Trump’s costly, controversial, uncompleted wall is in pieces
SIERRA VISTA, Ariz. — The sweeping view of undefiled wilderness on the border with Mexico long rewarded hikers who completed the Arizona Trail, an 800mile route winding through deserts, canyons and forests.
Then something else came into focus a few weeks ago at the forbidding site in the Huachuca Mountains: a lonely segment of border wall, connected to nothing at all, in an area where migrants rarely even try to cross into the United States.
“There it was, this unfinished piece of completely pointless wall, right in this magical place,” said Julia Sheehan, 31, a nurse and former Air Force mechanic who trekked to the site with three other military veterans who are hiking the Arizona Trail. “It’s one of the most senseless things I’ve ever seen.”
The quartermile fragment of wall is part of an array of new barrier segments along the border, some of them bizarre in appearance and of no apparent utility, that contractors rushed to build in the waning days of the Trump administration — well after President Biden made it clear that he would halt border wall construction.
Now the incomplete border wall, already one of the costliest megaprojects in U.S. history, with an estimated eventual price tag of more than $15 billion, is igniting tensions again as critics urge Biden to tear down parts of the wall and Republican leaders call on him to finish it.
The latest controversy over the wall comes amid a significant increase in migration across the border that is prompting U.S. authorities to search for extra places to hold new arrivals, especially unaccompanied children and teenagers.
The Biden administration suspended construction on the border wall on Jan. 20, the president’s first day in office, announcing a 60day period during which officials are determining how to proceed.
Former President Donald Trump made the wall a symbol of his administration’s efforts to slash immigration. While many stretches of the 1,954mile border already had some lowlevel barriers built by previous administrations, the project was mired in controversy from the start.
Only a few miles were built in South Texas, the area most prone to illegal crossings. Instead, much of the construction, especially in the Trump administration’s closing days, has taken place in remote parts of Arizona where crossings in recent years have been relatively uncommon.