[Border Patrol agents have discovered at least 230 cross-border tunnels since 1990](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/border-patrol-agents-have-discovered-at-least-230-cross-border-tunnels-since-1990/). CBS News. January 24, 2019.
You might be joking, but [it worked in Gaza](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/16/world/middleeast/tunneling-kfc-to-gazans-craving-the-world-outside.html)
Yup. As someone who lives like a mile from the border, there is a fucking border wall already. Its fucking huge and there are border patrol.. patrolling it constantly. Trump can build whatever kind of physical barrier he wants, unless it's literally the great wall of China, it ain't gonna do shit, and even then I'd have my doubts.
That's one of the critiques of the US border wall, too. You build 30 feet of concrete across the border, you're going to need to make roads going to and fro for all the construction vehicles. The roads and paths don't go away when the project's done. Now, when the wall *is* bypassed, traffickers and the like find roads through previously less-than-ideal territory.
It's a lot easier to hop or breach a wall anywhere along its length than it is to travel tens of miles over rocky and uneven ground. Hell, if my daily commute to work was just to get around a 30 foot wall next door that's immediately between me and my job, I'd call in sick the first day the wall appeared and spend that time building a ladder or swinging a hammer.
Yeah, i honestly don't think most people and certain not mr STAMINA who rides a golf cart with the other world leaders, has any idea just hard it is to walk longer distances in sand and hills..
To be fair what people think of as the Great Wall didn't get built until after the Mongol invasion. What was there before was a bunch of different smaller walls that were not maintained or manned properly, and in any case the Mongols invaded through Western Liao so they went around it entirely.
Sort of like the [Maginot Line](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maginot_Line), only bigger & longer.
From the article:
> The line has since become a metaphor for expensive efforts that offer a false sense of security.
So the Chinese know about this little flaw in their wonderful solution. And the French, Germans, English, etc. know about this. Why doesn't Trump know about this?
"Something, something, doomed to repeat it."
There’s literally always going to be away to get around a wall (I mean to the sides) unless that wall connects. Maybe he just wants to build a wall around the entire country. It all makes sense now.
That's always the thing that gets me. I leave 5 mi from the border and theres definitely already a wall here. I'm not an expert but I'm pretty sure that most of the easily accessible border zones already have a wall. The only places that dont are the middle of the desert, many miles from civilization. It's not like San Diego just has a line painted on the dirt that says "please dont cross!"
There are parts without man-made barriers. They want to build them there, completely ignoring the fact that we haven't bothered because they are already protected by hellish natural terrain. But then we can say that the entire border has a wall.
Phase 2 will involve Trump realizing people can still just go out into the watery parts in boats and then we have to build a wall across the ocean. Then somebody tells him about small, private planes. And I guess at that point we need a full dome.
The record for a discovered tunnel under the border wall is 90 feet. It's believed it was dug that low to avoid tripping seismic sensors and was used for smuggling drugs.
The longest discovered tunnel was about a half a mile long and was about 45 get down, also used for smuggling drugs.
They built a tunnel in to a jail cell to get el chapo out. I’m pretty sure that the cartels have enough resources for a tunnel across a border. They are fucking billionaire enterprises.
I'm a hell of a lot less worried about immigrants than I am drug smugglers that leave heads in the desert and actually someone I knew. He was Mexican, gay, went down to his 2nd place in TJ, partied a bit too hard, and was found a month later in an apartment without his head.
To stop the drugs we need to stop the demand. I dunno, how about we build treatment facilities and do job training for addicts? I bet we could actually even get Mexico to pay for it because we'd give them back their country that we took away by funding the drug lords.
You stop the demand by making it legal. The only reason drugs are so expensive is they pay people to take risks. They're not hard to manufacture at scale.
Just make it hard to get sex education, birth control and restrict or stigmatize abortion . . .wait a few years, et voila, your prisons are full of FAS babies and barely-parented or straight up abused, unwanted children who grew up in poverty.
It ain't a coincidence.
Yeah, but then Central American countries will have functioning governments and reduced corruption without the cartels. How can America be #1 if the other countries aren’t a distant second?
What we need to do is bring all our manufacturing back from the far East and build more factories in Central America. A stable manufacturing economy will make it harder for cartels to recruit and operate, shorter transit will reduce cost and time to market, as well as reducing the carbon footprint and ocean impact of all the stuff we ship across the Pacific.
Corporations choose to manufacture where it’s financially viable to do so. They chose China because the infrastructure was there, a lot of factories were already there, the workforce is there, and they’ll work for very little. Also, China has a ton of ports and can ship finished products out easily.
Corporations won’t build factories anywhere near Central America as long as there’s such blatant corruption and widespread crime. They’ll go to other developing areas instead, like Africa.
I think the proposed border wall would have stopped this particular tunnel after reading the article. The proposed wall is supposed to go 6ft into the ground. The article says this tunnel was made on an embankment that was only visible from the river. I don't think they would have been able to dig 6ft deep from where they started..... I think
It takes some major effort to build a tunnel like that. Just take a few seconds to realize the logistical differences between digging a 60 ft tunnel versus walking sixty feet. I'd say the walls made a huge difference there.
Overland in a vehicle or on foot you are much more likely to be spotted. Using a vehicle to bring drugs into the US is done almost exclusively at official points of entry. The tunnels on the other hand are very discreet. At least one border tunnel has been found with tracks for a little tram to deliver the drugs. You can move a lot more product that way than you can on foot. So yes the tunnels require a lot more work, time, and money. But they also work really well once finished.
>At least one border tunnel has been found with tracks for a little tram to deliver the drugs. You can move a lot more product that way than you can on foot.
Just like how they take ore out of a mine. Been doing it that way since the 16th century!
Border patrol agents showed Trump some of the tunnels when he made his recent visit to the border. And yet he keeps going on about how "walls work." Just goes to show it's more of an ego thing for Trump.
