Homeland Security Committee Democrats release report on potential costs of proposed border wall with Mexico

The Democratic members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) recently published a report detailing the potential costs for President Trump’s proposed border wall with Mexico, with a cost estimate reaching as high as $70 billion.

The report’s estimate also excludes the costs and legal resources needed for land acquisition.

On January 25, President Trump signed an executive order entitled Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements, which stated that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security should immediately “identify and, to the extent permitted by law, allocate all sources of federal funds for the planning, designing, and constructing of a physical wall along the southern border.”

The Democratic HSGAC report made a number of findings, including evidence that no cost-benefit analysis has been performed by the government regarding the project, litigation to acquire land to build the wall may last a decade or longer, and proposed concrete wall prototypes will be paid for by cutting the budget for mobile video surveillance.

“There is no reliable estimate of the cost of construction of the full border wall, but extrapolated estimates place the construction cost of the wall and associated technology and infrastructure at nearly $70 billion,” the report said. “That amounts to a total cost to every American man, woman, and child of over $200…The Department (of Homeland Security) cannot provide a cost estimate of the anticipated land acquisition to the Committee.”