President Donald Trump, who appeared in public for the first time since a violent crowd of his supporters attacked the Capitol at his insistence, took a victory round in Texas to claim that the boundary wall he promised was complete .
“Unlike those who came before me, I kept my promises and today we celebrated an extraordinary milestone, the completion of the promised 450-mile boundary wall,” Trump said Tuesday in Alamo, Texas, and a half a mile new border explored. wall. “Nobody realizes how big it is.”
The wall, for which Trump said Mexico would pay, was at the heart of Trump’s campaign to introduce more restrictive immigration policies and Trump’s own position of himself as a builder-turning politician. His crowd sang with appreciation, “Build the wall, build the wall!” during rallies, and as president, Trump has visited the border several times to monitor construction.
“I would build a great wall, and no one builds walls better than I do, believe me, and I will build it very cheaply. I will build a great wall on our southern border,” Trump said, announcing that he would White House in June 2015.
Experts believe that Trump’s work at the border has had a huge impact on people and the environment.
“The boundary wall was just a small piece of an overall boundary strategy that was uniquely cruel and at the same time uniquely successful in blocking migrants, especially asylum seekers,” said Denise Gilman, a professor of law at the University of Texas. . Gilman is co-director of the school’s immigration clinic and an immigration attorney who works with families seeking asylum.
Gilman said the president’s policies were aimed almost entirely at blocking Central American asylum seekers – not the Mexican immigrants he talked about as a candidate.
Here’s what Trump promised and what Trump delivered.
Promise: 1000 mile wall. Status: Not held.
On Tuesday, the president falsely claimed to have promised – and delivered – 450 miles of boundary wall.
In fact, it is less than half of its initial promise. And just 47 miles of the 450 miles are new structures where none existed before.
In 2015 and 2016, Trump said he expects the boundary wall to be about 1,000 kilometers long, with mountains and rivers also creating natural barriers. More recently, in his speech on the state of the nation address in 2020, Trump said that “significantly more than 500 miles” of border wall would be done in early 2021.
A spokesman for Customs and Border Protection told NBC News that the Trump administration has built 453 miles of new “border wall system” that includes barriers as well as patrol roads for patrol cars and other surveillance efforts.
The vast majority of them replace pedestrian and vehicle barriers erected during previous administrations with much larger steel fences. Trump falsely claimed to have built an entirely new boundary wall in much of his administration while replacing older fences.
As of January 8, the Trump administration has only built 47 miles of border wall where there has never been one. President Barack Obama left office with a 654-mile border fence, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office from early 2017; Trump will leave with 701 miles of border fence, according to CBP. The spokesman said the half-mile section Trump visited today was completely new.
Trump claimed Tuesday that another 300 miles are underway. According to CBP, 285 miles are under construction or in the pre-construction phase. Elected President Joe Biden said during his campaign that he intends to stop the construction of boundary walls.
Promise: the wall would cost $ 8- $ 12 billion, and Mexico would pay for it. Status: $ 15 billion, and U.S. taxpayers paid for it.
Perhaps Trump’s most consistent promise across the border wall was that Mexico would pay for it.
“I will make Mexico pay for the wall, note my words,” Trump said during his presidential announcement speech, one of hundreds of times he made the promise.
He said during his 2016 campaign that it would cost $ 8 billion, or maybe $ 12 billion, for his 1,000-mile wall. In fact, according to Time Magazine, the federal government has allocated $ 15 billion for the 453-mile project.
Mexico did not pay for the wall; his leaders have refused since Trump first made his promise. After Trump’s inauguration, the president began to suggest that the US would initially pay, but that Mexico would compensate the wall for the US.
That did not happen either. Taxpayers pay 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 on 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 long, depending on the rally.
“The politicians would come to me, and they would say, ‘You know, Donald, you can’ t build the wall. “I said, ‘You have to joke.’ You have to joke. Concrete board, you have to joke. Pre-thrown, pre-thrown, right? Tree. Bing. Finished. Keep going, ”he said in August 2016.
As president, he spent millions on prototypes of walls – some concrete, others steel – to test new boundary wall structures; all eight were vulnerable to transgressions and have since been demolished.
The Trump administration has continued to use steel pole fence designs for border barriers, just like the Obama administration.