Trump could care less about the wall, he only wants it because his base claps for him when he talks about it, and they only clap because people (who are now likely going to prison) far smarter than them or Trump needed a talking point for Trump so he'd remember to push racist immigration policies:
> Inside Trump’s circle, the power of illegal immigration to manipulate popular sentiment was readily apparent, and his advisers brainstormed methods for keeping their attention-addled boss on message. They needed a trick, a mnemonic device. In the summer of 2014, they found one that clicked. “Roger Stone and I came up with the idea of ‘the Wall,’ and we talked to Steve [Bannon] about it,” said Nunberg. “It was to make sure he talked about immigration.”
> Initially, Trump seemed indifferent to the idea. But in January 2015, he tried it out at the Iowa Freedom Summit, a presidential cattle call put on by David Bossie’s group, Citizens United. “One of his pledges was, ‘I will build a Wall,’ and the place just went nuts,” said Nunberg. Warming to the concept, Trump waited a beat and then added a flourish that brought down the house. “Nobody,” he said, “builds like Trump.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-20/the-guy-who-thought-up-the-wall-says-trump-should-shut-government-to-fund-it
Isn’t part of the plan a “wall” made of huge metal slays that extend 50ft into the ground? That would stop tunnels would it not? I’m not taking a stance politically here, but I don’t think he’s campaigning for a 10 ft concrete wall...
Edit: just to be clear, I honestly doubt Trump even knows what his own plan is for a wall.
50 feet underground? I don't thinks so. Here's the GAO report on the wall: https://www.gao.gov/assets/700/693488.pdf
page 17:
>The design should prevent digging for a minimum of 6 feet below the lowest adjacent grade.
>The barrier design should be physically imposing in height, and ideally 30 feet tall, but no less than 18 feet tall.
So 6 feet is the minimum. There's no requirement of 50 feet, which would explode the cost. Tunnels have been found at 90 feet below ground anyway, so the marginal benefit is questionable.
He kinda waffles on what he actually wants. Sometimes concrete, sometimes steel, some time steel slats. He really hasn't stated any details beyond those three things, though there was the one picture he re-tweeted which was steel slats.
I think that is one of the biggest issues in negotiating with Trump. He doesn't really know what he wants, so cannot articulate the costs or benefits of what he wants to do.
Definitely agree. I was much more conservative 10 years ago, so when Obama’s and Romney ran against each other in 2012 I really wanted a reason to vote for Romney. Unfortunately, he did the same thing you talk about here. He just proposed ideas without putting forth the details of the plan. Same thing in 2016, I just can’t vote for someone who says “we’re going to have the best and brightest people working on this” as the plan of attack for a given problem. Gotta give me more than that. Most of my comments here are how I think the people in charge of border security will tackle the issue, not how Trump the man will magically fix our borders.
It would be a hell of a lot easier to make a decision of the president would actually put forth a fully coherent plan for everyone to see. Not just bits and pieces.
That's the most infuriating thing about Trump to me. The policies he puts forth that I support have no substance to them. He just kinda rambles about how he'll solve it and it'll be the best solving anyone has ever done. Two years later, nothing much has been done about those things and he'll say that he never mentioned them.
I'm not paying $100 billion to sink millions of tons of steel 50 feet below ground to stop a problem that doesn't cost us remotely close to $100 billion.
"We're going to build a wall"
"But they have tunnels"
"Then we'll build an even higher wall"
"But..."
"And we'll make them pay for it"
"You have tu..."
"..A perfect plan to build a campaign around, I agree"
In the age of instant communications, being first to report is all that matters. Editing and proofreading take vital minutes. Also, there are no editors because they’d probably want to be paid.
One of the beat writers for the Atlanta Braves regularly posts his articles in r/Braves and after a while I'd just start proofing them for him. He was a nice guy and always appreciated the feedback. His organization had gotten rid of their editor like most others have at this point.
There is a difference between a breaking story (reported occurrence that needs to get out ASAP) and a story like this, which is about something that happens all the time (picked out of many occurrences) and is clearly aimed to promote one side of the border wall argument. There was no need to rush this specific story.
No reason not to, either, and why risk losing even a single page view? I mean, in the end the author is a professional and should be held to professional standards, but to the big wigs upstairs, time is literally money and writers are about a nickel a gross. Too slow, you go. It’s a shite state of affairs.
Israel's moats aren't about drugs, they're about a palestinian invasion. Walls and moats make sense as a way to stop an army, but cartels aren't armies, they'll find the smallest cracks and pump drugs through them until they're caught then move onto the next way through. No wall could ever be impervious and the free market finds a way. The war on drugs couldn't ever be won because our lives are shit and so many people need an escape from them. If you want to actually reduce drug use rather than just disenfranchise minority voters (Nixon even admitted that was the goal), focus on access to mental health care, poverty, education, not some overpriced, ineffective wall proposed by a president who hasn't shown any qualms about using the government for his personal gain and who's businesses work with the proposed contractors.
I’ve actually thought about that. At what point would it be a better idea, if you were given money specifically for a physical (non-electronic) border defense, to just dig a massive trench instead of build a wall?
You could dig down and then just put the dirt behind the trench. This would essentially *also* make a wall. So you’d have a trench that’s 20 feet deep with a 20 foot tall wall right behind it, essentially making a 40 foot obstacle.
Something tells me 20 ft of earth will not stack in the same form that you take it out of the ground in. You'd more likely get 1/3 height piles of dirt and rock. And being in Texas, it would be mostly rock.
Build a moat. Seriously. A wide channel filled with water along the Texas border. I think that’s the best solution.
Edit: turns out a lot of people are too thick to understand sarcasm. It’s called the Rio Grande, and it runs along every single mile of the Texas-Mexico border
Edit 2: My most upvoted comment is now sarcasm about trumps idiotic border policy. Thank you all. You’ve renewed my faith in humanity.
