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MCALLEN, Texas — The Trump administration has moved expeditiously in its second term to put up not only a border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, but also to build out a comprehensive security system, which Americans know little about.
Legal delays and poor planning meant that in President Donald Trump’s first term, he did not install 1 mile of border wall in an area that did not previously have it for almost the first three years.
This time around, more than 20 miles of wall have been put in the ground since January 2025. The Border Patrol is averaging 2 miles of wall installed per week, as of mid-December, and intends to increase this to 10 miles per week, according to Border Patrol Chief Mike Banks.
The top border official in the government, Rodney Scott, vowed during his confirmation hearing in April 2025 to become commissioner for Customs and Border Protection, to deliver “real border security.”
“We’ll continue to build out the border wall system. We’ll continue to build out the technology, but we’ll also make sure that we work with the U.S. Attorney’s Office so that there are consequences to violating laws in the United States,” Scott told senators.
Trump is building a ‘smart wall’ on border. Here’s what that means
Banks explained during an interview in Brownsville, Texas, on Jan. 7 that the smart wall system Trump has envisioned was made from the advice of agents and takes into account a number of components to be effective in the 21st century.
“The wall comes with the technology, the lighting, the infrastructure, the ground-sensing radars so that we know that traffic is coming,” Banks said.
The smart wall system also includes non-wall infrastructure, such as waterborne barriers and all-terrain roads.
The history of the wall
Border wall construction took off in the 1990s under then-President Bill Clinton. A decade later, during President George W. Bush’s administration, Congress approved the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which funded more than 650 miles of barrier.
Half of those 650 miles of barrier had short fences just tall enough to block vehicles from driving across rural parts of the border, while the other half was tall enough to prevent people from illegally walking over. Border wall projects continued, albeit at far slower rates, during the Obama administration.
Trump completed 450 miles of the 740 that were funded before leaving office.
Arrests of illegal immigrants at the nation’s borders hit 55-year lows in Trump’s first year as a result of the White House’s tough rhetoric, nearly a dozen immigration executive orders, and deportation operations.
However, the Trump administration wants to do more to ensure the border is harder to penetrate come 2029, when he leaves office. The wall is at the core of the border wall system.
Border Patrol has moved to complete projects that President Joe Biden canceled upon taking office in January 2021.
In 2025, Republicans tucked $46.5 billion for border security projects into the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. That means that more than 1,400 miles of the entire southern border will have a physical barrier to deter people from crossing by the time the current and future projects are completed.
The remaining 535 miles are not viewed by planners as ideal for building a wall or are considered low-risk areas for illegal crossings.
In addition, CBP is installing 550 miles of technology in parts of the border that have a physical barrier but lack ground sensors, cameras, and other tech.
The wall
Trump celebrated the completion of the first border wall project in San Luis, Arizona, by signing the steel bollard beams in June 2020.
“It’s really foolproof,” Trump said at the time. “Heavy concrete inside the steel. And inside the concrete, we have rebar.”
The Trump administration began a lengthy prototyping process in 2017 to test four concrete and four nonconcrete barriers. Elements of the eight designs were incorporated into the final product.
The wall that CBP decided to build is slatted, which Border Patrol agents prefer because it allows them to see what is going on beyond the barrier, but the beams are close enough that people cannot pass through it. The top of the wall has anti-climb steel plates to make scaling it more difficult.
In select unspecified areas of the border, the physical barrier will be painted black as part of the smart wall design, because Trump found it aesthetically pleasing. The steel will get harder and become more difficult to scale than the natural reddish-brown.
When asked by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at the roundtable in Texas on Jan. 7 what agents wanted from the department, Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley Chief Jared Ashby said emphatically, “Wall. More barrier.… To continue closing some of the gaps that were left during the Biden administration or areas of wall that weren’t finished.”
Noem reiterated that the wall was one of Trump’s top priorities, in addition to technology. However, Noem added that “if you just install technology or cameras or — and don’t have a complete, full wall and infrastructure, that if there’s an administration that wants to do what Joe Biden did before, they would just turn off the technology, and then you’d have no security at all.”
Southeast Texas is the only place on the southern border where the wall doubles as a levee system. Because of flooding in the region, a concrete structure was built into the ground, with an 18-foot slatted steel wall sitting on top.
