During his presidential election campaign, Donald Trump had promised to build a US-Mexico border wall and had also indicated that Mexico would pay for it. However, that is not likely to happen, and the Congress is also not willing to finance the several billion dollars project. Therefore, the president wants the Pentagon to release funds because it has adequate funds and the wall has security implications.
New York Post reports that in the opinion of Trump, the Pentagon should take it up as an issue related to national security because such a wall will prevent entry of drugs, unwanted elements like illegal migrants and enemy combatants into the country.
Trump tweets the wrong wall
President Donald Trump had mistaken a section of the border wall as a portion of the wall he had in mind and tweeted some photographs. It was actually work pertaining to the replacement of a stretch of existing barrier along the Mexican border and had nothing to do with the new wall. This portion of the wall, built in the 1990s, had used recycled metal scraps and old landing mat. It had proved effective in containing illegal cross-border activities like smuggling. Repairs on this portion of the wall had started in 2009 in Calexico, California. It is now being replaced with a 30-foot-high, bollard-style wall.
Border Patrol agents have confirmed that the activities in Calexico had no links with the eight prototypes that had been constructed as samples and displayed in San Diego for the 2000-mile wall promised by Trump.
These have been built to rigid specifications and are still under evaluation to ensure that they cannot be breached by miscreants from Mexico. Obviously, there was a communication gap somewhere down the line that led Trump to tweet the images.
The wall will threaten wildlife
The Mexico border wall will pass through natural habitats of wildlife, and many of these belong to endangered species.
The wall will be an obstruction and divide their habitats which will pose survival problems. According to Vox, there are existing barriers and border walls made from a common material like barbed wire, wire mesh, and chain link. These have already affected the ecosystems and split the wildlife population.
A study of 2011 has revealed that at least 50 species and three subspecies of wildlife are threatened in Mexico or the United States.
They have survived till now because of dedicated groups of people on both sides of the border who have helped to conserve them. If the 2000-mile wall promised by Donald Trump does materialize, it would be a disaster for the ecology and would translate into the death of a large variety of plants and animal species.