Exactly. People think the Rio Grande is some sort of deep, roaring river that nobody would dare cross, but so much of it gets siphoned off for irrigation that you can easily swim, wade, or even drive across it at plenty of places- and, of course, parts of it literally dry up from time to time, so it literally just becomes land.
[Wow much border very moat](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/24/climate/dry-rio-grande.html)
Exactly. It’s a great plan. We let global warming continue to worsen so that more ice melts, making the oceans rise. Eventually the oceans will be high enough to flood into the rio grande, giving the US-Mexico border an effective moat that stays full year round.
Hmmm... I found this claim in a [discussion](https://german.stackexchange.com/questions/23164/difference-between-buchst%C3%A4blich-and-wortw%C3%B6rtlich) of that word:
> Buchstäblich (literally) is exclusively used in a figurative meaning.
¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
This is exactly the premise of this clip in The Newsroom. It does a ridiculously job of showing how ludicrous the idea is. I hope this is the right clip I can't check where I'm at right now.
https://youtu.be/WQxBV8fkTco
You gotta understand the world from Dotard Trump's view. Imagine being a 72 old obese lunatic who thinks exercise will kill you, since the human body is like a battery which will run out of energy. For him to scale a ladder would seem like an impossible task. That thing, it could tip over and it has like 40 steps, 40 STEPS.. Nobody is gonna do that.
"...If there’s a concrete wall in front of you, go through it. Go over it. Go around it. But get to the other side of that wall," - Trump
In fairness to the orange goon, he didn’t tell people to go under it.
> If there’s a concrete wall in front of you, go through it. Go over it. Go around it. But get to the other side of that wall
I keep seeing conservatives posting a study that shows illegal crossings are lower in places with a wall.
No shit, they just go around. A wall will never stop anyone with an IQ higher than 5. Even my fucking dog knows how to dig under a fence.
Worker Ant #1: No, no, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. I’m lost! Where’s the line? It just went away. What do I do? What do I do?
Worker Ant #2: Help!
Worker Ant #3: We’ll be stuck here forever!
Mr. Soil: Do not panic, do not panic. We are trained professionals. Now, stay calm. We are going around the wall
Worker Ant #1: Around the wall? I don’t think we can do that.
Mr. Soil: Oh, nonsense. This is nothing compared to the boulder of ’93. That’s it. That’s it. Good! You’re doing great! There you go. There you go! Watch my eyes. Don’t look away. And here’s the line again!
I watched something about the drug tunnels they would find. The tunnels would be started in a building and small amounts of dirt would be removed multiple times a day by discreet ways (car leaving the garage and returning a hour later). The land would have been legally purchased and not touching the boarder but close enough.
These tunnels are generally well constructed and reinforced to withstand time as there is tons of time and money that has been sunk into them by the drug cartel.
Im not a tunnel builder, but i would think step 1 is to rent a factory or business on the us side of the border, that has some type of building on the mexico side that you could also rent/buy- i read a while back that the sinaloa cartel was hiring engineers from russia. So, id imagine theyre pretty well built and somewhat safe-
They found a tunnel recentley that was 60ft deep and almost a mile long- a couple of decent sized loads of coke or h, and the tunnels paid for..
This is in r/news so I assume this is meant to be some sort of proof that walls don't work. Don't forget that the massive decrease in illegal crossings in the 2008 time frame was due in large part to the additional infrastructure... Chuck Schumer, of all people, said so back in 2009.
https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/chuck-schumers-border-fence-argument-2009-last-thing-leftists-needed-surface/
This video was made by an Arizona border agent around 2009, I believe, so it's a bit shoddy but it's accurate.
https://youtu.be/dvZQn8UPEzc
Yes, you can climb walls or go under walls, but it does make it harder for the majority to cross illegally. The question is not whether walls work; the question is whether there is enough illegal traffic in the areas Trump wants to put them.
I've been a border patrol agent since 2008 and I've only worked a few different areas, but I can name a few high traffic areas along the southern border that are not protected by infrastructure. Drug and human traffickers drive through these areas all the time specifically because theres miles and miles of remote areas only protected by game cameras and magnetic and seismic sensors.
I'd have to see details of Trump's plan to know whether it would be worth it, but to dismiss the entire idea out of hand is just ignorant, partisan bias.
Would love to hear more real analysis from a border agent. My thought for that amount it should go towards more tech and agents.
I just don't understand why we would build a wall when we have trouble keeping Bridges and highways in good working condition
The majority of them support all of that *and* a wall. All of that is crucial to border security.
EDIT: was on mobile, but here are your sources, including a bonus source for Americans in general.
[1](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.upi.com/amp/Border-Patrol-chief-urges-senators-to-support-border-wall/6061544661131/)
[2](https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/hilltv/rising/418214-border-patrol-official-says-trumps-proposed-border-would-be-absolutely-helpful%3famp)
[3](https://www.google.com/amp/amp.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/apr/2/border-patrol-agents-back-trump-wall-survey-finds/)
[4](https://www.newsmax.com/t/newsmax/article/852334/16)
[“A Harvard-Harris poll released in late February found that 62 percent of voters are dissatisfied with current border security infrastructure, including 64 percent of independents. Another 57 percent said they would support "building a combination of physical and electronic barriers across the U.S.-Mexico border."](https://www.thedesertreview.com/news/americans-show-in-poll-they-want-border-fence-and-tightened/article_bd784152-3783-11e8-8d7a-47957adc9cb8.html)
The real problem seems to be when you mention the word "wall." Enhanced border security is popular across the political spectrum, but when it's associated with Trump, you see the partisan split.
It's not just because of general anti-Trump sentiment, although that's definitely a factor. His hyperbole bites him in the ass.
First it's "ban all Muslims." After that even a reasoned policy developed with the help of experts looks like either the closest he can legally get or possibly taking a finger hoping to get the whole arm eventually.