Roads and lighting
Gravel and paved roads, as well as tall lights that line roadways, may sound underwhelming as far as their effect on border security when compared to the use of artificial intelligence and state-of-the-art sensors that can detect underground tunnels being built.
But in many parts of the border, there are no roads that run parallel to the border. As Banks explained in a December interview, “the most significant part, if you ask any Border Patrol agent, is being able to have that road that gives us that lateral access to rapidly deploy east and west along that border.”
Adding to the problem is that places such as Sunland Park, New Mexico, were without lights or access roads for agents.
Walter Slozar, the former division chief of operations for Border Patrol’s El Paso, Texas, region, explained during a previous border trip that lighting fixtures installed along the new border wall in Sunland Park helped agents see people who illegally crossed, and the gravel roads gave agents a way to get to them before they slipped away.
“The lights are there for us at night, so we can see, operate, and see people much farther down than instead of a four-cell handheld flashlight that we all carry,” said Slozar.
New gravel roads run along the wall and allow access to spots where people may have climbed over. Previously, agents struggled to drive on sandy roads during and after heavy rains.
Technology and cameras
During the Biden administration, technology was supported by congressional Democrats, which allowed Border Patrol to make some gains without any physical barrier.
On the northern border, cameras fixed to electrical poles, trees, or signs capture individuals or groups walking across the border into the U.S.
Among the newest additions on the northern border are the so-called BuckEye cameras. These are fixed to a plate built to resemble tree bark. The cameras are attached to trees and blend in with the landscape, making it difficult for passersby to realize they are being tracked, according to Robert Bresnahan, chief patrol agent in charge of Swanton Sector’s Champlain Station in New York.
“We are now using 3D printing machines,” Bresnahan said. “We’re printing fake trees that have the cameras. There is some really cool stuff going on.”
Bresnahan said he wants to see technology that incorporates AI to differentiate between animals and people picked up on camera.
The Border Patrol has consistently upgraded its technology. Its cameras have gone from being able to capture clear images hundreds of yards away 20 years ago to seeing up to 10 miles out now, according to Ashby.
In addition, on the southern border, cameras are already using AI to read images.
“A sensor will pick up somebody, and then it’ll cue, ‘Hey, there’s a 90% chance that this is a human.’ And then now we have to have fewer agents monitoring every camera because AI has assisted us,” Ashby said. “As radars and cameras, sensor packages detect things, it can determine, ‘Is that cattle or is that humans?’ And then it will cue an agent for response if it believes it’s a human.”
While technology and AI, in particular, have made agents’ jobs easier, it in no way can replace agents as the ultimate resource.
“Technology has advanced border security significantly, but the most important sensor that we have is the agent,” Ashby said. “There’s no better sensor than the agent that knows the environment, knows the terrain, knows the locals that live in that area.”
Drones and aerostats
On the southern border, Border Patrol relies on several blimp-sized balloons to capture aerial images and video miles into Mexico. The aerostats are tethered to the ground and may fly 2,000 to 4,000 feet in the air, Ashby said.
Cameras attached to them capture images that help Border Patrol plan for where groups are moving toward the border on foot and get in place before they attempt to cross.
Richard Guerra, a border rancher in Roma, Texas, told Noem that he let Border Patrol put an aerostat on his property, and it has been to his personal benefit.
“I do have an aerostat on my ranch.… I don’t even charge them now. They’re free. They’re welcome to stay,” Guerra said. “Because I sleep better on my ranch knowing they’re there.”
Drones are a growing threat to U.S. national security. Hannah Haight of the Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law wrote in the Journal of Air Law and Commerce last year that Mexican drug trafficking organizations are increasingly using drones to deliver drugs across the U.S.–Mexico border.
Mexican cartels flew drones within 1,500 feet of the border approximately 60,000 times in six months, according to Steven Willoughby, deputy director of the DHS’s counter-drone program.
Cartels also use drones to spy on operations at ports of entry, where people and vehicles go through inspection, as well as to keep an eye on certain areas for Border Patrol agents. If the coast is clear, smugglers know they can run goods through the area on foot, by car, or even fly them overhead with a drone.
NOEM ABRUPTLY ENDS DEPORTATION PROTECTION FOR ALL SOMALI ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS
Just this week, the DHS announced the creation of a new office that would focus solely on rapidly procuring and deploying drone and counter-drone technology.
In addition, last month, the DHS granted agencies and local law enforcement partners the authority to take down enemy drones in U.S. airspace.
