Arizona leaders rained down praise on President Trump during a meeting by the U.S.-Mexico border Tuesday, touting how hundreds of miles of newly constructed barrier have boosted public safety and led to a decline in illegal crossings.
“I worked on the road back in the early 2000s, and I understand firsthand the calls for service related to undocumented immigrants and how high those calls for service were,” Yuma, Arizona, Police Chief Susan Smith told Trump during the briefing. “After the border enhancements were put in place, I can tell you we saw a marked decline in many of those calls associated with undocumented immigrants, such as load vehicles coming across with drugs and humans, human trafficking, stolen vehicles.”
Yuma Mayor Doug Nicholls told Trump that if the 110 miles of new border barrier had not been installed along southwestern Arizona’s border with Mexico and the border crisis that unfolded last year happened today, the coronavirus pandemic may have had a hugely negative impact on his city’s 97,000 residents.
“If you fast-forwarded that situation to today, and those families were coming through with COVID-19, that would be 5,200 people coming through my community potentially with COVID-19,” said Nicholls, a Republican. “So, it’s simple math. The wall prevents people from coming — that prevents the number of exposures we can have to COVID-19. From a local perspective, that helps our community.”
“You’re the only president in my 23-year career that has actually come down to the border multiple times to look at — assess what actually needs to be done,” said Brandon Judd, an agent who started his career in Arizona and is president of the National Border Patrol Council, which represents approximately 15,000 agents.
Trump met with federal, state, and local leaders in Yuma Tuesday afternoon to discuss border security initiatives then visited a recently completed $267 million project for 26 miles of barrier, where he signed a plaque on the new wall.
“Maybe somebody can get an extraordinarily long ladder, but once you get up there, it gets very high,” said Trump. “It’s just about unclimbable. So it’s really great.”
The top regional Border Patrol official, Carl Landrum, cited a vast increase in arrests during recent years before there was a barrier to prevent people from crossing. The region went from 17,000 arrests in 2017 to 68,000 in 2019. But crossings in the fiscal year 2020 are down 70% to date compared to the same period last year.
Trump nodded as the feedback poured in and poked Democrats for not pushing back against the wall in recent months.
“The reason it’s not mentioned — it’s not that we won the battle, it’s that it’s such a compelling thing to have done because you see the numbers and where that wall is going, it’s like magic,” Trump said. The wall “saves tremendous manpower and women power,” he said, referring to agents who would have to respond to crossers.
The federal government’s top border official, Mark Morgan, said that while the focus has been on the physical wall, the projects also include technology and paved roads.
“It’s not just a wall. I keep saying ‘wall system’ on purpose because what you have delivered is something that has just not been delivered before. It’s not just a bunch of steel in the ground,” said Morgan, acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection. “Every town, city, and state is a border town, border city, and border state. Everything that touches our border touches every town, city, and state in this country.”
As a candidate, Trump said he would build 1,000 miles of “wall” for $4 billion. As of the latest budget request this year, the Trump administration has been given or seized $18.4 billion for the wall.
The 2,000-mile southern border stretches from the Gulf of Mexico in southern Texas to the Pacific Ocean in southwestern California. Roughly 700 miles of the border had some type of fencing or barrier before Trump took office in January 2017. Half was tall, steel fencing, and half was just 4 feet tall. As of Tuesday, 216 miles of fence have gone up, including during the coronavirus pandemic.
CBP and the Army Corps of Engineers oversee the projects and construction process. The two federal agencies are working 339 miles of construction projects at present and planning how to spend funding for 183 miles of fencing. In total, more than 660 miles of fencing have been funded to date. The new fencing varies from 18 to 30 feet tall, depending on the location.
Builders are averaging a mile of new wall per day, according to Army Corps of Engineers chief Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite. Morgan said he was “100% convinced” the administration will have 450 miles of wall in the ground by the end of 2020, though Trump, moments earlier, had said the United States would be “very close to 500” by that time.
