DHS unveils smart wall plan: 1,422 miles of fencing along U.S.-Mexico border by 2025

The Department of Homeland Security announced its ambitious smart wall plans for the U.S.-Mexico border on Friday. Fences stretch 1,422 miles along the border, more than twice the current length, and with sensor technology to protect the remaining area too impassable for a wall. Here's what you need to know about the expanded border wall plans and the massive construction effort:

The Smart Wall plan

DHS unveils comprehensive border barrier strategy:

• The Department of Homeland Security announced its ambitious smart wall plans for the U.S.-Mexico border on Friday
• Fences stretch 1,422 miles along the border, more than twice as long as today
• Sensor technology to protect the remaining area that is too robust for the wall
• The barriers will begin at the Pacific Ocean in San Diego and will be largely uninterrupted until they reach the western edge of the Big Bend area in Texas
• Then head northwest from Laredo and walk to the Gulf of America near Brownsville
• CBP announced the renaming from the old name “Wall System” to “Smart Wall.”

Construction contracts and financing

$4.5 billion in new contracts awarded:

• Customs and Border Protection, which oversees the border, said it had just awarded $4.5 billion in new contracts to begin construction
• The money is the first installment of tens of billions of dollars allocated in President Trump's “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
• Will fund 230 miles of new fencing and 400 miles of new roads and technology
• “Washington has talked about border security for years but failed to act. This president has changed that,” said CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott
• “The Smart Wall means more miles of barriers, more technology and more opportunities for our agents on the ground to take control of the border.”

Environmental Waivers

Minister accelerates construction through legal exceptions:

• To speed up construction, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem issued exemptions from environmental laws for sections of the wall in Southern California and New Mexico

Trump's wall legacy

The promise of the 2016 Marquee campaign includes a significant expansion:

• Wall was the big promise of Mr. Trump's 2016 campaign and one on which he made major progress in his first term, completing 458 miles of fencing
• His 2020 election defeat handed power to President Biden, who halted construction
• That erased several hundred miles of already planned walls, leaving hundreds more miles where Mr. Trump had built fences but failed to complete planned roads and technology
• When he was re-elected last year, Mr. Trump promised to finish the job

Current vs. planned coverage

Expansion of the border wall from 36% to 73%:

• As of January 20, only 702 miles of the 1,954-mile border with Mexico had some form of fence or barrier in place – about 36%
• When Mr. Trump is finished, that will be 1,422 miles, or nearly 73%.
• The remaining 532 miles — most of which correspond to the Big Bend area of ​​West Texas — are too rugged or remote to need a wall and will instead be covered by detection technology, CBP said

Historical debates about the wall

New plans answer long-standing questions:

• New plans provide definitive answers to questions that have plagued Mr. Trump since he first proposed a “big, beautiful wall” during the 2016 campaign
• At the time he said that the wall would not have to run from sea to sea, but he differed on the exact length and what it would look like
• He referred to concrete structures in his campaign speeches, and his promise that Mexico would pay for them was the most popular applause for his raucous crowds
• In early 2017, he held a wall-building competition and personally visited the site to look at options
• Congress stepped in and, while giving him some money, ordered him to use the steel lath construction, which remains standard

Decommissioning and emergency financing

Past financing struggles shaped the construction of the wall:

• At the end of 2018, the dispute with Congress over its demand for increased funding for the wall led to the longest government shutdown ever
• Mr. Trump relented after 35 days and accepted a lower dollar amount from Congress, but did an about-face and declared a state of emergency, instead withdrawing billions of dollars from existing Pentagon accounts
• By the time he left office in 2021, Congress had given him $4.5 billion, and he had cobbled together another $10.5 billion from the Defense Department and Treasury Department recovery funds
• That was enough to fund 738 miles of wall construction, but when Mr. Biden took power, only 458 miles of barrier had been built

Incomplete wall system

In previous construction work, the fencing was given priority over the overall system:

• Because Trump prioritized building fences to meet his self-imposed Election Day 2020 deadline, most of those miles lacked roads, lighting and sensor technology to complete the wall system
• The Government Accountability Office reported in 2021 that only 69 of the new miles had all of the components planned by the Border Patrol
• “While the wall panels are typically the most expensive part of Border Patrol construction, the entire wall system remains incomplete,” GAO said at the time
• The Biden administration had money to implement the plans, but Mr. Biden's promise not to build “another foot” of wall stalled work, leaving literal gaps in the wall and hundreds of miles without roads and technology

Technology backfill plans

CBP fixes previous gaps:

• CBP said Friday its new plans call for backfill technology along 550 miles of previously constructed fences

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• DHS unveils major border plan: 1,422 miles of wall along the border with Mexico