Abstract
Assesses the practical and political problems involved in the construction of a ‘great, great, wall’ along the 1900-mile US border with Mexico during the first year of the Trump administration, together with the its likely financial and environmental costs, and consideration of how, and in what ways, President Trump can deliver on his campaign promise to ‘make Mexico pay for that wall’.
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Notes
- 1.
Washington Post staff, ‘Full Text: Donald Trump Announces a Presidential Bid,’ Washington Post, 16 June 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/06/16/full-text-donald-trump-announces-a-presidential-bid.
- 2.
Donald J. Trump, Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again (New York: Threshold Editions, 2015), pp. 13–14, 19–20; Presidential Debate at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, 19 October 2016, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=119039.
- 3.
‘Trump Speech to Congress; Full Transcript,’ 1 March 2017, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-39124596; https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/953948941674078208; https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/953951365532876800; National Security Strategy of the United States of America, December 2017, pp. 9–10, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/NSS-Final-12-18-2017-0905.pdf; ‘The Full Speech—Trump’s State of the Union Address,’ 31 January 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jan/30/the-full-text-of-trumps-state-of-the-union-address.
- 4.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, What Happened (London: Simon & Schuster, 2017), p. 225; Michael Wolff, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House (London: Little, Brown, 2018), pp. 9–12, 18; ‘Trump Wall: President Denies Changing View on Mexico Border Plan,’ 18 January 2018, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-42724380.
- 5.
‘What Would It Take for Donald Trump to Deport 11 Million and Build a Wall?’ New York Times, 19 May 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/20/us/politics/donald-trump-immigration.html; ‘Donald Trump’s Mexico Wall: Who Is Going to Pay for It?’ BBC News, 6 February, 2017, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-37243269; Lucy Rodgers and Nassos Stylianou, ‘6 Things That Could Topple Donald Trump’s Border Wall,’ BBC News, 16 June 2017, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-d60acebe-2076-4bab-90b4-0e9a5f62ab12.
- 6.
Trump, Crippled America, pp. 23–24.
- 7.
J. D. Hayworth with Joseph J. Eule, Whatever It Takes: Illegal Immigration, Border Security, and the War on Terror (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2006), p. 178; ‘Design Build Structure—Federal Business Opportunities,’ Update: 9 March 2017, https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&tab=core&id=f61a85538f383ec3ed9cac3c9e21d6f1&_cview=0; ‘100 Days: What Might Trump’s Border Wall Look Like?’ BBC News, 27 April 2017, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-39727705; ‘US-Mexico Border Wall Prototype Construction Starts,’ BBC News, 27 September 2017, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-41407194.
- 8.
‘6 Things That Could Topple Donald Trump’s Border Wall’; ‘Trump Wall: President Denies Changing View on Mexico Border Plan.’
- 9.
Michael Dear, Why Walls Won’t Work: Repairing the U.S.-Mexico Divide (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 107–8; ‘Your Questions on Trump’s Wall Answered by Anthony Zurcher,’ BBC News, 26 January 2017, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38755757; ‘Donald Trump’s Mexico Wall; Who Is Going to Pay for It?’
- 10.
Dear, Why Walls Won’t Work, pp. 107–8; Shannon K. O’Neil, Two Nations Indivisible: Mexico, the United States, and the Road Ahead (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 36; U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Buildingthe Wall: The Efficacy of a U.S.-Mexico Border Fence (2014), p. 3; ‘6 Things That Could Topple Donald Trump’s Border Wall.’
- 11.
Trump, Crippled America, p. 25; ‘Donald Trump’s Mexico Wall’; Wolff, Fire and Fury, pp. 77–78.
- 12.
Trump, Crippled America, p. 25; Money, Guns and Drugs: Are U.S. Inputs Fuelling Violence on the U.S.-Mexico Border? Hearing Before the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, House of Representatives, One Hundred Eleventh Congress, first session, 12 March 2009 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2010), pp. 37, 71; O’Neill, Two Nations Indivisible, p. 135.
- 13.
Trump, Crippled America, p. 25; Paul Ganster with David E. Lorey, The U.S.-Mexican Border Today: Conflict and Cooperation in Historical Perspective, Third Edition (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016); p. 156; ‘Donald Trump’s Mexico Wall.’
- 14.
Ibid.
- 15.
Ibid.
- 16.
Trump, Crippled America, p. 25; ‘Donald Trump’s Mexico Wall’; O’Neil, Two Nations Indivisible, p. 6.
