How Republicans came to support Trump's wall

Story highlights

• During the presidential campaign, both McConnell and Ryan argued that there were smarter ways to secure the border
• The switch marks the reversal of several years

(CNN)When President Donald Trump first proposed spending billions of dollars to build a massive wall on the US-Mexico border, Republican leaders weren't immediately thrilled with the prospect.

Now, Trump is getting the hearty backing -- or at least strong cooperation -- of rank and file Republicans and GOP leaders to build the border wall many of those same officials once called an overly costly and insufficiently effective border security measure.

House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday at the Congressional GOP retreat in Philadelphia that they would push ahead with legislation to fund Trump's wall, which they estimated would carry a $12 billion to $15 billion price tag.

Just weeks earlier, McConnell was dodging reporters' questions about whether he'd support a wall. And during the presidential campaign, both McConnell and Ryan argued that there were smarter ways to secure the border.

The switch marks the reversal of several years during which Republicans have distanced themselves from proposals calling for a physical barrier at the border in favor of more advanced technology and a broader focus on comprehensive immigration reform. And it raises the specter that Republicans could soon get on board with many of Trump's hardline policies on immigration -- like mass deportations -- and other issues, like trade.

Asked what changed to get Republicans on board with paying for a wall, Rep. Mark Meadows, R-North Carolina, put it bluntly: "November 8."

"Let's be frank: politics have consequences. November 8 happened, that's why a wall is going to be built," said Meadows, who chairs the small but influential House Freedom Caucus, home to some of Capitol Hill's most conservative Republicans.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's stunning primary defeat two years ago on the issue of immigration started Republicans down the path, Meadows said, and Trump's victory last year completed it.

"You know, the whole immigration issue changed dramatically in the House when Eric Cantor lost," he said. "Those two things were political in nature, but they had real legislative consequences. So I think November 8 happened and that's what finished the evolution."

But while that evolution was taking place among grassroots conservatives, another one was taking shape among Republican leaders in Washington. GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney's defeat in the 2012 election resulted in a post-mortem that concluded Republicans needed to move away from hardline immigration policies that alienated Hispanic voters in favor of a more moderate stance -- one focused on securing the border with more resources and modern technologies (not a wall) and increasingly support for pathways to legalization for at least a portion of the roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants in the US.

It's the collision of those two movements -- one leading Republicans further down a path of hardline immigration policies and the other toward a more moderate, bipartisan approach -- that helped catapult Trump to the top of the GOP primary horserace.

While Trump surged in the polls by decrying failed immigration policies, overstating the numbers of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants and vowing to build a wall, his opponents waffled.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who would eventually become the first of Trump's primary opponents to endorse him, for months mocked Trump's proposal to build a wall. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said a wall wouldn't work and wasn't a "practical" solution.

Pressed during a March 2016 interview, Ryan signaled, with a grin, that he wouldn't fund Trump's border wall: "Uh, remember we're not going to pay for that, recall?"

"We think we should secure the border that's for sure," Ryan said, but he pointed to congressional task forces that have identified non-wall based solutions to securing the border.

Now, the man Trump once called "very, very weak on illegal immigration" is priming the pump to pay for Trump's wall proposal -- despite a total lack of certainty about Trump's pledge to compel Mexico to foot the bill for the multibillion-dollar proposal that appears at odds with Republicans' fiscal conservatism.

Ryan dodged Friday when asked about the prospects of Mexico paying for the wall

"I'm not going to get into a quibbling about whether they should or should not pay for it, because we need to get something done," Ryan said at a Politico event Friday.

But how much further will Ryan and other GOP leaders go?

Trump has also called for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants and appeared to lay the groundwork for such steps in the executive orders he signed Wednesday, which included boosting Border Patrol forces by 5,000 and hiring 10,000 more immigration enforcement officers responsible for carrying out deportations.

Rep. Ryan Costello, a Pennsylvania Republican, said he thought many Republicans did not take Trump literally last year when he talked of building a wall.

"I've viewed that statement, 'Building the wall,' metaphorically, right? And I think a lot of Republicans did," Costello said.

