Pentagon receives new request to build 270 miles long border wall

A senior Department of Defense official on January 16 said that the Pentagon had received a new request from the Trump-led administration to build a wall of roughly 270 miles on the border with Mexico, adding that they are working on its cost and feasibility of the request. The DOD official said that Pentagon's review on the particular matter could take a period of about two weeks, adding that former requests submitted by the Department of Homeland Security for the building of the border wall have partially been fulfilled. According to reports, the request will lead to a meeting between the Pentagon and Democrats in the Congress, who are against Donal Trump's spending billions of dollars on the military in order to strengthen security on the US border.

Trump-led administration planning to divert additional funds

According to reports, the Trump-led administration is planning to divert an additional $7.2 billion funds from the Department of Defence for the construction of the wall along the US-Mexico border. The administration will take $3.5 billion from the Department of Defence's counterdrug program, while another $3.7 billion from military construction funding. In 2019, the administration diverted over $6.1 billion from the Department of Defence after Donald Trump declared a state of emergency in February.

If the administration decides to go forward with the plan and divert the funds allocated by the Congress to the Pentagon, it would be a classic case of bypassing lawmakers in an attempt to deliver on a promise made during the election campaign.

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White House diverted funds worth $2.5 billion

However, this would not be the first time when a diversion of funds has taken place in the Trump administration. In 2019, the White House reportedly diverted funds worth $2.5 billion from counternarcotics and $3.6 billion from military construction funding for Trump's ambitious project. United States government has built around 160 km (101 miles) of the wall so far since Donald Trump took office in 2016. The US is planning to complete its goal of building a wall spanning almost 885 miles, which is about 1,424 km of the wall along its Mexico border by 2020. The US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said that the agency is planning to build around 724 km of the wall by the end of 2020 and another 95 km will be under construction.

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