It’s going to take a while to finish.
“It’s going to take a while to finish.”
The rough schedule is to get the Program from the Comprehensive Plan awarded on contracts, and the funding obligated, before anyone else might normally take over the Presidency (i.e., before inauguration day 2021).
Contractors would be working hard to deliver on their end of the deal, through all of 2021. Around the beginning of 2022, we would be approaching full operational control of the border. Around this time, every mile of border should be under continuous technological surveillance.
Beyond that, there is a budget wedge in the ten year baseline budget for $1.4 to 1.6 billion per year (indexed for inflation) for additional barrier, out to 2027 - approximately 75 miles a year (my estimate, based on $20mil/mile). By historical standards, that alone would be an exceptionally generous funding for border barrier - but it pales before President Trump’s first term Wall Program - the largest (per year), most expensive, and most powerful in human history.
Each year operational priorities new barrier would be re-assessed (as smuggling routes shift), in whack-a-mole fashion, progressively driving illegal traffic to ever more difficult and infeasible routes.