The cost of the wall is underestimated

Felbab-Brown 2017 [Vanda Felbab-Brown, “The real costs of a barrier between the
United States and Mexico,” August 2017, Brookings,
https://www.brookings.edu/essay/the-wall-the-real-costs-of-a-barrier-between-the-
united-states-and-mexico/ ]
The wall comes with many costs, some obvious though hard to estimate, some
unforeseen. The most obvious is the large financial outlay required to build it, in
whatever form it eventually takes. Although during the election campaign candidate
Trump claimed that the wall would cost only $12 billion, a Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) internal report in February put the cost at $21.6 billion, but that may be
a major underestimate. The estimates vary so widely because of the lack of clarity about
what the wall will actually consist of beyond the first meager Homeland Security
specifications that it be either a solid concrete wall or a see–through structure,
“physically imposing in height,” ideally 30 feet high but no less than 18 feet, sunk at
least six feet into the ground to prevent tunneling under it; that it should not be scalable
with even sophisticated climbing aids; and that it should withstand prolonged attacks
with impact tools, cutting tools, and torches. But that description doesn’t begin to cover
questions about the details of its physical structure. Then there are the legal fees
required to seize land on which to build the wall. The Trump administration can use
eminent domain to acquire the land but will still have to negotiate compensation and
often face lawsuits. More than 90 such lawsuits in southern Texas alone are still open
from the 2008 effort to build a fence there.