- 17.
‘Donald Trump Talks up Solar Panel Plan for Mexico Wall,’ BBC News, 22 June 2017, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-39767844.
- 18.
Kendra Pierre-Louis, ‘A Border Wall Made of Solar Panels Wouldn’t Actually Be Good for the Environment,’ Popular Science, 23 June 2017, https://www.popsci.com/border-wall-solar-panels; Tracy Jan, ‘Trump’s Proposal for a “Solar” Border Wall Now Appears Dead,’ The Washington Post, 26 October 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/10/26/trumps-proposal-for-a-solar-border-wall-now-appears-dead/?utm_term=.5ea4b879c6b1.
- 19.
Trump, Crippled America, p. 65.
- 20.
Anthony Zurcher, ‘Seven Things Trump’s $500 bn Spending Splurge Tells Us,’ BBC News, 9 February 2018, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-43008311; ‘Trump’s Infrastructure Blueprint “a Scam”,’ BBC News, 12 February 2018, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-43034786.
- 21.
‘Immigration Effort to Protect Dreamers Collapses in U.S. Senate,’ BBC News, 16 February 2018, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-43079903; ‘Trump Backs Down on Border Wall Funding,’ BBC News, 26 April 2017, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-39708768; ‘U.S. Budget: No Cash for Trump’s Wall in Budget Deal,’ BBC News, 1 May 2017, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-39767844.
- 22.
Jonathan Sullivan, ‘What Would Trump’s Wall Mean for Wildlife?’ BBC News, 1 September 2016, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-37200583; ‘Donald Trump’s Mexico Wall’; ‘6 Things That Could Topple Donald Trump’s Border Wall’; Victoria Gill, ‘Trump’s Divided Desert: Wildlife at the Border Wall,’ BBC News, 18 June 2017, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-39888754; Ganster and Lorey, The U.S.-Mexican Border Today, p. 183.
- 23.
‘Dakota Pipeline: What’s Behind the Controversy?’ BBC News, 7 February 2017, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-37863955; ‘Paris Climate Deal: Trump Pulls U.S. Out of 2015 Accord,’ BBC News, 1 June 2017, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-40127326; Julie Turkewitz, ‘Trump Slashes Size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Monuments,’ The New York Times, 4 December 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/04/us/trump-bears-ears.html; Anthony Zurcher, ‘10 Ways Trump Has Changed America,’ BBC News, 12 January 2018, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-42653793.
- 24.
James Cook, ‘Border Town Divided on Trump’s Wall,’ BBC News, 23 February 2017, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-39047830; U.S.-Mexico Border: Issues and Challenges Confronting the United States and Mexico (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Accounting Office, 2011), pp. 11, 16, 35.
- 25.
Dear, Why Walls Won’t Work, p. 148; Gerald S. Dickinson, ‘The Biggest Problem for Trump’s Border Wall Isn’t Money: It’s Getting the Land,’ The Washington Post, 3 March 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/03/03/the-biggest-problem-with-trumps-border-wall-isnt-money-its-getting-the-land/?utm_term=.9adc047ee779.
- 26.
Dickinson, ‘The Biggest Problem for Trump’s Border Wall’; ‘Border Town Divided on Trump’s Wall’; James Cook, ‘100 Days: What Might Trump’s Border Wall Look Like?’ BBC News, 27 April 2017, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-39727705.
- 27.
Dickinson, ‘The Biggest Problem for Trump’s Border Wall’; Charlotte England, ‘Native American Tribe Vows to Stop Donald Trump Building Mexican Border Wall on Their Arizona Reservation,’ The Independent, 27 January 2017, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/native-american-tribe-stop-donald-trump-us-mexican-border-wall-arizona-reservation-land-tohono-o-a7549841.html.
- 28.
‘Border Town Divided on Trump’s Wall’; ‘Treaty to Resolve Pending Boundary Differences and Maintain the Rio Grande and Colorado River as the International Boundary Between the United States of America and Mexico,’ 23 November 1970, https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/125390.pdf; ‘100 Days: What Might Trump’s Border Wall Look Like?’; ‘6 Things That Could Topple Trump’s Border Wall’; Dear, Why Walls Won’t Work, p. 149.
- 29.
Dear, Why Walls Won’t Work, p. 174.
- 30.
