Trump building the wall!

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Construction that was slow during Trump’s first term, and abandoned during Joe Biden’s time in office, is now accelerating in Trump’s second term. The key was the passage of last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which included $46.5 billion for the 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 underway 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. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who would become obsessed with resisting Trump’s every move, declared a border barrier “immoral.”

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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 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 people 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.

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