Texan Governor Greg Abbott on Wednesday June 16 signed to make a deposit of $250 million of state budget money for a Texas border wall. The money will be taken from the state’s Department of Criminal Justice and allocated to the Texas Facilities Commission, which plans to build the wall.
The money will be taken from the agency’s 2023 fiscal budget.
In budget discussions, Democratic Texas Senators were given no indication that this discussed and planned budget would go to the border wall.
“Building a wall from El Paso to Brownsville is the most expensive and least effective way to do border security and it’s a huge waste of taxpayer money,” Sen. Cesar Blanco of El Paso said.
If the state wants to spend money on border security it should spend it on modern technology that is less expensive and more effective than a wall, he added.
Plans for a Mexico border wall have been circling since former President Donald Trump began his presidential campaign in 2016, using the platform of border security to run his presidential campaign.
At an estimated cost of $20 million per mile, the $250 million transferred from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice would realistically only build 12.5 miles of the border wall.Abbott expects people to donate their money and land for the wall, but most people say they would not give their land for government use. Which leads to the question of whether eminent domain will be used to seize land for Abbott’s border wall.
Though the talk of building a border wall is very much present in Texas and America, we are still years away from seeing if this plan will come to fruition as the $250 million isn’t designated until the 2023 budget. However, the question still remains, does Texas really need a border wall, and would it really stop illegal immigration?