He said many Republicans understood it as more about securing the Mexican border and took Trump's campaign jargon to mean other options, like improved surveillance.

"From my perspective and from I think most people's perspectives, you want to do what works and leave the -- whether this particular portion of the secured borders is an actual, physical erection of a wall or isn't I think that that's sort of subordinate to the principle goal of securing the southern border," Costello said.

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Trump starts building the border wall, signs orders on immigration enforcement

President Trump on Wednesday signed two executive orders on immigration, including one that directs federal agencies to begin construction of a wall on the border with Mexico, his signature campaign promise. Trump signed the actions during a visit to the Department of Homeland Security as his aides met in the White House with two top Mexican cabinet officials, according to the Associated Press.

 One of the orders signed by Trump calls for the construction of "a large physical barrier on the southern border," according to White House press secretary Sean Spicer. The other order deals with immigration enforcement and ends the "catch and release" policy that quickly returned border crossers back to Mexico instead of arresting and processing them for deportation.

The policy was a fixture of the Bush administration and was later reinstated on an informal basis by former President Barack Obama. "Federal agents are going to unapologetically enforce the law, no ifs, ands or buts," Spicer said. The immigration actions also seek to withhold visas from countries to make sure they take back people in the U.S. illegally who are found to have broken U.S. laws. It would also strip federal grants from "sanctuary" cities and states that do not enforce federal immigration laws. "We're going to strip federal grant money from the sanctuary states and cities that harbor illegal immigrants," Spicer said. The president pledged during the 2016 campaign he would make Mexico pay for the border wall, which is meant to cut off the flow of drugs and illegal immigration, but now says the federal government will be "reimbursed at a later date." "I'm just telling you there will be a payment. It will be in a form, perhaps a complicated form. What I'm doing is good for the United States. It's also going to be good for Mexico. We want to have a very stable, very solid Mexico," Trump said Wednesday in an interview with ABC.

At a press conference earlier this month, Trump said he didn't want to wait "a year-and-a-half until I make my deal with Mexico" for work on the wall to begin. Trump added in the ABC interview that work on the project could begin within months. "As soon as we can, as soon as we can physically do it," he said. "I would say in months, yea. I would say in months - certainly planning is starting immediately."

 The construction of the wall is expected to be controversial, and is already drawing criticism for its potential human consequences and cost. Marielena Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, called Trump's executive actions on immigration "incoherent and a monumental waste of taxpayer money." Paying for the wall is likely to be a top issues as Trump seeks to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Mexico and Canada. Mexico's secretary of the economy, Ildefonso Guajardo, one of the attendants at Wednesday's White House meeting, warned Tuesday that a demand to pay for the wall would cause Mexico to withdraw from renegotiation talks on NAFTA. Estimates for the cost of the wall range from $8 billion to $25 billion dollars. While existing legislation authorizes the construction of border fencing, Trump will likely need to ask Congress for money this year. On the campaign trail, Trump initially suggested paying for the wall by taxing or impounding remittances - the money immigrants send to their families abroad. Some experts panned the idea, saying it would be legally impossible to single out Mexican remittances from those going to other countries. The construction of the wall is expected to face major challenges, given the terrain it would have to cover and the areas it would have to pass through.

 The U.S.-Mexico border goes through large metropolitan areas, such as El Paso-Ciudad Juarez and San Diego-Tijuana, which are largely walled off already; rural areas, including farms that in some cases straddle both sides of the border; and inhospitable wilderness, including national parks. Of the almost-2000 miles of border, 653 miles are already covered by a hodge-podge of fences mostly built since the late 1990s. Most of the fencing - 444 miles - was ordered built by the 2006 Secure Fence Act signed by President George W. Bush. Wednesday's executive order mandates new construction under the same Secure Fence Act. 

The Rio Grande forms a natural barrier along most of the eastern border region, leaving only the most remote and rugged areas exposed. While the number of border crossings has leveled off at around 400,000 a year since 2010 (hitting a low comparable to crossings in the 1970s) the number of Mexican nationals attempting to cross has continued to decrease. In fiscal 2014 and 2016, Mexican nationals accounted for less than half of all illicit border crossings.




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