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Explore the following posts and respond to the follow up questions.

Then, browse the images posted below and respond to the following questions:

Why do you think more countries have built border walls and fences in recent years? To what extent are these structures effective in securing borders?

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5 Challenges Trump May Face Building a Border Wall, The Washington Post

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5 Challenges Trump May Face Building a Border Wall, The Washington Post

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What are the main challenges to building a border wall along the Mexico-US border?

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To report a multipart visual series on border barriers around the globe, we drove the entire length of the U.S.-Mexico border - from Brownsville, Tex., to San Diego, with crossings into Mexico scattered throughout - talking to locals and experts about President Trump's promise to build the wall.

Trump's action to start construction leaves unclear whether the administration will build a wall along the entire border or just in certain areas.

Below are five notable challenges to building the wall that we observed along the journey.

[ Trump signs directive to start border wall with Mexico, ramp up immigration enforcement]

1. The terrain is very rough in some areas

The nearly 2,000-mile border features a variety of climates, vegetation and terrain. Most of the current border fence exists west of El Paso, Tex., where the border switches from relatively straight lines to the winding path of the Rio Grande.

On its way to the Gulf of Mexico, the river cuts through the mountains of Big Bend National Park and rests in reservoirs, including near Amistad Dam. Both present clear challenges to wall builders.

Byron Hedges, a local who has fished in the Amistad Dam, said he thought the topography would make construction difficult. He said, "If Donald Trump went and flew the whole border, just in Texas, he would realize it's infeasible. It's too rough of country."

[ Why Trump can't simply build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border with an executive order]

2. Unlike the Western border states, most of Texas is privately owned

A significant amount of border land in Arizona and New Mexico is owned by the federal government. But most Texas land is privately owned, thanks to its terms of entry into the Union 200 years ago.

This difference led to lawsuits between Texans and the federal government during construction of the fencing that exists today.

According to a project on the border barrier by the University of Texas's law school, the United States sued "hundreds of private property owners to obtain title to their land to allow for construction of segments of the wall on that land." Resuming barrier construction on private lands will likely invite more lawsuits and logistical challenges.

[ People were taking Trump seriously. Now they're starting to take him literally.]

3. Most of the border is natural, but a human-made barrier is not

The southern border of Texas is technically somewhere in the middle of the Rio Grande. The river has changed course in the past, creating boundary disputes between the United States and Mexico.

The existing border fencing in southern Texas often sits far from the river, outside its flood plains - creating wide seams between the fence and the official border.

Some Americans live on the Mexican side of the border fence.

River Bend Resort, a golf course and residence in Brownsville, Tex., sits between a gap in the existing fence. If the wall were completed, based on U.S. regulations, it would bisect the property, according to owner Jeremy Barnard. Roughly 200 residents and 15 of the 18 golf holes would sit south of the border wall.

"What is the government's plan? Are they going to come and buy out 200 people of their houses?" he said. "There's so much more to it than 'let's just build a wall.' "

4. Surveillance makes the barrier effective

Security experts say that border barriers are merely obstacles to would-be crossers unless they are watched. Former homeland security secretary Janet Napolitano famously remarked, "You show me a 50-foot wall, and I'll show you a 51-foot ladder."

Fencing is just one part of the effort by U.S. Customs and Border Protection to secure the country's borders. The number of Border Patrol officers has doubled in recent years. Checkpoints strategically line roads along the border. Where no fencing exists, cameras and sensors do.

Efforts to build a "virtual fence" to supplement the physical barrier have proven challenging. SBInet, an initiative to augment border patrol agents with advanced technology, struggled to meet deadlines and faced repeated technical problems before it was terminated in 2011, according to a recent Congressional Research Service report.

5. Migrants are determined and often have few options

Increased violence in some Central American countries has pushed migrants and asylum seekers to the U.S. at a breakneck pace. Apprehensions of unaccompanied children from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras have doubled in the past three years, according to Border Patrol figures.

UNHCR reported that asylum seekers from those three countries have increased fivefold since 2012.

