President Trump vowed during the State of the Union address to build more than 500 miles of wall on the southern border by early 2021, blowing well past the 450 miles his administration has previously said would be created before the end of this year.
“We have now completed over 100 miles and [will] have over 500 miles fully completed in a very short period of time. Early next year, we will have substantially more than 500 miles completed,” Trump said Tuesday night.
The Trump administration has more than 500 miles of fence funded and is either in pre-construction or under construction. But even if the administration achieved its 2020 goal, it would only put 165 miles of fence in previously unsecured areas of the 2,000-mile border. Other construction has occurred in areas where fencing already exists and is being replaced.
The progress nine months out from the 2020 election puts the Trump administration over budget and behind schedule on the president’s keystone campaign promise to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. On many occasions as a candidate in 2015 and 2016, Trump said he would build 1,000 miles of “wall” at a total cost of $4 billion. That campaign promise, which vastly understated what it would cost to build 1,000 miles of barrier, will not be met by December 2020 and has now cost $18 billion. The Washington Examiner first reported in July that the administration had not constructed a single new mile of fencing, at that point only constructing replacement fencing.
Despite not meeting his goal, Trump has applauded his administration for building more border wall. His 2020 campaign has made the border wall its primary messaging. Trump’s 2020 campaign debuted the slogan, “Finish the Wall,” at his first rally of 2019 in El Paso, Texas. At one point during his speech, the crowd began cheering, “Build that wall.” Trump responded, “Now, you really mean ‘finish that wall,’ because we’ve built a lot of it.”
A senior administration official told the Washington Examiner in November that Border Patrol and the Army Corps of Engineers moved faster on replacement projects than the new ones because the approval process for environmental and zoning permits was far less extensive than areas of the border with no barrier. Other causes for delay include the need to acquire private land, lack of planning early on after Trump won in 2016, and lawsuits.
Roughly 700 miles of the 2,000-mile border has some sort of barrier as a result of the Secure Fence Act, which was passed by Congress during the George W. Bush administration. It was the first major piece of legislation that funded the construction of barriers along the southern border. Roughly half is steel fencing, and the other half is Normandy style, which prevents vehicular traffic from getting by but not people.
