Fact Check: Trump Is Correct, the Border Wall Pays for Itself

During President Trump’s Oval Office address, the president said his proposed wall along the United States-Mexico border would “very quickly pay for itself.”

“The Border Wall would very quickly pay for itself,” Trump said. “The cost of illegal drugs exceeds $500 billion dollars a year – vastly more than the $5.7 billion dollars we have requested from Congress.  The wall will also be paid for, indirectly, by the great new trade deal we have made with Mexico.”

In a fact check by Breitbart News, Trump’s statement is correct, even when his claim that the annual billion-dollar drug trade will pay for the barrier.

For instance, Trump has only requested only $5.7 billion out of the $25 billion his steel border wall will cost the federal government. Every year, though, American taxpayers are billed more than $116 billion to pay for illegal immigration. The $25 billion border wall would pay for itself in the first four months of its construction should it stop illegal immigration at the border.

Even more cost-effective, Trump’s request for $5.7 billion for a border wall is 20 times less expensive to Americans than the annual burden of paying for mass illegal immigration, wherein hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens pour into the country every year to strain public services and welfare.

Another way the Trump administration has presented to make sure American taxpayers see a return on their investment with a border wall is to end all public welfare for illegal aliens. The Center for Immigration Studies finds that doing so would save U.S. taxpayers $64 billion, four times the cost of the border wall, every year.