US-Mexico Border Wall: Will It Ever Get Built? Trump Brags It's 'Ahead of Schedule' In CPAC Speech

President Donald Trump is pleased with the progress of his "big, beautiful wall" along the U.S.-Mexico border. He was sure to tell the nation about it during a speech delivered to the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, in National Harbor, Maryland.

The process of constructing the wall is both getting started and ahead of schedule, according to the president. He launched into talking about the wall after he told the crowd, "we've defended other nations' borders while leaving ours wide open, anybody can come in," a line that prompted the conference attendees to chant "build the wall."

"Oh, we're going to build a wall, don't worry about it. We're building the wall. We're building the wall," Trump said in response. "In fact, it's going to start soon. Way ahead of schedule. Way ahead of schedule. Way, way, way ahead of schedule. It's going to start very soon."

During the campaign, the president promised a massive wall along the entire southern border of the U.S., which would span nearly 2,000 miles. Trump's campaign has regularly said it will cost about $10 billion to make the wall, an estimate that was formed by the National Precast Concrete Association.

Other estimates had suggested the cost could nearly double that, without even taking into account the cost of purchasing land along the border.

"We're pretty confident in that figure," Ty Gable, president of the National Precast Concrete Association, told CNN Money. "But there are a lot of variables. It depends on factors like terrain, how level the land is, whether you can get a crane in there."

There are a number of natural barriers, such as mountains and rivers, which will get in the way of building a massive wall, not to mention private property.

"In Texas, most of the private property that we have in the southwest border is in the state of Texas," Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) told CNN. "There will be lawsuits that will delay the building of any fence.”

Meanwhile, Bernstein Research estimated the wall would take two years to plan and two years to construct, which means the chances of the wall being built by the end of Trump's first term could be in jeopardy.