Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan says he’s found enough money to build 256 miles of new border barriers, including fencing.
The southern border of the US is almost 2,000 miles long and about 700 miles of it has permanent border fencing.
Shanahan says over the next 6 months about 63 additional new miles of wall will be built. He says crews will build about a half a mile of wall a day. Shanahan also says he won’t look for any more money from his department for this project. He says the money comes from savings in several different defense accounts, including one for Afghan Security Forces. The total funding is part of the 2.5 billion dollars that President Trump asked for through an executive order following the government shut down.
Senate Democrats criticized the move saying it degrades military readiness and the money should be used to fund relief projects for military bases severely damaged by hurricanes and floods.
Shanahan has been very open about how they’ll pay for the wall, but no one will say where the sections of the wall or high-tech barriers will be built. Lately, border patrol says most of the Central American families have been coming across in Texas, followed by Arizona, then California. But, recent Census Bureau data show most illegal immigrants are settling in lesser known parts of the United States like Beadle County, South Dakota. This area with a population of 18,600 has seen the most dramatic influx of migrants, followed by places like Colfax County, Nebraska, Hudson County, New Jersey and Adams County, Mississippi.
The numbers also show between July 2017 and July 2018 more than a million people were added to the US population from other countries…the data don’t specify if the migration was legal or not.