So much damage that everyone and everything still loses when it stops.
A Rush to Expand the Border Wall That Many Fear Is Here to Stay.
Despite the president-elect’s vow to halt the project, the Trump administration is expanding the wall at a breakneck pace
www.nytimes.com/2020/11/28/us/trump-biden-border-wall.html
In southeastern Arizona, the continuing political divisiveness around the president’s signature construction project has pitted rancher against rancher and neighbor against neighbor in a state that a Democratic presidential candidate narrowly carried for the first time in decades.
The region is emerging as one of the Trump administration’s last centers of wall building as blasting crews feverishly tear through the remote Peloncillo Mountains, where ocelots and bighorn sheep roam through woodlands of cottonwoods and sycamores.
“Wildlife corridors, the archaeology and history, that’s all being blasted to oblivion or destroyed already,” said Bill McDonald, 68, a fifth-generation cattleman and former lifelong Republican who voted for Mr. Biden. “Tragedy is the word I use to describe it.”
Even those like Mr. McDonald who loathe the wall are bracing for the possibility that it could endure for decades to come, basing their assessments on signals from Mr. Biden’s transition team.
While the president-elect has said he will halt new wall construction, other immigration priorities like ending travel bans, accepting more refugees and easing asylum restrictions are eclipsing calls to tear down portions of the wall that already exist.
Advisers involved with the transition team, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss planning for the incoming administration, rejected the notion that there would be any attempt to dismantle the existing border wall, with one adviser calling the wall a “distraction.”
Customs and Border Protection officials are still rushing to meet Mr. Trump’s mandate of 450 miles of new wall construction during his term, nearly doubling the rate of construction since the start of the year. The administration had built 402 miles of wall as of Nov. 13.
Of that, about 25 miles had no barrier before Mr. Trump took office. The rest replaced much smaller, dilapidated sections of wall, or sections that had only vehicle barriers, which border officials say did not deter migrants crossing on foot.
Some of the costliest and most invasive construction is unfolding this month in Guadalupe Canyon, an oasis-like habitat for rare species of birds like the buff-collared nightjar and tropical kingbird.
Until the blasting crews showed up this year, the canyon was so remote — about 30 miles outside of Douglas, the closest town, on largely dirt roads — that ranchers in the area say illegal crossings by migrants were extraordinarily infrequent.
Now parts of the canyon resemble an open-air mining operation. Work crews are blasting cliff sides on a daily basis to build the wall and access roads to it in one of the costliest portions of construction anywhere on the border.
Jay Field, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers, cited the canyon’s “4.7 miles of challenging, rugged and steep terrain” in a statement explaining that the cost per mile for this segment is about $41 million, roughly double the border wall’s estimated average cost per mile laid out in a 2020 C.B.P. status report.