Donald Trump during his campaign:

I will build a great wall -- and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me --and I'll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.

Every time I read about the wall now, I'm reminded of the Proclaimers' catchy tune:

I would walk 500 miles and I would walk 500 more
Just to be the man who walked 1,000 miles
To fall down at your door

No wall is going to stop a determined migrant. If they fail, they'll try again.

"Even if they build the wall, I will climb the wall. I bring a ladder the size of the wall, even from sticks or whatever, but I'll make it, and I'll jump over there," said José de Jesús Ramírez, a recently deported Mexican migrant whose wife and children are in the U.S.

Trump doesn't know where he'd put a wall. Because there is no place to put it. You can't put a wall on the top of a mountain or in a river, and those are about the only places left without a fence or wall.

There are about 700 miles of border wall or fence along the U.S.-Mexico border. Much of the rest of the border sits against land barriers including canyon walls 1,500 feet tall like those of the Santa Elena Canyon across from Big Bend National Park.

From a CNN opinion column:

Trump's executive order does not specify how or where these new sections of the wall would be built. Trump's wall order is merely a concession to his supporters and, of course, carries no force in compelling Mexico to pay for construction. As yet, Wednesday's order has few facts, no dates and no details.

In other words, a big nothing, little more than tactical symbolism on a cornerstone campaign promise. Operationally? Empty. Rather, what the occasion reveals is the inadequacy of such a barrier in securing our southern border — and the rest of our nation.

What it also reveals is Trump's consistent adherence to his unfortunate campaign platform: America as unwelcoming: anti-Muslim, anti-refugee, anti-immigrant

There's approximately 2,000 miles of border with Mexico, spread out between California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

Trump is playing the bigotry card with his wall talk. His campaign statement that started him on a path from which he left no retreat:

When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending the best. They're sending people that have lots of problems and they're bringing those problems. They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime. They're rapists and some, I assume, are good people, but I speak to border guards and they're telling us what we're getting.

Almost all of the Arizona's border has fences or walls.

Arizona’s border with Mexico stretches for 362 miles. Today, 306 of those miles have some kind of barrier, leaving only 56 miles with just barbed wire, or no fence at all.

The places that don't are mostly on Tohono O’Odham Nation land or in mountainous or extremely remote locations.

Border walls are bad for the environment, bad for wildlife, and dangerous to humans who try to get around them.

Prior projects have not gone well. In 2011, the OIG did an audit of the fence building and found CBP wasted $69 million on steel. After the report, the program was pulled. From the report:

Customs and Border Protection completed 299 miles of fence; however, it did not effectively manage the purchase and storage of steel in support of the Secure Border Initiative. It purchased steel based on an estimate before legally acquiring land or meeting international treaty obligations. In addition, it did not provide effective contract oversight during the project: it paid invoices late, did not reconcile invoices to receiving documents, and did not perform a thorough review of the contractor’s selection of a higher-priced subcontractor or document the reasons for its approval of the subcontractor. As a result, Customs and Border Protection purchased more steel than needed, incurred additional storage costs, paid interest on late payments, and approved a higher-priced subcontractor, resulting in additional expenditures of about $69 million that could have been put to better use.

Trump just wants to waste money. CNN reports:

The executive orders Trump signed Wednesday call for boosting the ranks of Border Patrol forces by an additional 5,000 agents as well as for 10,000 new Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to carry out deportations. The orders noted that the increases were subject to Congress's appropriation of sufficient funds.

Trump and his under-informed supporters pretend there has been no attention placed on controlling the border with Mexico during the last 25 years. Baloney.

Suddenly, there hadn't been a bipartisan government effort over the last quarter-century to put in place an unprecedented array of walls, detection systems, and guards for that southern border. In those years, the number of Border Patrol agents had, in fact, quintupled from 4,000 to more than 21,000, while Customs and Border Protection became the largest federal law enforcement agency in the country with more than 60,000 agents. The annual budget for border and immigration enforcement ballooned from $1.5 billion to $19.5 billion, a more than twelvefold increase. By 2016, federal funding of border and immigration enforcement added up to $5 billion more than funding for all other federal law enforcement agencies combined.

Trump's wall is antiquated. Maybe because he has little experience using a computer, he's ignorant about how walls have been replaced by technology.

For all practical purposes, the "Great Wall" that Trump talks about may, by January 2017, be as antiquated as the Great Wall of China given the new high-tech surveillance methods now coming on the market. These are being developed in a major way and on a regular basis by a booming border techno-surveillance industry.

The 21st-century border is no longer just about walls—it's about biometrics and drones. It's about a "layered approach to national security," given that, as former Border Patrol chief Mike Fisher has put it, "the international boundary is no longer the first or last line of defense, but one of many."

He doesn't seem to have a clue about intelligence gathering and sharing. Has he even read CBP's vision for 2020 and 2025? Trump is mired in the 1980's.

How about the 2013 testimony to Congress by Secure Border Initiative Executive Director Mark Borkowski and Acting Chief of the Border Patrol Michael Fisher. Or the testimonies at the 2015 hearing, Securing the Border: Fencing, Infrastructure, and Technology Force Multipliers.

Here's an Arizona border town sheriff who says Trump's plan is a multi-billion dollar waste.

Trump's wall will do little to stem drugs. Most drugs come through ports of entry. (See, Drug Enforcement Administration, 2015 National Drug Threat Assessment Summary, October 2015, p. 3. )

Mexican TCOs transport the bulk of their drugs over the Southwest Border through ports of entry (POEs) using passenger vehicles or tractor trailers.

More airplanes and intelligence gathering, not physical barriers is what CBP says is needed.

Trump can't build a wall by executive order. It takes funding. There are engineering problems, environmental problems, problems with land owners, and a price tag of reportedly $20 billion.

But border security experts and former DHS and congressional officials said Wednesday that the project is a massive and difficult undertaking. In addition to the cost, they said, it would face engineering and environmental problems; fights with ranchers and others who don’t want to give up their land; and the huge topographical problems of the border, which runs through remote desert in Arizona and rugged mountains in New Mexico, as well as, for two-thirds of its length, along rivers.

His fight with landowners will take years to wind their way through the courts, preventing a wall from being built until they are done:

The Trump administration will have to contend with private ranchers, farmers and other property owners with land along the border. Just one-third of the border is made up of federal and tribal lands, according to a 2015 report by the Government Accountability Office, with private and state-owned lands making up the rest.

Go ahead and let him threaten to use eminent domain to take private land. The wall won't be built until the appeals process on all the lawsuits have ended -- years and years. By which time we'll have a new president who revokes his orders.

Trump's idea for a border wall is antiquated and ignorant, and we've been there, done that. Don't let him push your buttons. He's all bluster. And he doesn't have the power he thinks he does.

Donald Trump Grade: FAIL.

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