After $15 billion and 450 miles, Biden will halt border wall, Trump’s signature project
WASHINGTON — Mexico never paid for any of it. It’s less than half finished. And on Jan. 20 or soon thereafter, construction will come to an abrupt halt on the “big beautiful wall” that President Donald Trump promised to build along the U.s.-mexico border.
The project has cost $15 billion so far, most of it diverted from the military budget after Congress refused to provide full funding.
President-elect Joe Biden vowed during the campaign to kill the project, but leave in place whatever the Trump administration leaves behind.
At the moment, that’s about 400 miles worth of levee wall and 30-foot-tall bollard fencing, though nearly all of that mileage already had some sort of barrier before Trump took office. Only 12 miles did not.
The rest is upgrade or replacement for shorter, less sturdy fencing, or a second layer of barrier meant to slow migrants
and smugglers long enough for the Border Patrol to arrive.
“It was a referendum on the wall,” Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Laredo Democrat, said of the election. Cuellar has fought on the Appropriations Committee to stymie Trump budget maneuvers that sapped billions from defense spending for his pet project.
Trump and his supporters viewed the wall both as an actual deterrent to smuggling and illegal border crossing, and a powerful symbol that uninvited migrants were not welcome and that the U.S. was
tightening security. For immigrant advocates and for many Mexicans, it has been an affront.
Although Biden won’t push to dismantle Trump’s physical legacy, he will undo sharp curbs on refugee admissions and a host of other immigration policies put in place through executive order.
A wall on the scale Trump demanded wasn’t even a minor priority during the Obama years for Republicans when they controlled both the House and Senate, and Cuellar sees little political will to push ahead with it once he’s gone.