As if anyone has forgotten, Donald Trump tried to do this for four years with all the powers of the presidency and a Republican Congress. But that only produced a few hundred miles of border wall, and much of that just repaired or improved existing walls. One governor in one state can hardly be expected to succeed where a president failed.
The same problems remain: It is just not feasible to build an impassible wall along the 1,254 miles of our state’s border with Mexico, not to mention the other 700 miles running across New Mexico, Arizona and California. And if the wall is not complete, from end to end, people can simply go around it. Even so, almost any wall can be climbed over, cut through or dug under by people who are determined enough.
Much of the U.S.-Mexico board is also rugged and inhospitable, so much so that migrants rarely try to cross it. Virtually all illegal crossings occur in well-known routes near cities in the U.S. or Mexico. Most of the border land is also owned by private citizens, not the state or federal governments, and many of them do not want to sell any property for a wall. The state government could theoretically seek eminent domain authority for this wall, but those court fights could take years — and the state might not win.
The real issue here is that immigration is a federal responsibility, and states have limited rights to detain migrants, much less order them returned across the border. The Biden administration has not been doing a great job on this issue, with the new president unprepared for a surge of illegal crossings. President Biden has since slowed the flow, deporting more immigrants even though a large number have also been released into our country for adjudication later, a process that too many migrants skip.
Biden’s best move on this issue was sending Vice President Kamala Harris to Central America recently to try to combat the root causes of illegal immigration. But conditions in those countries are pretty bad, and many desperate people are tempted to take dangerous and costly risks to enter our nation.
The $250 million that Abbott plans to spend on this wall is mostly symbolic, thought Texans could undoubtedly think of a lot of way to allocate that money to other legitimate uses in this state. Ultimately, the wall will probably never be built, and certainly not from one end of the state to the other. But it might help Abbott get re-elected, and the governor would consider that a success.