That doesn't actually settle the tunnel problem since cartels have built tunnels over a thousand feet long. But how exactly do you plan on setting up 'surveillance' for a wall in excess of two thousand miles long?
this is implying the wall doesn't go underground deep enough to prevent this
What's the maximum reliable field of view of a single surveillance camera? 100 feet? That's 105,600 cameras needed to cover the entire length of the border.
several things
looking up on
google ("gurgl iz mah srze"), the high-end security cameras available to citizens at least were a couple hundred bucks, either for one of them or for a set of them
considering the sentiment of the $25 billion price tag, this cost would be a tiny chunk of it, that's even considering everything you said is accurate
even
googling the maximum range of security cameras, you can see the effective range of most long-range night-vision cameras (which are at the same price as previously mentioned) far exceeds 100 feet
using a conservative estimate of 300 feet, that cuts your number into thirds; 35,200 cameras
even then I doubt you took into consideration the landscape of the border
lots of flat land means you need less and less cameras; the most cameras would be in mountainous regions where it's hard to see around foliage and terrain
I'm not going to give you an accurate estimate about how many security cameras you'd need, because I'm not a hardcore mathmatician/omnipotent being who knows everything, but there's pretty direct evidence to suggest that 105,600 is a gross overestimate
And speaking of the remote regions of the border, what actually happens when a truck pulls up and hands over a couple dozen immigrants to a vehicle on the other side? Surely they're not gonna hang out at the wall for three hours waiting for border agents to drive there?
hiring a lot more border agents would be expensive, yes, but it would also mean more jobs and it would solve this problem fairly quickly
I think 'foreign criminals' is a questionable label. When you say 'criminal', the instant psychological reaction is 'murderer' or 'rapist' or 'thief' or whatever. The crime that illegal immigrants commit is deciding to immigrate to their nicer next-door-neighbor because our subsidized goods make Mexicans non-competitive in their country's market.
So like, yes they are committing a crime, but it's a crime we basically invented and incentivized.
"she's at fault, she was wearing a tight skirt, she incentivized me to rape her!"
"he called me a bad name and made fun of my mom, he invented a scenario in which I would want to kill him!"
see how stupid that sounds
OT:
it seems everyone's forgetting that Annoying Orange is going to be coupling the wall with deportations
mass deportation may be a little national socialist-like to some of you but if Annoying Orange every now and then just took 1,000 illegal immigrants or so and filmed their deportation for mass media ("targeted deportations"), the rest of the illegal immigrants would get the message and head back voluntarily
Eisenhower did this successfully, so can Annoying Orange