Posted on 07/06/2020 9:32:24 AM PDT by BeauBo
229 miles completed, 326 miles under construction, 183 miles under pre-construction. (738 Total)
Displaced smugglers are starting to have to shoot their way in to take over rival gangs territory along the border. This phenomena will likely become quite pronounced in the 6-24 months ahead, as most of the best routes get shut off by the new Trump style Super Wall System.
AWESOME!
This is what you get when you hire a construction CEO is your president
With 100° plus summer heat the heavy equipment loaders and cranes may have extra downtime. Things were slowing down.
If about 180 days left in year, need 221 miles of wall to get to 450. One mile a day pace needs to average 1.2 miles a day or 8.5 a week to get it there.
great report beaubo.
awesome results on the border wall
I love good news, thanks again for contiuning the border wall updates. Who are the displaced smugglers shooting at, hopefully just the other gangs? Are the BP under more danger than usual?
Thumbs up!
Picture does not show; link broken.
A World Class Builder in Charge!
The plan is thorough and complete, and the prep work has been ongoing these last three years. The money is on hand, and the pool of qualified contractors is all pre-screened, and ready to source the materials and ramp up more crews and equipment.
It is full scale deployment now, and it is dwarfing what we saw during the first three years.
The effects of this Super Wall System shutting off the carefully selected highest priority routes, is really going to mount from this point forward. It is no longer just a drop in the bucket, but is beginning to fundamentally alter the situation on the ground.
San Diego (the biggest city on the border) - illegal traffic already down over 90%.
Yuma (historically the third heaviest traveled route) is half done, with several crews working at once. They are already seeing improvements. By the end of this year, that door will be largely closed.
The main battle of securing the Southern Border has long been the 100 open miles in the Rio Grande Valley Sector, where almost half of the total traffic crosses. If that gets done, everything else is easier, and less important.
Those never before fenced miles are now on contract, and multiple crews have broken ground. We should see more crews getting underway there in the next months as well, as all of those contracts get into their performance periods.
Neighboring Laredo Sector (the likely alternate route as the Rio Grande Sector finally gets buttoned up) is funded for virtually complete closure as well, but the contracts have only recently started to drop there, so not that much is likely to get done this year. They should get it all contracted, and the funding obligated (and start some work), before Inauguration Day, 2021.
Bottom Line: Between now and Christmas, new border wall system will strongly shake up the status quo on the border. The Cartels are going to start buzzing around each other like a hornet’s nest was kicked. By the end of next year (given a re-elected President Trump), we will be approaching full operational control of the Southern Border.
“link broken.
“Everything at the link is posted here - the one slide, and the miles in each of the three categories.
Some obnoxious fake news TDS posting on Facebook said President Trump had only completed 16 miles... Doubt FB will lift a finger to fix it.
In a recent case (http://freerepublic.com/focus/news/3862340/posts?page=19#19), a group from Cartel Del Noreste (Cartel of the Northeast), a sub-group of the larger Los Zetas, ran into a Military patrol, and the Military outgunned them handily. 12 were machine gunned down on the spot, 4 more dead recovered from local hospitals.
They (CDN) openly drive around in Nuevo Laredo as if they own the place, bristling weapons and wearing military style uniforms with CDN patches on the shoulders, and logos on their vehicles.
A few years ago, cartels fighting over Nuevo Laredo got so bad, that the police force had to be dismantled due to corruption, and the Military patrolled the city under martial law. So the Military is experienced (and equipped) for dealing with them (Concentrated, high volume fire - typically shooting first, before trying to chat them up).
In recent months though https://www.breitbart.com/border/2020/06/09/video-inside-an-armored-mexican-cartel-convoy-near-texas-border/), Los Zetas groups (like CDN) have been shooting it out with groups from the Gulf Cartel, like Los Metros, for routes in the Rio Grande Valley Sector, where wall construction is just getting underway. It is currently still the highest trafficked Sector. Often, the authorities (both Police and Military) just stand clear until the shooting is over, and let them kill each other (taking fewer casualties of their own).
