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Audit: Border Wall's Effectiveness Has Never Been Measured

Federal auditors told Congress that there is no reliable way to tell whether the current fences and walls along the U.S. border are effective at stopping illicit traffic.

The audit came out just as President Donald Trump announced in a press conference that his administration was starting the process of building a wall along Mexico’s border.

The report from the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said that the U.S. spent $2.3 billion between 2007 and 2015 to build 654 miles of border fencing and walls. But there is no metric to measure how successful those barriers have been to stopping illegal traffic. 

One measurement auditors were able to take - the number of times that current border barriers were breached: 9,287 sometimes with portable power tools.

Agents working in Arizona told auditors that illegal border crossers also used ramps to drive over, and other times, just climbed over the high fencing.

Fronteras Desk senior editor Michel Marizco is an award-winning investigative reporter based in Flagstaff.