Ramon Reyes, a Guatemalan migrant in Reynosa, Mexico, recounted tragic stories of war, corruption and murder in his home country. He said he left because of the violence and a lack of jobs.

"Look, my opinion about fences, about those obstacles they're placing, is that, no. No matter how many barriers they may place, they won't stop us."

[ Hear more from people affected by border barriers]

Sources: Google Earth, United States Geological Survey, Center for Investigative Reporting, Openstreetmap.org, Customs and Border Protection, UNHCR. Published Jan. 25, 2017.

Note: A previous map incorrectly labeled two Texas towns. It has been corrected.

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5 challenges Trump may face building a border wall

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To report a multipart visual series on border barriers around the globe, we drove the entire length of the U.S.-Mexico border - from Brownsville, Tex., to San Diego, with crossings into Mexico scattered throughout - talking to locals and experts about President Trump's promise to build the wall.

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More Neighbours Build More Fences, The Economist

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More Neighbours Build More Fences, The Economist

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What are some of the main reasons countries build border walls and fences?

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EUROPE will soon have more physical barriers on its national borders than it did during the Cold War. The ongoing refugee crisis, combined with Ukraine's conflict with Russia, saw governments plan and construct border walls and security fences across the continent in 2015. On September 15th Hungary completed a fence along its border with Serbia, a major point of entry for refugees making their way into the European Union (EU) last year. Within hours, over 60 people were arrested for attempting to scale it. Hungary's is just one of a ring of anti-migrant fences along the southern fringes of the EU's visa-free Schengen zone. To the north, in late December, platforms at Copenhagen's Kastrup rail station were fenced off as part of Sweden's latest effort to control the number of migrants entering Malmo from Denmark across the Oresund bridge. Not all of Europe's barriers are so fresh, refugees are still trying to climb or swim around fences originally built in the mid-1990's enclosing Spain's Moroccan enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. Fences were also erected on Greece's and Bulgaria's borders with Turkey in 2012, and Ukraine began sealing off its border with Russia in 2014. Last year the Baltic states announced they are following suit. That would leave Belarus's as the only unsealed border between the Baltic and the Black sea.
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Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, over 40 countries around the world have built fences against more than 60 of their neighbours. The majority have cited security concerns and the prevention of illegal migration as justifications. More than 30 of those decisions were made following 9/11, 15 of them last year. In the Middle East, the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria as well as the associated wave of refugees have prompted most countries to close borders. When it completes its border-wall with Jordan, Israel will have surrounded itself entirely. In Asia, too, walls and fences have proliferated, generally designed to prevent illicit movement of people and goods rather than to seal disputed borders, though Kashmir's line of control at India and Pakistan's disputed northern boundary remains a highly-militarised example.

Some proposals for border fences are less plausible than others. In 2013 Brazil announced a "virtual" wall, monitored by drones and satellites, around its entire, nearly 15,000 km- (9,000 mile-) long border. It began work on the Paraguayan and Bolivian sections this year, which are hot-spots for smuggling. But sceptics point out that much of Brazil's border runs through rainforest that is impassable and hard to monitor. Even given easier terrain, high-tech border security often fails. The United States, which has several times fortified its border with Mexico, and Saudi Arabia, which has shuttered five of its borders since 2003, have struggled with proposals that were either too expensive or didn't work (or both). For most countries, barbed-wire or electric fences, combined with ditches and buffer zones, are the reality. Thankfully, in contrast with the Cold War, transgressors of Europe's new borders are no longer shot.

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EUROPE will soon have more physical barriers on its national borders than it did during the Cold War. The ongoing refugee crisis, combined with Ukraine's conflict with Russia, saw governments plan and construct border walls and security fences across the continent in 2015.

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Aeromexico's Ad in Response to Donald Trump

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Aeromexico's Ad in Response to Donald Trump

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What is the main idea of this video? To what extent is it a persuasive argument?

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Aeromexico's Ad in Response to Donald Trump