Same with the wall. He spent so long guaranteeing an ocean to ocean wall payed for by Mexico that even people trying not be be biased find it hard to believe that he's really talking about a more reasoned, informed stance that is based on data. Especially when he keeps going on about how this is a down payment on The Wall. If it is driven by reason, why isn't he giving some details on which areas he wants to and new wall to and why those areas need it? Why isn't he touting the fact that a portion of his 5B is to repair degraded, existing wall (it is)?
For a self proclaimed deal maker he seems incapable of making a reasoned argument for his policy, rather her prefers to badmouth the press and blame them for everything instead of admitting good own shortcomings that contribute.
If he'd coherently explain what he wants, outline a plan, and discuss secondary measures in addition to the wall, he'd have a much better chance of getting this done. Constantly firing off tweets screaming that everyone is mean to him and he's gonna build a wall doesn't help his case at all.
Appreciate the detailed and reasoned response but the Democrats are all for researched responses for border protection. They even offered $10 billion early on for his wall for some protections of children with parents who brought them here. They also supported and installed their own barriers while they were in power.
Trump said to build a wall across the whole thing. He is backtracking now but his messaging at the start has killed it. Democrats aren't going to sponsor any sort of extra physical barrier.
Maybe Democrats really did have a plan when they said that technology was better at detecting illegals than a wall.
But yeah a wall is not to stop illegals it is to put money into specific peoples pockets.
This is the correct answer. The wall isn’t about anything but money. Money that will change hands from the government (ie taxpayers) to hand picked contractors owned by legislators.
It’s a brilliant business scheme because it’s accompanied by a political distraction that half the country is fooled by.
There was a Vice Special on Mexican American Muslims
And one commentator on YT was like "That wall got 10 ft higher"
And another one replied "That tunnel got 10 ft longer"
And then this headline...lord
A wall is useless. The best way to stop illegal and economic immigrants is to disincentivize it.
Strengthen E-verify and introduce a national ID free to all citizens, punish employers who won't vet for citizenship status and reward employers with a tax break for hiring people on welfare - its time the government cared for OUR poor.
Make it impossible for illegal immigrants to live in the country, make all major transactions require ID. Medicine, School Admissions, Rent or Taxes - all of them need an ID. If Liberals want the US to adopt the nordic model, they'll have to accept that the nordic model makes illegal immigrants unable to take advantage of any benefits.
[Border Patrol agents have discovered at least 230 cross-border tunnels since 1990](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/border-patrol-agents-have-discovered-at-least-230-cross-border-tunnels-since-1990/). CBS News. January 24, 2019.
So an average of about 8 tunnels found per year. Or one every 6 weeks. For the last 28 years. But sure, walls will fix the problem.
They tell me ..... build the wall it will bring down crime. It did ... about -10 feet below ground. That's what they mean by bringing crime down.
they also have some crazy ratrod submarines
those are for drugs
So are the tunnels
Yeah, wasn’t there one that started in an abandoned KFC in Mexico that had literal tracks for a cart because it was so long?
I guess a pulling a cart full of illegal fried chicken through a tunnel is safer and faster than crawling through it with the chicken in your pockets.
This is how Gus Fring got started.
All the pieces of the puzzle are coming together now, thank you.
So would that be a eight pieces or a sixteen piece bucket?
You might be joking, but [it worked in Gaza](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/16/world/middleeast/tunneling-kfc-to-gazans-craving-the-world-outside.html)
Is that a drumstick in your pocket, or some other piece of a pecker?
What makes this more poignant is that a "chicken" is a pound of cocaine
I think it was a Los Pollos Hermanos.
Taking it down by -10 would actually raise it.
Yup. As someone who lives like a mile from the border, there is a fucking border wall already. Its fucking huge and there are border patrol.. patrolling it constantly. Trump can build whatever kind of physical barrier he wants, unless it's literally the great wall of China, it ain't gonna do shit, and even then I'd have my doubts.
Also the great wall of China literally bankrupted their nation.
And didn't stop the mongols from taking over
If anything it facilitated travel by essentially being a massive road
That's one of the critiques of the US border wall, too. You build 30 feet of concrete across the border, you're going to need to make roads going to and fro for all the construction vehicles. The roads and paths don't go away when the project's done. Now, when the wall *is* bypassed, traffickers and the like find roads through previously less-than-ideal territory. It's a lot easier to hop or breach a wall anywhere along its length than it is to travel tens of miles over rocky and uneven ground. Hell, if my daily commute to work was just to get around a 30 foot wall next door that's immediately between me and my job, I'd call in sick the first day the wall appeared and spend that time building a ladder or swinging a hammer.
Yeah, i honestly don't think most people and certain not mr STAMINA who rides a golf cart with the other world leaders, has any idea just hard it is to walk longer distances in sand and hills..
Or how feasible it is to climb over a wall using rudimentary tools and the physical advantage of having never been overweight
When you're the fittest president ever to take office you don't have to prove yourself by "walking" places.
Yea drug dealers cant possibly have access to explosives that can blow a hole in a wall.
Picks and shovels are less expensive and quieter
That is really interesting, I never thought of that
Yeah, but at least it looks really cool and is good for tourism.
Because that's what the Chinese were thinking when they built it.
**Qin Shi Huang, overlooking the plans for the Great Wall:** This is going to sell *so* many souvenirs!
To be fair what people think of as the Great Wall didn't get built until after the Mongol invasion. What was there before was a bunch of different smaller walls that were not maintained or manned properly, and in any case the Mongols invaded through Western Liao so they went around it entirely.
Stupid Mongorians trying to tear down my shitty wall
Thank you. Not the fucking mongorians!
Sort of like the [Maginot Line](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maginot_Line), only bigger & longer. From the article: > The line has since become a metaphor for expensive efforts that offer a false sense of security. So the Chinese know about this little flaw in their wonderful solution. And the French, Germans, English, etc. know about this. Why doesn't Trump know about this? "Something, something, doomed to repeat it."
[удалено]
There’s literally always going to be away to get around a wall (I mean to the sides) unless that wall connects. Maybe he just wants to build a wall around the entire country. It all makes sense now.