They have been going at each other with machine guns, grenades, and .50 cal sniper rifles, and it is really just starting in earnest.
Improvised Armored Vehicles used in Cartel gun battle, on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande Valley Sector:
Some militarized Gulf Cartel shooters:
What is the final length going to be?
If not for the RINO’s running the House the first two Years of the POTUS Trump Administration, the Wall would have been completed by now.
Thank you for the details. It sounds as though MX is trying better to take care of them. Very good.
“posting on Facebook said President Trump had only completed 16 miles”
That is the old “New Wall vs Replacement Fence” canard. It doesn’t count (in their fevered TDS dreams) as new wall, if there was a strand of barbed wire there before.
They are not counting 30 foot bollards with new high speed all weather road, grid powered stadium lighting, full persistent day/night camera surveillance with multiple alarm systems as new wall (which fully halts a major flow of illegal traffic through an area, Like San Diego) - as long as something of any sort was there before, no matter how ridiculously ineffective it was.
The bottom line is that the new wall is carefully prioritized to go in where it will make the biggest impact first - regardless of whether some ineffective barrier was there or not.
So the conclusion of their misleading rhetoric (that no significant border control is getting accomplished by wall building) is the very opposite of reality. Those 229 new miles are making a major difference where they were installed - exceeding their design estimates so far.
Very fundamental border control is occurring, and the rollout now is an order of magnitude more rapid than it was in the first couple of years of the Trump Administration. We are off to the races, flooding the zone with more and more concurrent crews. About twice as much money is to be put on contract this year (~$12 bil), as the first three years combined (~$6 bil).
Those 229 already completed miles are near the top of the priority list. The first 300-400 miles on the priority list, account for over 80% of historical illegal traffic.
Although very high priority miles in the Rio Grande Valley Sector have lagged behind their priority order due to land acquisition and other special issues (like flood control and Treaty requirements), everything being built is in carefully prioritized, very impactful locations - far from random. The design of what is being built, is based on achieving full operational control of that segment - not just some marginal improvement.
“What is the final length going to be?”
Bottom Line: About half of the border will have the new (bollard-based) Wall System - very roughly around 1,000 miles. All of the Border will have the new Technology Programs - every mile, barrier or not.
The Comprehensive Plan for Full Operational Control of the Southern Border reportedly called for $25 billion over five years, 1,100 miles of effective barrier, thousands more full time positions and several Technology Programs.
The Southern Border is 1,954 miles long.
It is unclear how secondary (Double barrier) miles are counted. I think it likely that one mile of border with a double barrier, is counted as two miles of barrier. It seems like there might be 100-200 miles like that (e.g. San Diego and Yuma).
Also, 221 miles of pre-existing barrier was assessed as operationally effective. If you add that to the 738 that is currently being reported on the weekly slides (that is, for those specific miles for which funding has already been transferred into the Border Wall account), that brings us to 959 miles of barrier.
There is another $3.6 billion in Military Construction money that has been identified for the wall, but not yet transferred. That could easily pay for 141 more miles, to bring the total to 1,100 miles, which is my best guess for the final length, based on the reports I’ve seen. Again, that would be miles of barrier, rather than miles of border, as some tough places will get double barrier.
Since the Border Wall System segments have been carefully prioritized, and the first 300-400 miles account for so much of the current illegal traffic, when you get to last 100-200 miles on the priority list, you are really looking at marginal potential alternative routes, where not much currently crosses. It is quite possible that they might decide to just plug those areas with more technology and personnel, rather than incur the pain of having to pull that last $3.6 billion away from other projects for the last 140 or so miles. We’ll have to see how things shake out in the end.
Another Bottom Line: We are on track for a dramatically improved Border Security situation by the end of this year, and approaching full operational control of the Southern Border by the end of next year (2021), assuming President Trump is re-elected.
Thank you for this detail, much appreciated.
Thanks!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.