Mexico Wall
Early in the campaign, Trump committed to building a wall between the United States and its southern ally. He has backed up that rhetoric with an Executive Order to do just that. There is continued debate about not only the need, purpose, and construction of such a wall, but also who will pay for it.
See also Mexico.
Timeline
| 2017.02.22 | Paul Ryan leads a delegation of House Republicans on a tour of the U.S.-Mexico border to see firsthand the security challenges of keeping out undocumented immigrants that Trump wants to block with a costly wall. washingtonpost.com (See also First 100 Days) |
| 2017.02.22 | Rex W. Tillerson arrives in Mexico with twin threats hanging over the frayed relationship between the two nations: Trump’s new orders to round up and deport immigrants who are in the United States illegally, and a separate effort to examine American aid to Mexico for possible use in paying for a border wall. nytimes.com (See also Rex Tillerson, Department of State, First 100 Days, Mexico, Immigration) |
| 2017.02.24 | Trump administration solicits ideas from contractors on how to build its promised wall between the U.S. and Mexico, a first tangible step toward delivering on the president’s signature campaign promise to curb unauthorized immigration. bloomberg.com (See also First 100 Days, Immigration) |
| 2017.03.03 | Mexican congressman sends President Trump a message after apparently climbing a 30-foot fence at the U.S.-Mexico border on Wednesday. “I was able to scale it, climb it, and sit myself right here. It would be simple for me to jump into the United States, which shows that it is unnecessary and totally absurd to build a wall." news.vice.com (See also First 100 Days) |
| 2017.03.07 | Trump administration weighs cuts to the Coast Guard, the TSA, and other agencies to pay for a Mexico border wall. washingtonpost.com The Federal Emergency Management Agency also could see significant cuts under an OMB proposal. |
| 2017.03.09 | Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell says Mexico will not pay for Trump's border wall. yahoo.com |
| 2017.03.15 | Trump’s promise to build a fortified barrier on the U.S.-Mexico border is about to hit a wall of its own: top Republicans in Congress with different ideas on how to curb illegal immigration. bloomberg.com (See also First 100 Days) |
| 2017.06.22 | Trump claimed Mexico is the second deadliest country in the world. It's not. buzzfeed.com (See also Mexico, Unpresidential Behavior, False Statements) |
| 2017.07.27 | The House has passed a $788 billion spending bill that combines a $1.6 billion down payment for Trump’s controversial border wall with Mexico with a whopping budget increase for the Pentagon, but significant hurdles remain in front of the measure, which will meet with more powerful Democratic opposition in the Senate. apnews.com (See also Department of Defense) |
| 2017.08.03 | The Washington Post on Thursday published transcripts of Trump’s January phone calls with the leaders of Mexico and Australia — and they include plenty of bizarre, surreal, and stunning moments. buzzfeed.com (See also Foreign Policy, Mexico, Unpresidential Behavior, False Statements) |
| 2017.08.03 | Trump made building a wall along the southern U.S. border and forcing Mexico to pay for it core pledges of his campaign, but as transcripts of his first White House call with Mexico’s president reveal, Trump described his vow to charge Mexico as a growing political problem, pressuring the Mexican leader to stop saying publicly that his government would never pay. washingtonpost.com (See also Foreign Policy, Mexico) |
| 2017.08.23 | Trump at a campaign-style rally in Phoenix promised he would shut down the government if Congress does not fund a wall on the southern border. nytimes.com (See also Immigration, Unprecedented Actions) |
| 2017.08.24 | The White House reiterated its willingness to risk shutting down the government to obtain funding for Donald Trump's long-promised wall between the United States and Mexico. nbcnews.com (See also Assaults on Government, Immigration) |
| 2017.08.30 | Donald Trump is promising billions to help Texas rebuild from Harvey-caused epic flooding, but his Republican allies in the House are looking at cutting almost $1 billion from disaster accounts to help finance the border wall. apnews.com (See also Federal Departments, Environment) |
| 2017.09.14 | Donald Trump confirmed that he supports legislation that would protect young undocumented immigrants from deportation and would deliver a “massive” increase in border security — but not with a wall on the southern border. nytimes.com (See also Immigrants, Immigration) |
| 2017.10.06 | The House Homeland Security Committee approved Wednesday a border security bill that includes $10 billion for a border wall. thehill.com (See also Immigration) |
| 2017.10.13 | Donald Trump remains determined to build his long-promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, so much so that a top administration official said he’s willing to shut down the government to secure funding for the project. mic.com (See also Assaults on Government) |
