“We had…championship mountain climbers” who couldn’t get over bolstered 30-foot border fencing, President Donald Trump told Fox News in September. No one, he said, could scale the structure.
A viral video circulating on social media shows a group of migrants climbing over the wall using a ladder and some rope.
This is the newly replaced wall along the US/MEXICO border. #TheWall pic.twitter.com/MIrD3HhVsE
— J. Omar Ornelas (@fotornelas) December 4, 2019
And according to a recent Washington Post report, smugglers have been able to saw through the barrier using commonly available cordless saws (this is not a new phenomenon). All of these reports contradict Trump’s claim that a border wall would be “virtually impenetrable.”
Of course, the wall in 2019 looks much different than the one Trump promised during his 2016 campaign. It’s made of steel bollards, as opposed to the “concrete plank” that Trump promised during his campaign. And despite Trump claiming responsibility for building new stretches of border barrier, his administration has focused almost exclusively on renovating existing fencing.
Will fortifying fencing and building new barriers—at a conservative price estimate of $18 billion—meaningfully impact undocumented immigration and the smuggling of humans and drugs? It’s actually tough to measure the wall’s impact.
Border apprehensions for illegal entry and other offenses totaled 396,579 in 2018, down from 1,643,679 in 2000. In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security linked those lower apprehensions to the wall. “When it comes to stopping drugs and illegal aliens from crossing our borders, border walls have proven to be extremely effective,” a statement said. “Border security relies on a combination of border infrastructure, technology, personnel and partnerships with law enforcement at the state, local, tribal, and federal level. For example, when we installed a border wall in the Yuma Sector, we have seen border apprehensions decrease by 90 percent.”
Yet the vast majority of cocaine and heroin that arrives in the U.S. from Central and South America comes through legal ports of entry. It’s also difficult to ascertain the role of barriers in reducing apprehensions. As David Bier of the Cato Institute notes in Reason, Congress implemented the Secure Fence Act in 2006, the same year they also bumped Border Patrol from 12,000 to 21,000 officers. Is the wall the deterrent? Or the patrols?
Even DHS concedes that a constellation of policies are at work, which undermines the case for investing so many billions of U.S. tax dollars in a wall, particularly when sections of that wall would require the confiscation of private property owned by U.S. citizens and building in desolate areas that only the hardiest and most desperate immigrants can cross without dying.
Bier also noted that apprehensions are down at least in part because immigrants have worked around the wall both figuratively and literally. In 2006, for instance, more than a third of undocumented immigrants came here by way of a visa overstay. By 2012, that number was up to 58 percent.
“It’s not surprising that you put up a big wall somewhere, people go somewhere else,” Bier tells me. “That’s been true at least to some extent everywhere they’ve put up fences. People go around them if they can. In some cases, they go over them.”
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)
The Wall in Jerusalem is just working fine.
Concrete 10 feet thick and 25 feet tall, equipped in places with razor wire and machine guns does the trick. Trump’s fence isn’t designed to stop anyone; it’s merely a physical fitness test.
Well of course, we paid for it.
They can make impenetrable walls. Every prison in the country has one. The truth is that trump used the wall-and the controlling borders issue to rope in the rubes-a speciality of his.
Prison walls are/would be easily penetrable. It is only the fact they are actually guarded that makes it difficult.
In military terms, walls are like engineering obstacles, force multipliers. You can’t multiply zero force. Walls make the border patrol’s job easier, not unnecessary.
Just like safes. There is no safe in the country that could keep me out of it if I have access to whatever tools I need, however much time I need, and don’t have to worry about being caught/heard/stopped. I might destroy whatever is inside it during the application of ‘enough force’, but I could get in.
My career was spent on prison construction including working ‘inside the wire’. Walls can be made impenetrable with hardware and software. All it takes is an honest effort. Ask Israel.
Ask them what, where they get the money?
Their border to keep out black jews.
It’s only impenetrable if there’s a strong electrical shock that kills.
And how much will that add to the cost?
I don’t know but my guess is cheaper than the food stamps, housing and medical care we’re giving the illegals now.
You forgot schooling the illegal kiddies, it costs Texas almost 100 billion with a B per year….hola….
Less than a cremation.
It doesn’t have to kill. Electric fences use low voltage current to contain 800 lb cattle. And just try cutting your way thru ribbon wire.
Post snipers…….
Shoot a few of them or run a few hundred volts potential between the individual slates and they’d stop.
No razor wire at the top? I don’t know why they don’t make the wall out of bulletproof or unbreakable glass (since the Border Patrol want be able to see through to the other side, which is why it’s bars instead of a solid wall), with razor wire at the top. That rope ladder wouldn’t have lasted against razor wire. But again, I repeat my comment about an electrical charge on the metal wall.
How would you generate said potential across 2000 miles of wall?
It doesn’t cost that much to run electricity lines from poles to the fence. You’re spending more now on investigation of sex acts of turtles. Divert the money.
Hot wires are strung across pastures all the time. Solar is powering some of them, Touching a hot wire is rather off-putting.
Most guys I grew up with understood early on, not to piss too close to fencing.