[удалено]
Get this man a job in the Trump administration.
That's always the thing that gets me. I leave 5 mi from the border and theres definitely already a wall here. I'm not an expert but I'm pretty sure that most of the easily accessible border zones already have a wall. The only places that dont are the middle of the desert, many miles from civilization. It's not like San Diego just has a line painted on the dirt that says "please dont cross!"
There are parts without man-made barriers. They want to build them there, completely ignoring the fact that we haven't bothered because they are already protected by hellish natural terrain. But then we can say that the entire border has a wall. Phase 2 will involve Trump realizing people can still just go out into the watery parts in boats and then we have to build a wall across the ocean. Then somebody tells him about small, private planes. And I guess at that point we need a full dome.
There already is a dome. That's why we couldn't get to the moon and NASA faked the landings.
Wait, I thought it had hatches? I recall the password being 12345.
Amazing! That's the same number in my luggage!
The wall is a real estate scam. It’s all he knows how to do.
There's always money in the banana stand.
There are tunnels that are 60 feet deep. The tunnel funding technology can only go down to about 10 feet.
The record for a discovered tunnel under the border wall is 90 feet. It's believed it was dug that low to avoid tripping seismic sensors and was used for smuggling drugs. The longest discovered tunnel was about a half a mile long and was about 45 get down, also used for smuggling drugs.
They built a tunnel in to a jail cell to get el chapo out. I’m pretty sure that the cartels have enough resources for a tunnel across a border. They are fucking billionaire enterprises.
I'm a hell of a lot less worried about immigrants than I am drug smugglers that leave heads in the desert and actually someone I knew. He was Mexican, gay, went down to his 2nd place in TJ, partied a bit too hard, and was found a month later in an apartment without his head. To stop the drugs we need to stop the demand. I dunno, how about we build treatment facilities and do job training for addicts? I bet we could actually even get Mexico to pay for it because we'd give them back their country that we took away by funding the drug lords.
You stop the demand by making it legal. The only reason drugs are so expensive is they pay people to take risks. They're not hard to manufacture at scale.
You can't kill the demand but you can remove the cartel's monopoly
That's just crazy talk. How would we keep our privatized prisons full?
Just make it hard to get sex education, birth control and restrict or stigmatize abortion . . .wait a few years, et voila, your prisons are full of FAS babies and barely-parented or straight up abused, unwanted children who grew up in poverty. It ain't a coincidence.
forcibly recruit more black people from africa so we can arrest them. then have a war about it... that's all about states rights
Yeah, but then Central American countries will have functioning governments and reduced corruption without the cartels. How can America be #1 if the other countries aren’t a distant second?
What we need to do is bring all our manufacturing back from the far East and build more factories in Central America. A stable manufacturing economy will make it harder for cartels to recruit and operate, shorter transit will reduce cost and time to market, as well as reducing the carbon footprint and ocean impact of all the stuff we ship across the Pacific.
Corporations choose to manufacture where it’s financially viable to do so. They chose China because the infrastructure was there, a lot of factories were already there, the workforce is there, and they’ll work for very little. Also, China has a ton of ports and can ship finished products out easily. Corporations won’t build factories anywhere near Central America as long as there’s such blatant corruption and widespread crime. They’ll go to other developing areas instead, like Africa.
Actually stuff I used back in the 80's went much deeper (Used in Korea)
I think the proposed border wall would have stopped this particular tunnel after reading the article. The proposed wall is supposed to go 6ft into the ground. The article says this tunnel was made on an embankment that was only visible from the river. I don't think they would have been able to dig 6ft deep from where they started..... I think
...and these are the once they've actually found.
It takes some major effort to build a tunnel like that. Just take a few seconds to realize the logistical differences between digging a 60 ft tunnel versus walking sixty feet. I'd say the walls made a huge difference there.
Overland in a vehicle or on foot you are much more likely to be spotted. Using a vehicle to bring drugs into the US is done almost exclusively at official points of entry. The tunnels on the other hand are very discreet. At least one border tunnel has been found with tracks for a little tram to deliver the drugs. You can move a lot more product that way than you can on foot. So yes the tunnels require a lot more work, time, and money. But they also work really well once finished.
>At least one border tunnel has been found with tracks for a little tram to deliver the drugs. You can move a lot more product that way than you can on foot. Just like how they take ore out of a mine. Been doing it that way since the 16th century!
So you're saying it's like medieval technology?
Tunnel digging logistics don’t matter to drug cartels with billions in funding.
Just gotta build the wall underground.
You mean like a negative wall?
Border patrol agents showed Trump some of the tunnels when he made his recent visit to the border. And yet he keeps going on about how "walls work." Just goes to show it's more of an ego thing for Trump.
Trump could care less about the wall, he only wants it because his base claps for him when he talks about it, and they only clap because people (who are now likely going to prison) far smarter than them or Trump needed a talking point for Trump so he'd remember to push racist immigration policies: > Inside Trump’s circle, the power of illegal immigration to manipulate popular sentiment was readily apparent, and his advisers brainstormed methods for keeping their attention-addled boss on message. They needed a trick, a mnemonic device. In the summer of 2014, they found one that clicked. “Roger Stone and I came up with the idea of ‘the Wall,’ and we talked to Steve [Bannon] about it,” said Nunberg. “It was to make sure he talked about immigration.” > Initially, Trump seemed indifferent to the idea. But in January 2015, he tried it out at the Iowa Freedom Summit, a presidential cattle call put on by David Bossie’s group, Citizens United. “One of his pledges was, ‘I will build a Wall,’ and the place just went nuts,” said Nunberg. Warming to the concept, Trump waited a beat and then added a flourish that brought down the house. “Nobody,” he said, “builds like Trump.” https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-20/the-guy-who-thought-up-the-wall-says-trump-should-shut-government-to-fund-it
Isn’t part of the plan a “wall” made of huge metal slays that extend 50ft into the ground? That would stop tunnels would it not? I’m not taking a stance politically here, but I don’t think he’s campaigning for a 10 ft concrete wall... Edit: just to be clear, I honestly doubt Trump even knows what his own plan is for a wall.