| 2017.11.30 | Donald Trump has told confidants that a government shutdown could be good for him politically. washingtonpost.com (See also Unpresidential Behavior, Immigration) |
| 2017.12.18 | Donald Trump is removing climate change from the United States' National Security Strategy. futurism.com (See also Department of Homeland Security, Climate Change, Environment) |
| 2018.01.08 | The Trump administration would cut or delay funding for border surveillance, radar technology, patrol boats and customs agents in its upcoming spending plan to curb illegal immigration — all proven security measures that officials and experts have said are more effective than building a wall along the Mexican border. nytimes.com (See also Department of Homeland Security, Immigration) |
| 2018.01.17 | White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly told Democratic lawmakers Wednesday that the United States will never construct a physical wall along the entire stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border and that some of President Trump’s campaign promises on immigration were “uninformed.” washingtonpost.com (See also John Kelly, Immigration) |
| 2018.01.22 | The Trump administration is waiving dozens of environmental regulations to speed up construction of Donald Trump’s proposed wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. thehill.com (See also Environment, Department of Homeland Security, Immigration) The waiver excludes rules from major laws including the National Environment Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, the National Historic Preservation Act and the Antiquities Act, among others. |
| 2018.01.28 | Lawmakers in both parties said that the immigration debate should focus narrowly on efforts to legalize young immigrants known as “dreamers” and beef up border security, suggesting that Donald Trump’s demands to slash legal immigration levels are likely to sink a deal. washingtonpost.com (See also Immigration) |
| 2018.02.24 | Tentative plans for Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto to make his first visit to the White House to meet with Donald Trump were scuttled this week after a testy call between the two leaders ended in an impasse over Trump’s promised border wall, according to U.S. and Mexican officials. washingtonpost.com (See also Immigration, Mexico) |
| 2018.03.29 | Donald Trump repeated a false claim that the border wall has started construction by posting pictures from a 2009 project which was designed to replace a 2.25 mile section in the existing California-Mexico wall. buzzfeed.com (See also False Statements, Unpresidential Behavior, Immigration) |
Assessments
Peter Andreas — The Washington Post
On Jan. 26, 2017, Andreas notes that Trump probably will build his wall because most of it is already built.
Trump has dismissed the current state of border security as “a joke,” but he’ll soon find that the bipartisan border policing boom started in the 1990s will be crucial to keeping his wall pledge. Trump’s plan calls for a wall that covers 1,000 miles of the nearly 2,000-mile-long border — with natural obstacles covering the remainder. Nearly 700 miles of various types of border fencing are already in place, and portions of it very much look like a formidable metal wall. It is hard to imagine Trump tearing all that fencing up and starting from scratch.
What’s much more realistic is that Trump will simply add more miles of fencing; reinforce existing fencing in key, visible places; and deploy even more border guards, stadium lighting, and the latest high-tech detection and surveillance equipment.
Seth Stodder — Politico
In his Jan. 25, 2017, article, Stodder posits that Trump's wall attacks the wrong immigration crisis.
...according to the Pew Research Center, more Mexicans now leave the U.S. than head north, and border apprehensions are down a whopping 75 percent since 2000. Simply put, fewer people are coming, and our border authorities catch and remove most who try.
This is not to say there isn’t a crisis, however. There is one, but it’s different from the one Trump thinks exists. It doesn’t involve Mexican migrants, and a wall won’t solve it. The actual crisis involves thousands of migrants from Central America’s “Northern Triangle” — El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras — who are fleeing brutal gang violence, extreme poverty or malnutrition. Roughly half of these migrants are women and young children escaping desperate circumstances, facing the real possibility of death or rape if they stay. Others are fleeing extreme poverty in remote regions where education ends at the sixth grade and families are limited to one meal a day.
America obviously cannot solve all the economic problems of Central America, but under U.S. and international law, all migrants are afforded the opportunity to apply for asylum protection if they make it to U.S. soil.
Further research
- Peter Andreas, Border Games: Policing the U.S.-Mexico Divide