To secure the southern border — his top campaign promise — President Trump next year is seeking to hire 100 new government lawyers, add 1,500 law enforcement officials and spend more than $1 billion on detention and deportation, according to the White House budget plan released on Thursday.
The proposal, which includes a $2 billion down payment on Mr. Trump’s signature border wall, is one of the single largest investments in the president’s budget plan. Yet experts say it appears only to scratch the surface of what Mr. Trump has pledged, and highlights the difficulty of translating campaign promises into a workable, governing reality.
“It’s easy to promise things until you have to pay for them,” said Theresa Cardinal Brown, the director of immigration policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center and a former senior official at the Department of Homeland Security. “It is certainly an attempt to begin to carry out what he promised.”
Mr. Trump is proposing to pay for his border security plan by marshaling savings from across the federal government. To what extent it is ultimately funded will depend in large part on Congress, which makes spending decisions based on the president’s proposals.
Steven Umidha is a data and financial journalist with over 14 years of work experience in journalism and communication.
He specialises in finance and economics reporting as well as on the causes, impacts, and solutions of global warming, conservation, pollution and sustainability, often blending scientific literacy with journalist ethics, while involving policy analysis and multimedia storytelling across various platforms in highlighting issues from biodiversity loss to ecological justice.
Besides being the Founder of Financial Fortune Media, Umidha has previously worked with the Standard Media Group, Mediamax Networks LTD, bird story agency, Business Journal Africa, and Financial Post among other outlets.
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