Ok.  This isn’t about the cost of guarding any actual fence or wall.   I note that  see through fence, rather than a solid wall has been long considered a more effective border security efforts.   Some prototypes include see through sections, so are they walls or fences.  Do we care?

This is about the eight standing prototypes in San Diego.   They must be guarded day and night against  graffiti artists, who would love to deface them probably with not very favorable opinions of Trump’s immigration policies.   The task to stand guard over these eight walls/fences falls to the San Diego city police and the San Diego County  Sheriff’s office.   NBC 7 local news in San Diego reports a total cost of around  one million dollars,  of which  $278,000 is for city police and $761,000 is for the Sheriff’s office.   The Sheriff’s office estimate  is for approximately 10,000 hours of overtime, coming out to $76/hour.  The cost estimate from NBC News is provided in the links.

There has been no reported arrest of graffiti artists,  so the security must be working.  This also may be to the no nonsense Trump position (Minimum mandatory sentence to all graffitists)  or the “Trump effect” of not daring to deface his wall.

The prototypes  have already been tested, I guess, by seeing if people can get over them.  It has been reported that all the prototypes passed, even the ones with see through parts.  If these prototypes are to stay until the security fence (the word I like) is built,  we may be looking at decades of prototype protection.  It would seem there should be some way to make money off of this.   San Diego Prototype Park?   Maybe do some landscaping, and build signs, explaining the features of each fence.

Or, invite local artists to paint the walls.  In Miami, we have Wynwood walls, which is very popular among tourists.

I suspect like many walls, this one will come down.   The destruction day should  be on YouTube.

And I expect Trump to stiff the city and county for all their good work.

Stay tuned,

Dave

Links:

This report also goes into details of the drastic drop off of illegal immigrants entering the US through Mexico.   But the Department of Homeland Security is saying that in March 2018, there was a sudden surge in attempted illegal entry.   Of course, all we have are statistics on how many failed to get into the US, not how many evaded border patrols.   There are a lot of statistics floating around, and I’ll do my best to explain them in a future blog.

NBC 7 Investigates Looks at Local Border Wall Costs and Immigration Arrests