Mexico Wall Failures

The General Accounting Office released a report on the border wall prototypes that came out of the governments call for bids. The upshot is that they are failures and this will cost more money than U.S. Customs and Border Protection can afford.

DHS plans to spend billions of dollars developing and deploying new barriers along the southwest border. However, by proceeding without key information on cost, acquisition baselines, and the contributions of previous barrier and technology deployments, DHS faces an increased risk that the Border Wall System Program will cost more than projected, take longer than planned, or not fully perform as expected. Without assessing costs when prioritizing locations for future barriers, CBP does not have complete information to determine whether it is using its limited resources in the most cost-effective manner and does not have important cost information that would help it develop future budget requests. Without documenting plans to require CBP to follow the DHS acquisition process for the San Diego barrier segment, DHS may not establish cost, schedule, and performance goals by which it can measure the program’s progress. In addition, Border Patrol should continue to implement our prior recommendations to assess the contributions of existing barriers and technologies deployed along the southwest border and consider this information when making future border security investments.

The Department of Homeland Security is mostly stumbling around with this, though it's not easy to implement bad ideas.