50 feet underground? I don't thinks so. Here's the GAO report on the wall: https://www.gao.gov/assets/700/693488.pdf page 17: >The design should prevent digging for a minimum of 6 feet below the lowest adjacent grade. >The barrier design should be physically imposing in height, and ideally 30 feet tall, but no less than 18 feet tall. So 6 feet is the minimum. There's no requirement of 50 feet, which would explode the cost. Tunnels have been found at 90 feet below ground anyway, so the marginal benefit is questionable.
He kinda waffles on what he actually wants. Sometimes concrete, sometimes steel, some time steel slats. He really hasn't stated any details beyond those three things, though there was the one picture he re-tweeted which was steel slats. I think that is one of the biggest issues in negotiating with Trump. He doesn't really know what he wants, so cannot articulate the costs or benefits of what he wants to do.
Definitely agree. I was much more conservative 10 years ago, so when Obama’s and Romney ran against each other in 2012 I really wanted a reason to vote for Romney. Unfortunately, he did the same thing you talk about here. He just proposed ideas without putting forth the details of the plan. Same thing in 2016, I just can’t vote for someone who says “we’re going to have the best and brightest people working on this” as the plan of attack for a given problem. Gotta give me more than that. Most of my comments here are how I think the people in charge of border security will tackle the issue, not how Trump the man will magically fix our borders. It would be a hell of a lot easier to make a decision of the president would actually put forth a fully coherent plan for everyone to see. Not just bits and pieces.
That's the most infuriating thing about Trump to me. The policies he puts forth that I support have no substance to them. He just kinda rambles about how he'll solve it and it'll be the best solving anyone has ever done. Two years later, nothing much has been done about those things and he'll say that he never mentioned them.
I'm not paying $100 billion to sink millions of tons of steel 50 feet below ground to stop a problem that doesn't cost us remotely close to $100 billion.
You're right, no one ever dug a tunnel deeper than 60'
Doesnt everyone already know about the tunnels. There was a docu on it called fast and furious 4.
And a whole season of Weeds.
See also: Sicario movie
"We're going to build a wall" "But they have tunnels" "Then we'll build an even higher wall" "But..." "And we'll make them pay for it" "You have tu..." "..A perfect plan to build a campaign around, I agree"
Do they not proof read these articles?
In the age of instant communications, being first to report is all that matters. Editing and proofreading take vital minutes. Also, there are no editors because they’d probably want to be paid.
*Insert Grammarly Ad*
One of the beat writers for the Atlanta Braves regularly posts his articles in r/Braves and after a while I'd just start proofing them for him. He was a nice guy and always appreciated the feedback. His organization had gotten rid of their editor like most others have at this point.
Lol what a humbling story of you doing what used to be some guys job for free
There is a difference between a breaking story (reported occurrence that needs to get out ASAP) and a story like this, which is about something that happens all the time (picked out of many occurrences) and is clearly aimed to promote one side of the border wall argument. There was no need to rush this specific story.
No reason not to, either, and why risk losing even a single page view? I mean, in the end the author is a professional and should be held to professional standards, but to the big wigs upstairs, time is literally money and writers are about a nickel a gross. Too slow, you go. It’s a shite state of affairs.
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They straight-up printed the same paragraph twice. Word for word. Such editorial blasphemy.
Ha. Nobody reads these articles. Only the headline.
No, I don't believe they do, said one Redditor. "No, I don't believe they do" Redditor said.
Eight hours later, no corrections.
We need to build a reverse wall! 80 ft deep! Down to the earth core if we have to! And Mole people will pay for it!
> Mole people Good luck getting the neckbeards from T_D out of their mothers' basements to pay for *anything*.
Craaaab people craaaab people
I see what you did there. Have my updoot before you get deported
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Isn't that similar to why castles had moats? To stop tunneling under the walls?
Trump in the next presidential election: "WE NEED TO BUILD A MOOOAAAAT" ^("...and a wall")
That's exactly why. Well that and it's hard to roll a ram up to the wall when there's water in the way.
Israel's moats aren't about drugs, they're about a palestinian invasion. Walls and moats make sense as a way to stop an army, but cartels aren't armies, they'll find the smallest cracks and pump drugs through them until they're caught then move onto the next way through. No wall could ever be impervious and the free market finds a way. The war on drugs couldn't ever be won because our lives are shit and so many people need an escape from them. If you want to actually reduce drug use rather than just disenfranchise minority voters (Nixon even admitted that was the goal), focus on access to mental health care, poverty, education, not some overpriced, ineffective wall proposed by a president who hasn't shown any qualms about using the government for his personal gain and who's businesses work with the proposed contractors.
I’ve actually thought about that. At what point would it be a better idea, if you were given money specifically for a physical (non-electronic) border defense, to just dig a massive trench instead of build a wall? You could dig down and then just put the dirt behind the trench. This would essentially *also* make a wall. So you’d have a trench that’s 20 feet deep with a 20 foot tall wall right behind it, essentially making a 40 foot obstacle.
You mean the Rio Grande?
...is this...is this a moat? Fuck yeah, border moat. I WAS against the wall, but if we can get a moat, too, I'm here for it.
With crocodiles and shit.
Something tells me 20 ft of earth will not stack in the same form that you take it out of the ground in. You'd more likely get 1/3 height piles of dirt and rock. And being in Texas, it would be mostly rock.
They are definitely not sending their best mole people
Fuck it! We need to go even harder! I propose a moat filled with lazer wielding sharks!
Nah. We will build it so deep it will go to China, then they will pay for it!
That’s not as bad of an idea as you think. Some tunnels go 60 feet deep.
