I’ve got some good news for you on the building of the southern border wall. The Acting Secretary of Defense says they’ve already contracted out 256 miles of wall to be built:
So @ActingSecDef just told Congress that 256 new miles of Trump’s Wall is now funded to be built, at the rate of half a mile every day. He said that we will see about “63 additional new miles of wall” constructed six months from now. #thewall
— Emerald Robinson ✝️ (@EmeraldRobinson) May 9, 2019
And here’s video:
Every day, another 1/2 mile of the Wall is built to protect our communities from gang members, deadly drugs, dangerous criminals and evil human traffickers. It is getting done! #SecureTheBorder pic.twitter.com/cZKHGDmSkH
— Official Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) May 9, 2019
Shanahan says the Army Corp of Engineers has responsibility for building the wall and has contracted out about 256 miles.
He says it’s being funded with both DHS funds from 2017 and 2018 and Treasury forfeiture funds, as well as reprogrammed funds.
He says that 63 miles of new wall should come online in about six months and that results in the wall being built at about half a mile per day. At that rate it would take over two years to build the 256 miles unless they can increase the number of contractors at work to build the wall.
256 miles is significant, but probably only about a quarter of what needs to be built in totality. So I hope they can double up some of this to get it built as quickly as possible.