Trump Mexico Wall Latest News 2017: Trump Asking for $1.6 Billion
President Donald Trump has just included a request for $1.6 billion in the budget proposal for 2018, which is short by $2.5 billion from the amount that the current administration has announced a couple of months ago.
Currently, there appears to be no sign of plans to have Mexico pay for the border wall, as promised by then-candidate Trump in his election campaign. The portion of the $4.1 billion original target for the wall on the southern border of the United States will be allocated as part of White House's budget proposal for 2018, according to Dallas News.
Even the $4.1 billion target is a small fraction of the estimate of the total cost for the wall, as outlined in a plan by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). According to the department's reckoning, the entire wall will need $21.6 billion to be completed, according to Reuters.
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For now, the Trump administration has included the more modest $1.6 billion in next year's budget. The amount is deemed sufficient for Trump's administration to make a bit of progress towards building short segments of the promised wall between the U.S. and Mexico.
To put the amount proposed into perspective, an internal DHS document presented to a Senate committee in the previous month gave an estimate of what the government agency will be able to do with $1 billion dollars in terms of building the border wall. With that amount, DHS will be able to erect 34 miles or 55 kilometers of levee wall structures in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, and the remainder will be enough to replace 14 miles or 23 kilometers of fencing in San Diego.
John Czwartacki, communications director for the Office of Management and Budget, noted how Congress has refused to release the budget for the wall in the current year. "$4.1 billion is not available to us. Sometimes you win and sometimes you don't win as much," Czwartacki noted.