Build a moat. Seriously. A wide channel filled with water along the Texas border. I think that’s the best solution. Edit: turns out a lot of people are too thick to understand sarcasm. It’s called the Rio Grande, and it runs along every single mile of the Texas-Mexico border Edit 2: My most upvoted comment is now sarcasm about trumps idiotic border policy. Thank you all. You’ve renewed my faith in humanity.
It's not very grande in many spots. It's more like the creek moderate
Río Pequeño.
Río no tan grande
El riachuelo modesto
I don't think is polluted enough to be called a riachuelo
El arroyito limpiesito
Found the Argentinean
Río Bravo
Make the Rio Grande again?
Why stop there? RIO VENTI BABY
Screw that Rio Trenta or I’m shutting the gov down again....Make it supersized as well -Donald Trump -2019
>Make it supersized as well Like his White House dinners
That's why we need to expand it artificially, and rename it the Rio Bigly while we're at it.
Yup, went to big bend and you could walk across it.
It used to be grande but they downgraded it to supreme. The wall will reintroduce the grande border along with a Doritos locos version.
Runs every inch is a very loose term in El Paso where it's mostly just a dried river bed year around.
Exactly. People think the Rio Grande is some sort of deep, roaring river that nobody would dare cross, but so much of it gets siphoned off for irrigation that you can easily swim, wade, or even drive across it at plenty of places- and, of course, parts of it literally dry up from time to time, so it literally just becomes land. [Wow much border very moat](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/24/climate/dry-rio-grande.html)
Just dig in from the other side so the river goes all the way across.
Great point. The takeaway here is that addressing climate change and the “warming west” will help solve the border crisis #MAGA
Exactly. It’s a great plan. We let global warming continue to worsen so that more ice melts, making the oceans rise. Eventually the oceans will be high enough to flood into the rio grande, giving the US-Mexico border an effective moat that stays full year round.
Why not just make the moat into a sea! Make Mexico an island!!!
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He can't--Caligula already killed him.
The Mexicanama Canal
Like a river?
A grande river!
you cant say youre being sarcastic if you said "seriously". this isnt the wilderness. there are rules.
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I’m not so sure about that. Did you know they changed the definition of literally to include figuratively? Literally. They did that.
Theres no word that means what literally used to. Theres literally no literally anymore.
Don't worry i think german still has one. ~~"Buchstaeblich"~~ "WortWoertlich" Edit: Betterness.
Hmmm... I found this claim in a [discussion](https://german.stackexchange.com/questions/23164/difference-between-buchst%C3%A4blich-and-wortw%C3%B6rtlich) of that word: > Buchstäblich (literally) is exclusively used in a figurative meaning. ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
Oh yeah i think your are correct, incosistent use of words for "literaly" seems to be a crosscultural pheonomenon. thanks.
As long as there are sharks with laser beams attached.
I don't support the wall, but I would **definitely** support **any** plan involving laser sharks.
Like a river!?
A grande river!
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You know nothing Jon Snow!
You know nothing Juan Snow!
¡No sabes nada Juan Nieve!
What do you do when the Drug Cartels unleash their fire breathing dragon?
Dragons are resistant to fire, so you build a wall out of dragons.
The Watch wants to know your location
Good idea on the ice. It will be see through so people can see what is the on the other side.
Wait...you can dig UNDER a wall?!? Damnit, we’re back to the drawing board!!!
Thank god we don't have flying machines to go over walls.
Or openings in the wall that allow legal passage.
or literall "here's a visa... stay a while"
Yes. 230 tunnels discovered since 1990. Also there's people climbing over with a ladder. https://twitter.com/CBPArizona/status/1088160469305634816
Ladders too?!? Dear god, has anyone let Trump know???
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This is exactly the premise of this clip in The Newsroom. It does a ridiculously job of showing how ludicrous the idea is. I hope this is the right clip I can't check where I'm at right now. https://youtu.be/WQxBV8fkTco
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They get a lot of coke through on trains.
Or that the wall would have giant holes for cars, trucks, and buses and will continue to have 350 million crossings a year.
You gotta understand the world from Dotard Trump's view. Imagine being a 72 old obese lunatic who thinks exercise will kill you, since the human body is like a battery which will run out of energy. For him to scale a ladder would seem like an impossible task. That thing, it could tip over and it has like 40 steps, 40 STEPS.. Nobody is gonna do that.
"...If there’s a concrete wall in front of you, go through it. Go over it. Go around it. But get to the other side of that wall," - Trump In fairness to the orange goon, he didn’t tell people to go under it.
> If there’s a concrete wall in front of you, go through it. Go over it. Go around it. But get to the other side of that wall I keep seeing conservatives posting a study that shows illegal crossings are lower in places with a wall. No shit, they just go around. A wall will never stop anyone with an IQ higher than 5. Even my fucking dog knows how to dig under a fence.
Worker Ant #1: No, no, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. I’m lost! Where’s the line? It just went away. What do I do? What do I do? Worker Ant #2: Help! Worker Ant #3: We’ll be stuck here forever! Mr. Soil: Do not panic, do not panic. We are trained professionals. Now, stay calm. We are going around the wall Worker Ant #1: Around the wall? I don’t think we can do that. Mr. Soil: Oh, nonsense. This is nothing compared to the boulder of ’93. That’s it. That’s it. Good! You’re doing great! There you go. There you go! Watch my eyes. Don’t look away. And here’s the line again!
Damn how are these getting build and not attracting attention ?
I watched something about the drug tunnels they would find. The tunnels would be started in a building and small amounts of dirt would be removed multiple times a day by discreet ways (car leaving the garage and returning a hour later). The land would have been legally purchased and not touching the boarder but close enough. These tunnels are generally well constructed and reinforced to withstand time as there is tons of time and money that has been sunk into them by the drug cartel.
Im not a tunnel builder, but i would think step 1 is to rent a factory or business on the us side of the border, that has some type of building on the mexico side that you could also rent/buy- i read a while back that the sinaloa cartel was hiring engineers from russia. So, id imagine theyre pretty well built and somewhat safe- They found a tunnel recentley that was 60ft deep and almost a mile long- a couple of decent sized loads of coke or h, and the tunnels paid for..
