Trump builds the wall

Lately, there have been news stories expressing alarm about the rapid progress the Trump administration is making building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Whatever the stories are nominally about — environmental objections, questions about contracting, local concerns — their true headline is this: President Donald Trump is finally building the border wall he has promised for more than a decade. Construction that was slow in Trump's first term, and abandoned during Joe Biden's time in office, is now accelerating in Trump's second term. The key was passage of last year's One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which included $46.5 billion for construction of what is now called a "smart wall" — that is, a wall that includes not only the basic structure but detection technology, cameras, lighting and roads. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, 221 miles of what is called primary smart wall are currently under construction. Contracts have been awarded and design is under way for an additional 370 miles. Another 44 miles of replacement wall are under construction, plus 183 miles of secondary wall to provide backup security in high-traffic areas where there is already a primary wall. Things are moving quickly. "Construction crews are erecting five miles of wall a week, according to Customs and Border Protection officials," reports the Washington Post. The crews are "introducing barriers in parts of Texas that did not previously have them and installing a second wall across much of California, Arizona, and New Mexico to further deter illegal immigration." It's an extraordinary development, given the decade of political battle over the wall that preceded it. Trump, of course, made the promise to build a wall the centerpiece of his 2016 presidential campaign. When he won, stunned Democrats made opposing the wall one of their top priorities. Nancy Pelosi, who would become obsessed with resisting Trump's every move, declared a border barrier "immoral." In the first half of his first term, Trump, new to the ways of Washington, failed to win funding for the wall. Then he lost control of the House of Representatives, and that was that. Trump repurposed some military funds to replace and shore up about 500 miles of existing but dilapidated barriers. With the wall a political flashpoint and the opposition party in control of the House, there wasn't much Trump could do; he ended up building less than 100 miles of new wall. Biden, of course, slowed the effort nearly to a standstill, and then shut it down altogether. Not only did Biden stop building any new barriers, he took the steel bollards that had been purchased for the Trump wall and sold them as scrap for pennies on the dollar. For wall supporters, it was a dispiriting elections-have-consequences moment. Far worse, Biden opened the border and allowed millions of crossers to enter the United States illegally, with little or no vetting. The Biden influx, possibly 10 million or more, strained the resources of U.S. cities and towns, which struggled to support thousands of new residents, many of them ill-prepared to live in the United States. The damage done by Biden's border disaster was one of the key factors in Trump's 2024 comeback victory. And now, Trump is prioritizing what he promised so many years ago. Notably, while immigration and deportations have become heated issues in this Trump term, wall construction hasn't. Why not? For one thing, there's a lot going on these days. From the Iran war on down, other events are competing for the public's attention. In addition, Trump is moving forward on so many controversial fronts — wars, tariffs, immigration and more — that, at times, he has simply overwhelmed the resistance's ability to resist. They just can't keep up. But most importantly, Trump's striking progress on the wall is attracting less opposition because of Biden's catastrophic record. Biden showed the nation the danger of a reckless open borders policy. Trump fixed it, but a future president can always pick up where Biden left off. A wall cannot prevent that entirely — but can make it more difficult. So in a very real and possibly lasting way, Trump is leaving the border far more secure than he found it. Byron York is chief political correspondent for The Washington Examiner. Email him at byork@washingtonexaminer.com.