Trump Declares National Emergency to Build Border Wall

Put yourself in the shoes of an illegal immigrant. You've traveled days/weeks/months (depending on route/mode of travel) all just to sneak into America. You finally arrive at the border and there's an 18 foot tall wall in the way. Would you go home, or would you spend 120$ on a 20 foot ladder?

The Berlin wall was less than 1/20th of the US/Mexico border, had constant manning with guard towers, machine gun nests, barbed wire, nail beds, anti-vehicle trenches, and anti-personnel mines. All that and it still failed to prevent people crossing it, and was in the end overwhelmed because East German guards were no longer willing to use lethal force.

History has shown an unaccompanied wall does little to stop people who have decided to cross illegally. If you want it to work how you're imagining it will work you're going to need to build a DMZ-style fortification area around the border with a designated kill zone, and you're going to need a fuck ton of money to do it.

/r/news Thread Parent Link - nytimes.com