What ever happened to the border wall Trump promised 8 years ago?

Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Get our free Inside Washington email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Even as Biden spoke openly about how he didn’t think walls worked, he told reporters at the time, “I can’t stop that.” open image in gallery In addition to building new sections of the border wall itself, the Biden administration constructed armored levee projects along the border line in places like Abram, Texas, earning criticisms it was still functionally continuing to build the border wall “If he really didn’t want that wall to be built, he could’ve let it get lost in the bureaucracy,” UCLA professor Chris Zepeda-Millán, author of Walls, Cages, and Family Separation: Immigration Policy in the Time of Trump, told The Independent. open image in gallery Simple tools ranging from household saws to ladders have been used to get through the federal border wall, pictured here in 2023, which cost an estimated $20m per mile to build “In some ways we were able to get some concessions from this administration, but unfortunately you see the reality that border walls are bipartisan in the United States, even if you call them something different,” said Ricky Garza, border policy counsel at Southern Border Communities Coalition, one of the groups now suing in federal appeals court over the pullback on the 2023 settlement. open image in gallery Extensive wall construction throughout multiple administrations has pushed migrants, pictured here in 2023, to attempt to cross in more remote areas across the deserts of the Southwest, putting them at risk of death or injury Illegal immigration increased right through Trump’s major border wall construction push, and U.S.-Mexico border-crossings overall hit record levels in 2023 even as Biden built far less. “The vast majority of people who do support Trump’s border walls are also the same people who have anti-Latino sentiment, people who are uncomfortable with the demographic changes that are happening.” open image in gallery Trump and allies like border czar Tom Homan have vowed to deport millions of undocumented people shortly after assuming the White House The professor sees a parallel between the wall and Trump’s new promises to rapidly deport millions of undocumented people.