‘Your Questions on Trump’s Wall Answered’; Dear, Why Walls Won’t Work, p. 174; Peter Eichstaedt, The Dangerous Divide: Peril and Promise on the U.S.-Mexico Border (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2014), pp. 26, 39; Filiz Garip, On the Move: Changing Mechanisms of Mexico-U.S. Migration (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), p. 159.
- 31.
Jens Manuel Krogstad, ‘5 Facts About Mexico and Immigration to the U.S.,’ Pew Research Center, 11 February 2016, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/02/11/mexico-and-immigration-to-us/; ‘Border Town Divided on Trump’s Wall’; ‘U.S. Border Arrests at Lowest Since 1971—Trump Administration,’ BBC News, 5 December 2017, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-42241671; ‘Mexico Finds Nearly 200m Migrants Hidden in Cramped Lorry,’ BBC News, 4 February 2018, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-42935071; ‘6 Things That Could Topple Donald Trump’s Border Wall’; Garip, On the Move, pp. 2, 179; Rachel St. John, Line in the Sand: A History of the Western U.S.-Mexico Border (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), p. 200; Eichstaedt, The Dangerous Divide, p. 230; Hayworth with Eule, Whatever It Takes, p. 1.
- 32.
Trump, Crippled America, pp. 23–24; ‘Donald Trump’s Mexico Wall: Who Is Going to Pay for It?’; ‘Trump Wall: President Denies Changing View on Mexico Border Plan.’
- 33.
Sean Hannity, ‘Introduction to Hayworth with Eule,’ Whatever It Takes, pp. ix–x; Ed Ashurst, Alligators in the Moat: Politics and the Mexican Border (No place: Ed Ashurst Publishing Company, 2016), p. 192; S. Deborah Kang, The INS on the Line: Making Immigration Law on the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1917–1954 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), p. 170.
- 34.
‘Full Text: Donald Trump Announces a Presidential Bid’; Trump, Crippled America, pp. 19–20; National Security Strategy of the United States of America, p. 9.
- 35.
Buildingthe Wall, pp. 4, 13, 18–23, 57–58, 62.
- 36.
Buildingthe Wall, pp. 18, 23, 68–69.
- 37.
Jens Manuel Krogstad, ‘5 Facts About Mexico and Immigration to the U.S.’; Ana Gonzalez-Barrera, ‘More Mexicans Leaving Than Coming to the U.S.,’ Pew Research Center, 19 November 2016, http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/11/19/more-mexicans-leaving-than-coming-to-the-u-s/; Jie Zong and Jeanne Batalova, ‘Mexican Immigrants in the United States,’ Migration Policy Institute, 17 March 2016, https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/mexican-immigrants-united-states; Jens Manuel Krogstad, Jeffrey S. Passel, and D’Vera Cohn, ‘5 Facts About Illegal Immigration in the U.S.,’ Pew Research Center, 3 November 2016, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/27/5-facts-about-illegal-immigration-in-the-u-s/.
- 38.
Gonzalez-Barrera, ‘More Mexicans Leaving Than Coming to the U.S.’; Jeffrey S. Passel and D’Vera Cohn, ‘Overall Number of U.S. Unauthorized Immigrants Holds Steady Since 2009,’ Pew Research Center, 20 September 2016, http://www.pewhispanic.org/2016/09/20/overall-number-of-u-s-unauthorized-immigrants-holds-steady-since-2009/.
- 39.
‘U.S. Border Arrests at Lowest Since 1971—Trump Administration’; Gonzalez-Barrera, ‘More Mexicans Leaving Than Coming to the U.S.’; From 2009–2014 two million unauthorized migrants were deported from the United States, ‘The Highest Level Ever Recorded’; Dear, Why Walls Won’t Work, pp. 181–82.
- 40.
Gonzalez-Barrera, ‘More Mexicans Leaving Than Coming to the U.S.’; Dear, Why Walls Won’t Work, p. 185.
- 41.
O’Neil, Two Nations Indivisible, pp. 33, 57; Gonzalez-Barrera, ‘More Mexicans Leaving Than Coming to the U.S.’
- 42.
Filip, On the Move, p. 179; Carl Meacham and Michael Graybeal, Diminishing Mexican Immigration to the United States: A Report of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (C.S.I.S.) Program (Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield, July 2013), pp. 12–17; Passell and D’Vera Cohn, ‘Overall Numbers of U.S. Unauthorized Immigrants Holds Steady Since 2009’; ‘U.S. Border Arrests at Lowest Since 1971—Trump Administration’; ‘Mexico Finds Nearly 200 Migrants Hidden in Cramped Lorry’; Krogstad, ‘5 Facts About Mexico and Immigration to the U.S.’
