In August of 2020, President Joe Biden said of Trump’s border wall: “There will not be another foot of wall constructed on my administration.” Building the wall that would sit on the border between Mexico and the U.S. was at the center of former President Trump’s 2016 campaign. He said it would be 1,000 miles long and that “substantially more than 500 miles” would be built by 2021. The US Customs and Border Protection says 453 miles of the wall has been completed; however, most of the wall so far has just replaced old barriers, and only 80 miles of new wall has been built.
In 2016, Trump said in an interview with MSNBC that “Mexico is going to pay for the wall.” However, in 2019 Trump said, “When during the campaign I would say: ‘Mexico’s going to pay for it,’ obviously I never said this, and I never meant they’re going to write out a check.” So far, the U.S. has completely paid for the wall. $15 billion has come from the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Treasury.
Although President Biden has said that he will halt construction of the wall, he has not said whether he will tear it down. He said that he will completely “withdraw the lawsuits” over private land that sits on the border and that they’re “not going to confiscate the land.”
