Trump wall

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The Trump wall, commonly referred to as "The Wall", is an expansion of the Mexico–United States barrier that started during the U.S. first presidency of Donald Trump and was a critical part of Trump's 2016 presidential campaign platform leading up to the year's election.^[1] Throughout his campaign, Trump called for the construction of a border wall to combat illegal immigration. He promised that Mexico would pay for the wall's construction, by a 20% tariff on Mexican goods,^[2] a claim rejected by then-Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto; all construction relied exclusively on U.S. funding.^[3][4][5]

In January 2017, President Trump signed Executive Order 13767, which formally directed the U.S. government to begin wall construction along the U.S.–Mexico border using existing federal funding.^[6] After a political struggle for funding, including an appropriations lapse resulting in a government shutdown for 35 days, and the declaration of a national emergency, construction started in 2018.

The U.S. built new barriers along 455 miles (732 km),^[7][8][9] 49 miles (79 km) of which previously had no barrier.^[8][9] Much of the remainder consists of 30-foot-tall (9.1 m) steel bollard wall where previously there had been fencing or vehicle barriers.^[7] Additionally, a private organization called We Build the Wall constructed under five miles (8 km) of new wall^[10] on private property near El Paso, Texas. By August 2020, the portions constructed by the organization were already in serious danger of collapsing due to erosion, and the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York unsealed an indictment charging four people, including former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon,^{[10][11][12][13]} with a scheme to defraud hundreds of thousands of donors by illegally taking funds intended to finance construction for personal use.^[14] An unpublished memo from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection leaked in March 2022 revealed that the wall had been breached more than 3,200 times from October 2018 to September 2021. Nonetheless, CBP officials say the bollard fencing remains a valuable border security tool when combined with surveillance technology and sufficient personnel.^[15]

On January 20, 2021, newly inaugurated U.S. president Joe Biden terminated the national emergency and halted construction of the wall,^[7][16][17] but the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security later hinted that the construction of the wall may continue under Biden's administration.^[18][19] In April 2021, the Biden administration cancelled all border wall projects that were being paid for with funds diverted from U.S. Department of Defense accounts.^[20] By October 2021, several border wall construction contracts had been cancelled and, in some cases, land that was acquired by the government from private property owners via eminent domain was returned to its owners.^[21] On July 28, 2022, the Biden administration announced it would fill four wide gaps in Arizona near Yuma, an area with some of the busiest corridors for illegal crossings.^[22]