Politics

Here's The Status Of Trump's Border Wall

A signature promise during his campaign, President Trump continues to push for an extensive wall along the US-Mexico border.

Here's The Status Of Trump's Border Wall
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More than two years after a campaign filled with promises like this.

"We're going to build a wall, it's going to be built," then candidate Donald Trump said during a rally in 2016.  

Here is the progress that’s been made on the president’s signature campaign issue. So far Customs and Border Patrol has set aside nearly $1.4 billion to fund construction of new and replacement barriers along parts of the U.S.-Mexico border. 

This would include sections of barriers or fencing near San Diego, Tuscon, El Paso and Yuma, as well as levee barriers in the Rio Grande Valley. The border patrol says the projects would amount to 84 miles of barriers with some of it being new construction. 

But is it part of Trump's planned wall from sea to shining sea? For perspective The U.S. Mexico border is about 2,000 miles with only 653 miles with some type of fencing or barrier. 

And figuring out what is and isn't part of "the wall" is kind of open to interpretation. Back in October, Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen christened a two-mile section of replaced fencing as the first part of Trump's border wall. The new barrier isn't built like any of the wall prototypes Trump viewed in 2018, but Nielsen told NBC News its use of technology qualifies it as the "full wall system."

The bill that set aside funding for border the project doesn't allow any money to be used for the newly proposed border wall prototypes. Congress has yet to provide the funds the White House requested for the massive wall project.