Trump to attend Arizona border ceremony to 'commemorate' 200 miles of wall constructi
Trump to attend Arizona border ceremony to 'commemorate' 200 miles of wall construction
by Anna Giaritelli
| June 22, 2020 12:58 PM
President Trump will travel to the southern border Tuesday to attend a ceremony celebrating 200 miles of completed border wall construction under his administration, according to the White House.
Trump will visit Yuma, Arizona, for a roundtable briefing with U.S. border officials on trade and travel operations and the progress of the southern border barrier's construction at the international boundary and then will participate in a wall "commemoration" ceremony.
The trip, less than five months ahead of the November election, gives Trump a chance to tout his progress on following through on his campaign promise to secure the border with a wall. The 2,000-mile southern border stretches from the Gulf of Mexico in southern Texas to the Pacific Ocean in southwestern California. Roughly 700 miles of the border had some type of fencing or barrier before Trump took office in January 2017 — half was tall, steel fencing, and half was 4-foot-tall vehicle barriers.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the federal agency overseeing where wall is installed, told the Washington Examiner last summer that most of the completed miles of wall under Trump were “in place of dilapidated designs." CBP and the Army Corps of Engineers, overseeing the actual construction, moved faster on replacement projects than the new ones because the approval process for environmental and zoning permits was less extensive than areas of the border with no barrier.
The Trump administration maintains that significant portions of new wall will be finished in the time remaining in Trump's term. Army Corps Commanding Gen. Todd T. Semonite said the Corps will put up 450 miles of wall, including some that replaces old wall, by November 2020. Trump vowed during the State of the Union address in February to build “substantially more than 500 miles” of wall by early 2021.
Wall construction has continued through the coronavirus pandemic despite stay-at-home orders that affected more than 200 million nonessential workers nationwide. Dozens of Democratic lawmakers in April asked acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf to suspend construction during the pandemic, but construction did not stop.
The Trump administration has more than 500 miles of fence funded, some of which is already under construction. But even if the administration achieved its 2020 goal, it would only put 165 miles of new fence in previously unsecured areas of the 2,000-mile border. The rest would replace older barriers.
On many occasions as a candidate in 2015 and 2016, Trump said he would build 1,000 miles of “wall” at a total cost of $4 billion. That campaign promise, which vastly understated what it would cost to build 1,000 miles of barrier, will not be met by December. As of the latest budget request earlier this year, the Trump administration has been given or seized $18.4 billion for the wall.
Nevertheless, Trump has applauded the work to date. Trump's 2020 campaign debuted the slogan "Finish the Wall" at his first rally of 2019 in El Paso, Texas. At one point during his speech, the crowd began cheering, "Build that wall." Trump responded, "Now, you really mean, 'Finish that wall' — because we've built a lot of it."
The first completed wall project of two miles in Calexico, California, was unveiled in October 2018. Then-DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen had workers install a plaque with Trump’s name onto the wall. The wall system includes see-through steel bollard beams, lighting, cameras, other related technology, and all-weather roads.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/n...l-construction
