US-Mexico Border Fence / Great Wall of Mexico
But Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said a wall running the length of a border would cost too much.
A 2,000 mile state-of-the-art border fence has been estimated to cost between four and eight billion dollars. Costs for a wall that would run the entire length of the border might be as low as $851 million for a standard 10-foot prison chain link fence topped by razor wire. For another $362 million, the fence could be electrified. A larger 12-foot tall, two-foot-thick concrete wall painted on both sides would run about $2 billion. Initially it was estimated that the San Diego fence would cost $14 million -- about $1 million a mile. The first 11 miles of the fence eventually cost $42 million -- $3.8 million per mile, and the last 3.5 miles may cost even more since they cover more difficult terrain. An additional $35 million to complete the final 3.5 miles was approved in 2005 by the Department of Homeland Security -- $10 million per mile.
The REAL ID bill conference report contained a provision that would complete the US-Mexico border fence in San Diego. But it went much farther than that. It gives the Department of Homeland security unprecedented and unchecked authority to waive all legal requirements necessary to build such fences, not only in San Diego, but anywhere else along the 2,000 mile border with Mexico and our 4,000 mile border with Canada.
In August 2005 the governors of New Mexico and Arizona declared a state of emergency, saying their states were suffering because the federal government had failed to stem the tide of drug smuggling and illegal immigration. The declarations by New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano freed up a combined $2.2 million to eight border counties in those states.
On 14 December 2005 Mexican President Vicente Fox denounced as "disgraceful and shameful" a proposal to build a high-tech wall on the US-Mexico border to stop illegal immigrants. Media reports on 21 December 2005 quoted Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez as saying, " Mexico is not going to bear, it is not going to permit, and it will not allow a stupid thing like this wall."
DHS's U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) contractor, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), had completed about 73 miles of primary SBI fencing costing approximately $198 million as of September 30, 2007, and about 215 miles of fencing costing about $625 million as of October 31, 2008. Seventy-one of the miles completed as of September 30, 2007, were pedestrian fencing completed at costs ranging from $400,000 to $4.8 million per mile and averaging $2.8 million per mile. CBP had also finished about 2 miles of vehicle fencing at a cost of $2.8 million. Pedestrian fencing accounted for 140 of the miles that CBP had completed as of October 31, 2008, with costs ranging from $400,000 to $15.1 million per mile for an average of $3.9 million per mile. Seventy-five of the miles were vehicle fencing and costs ranged from $200,000 to $1.8 million per mile, averaging $1.0 million per mile. The per mile costs to build the fencing varied considerably because of the type of fencing, topography, materials used, land acquisition costs, and labor costs, among other things.
For fiscal years 2006 through 2009, the SBI program received about $3.6 billion in appropriated funds.
Of this amount, by late 2008 about $2.4 billion had been allocated to complete approximately 670 miles of vehicle and pedestrian fencing along the roughly 2,000 miles of border between the United States and Mexico. In March the Tactical Infrastructure / Border Fence Program was transferred to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Office of Finance, Facilities Management and Engineering (FM&E) from the Secure Border Initiative (SBI).