Embedded electrovoltaic solar panels that power an industrial strength electric fence similar to that used on cattle. Throw in razor wire and every so often crank up the juice so there is an electrocution with the body left hanging on the fence. Plenty of other ways technology can solve the “Keep Out” problem. As the saying goes, if we can send a man to the moon………
I would have built the wall from long 4 inch rollers, 2 inches apart and about thirty feet high. The border patrol could come by and grease them every once and a while. Can you imagine putting a ladder up to the first twenty feet; then try to hold onto a roller and clime the next ten ? I will not say it could never be climbed, but it would be a lot of fun watching the first people try.
Have a friend who says they should build a concrete wall fifty feet high and top it with an interstate highway from El Paso to San Diego. That should be high enough the slow them down and wide enough to discourage a tunnel. Of course, with a highway all sorts of other infrastructure could be brought in to start developing the whole southwestern quarter of the country.
I have a friend who says your friend is high on his own stuff. There’s already a highway like that on the Mexico side and there is a particular portion that will make a believer out of any atheist. There is also the defunct highway along the route you describe and even so few folks use its replacement – the I-8 because it is freaking hot driving through Yuma in the summertime. The 10 is much more tolerable, thank you.
I have a feeling your friend is actually you.
By the way, I’m not a Trump zombie. Didn’t even vote for the man. Didn’t even vote period. But I can’t stand illegals.
That’s just a progressive modification of something that started out as clan of the cave monkeys, it is not an indictment of any group at all, we will all suffer for Trump or whoever is president. My only protection since youth has been a deep sense of alienation which is a natural state for an illegal, I’m here but I’m still in the Arizona desert in my mind.
Hello and welcome to the One World Empire Game where we pick the next president of the United States. The winner of tonight’s game will take full responsibility for all the wars and atrocities commited in the name of the American people while bearing none of the authority of an actual chief executive.
Our first candidate is from another country but hey, that didn’t stop Obongo. Say hello and give a warm welcome to Greta Thunberg. Say hello, Greta. Hello.
Candidate number two hails from the heartland, Minnesota, he’s a conservative businessman, say hello to Hakeem Boganagonadindu. Say hello, Hakeem. Oongawa.
When someone legs up one leg over the wall pick them off sniper style day and night . With dead bodies dangling from the wall the invasion from the south should slow to barely a trickle !
The US has legitimate entry points all other attempts to enter illegally should be meet with force including deadly !
Nice, KaD!
Not me dude.
Walls work. You just have to be serious about it, not half-assing it like our govt. Just ask East Germans if walls work or not. Or North Koreans.
I wish we could have East Germany’s wall; they’re not using it anymore.
If we installed minefields, gun towers with interlocking fields of fire, microwave sensors, flamer throwers, and triple concertina it might be more effective.
A viral video shows why cops militarized by DHS are ineffective (and worse). These guys should be tried for murder and any law enforcement officer who defends them should be ostracized and humiliated. Choose your side wisely, Officers. Very wisely.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/outrage-over-police-using-bystanders-human-shields-florida-ups-truck-shootout
Lol guess they should’ve asked a couple of Mexicans if they could figure it out instead of mountain climbers
Any wall can be climbed. The idea is to slow them down enough to get a clear shot.
You have to patrol and guard the wall too……..
ONLY eliminating the welfare state (including the government monopoly school system), and ending the war on drugs, will stop the flow of parasites into this country. No wall will EVER be tall enough if the pile of money on the other side is still big enough.
Bingo!
There is one of two, or a combination of the two, reasons the wall and the immigration problem has not been properly addressed and solved. 1) A lack of true willingness to address the situation by the construction of either wall or laws. 2) Insurmountable interference from those whose best interests are being served by not solving the immigration problems. Both of these reasons appear to have a large tap root embedded within those who are currently members of congress or continue to have a large influence over many members of congress. I am not letting president Trump totally off the hook by saying this, but better co-operation on legislative measures would go a long way toward a solution.
Used to design and install MilSpec security systems. They are not designed to keep the determined amateur or pro out, just slow them down. The casual ‘tourist’ will be slowed enough to be captured. The determined pros just blow their way thru somewhere not the front gate and set about killing any resistance.
Anyone who thinks that was to fully stop the traffic is the worst kind of fool.
There’s nothing like mine fields to let people know that they’re not welcome here. Can you imagine the Socialist reaction if this was done? I like the mines that fly up out of the ground and detonate at waist level. They’re called ball busters.
What consequences? Send them back to try again? A 50 yard kill zone where anything that moved in the area would be automatically dealt with would put a damper on it real quick. But like someone said earlier until all the bennies are cut off it will never stop. If people who employed illegals were fined $10,000 a day for every illegal found working for them would definitely slow it down too.
I’d be willing to wager that if the express purpose of the wall was to keep the American slaves from fleeing this soon to become Communistic “Utopia,” the wall could be made to be 100% effective overnight. The reason for the influx of illegals has always been to keep the debt rising, i.e., new debtors.
The fiat currency scheme of the kosher bankers will implode upon itself if a steady and constant expansion of indebtedness is not maintained. That’s why the so-called deficit is never reduced, but always increases at an ever more exponentially expanding rate, until the event horizon is finally reached with a spectacular nation destroying blow out. All of the talk about stopping illegal immigration is merely lip service designed to placate the ignorant debt slaves, who are paying for their one way ticket to the gulags (or worse).
Keep paying your taxes and don’t forget to vote, I’m sure your redemption draweth nigh.