- 43.
Carla A. Hills, ‘NAFTA’s Economic Upsides: The View from the United States,’ Foreign Affairs (January/February 2014), p. 2, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/canada/2013-12-06/naftas-economic-upsides.
- 44.
‘6 Things That Could Topple Donald Trump’s Border Wall’; Hills, ‘NAFTA’s Economic Upsides,’ pp. 2, 4; O’Neil, Two Nations Indivisible, pp. 6, 9, 113.
- 45.
‘Presidential Debate at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri,’ 9 October 2016, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=119038; ‘Presidential Debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York,’ 26 September 2016, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=118971; ‘What’s at Stake as Nafta Talks Begin?’ BBC News, 16 August 2017, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40943041; ‘US Calls for “Major” Nafta Overhaul,’ BBC News, 17 August 2017, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40952823; Trump, Crippled America, p. 164.
- 46.
O’Neill, Two Nations Indivisible, pp. 117–18; Hills, ‘NAFTA’s Economic Upsides,’ p. 3; ‘Your Questions on Trump’s Wall Answered’; Douglas S. Massey, Jorge Durand, and Nolan J. Malone, Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Immigration in an Era of Economic Integration (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2003), p. 99; Eichstaedt, The Dangerous Divide, p. 83; Robert Lee Maril, The Fence: National Security, Public Safety, and Illegal Immigration Along the U.S.-Mexico Border (Lubbock, TX: Texas Tech University Press, 2012), p. 287.
- 47.
Raoul Lowery Contreras, The Mexican Border: Immigration, War and a Trillion Dollars in Trade (Moorpark, CA: Floricanto Press, 2015), p. 19; O’Neill, Two Nations Indivisible, p. 119; Ganster and Lorey, The U.S.-Mexico Border Today, p. 212.
- 48.
Eichstaedt, The Dangerous Divide, pp. 62–64; Money, Guns and Drugs, p. 2.
- 49.
Money, Guns and Drugs, pp. 20–21; Eichstaedt, The Dangerous Divide, pp. 64–65; Maril, The Fence, p. 289; Bernie Sanders, Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In (London: Profile Books Ltd., 2017), p. 380.
- 50.
Money, Guns and Drugs, pp. 2–3, 22, 38, 46, 52–53; Edward S. Casey and Mary Watkins, Up Againstthe Wall: Re-Imagining the U.S.-Mexico Border (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014), p. 23.
- 51.
Massey, Durand, and Malone, Beyond Smoke and Mirrors, p. 105; Hayworth and Eule, Whatever It Takes, pp. 175, 179–80; U.S. Army War College, The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Cause for National Concern (No place: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, July 2014), p. 5; ‘Your Questions on Trump’s Wall Answered’; King, The INS on the Line, p. 170.
- 52.
M. D. Allen Frances, Twilight of American Sanity: A Psychiatrist Analyses the Age of Trump (New York: William Morrow, 2017), pp. 122–23; Clinton, What Happened, p. 277; Jeff Flake, Conscience of a Conservative: A Rejection of Destructive Politics and a Return to Principle (New York: Random House, 2017), p. 48; ‘Decoding Bush’s Thinly Veiled Trump Speech,’ BBC News, 20 October 2017, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-41689272.
- 53.
Maldwyn Jones, American Immigration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 126, 130, 152–57; Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race: Or, the Racial Basis of European History, Fourth Revised Edition (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936, first published 1916), p. 211; T. Lothrop Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy (Burlington, IA: Ostara Publications, 2011, first published 1921), p. xiv; Trump, Crippled America, p. 21.
- 54.
‘Donald Trump and the Politics of Paranoia,’ BBC News, 24 January 2016, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35382599; ‘Trump’s Speech to Congress’; ‘Kate Steinle: Trump Outrage over Murder Case Acquittal,’ BBC News, 1 December 2017, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-42190455; ‘Indianapolis Colts’ Edwin Jackson “Killed by Illegal Immigrant”,’ BBC News, 5 February 2018, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-42952519; O’Neil, Two Nations Indivisible, pp. 43, 51.
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Verney, K. (2019). Bad Hombres: The Trump Administration, Mexican Immigration and the Border Wall. In: Oliva, M., Shanahan, M. (eds) The Trump Presidency. The Evolving American Presidency. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96325-9_7
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