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President Donald Trump, appearing publicly for the first time since a violent mob of his supporters attacked the Capitol at his behest, won a victory lap in Texas to claim the border wall he promised was complete.
“Unlike those who have come before me, I have kept my promises, and today we celebrated an extraordinary milestone, the completion of the promised 450 miles of border wall,” Trump said in Alamo, Texas on Tuesday. , examining a half-mile stretch of the New Frontier. Wall. “Nobody realizes how big it is.”
The wall, which Trump said Mexico will pay for, was central to Trump’s campaign to adopt more restrictive immigration policies and Trump’s own portrayal as a builder turned politician. His crowds chanted with appreciation, “Build the wall, build the wall!” at rallies and as president, Trump has made several trips to the border to monitor construction work.
“I would build a big wall, and no one builds walls better than me, believe me, and I will build them very inexpensively, I will build a big, big wall on our southern border,” Trump said, announcing his candidacy for the White House in June 2015.
Experts say Trump’s work on the border has had a big impact – both on people and on the environment.
“The border wall is only a small part of a comprehensive border strategy which has proven to be particularly cruel and at the same time particularly effective in blocking migrants, especially asylum seekers,” said Denise Gilman, professor at the University of Texas Law School. Gilman is the co-director of the school’s immigration clinic and an immigration lawyer who works with families seeking asylum.
Gilman said that once in office, the president’s policies were almost entirely focused on blocking asylum seekers from Central America – not the Mexican immigrants he had talked about so much about as a candidate.
Here’s what Trump promised and what Trump delivered.
Promise: 1,000 miles of wall. Status: not retained.
On Tuesday, the president falsely claimed he had promised – and delivered – 450 miles of border wall.
In fact, that’s less than half of its original promise. And only 47 miles of the 450 miles represents new structures where none existed before.
In 2015 and 2016, Trump said he expected the border wall to be around 1,000 km long, with mountains and rivers creating natural barriers. More recently, in his State of the Union 2020 address, Trump said that “much more than 500 miles” of border wall would be built by early 2021.
A spokesperson for customs and border protection told NBC News that the Trump administration has built 453 miles of a new “border wall system,” which includes barriers as well as patrol roads for patrol cars. and other monitoring efforts.
The vast majority of it replaces the pedestrian and vehicle barriers erected in previous administrations with much taller steel fences. Trump has falsely claimed that he is building a whole new border wall across much of his administration when in fact he is replacing older fences.
As of January 8, the Trump administration had only built 47 miles of border wall where none previously existed. President Barack Obama left office with 654 miles of border fencing, according to a Government Accountability Office report in early 2017; Trump will leave with 701 miles of border fences, according to CBP. The half-mile section that Trump visited today was completely new, the spokesperson said.
Trump said on Tuesday that another 300 miles were in the works. According to CBP, 285 miles are under construction or in the pre-construction phase. President-elect Joe Biden has said during his campaign that he intends to stop building border walls.
Promise: the wall would cost between $ 8 billion and $ 12 billion, and Mexico would pay. Status: $ 15 billion, and American taxpayers have paid it.
Perhaps Trump’s most consistent promise regarding the border wall was that Mexico would pay for it.
“I’m going to ask Mexico to pay for this wall, mark my words,” Trump said in his presidential announcement speech, one of the hundreds of times he made that pledge.
He said during his 2016 campaign that it would cost $ 8 billion, or maybe $ 12 billion, for his 1,000-mile wall. In fact, the federal government has allocated $ 15 billion for the 453-mile project, according to Time Magazine.
Mexico has not paid the wall; its leaders have refused since Trump first made his promise. After Trump’s inauguration, the president began to suggest that the United States would pay initially, but that Mexico would reimburse the United States for the wall.
This also did not happen. Taxpayers foot the bill for Trump’s wall.
Promise: the wall will be “big, beautiful” and “concrete” Status: not exactly.
Trump spent a lot of time as a candidate talking about what his “big, beautiful” border wall would look like. He often said it would be made of concrete; he said it would be 35 or 40 or 55 or 80 feet high, depending on the rally.
“The politicians would come up to me and say, ‘You know, Donald, you can’t build the wall.’ I said, “ You’re kidding. You laugh. Concrete board, you’re kidding. Prefabricated, prefabricated, right? Boom. Bing. Finished. Keep going, ”he said in August 2016.
As president, he spent millions on prototype border walls – concrete, steel – to test new border wall structures; all eight were vulnerable to violations and have since been demolished.
The Trump administration continued to use steel fence designs for border gates, just like the Obama administration.
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