopt high-tech solu­tions than a phys­i­cal bar­ri­er. On April 30, the Depart­ment of Defense announced that all wall con­struc­tion con­tracts were can­celed. Until then, more than 450 miles of the wall had been completed.

The biggest impact of the wall is the migra­tion issue. Accord­ing to U.S. Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion Agency, the num­ber of migrants detained at the U.S.-Mexico bor­der was more than 800,000 dur­ing Bush’s term of office and aver­aged 400,000 in Obama’s term. Ille­gal migrants from South Amer­i­ca have brought a sense of inse­cu­ri­ty to the Amer­i­can peo­ple. It great­ly reshapes the eth­nic com­po­si­tion of the U.S., con­tribut­ing to the increase of the Latin Amer­i­can por­tion. Drug smug­gling across the bor­der has become more and more ram­pant. Fam­i­ly homes near the bor­der are bro­ken into, and some fam­i­lies have been killed by unau­tho­rized immi­grants. As dis­sat­is­fac­tion accu­mu­lates, more and more peo­ple call for action to stop ille­gal migra­tion inflow.

How­ev­er, before the con­struc­tion of the wall, ille­gal cross­ings had fall­en in the U.S. Hence some experts, like Sarah Pierce, US immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy ana­lyst at the inde­pen­dent Migra­tion Pol­i­cy Insti­tute, don’t attribute the migra­tion reduc­tion to the phys­i­cal bor­der. She says “Any effect that the phys­i­cal wall has had in reduc­ing unau­tho­rized migra­tion has paled in com­par­i­son to the admin­is­tra­tion’s bureau­crat­ic wall”. 

The bor­der was also built to inhib­it ille­gal drugs from flow­ing into the U.S. In 2016, more than 90 per­cent of U.S. hero­in was from the south­ern bor­der. Nev­er­the­less, some experts think a phys­i­cal wall is unlike­ly to help reduce ille­gal drugs. Unlike ille­gal migrants who cross the bor­der fence, the drugs most com­mon­ly sneak through estab­lished bor­der check­points. They are hid­den in pri­vate­ly owned vehi­cles or trans­porter trucks, mixed with oth­er goods. Under this cir­cum­stance, it’s more impor­tant to strength­en legal entry points instead of the phys­i­cal barrier.

The wall also impos­es a threat to the envi­ron­ment and species liv­ing on the bor­der. The U.S. jaguar needs a con­nec­tion with Mexico’s pop­u­la­tion to sur­vive. A wall on the bor­der will elim­i­nate migra­tion cor­ri­dors for jaguars. As an apex preda­tor at the top of the food chain, the sur­vival of the jaguar is essen­tial to the sta­bil­i­ty of the ecosys­tem. Apart from the jaguar, oth­er species like oaks and pinons will suf­fer from the wall. When Trump start­ed to build the wall, he waived 37 envi­ron­men­tal laws and regulations.

Anoth­er chal­lenge in build­ing the wall is the pri­vate prop­er­ty on the bor­der­lands. The con­struc­tion of the wall requires seiz­ing near­ly 5,000 parcels of prop­er­ty, around 4,900 parcels of which sit with­in 500 feet of the bor­der in Texas. Most Texas land is pri­vate­ly owned, and hence a wall would reverse pri­vate prop­er­ty rights. Many court cas­es have been issued, but many decline the gov­ern­men­t’s offers. The wall either cuts across their pri­vate prop­er­ty or lies back toward the high­way, so landown­ers have to go through a locked gate to access their land. Some peo­ple con­sid­er it a sep­a­ra­tion of both land own­er­ship and community.

From the Mex­i­can people’s per­spec­tive, who won’t stop try­ing for a bet­ter life, the ven­ture would be only more dan­ger­ous and life-threat­en­ing. They will tend to choose more dan­ger­ous routes and are more like­ly to die in the desert or get deport­ed back to Mex­i­co. The num­ber of peo­ple who suc­cess­ful­ly get through is only a frac­tion of those who try to cross. The skull found in the desert is hard to iden­ti­fy. The crossers deport­ed back to Mex­i­co face the dan­ger from local crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tions and drug gangs, who assume they have rel­a­tives in the U.S. that could be extort­ed for money. 

CEE Sub­jects: Con­struc­tion Engi­neer­ing and Man­age­ment, Struc­tur­al Engineering

Discussion Questions

  • Should the Wall be built? How can we resolve the con­cerns of dif­fer­ent stake­hold­er par­ties involved in the project?
  • From the Trump Wall’s per­spec­tive, what do you think about the rela­tion­ship between engi­neer­ing infra­struc­ture and human­i­tar­i­an issues?
  • As civil/environmental engi­neers, what is our role in this project?

References

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