BAJA CALIFORNIA, Mexico (Reuters) — Mexican congressman Braulio Guerra recently climbed the fence along the U.S.-Mexico border to demonstrate what he says is the futility of U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to build a wall between the two countries to stem migration.
Guerra, who represents the state of Queretaro, 218 km (135 miles) north of the capital Mexico City, said on a video filmed by his office that it was easy for him to climb the fence and he just as easily could have crossed to the United States.
“I am on the wall, sitting on the wall that divides the border between Mexico and the United States. On this side is Mexico. On this side is the United States. And you can see that in these eight meters– more or less eight to 10 meters — it is easy to climb up. I could get up, climb up, scale it and sit here. It would be very easy to cross to the United States which proves that it is totally unnecessary and absurd to construct a wall costing 15 billion dollars or 300 billion pesos,” he said.
Trump has made building a border wall and removing undocumented migrants a central part of his platform.
He first angered Mexicans on the campaign trail, by calling Mexican migrants “rapists” and “criminals.”
Since then, the White House has threatened to create new taxes or tariffs on Mexican goods to pay for building a border wall and has unveiled plans to deport undocumented migrants to Mexico if they entered the United States from there, regardless of their nationality.
Guerra said he believes it is important to cooperate with Washington to stem the flow of migration, but said reinforcing the wall is “unnecessary.”
“To be good neighbors and (to give) mutual help is to improve the relationship and detain the flow of migration and return to a friendly relationship that translates into jobs, that translates into good economic terms, in development for both countries. It is very easy and here we can show how unnecessary this project, this policy, of Donald Trump is,” he said, perched on the fence.
The U.S.-Mexican border is almost 2,000 miles (3219 km) long and 654 miles (1,046 km) is already fortified by a series of fences and walls.
A U.S. Department of Homeland Security internal report lays out what it would take to seal the border in three phases of construction of fences and walls covering just over 1,250 miles (2,000 km) by the end of 2020.
The report sets out a series of fences and walls that would cost as much as $21.6 billion, and take more than three years to construct.
One reason for the steep price is the cost of acquiring private land and environmental waivers.
In addition, the U.S. government would also have to meet the requirements of the International Boundary and Water Commission, a U.S.-Mexico pact over shared waters. The report estimated that agreement alone could bring the cost from $11 million per mile to $15 million per mile in one area.
