Yesterday, the President Trump ordered a construction of an "impassable physical barrier" on the border between the U.S. and Mexico as he previously promised.
Trump signed one of his first executives orders on immigration and border control that fulfilled one of the most controversial promises of his campaign. Yesterday, the newly-inaugurated President ordered to start building a wall, or an "impassable physical barrier" as he defined it, along the border between the neighboring countries, said BBC. On top of that, Trump ordered to significantly increase the number of patrol officers responsible for carrying out deportations of undocumented immigrants as well as to limit federal funding for the U.S. cities that serve as sanctuaries.
"A nation without borders is not a nation. Beginning today the United States gets back control of its borders," Trump said, as reported by BBC.
Not many expected that one of Trump's most bizarre campaign promises would be actually implemented, although his first few days into the presidency made it more than clear. Despite making orders to start the construction process, the U.S. government was not planning to pay for the wall, said the President. During an interview with ABC News, Trump emphasized that there was no doubt that Mexico would reimburse full costs to the U.S., even though the Mexican government had repeatedly rejected this idea.
The dishonest media does not report that any money spent on building the Great Wall (for sake of speed), will be paid back by Mexico later!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017
Trump confirmed that he planned to pay for the wall's construction from the federal budget first and later receive full reimbursement from Mexico. To fully cover the border between the U.S. and Mexico, which is approximately 2,000 miles long, a 40-feet high wall needs to be constructed. It would contain approximately 19 million tons of concrete and cost billions of dollars.
When asked about the grand sizes of the wall that he planned to build, Trump did not consider it to be a problem:
"You know, the Great Wall of China, built a long time ago, is 13,000 miles. I mean, you're talking about big stuff. We're talking about peanuts, by comparison, to that," said Trump, as reported by CNN.
BBC mentioned that Trump estimated the costs of the wall's construction to add up to approximately $8 billion, although critics suggested that the actual sum could be more than double of that. He said that he expected Mexico to pay for the wall because it could actually help Mexico to control immigration from the southern countries.
"All it is, is we'll be reimbursed at a later date from whatever transaction we make from Mexico. I'm just telling you there will be a payment. It will be in a form, perhaps a complicated form," Trump said during an interview with David Muir of ABC.
Shortly after Trump signed the executives orders, Mexico's President Enrique Pena Nieto made an address to the Mexican nation, saying that Mexico did not "believe in walls" and rejected any possibility of the country paying costs of Trump's project, reported BBC. Next to that, a number of Mexican officials said that Nieto was considering cancelling his planned trip to Washington as a result of that.
"I regret and condemn the decision of the United States to continue construction of a wall that, for years, has divided us instead of uniting us," the President Nieto said in his address yesterday, as {blank} by Al Jazeera.
A few days before that, the President Trump said he planned to meet with Canadian and Mexican officials to renegotiate NAFTA, the agreement that allowed preferential trade between the neighboring countries. According to Reuters, several Canadian governmental sources said that Canada was convinced that Mexico could be the one to significantly suffer from the changes to NAFTA but they would not be able to help Mexico avoid that. They said that Canada's national interests "come first" while the friendship between the two countries "comes second".
Apart from signing an executive order on starting the construction of the wall, Trump also ordered to hire additional 10,000 immigration officers to boost the protection of the Mexican border. CNN added that the President planned to toughen the deportation policy when it comes to undocumented immigrants, which could affect additional hundreds of thousands or even millions of people.