When Donald Trump first announced he was running for president back in 2015, one of his earliest promises was to build a border wall.
Now, after years of waiting, the government has finally revealed designs showing what the wall between America and Mexico will look like. Trump has famously insisted that our southern neighbors will pay for the wall, but they say that won't happen.
While plans for the border wall seem to be moving forward, Americans are still divided over the project. Although 74% of Republicans polled say they support the plan to build a wall, 89% of Democrats don't, and the majority of Americans (70%) think it's a bad idea.
There are also concerns that the wall will harm the wildlife population along the border, and it's not clear whether the wall would cover a 700-900 mile stretch or America's full 2,000 mile border with Mexico.
This early design for the wall seems to have been rejected.
Regardless, President Trump is very serious about the project. At a rally in Phoenix, Arizona this month he threatened to shut down the government next month unless the Congress and Senate fund the wall.
The new designs give us a pretty good idea what the finished project will look like.
These designs will be used to build prototypes of the planned wall in California.
As you can see from the photo, the new wall features a smaller fence on the Mexican side of the border with a larger wall on the American side, said to be 18-30 feet tall and made of concrete.
The 150-foot "enforcement zone" between the pair of barriers will feature spotlights and roads for law enforcement officers. The design also says this space will be "electronically monitored," although it's unclear exactly how.
The designs were released by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency as they announced that 5 American companies have been given contracts to build the protototypes.
The idea behind these small-scale versions of the wall, which could cost anywhere from $400,00-500,000 each, is to test which materials would work best for the real wall.
Republican lawmakers say the finished project could cost as much as $12-15 billion, but they don't say how long they expect the wall to be.
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