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“Close the Border” could mean a variety of things.

Completely closing the border crossing points (the World’s busiest) would impact a lot of individuals, but would also disrupt a huge amount of scheduled deliveries, disrupting lots of businesses as well. Big businesses, like the automobile industry.

Sending 200,000 troops to stand guard along the entire 1,954 miles (four shifts of one every hundred yards (16/mile), plus eight for a reaction force per mile) would cost many billions per year in logistics, which have not been budgeted or appropriated. There are 476,000 in the Active Army (15% are Infantry), including those deployed Overseas, so it would likely require putting a lot of cooks, clerks, mechanics and medics on line as their full time job.

Policy changes could be implemented, or additional security (like a more limited military deployment) that would selectively “close the border” would be more likely.

For example, a few thousand active duty military could be sent for a month or two to reinforce the border patrol where this group is heading. That would be expensive, but doable out of the existing DoD budget, and would be a big escalation from past practice.

The border crossing points could close to pedestrians while allowing cargo, or to just certain classes of pedestrians (which would meet legal challenges). For example, only US citizens, or those carrying a new authorization document they would have to roll out.

A demonstration could be made for political effect, like closing the pedestrian crossing points for one day, to pressure the Mexican Government. There would be chaos for the cameras.

Although the press will likely lampoon the President’s “CLOSE THE BORDER” as foolishly unrealistic, there are a lot of steps that could be taken under that umbrella term, that would influence the Mexican Government to respond. Leverage, you might say.