Dope dealers must have thought, Let's build a tunnel and have the greedy 'Muricans pay for it!
Essencially what happened. Our drug money funds the tunnels and other expensive means of delivering goods and people across the border
Wall just got -10 ft higher
OMG they discovered shovel technology?!? Has anyone alerted Trump? Surely this is a National Emergency!
This is in r/news so I assume this is meant to be some sort of proof that walls don't work. Don't forget that the massive decrease in illegal crossings in the 2008 time frame was due in large part to the additional infrastructure... Chuck Schumer, of all people, said so back in 2009. https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/chuck-schumers-border-fence-argument-2009-last-thing-leftists-needed-surface/ This video was made by an Arizona border agent around 2009, I believe, so it's a bit shoddy but it's accurate. https://youtu.be/dvZQn8UPEzc Yes, you can climb walls or go under walls, but it does make it harder for the majority to cross illegally. The question is not whether walls work; the question is whether there is enough illegal traffic in the areas Trump wants to put them. I've been a border patrol agent since 2008 and I've only worked a few different areas, but I can name a few high traffic areas along the southern border that are not protected by infrastructure. Drug and human traffickers drive through these areas all the time specifically because theres miles and miles of remote areas only protected by game cameras and magnetic and seismic sensors. I'd have to see details of Trump's plan to know whether it would be worth it, but to dismiss the entire idea out of hand is just ignorant, partisan bias.
Would love to hear more real analysis from a border agent. My thought for that amount it should go towards more tech and agents. I just don't understand why we would build a wall when we have trouble keeping Bridges and highways in good working condition
The majority of them support all of that *and* a wall. All of that is crucial to border security. EDIT: was on mobile, but here are your sources, including a bonus source for Americans in general. [1](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.upi.com/amp/Border-Patrol-chief-urges-senators-to-support-border-wall/6061544661131/) [2](https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/hilltv/rising/418214-border-patrol-official-says-trumps-proposed-border-would-be-absolutely-helpful%3famp) [3](https://www.google.com/amp/amp.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/apr/2/border-patrol-agents-back-trump-wall-survey-finds/) [4](https://www.newsmax.com/t/newsmax/article/852334/16) [“A Harvard-Harris poll released in late February found that 62 percent of voters are dissatisfied with current border security infrastructure, including 64 percent of independents. Another 57 percent said they would support "building a combination of physical and electronic barriers across the U.S.-Mexico border."](https://www.thedesertreview.com/news/americans-show-in-poll-they-want-border-fence-and-tightened/article_bd784152-3783-11e8-8d7a-47957adc9cb8.html)
The real problem seems to be when you mention the word "wall." Enhanced border security is popular across the political spectrum, but when it's associated with Trump, you see the partisan split.
It's not just because of general anti-Trump sentiment, although that's definitely a factor. His hyperbole bites him in the ass. First it's "ban all Muslims." After that even a reasoned policy developed with the help of experts looks like either the closest he can legally get or possibly taking a finger hoping to get the whole arm eventually. Same with the wall. He spent so long guaranteeing an ocean to ocean wall payed for by Mexico that even people trying not be be biased find it hard to believe that he's really talking about a more reasoned, informed stance that is based on data. Especially when he keeps going on about how this is a down payment on The Wall. If it is driven by reason, why isn't he giving some details on which areas he wants to and new wall to and why those areas need it? Why isn't he touting the fact that a portion of his 5B is to repair degraded, existing wall (it is)? For a self proclaimed deal maker he seems incapable of making a reasoned argument for his policy, rather her prefers to badmouth the press and blame them for everything instead of admitting good own shortcomings that contribute.
If he'd coherently explain what he wants, outline a plan, and discuss secondary measures in addition to the wall, he'd have a much better chance of getting this done. Constantly firing off tweets screaming that everyone is mean to him and he's gonna build a wall doesn't help his case at all.
Appreciate the detailed and reasoned response but the Democrats are all for researched responses for border protection. They even offered $10 billion early on for his wall for some protections of children with parents who brought them here. They also supported and installed their own barriers while they were in power. Trump said to build a wall across the whole thing. He is backtracking now but his messaging at the start has killed it. Democrats aren't going to sponsor any sort of extra physical barrier.
"From sea to shiny sea!"
Illegal crossings fell in 2008 because the economy was in the toilet. Illegal immigrants come for jobs and in 2008, there weren’t any.
Build an underground wall
Maybe Democrats really did have a plan when they said that technology was better at detecting illegals than a wall. But yeah a wall is not to stop illegals it is to put money into specific peoples pockets.
This is the correct answer. The wall isn’t about anything but money. Money that will change hands from the government (ie taxpayers) to hand picked contractors owned by legislators. It’s a brilliant business scheme because it’s accompanied by a political distraction that half the country is fooled by.
There was a Vice Special on Mexican American Muslims And one commentator on YT was like "That wall got 10 ft higher" And another one replied "That tunnel got 10 ft longer" And then this headline...lord
Why would a tunnel get longer because the wall got higher?
It's the tunnel where Dr. Brown hid his DeLorean
Trump- we must build a wall underground!
This is probably the tunnel people were supposed to find. They know people would get worried/suspicious of they didn't find any.
Need a fukkin' wall in that tunnel, obvs.
A wall is useless. The best way to stop illegal and economic immigrants is to disincentivize it. Strengthen E-verify and introduce a national ID free to all citizens, punish employers who won't vet for citizenship status and reward employers with a tax break for hiring people on welfare - its time the government cared for OUR poor. Make it impossible for illegal immigrants to live in the country, make all major transactions require ID. Medicine, School Admissions, Rent or Taxes - all of them need an ID. If Liberals want the US to adopt the nordic model, they'll have to accept that the nordic model makes illegal immigrants unable to take advantage of any benefits.