page_title: Mexico–United States barrier
section_title: Trump administration
hierarchical_section_title: Mexico–United States barrier / History / Trump administration
caption_attribution_description: POTUS visits DHS
context_page_description: The Mexico–United States barrier, also known as the border wall, is a series of vertical barriers along the Mexico–United States border intended to reduce illegal immigration to the United States from Mexico. The barrier is not a continuous structure, but a series of obstructions variously classified as "fences" or "walls".
  Between the physical barriers, security is provided by a "virtual fence" of sensors, cameras, and other surveillance equipment used to dispatch United States Border Patrol agents to suspected migrant crossings. In May 2011, the Department of Homeland Security stated that it had 649 miles of barriers in place. The total length of the continental border is 1,954 miles.
context_section_description: Throughout his 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump called for the construction of a much larger and fortified border wall, claiming that if elected, he would "build the wall and make Mexico pay for it". Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto maintained that his country would not pay for the wall. On January 25, 2017, the Trump administration signed Executive Order 13767, which formally directed the US government to begin attempting to construct a border wall using existing federal funding, although construction did not begin at this time due to the lack of a proper budget.
  Trump's campaign promise has faced a host of legal and logistical challenges since. In March 2018, the Trump administration secured $1.6bn from Congress for projects at the border for existing designs of approximately 100 miles of new and replacement walls. From December 22, 2018 to January 25, 2019, the federal government was partially shut down due to Trump's declared intention to veto any spending bill that did not include $5 billion in funding for a border wall.
  On May 24, 2019, federal Judge Haywood Gilliam in the Northern District of California granted a preliminary injunction preventing the Trump administration from redirecting funds under the national emergency declaration issued earlier in the year to fund a planned wall along the border with Mexico. The injunction applies specifically to money the administration intended to allocate from other agencies and limits wall construction projects in El Paso and Yuma. On June 28, Gilliam blocked the reallocation of $2.5bn of funding from the Department of Defense to the construction of segments of the border wall categorized as high priority by the Trump administration (spanning across Arizona, California and New Mexico). The decision was upheld five days later by a majority in the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court, but was overturned by the US Supreme Court on July 26. On September 3, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper authorized the use of $3.6bn in military construction funding for 175 miles of the barrier. The House and Senate have twice voted to terminate Trump's emergency declaration, but the president vetoed both resolutions. In October, a lawsuit filed in El Paso County produced a ruling that the emergency declaration was unlawful, as it fails to meet the National Emergencies Act's definition of an emergency. On December 10, a federal judge in the case blocked the use of the funding, but on January 8, 2020, a federal appeals court granted a stay of the ruling, freeing $3.6 billion for the wall.
  As of August 2019, the Trump administration's barrier construction has been limited to replacing sections that were in need of repair, with 60 miles of replacement wall built in the Southwest since 2017. As of September 12, 2019, the Trump administration plans for "Between 450 and 500 miles (724–806 kilometers) of fencing along the nearly 2,000-mile (3,218-kilometer) border by the end of 2020" with an estimated total cost of $18.4 billion. Privately owned land adjacent to the border would have to be acquired by the U.S. government to be built upon.
  As of May 2020, only 16 miles out of 194 miles of wall constructed under the Trump administration was not replacement fencing. On June 23, Trump visited Yuma, Arizona, for a campaign rally commemorating the completion of 200 miles (320 km) of the wall. U.S. Customs and Border Protection confirms that almost all of this is replacement fencing.
caption: President Donald Trump signing Executive Order 13767
exif: {"Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D810", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS4 Macintosh", "Image DateTime": "2017:01:25 15:51:57", "Image Artist": "", "Image WhitePoint": "[313/1000, 329/1000]", "Image PrimaryChromaticities": "[16/25, 33/100, 21/100, 71/100, 3/20, 3/50]", "Image YCbCrCoefficients": "[299/1000, 587/1000, 57/500]", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image Copyright": "", "Image ExifOffset": "484", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 3, 0, 0]", "Image GPSInfo": "1172", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1286", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6788", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/125", "EXIF FNumber": "11", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Manual", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "12800", "EXIF SensitivityType": "Recommended Exposure Index", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2017:01:25 14:41:40", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2017:01:25 14:41:40", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "95", "EXIF SubSecTime": "73", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "73", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "73", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3000", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2143", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R03", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "1140", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[2, 0, 2, 0, 0, 1, 1, 2]", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Manual Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Manual", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "95", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "High gain up", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0", "EXIF Gamma": "11/5"}