Trump’s push to complete border wall intensifies with more contracts, waivers

President Donald Trump's signature tax and spending legislation has helped him advance his campaign promise to finish building the border wall.

Trump regularly invoked the wall as he pushed Congress in June 2025 to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which included $46.5 billion for border barriers, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The White House said at the time that the bill would fund hundreds of miles of border wall, river barriers and other obstructions.

Since Trump signed the bill on July 4, 2025, CBP has awarded 11 contracts to build new permanent walling or replace old barrier segments over a total of 218 miles. The 2025 legislation funded the contracts, which were announced in October and December.

Because many of the contracts, worth over $6.5 million, build both segments of wall and other barriers and detection systems, it's impossible to say how much of that money is going toward border wall construction.

The White House referred PolitiFact to CBP for this story, and agency spokesperson John Mennell said in an email that 110 miles of border barriers have been built since the contracts were awarded, including 74 miles of the primary walls that face Mexico.

The agency has allocated funding under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act for 33 of its 34 projects to build a "smart wall" system, a mixture of steel walls, roads, detection technology, cameras and lighting, Mennell said. In some places, it includes secondary walls and river barriers.

"The President's goal is to close the entire southwest border with Mexico by fiscal year 2028 through a combination of physical barriers and technology," Mennell said.

The U.S.-Mexico border is 1,954 miles long, and Trump built around 450 miles of border barriers during his first term, much of which replaced existing barriers.

When Trump took office for his second term, he declared a national emergency and instructed the Homeland Security and Defense secretaries to "take all appropriate action … to construct additional physical barriers along the southern border."

The administration is expediting construction with waivers to get around environmental laws. Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem signed 29 waivers before Trump fired her in March. Under her successor, Markwayne Mullin, the Department of Homeland Security has issued two waivers.

These waivers eliminate CBP's need to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires federal agencies to evaluate the environmental impact of their proposed actions. According to the national security publication Lawfare, it can take an average of over four years to complete the necessary environmental impact statement.

The administration's efforts to circumvent that requirement drew lawsuits from environmental groups, which have argued the administration is unjustifiably ignoring the law. Local officials and tribal nations have also sued over the border wall — so far unsuccessfully.

PolitiFact last evaluated progress on border wall construction in June 2025, when we identified two contracts and three environmental law waivers and rated the promise In the Works.

With a spate of new contracts and dozens more waivers to accelerate border wall construction, this promise is still In the Works.

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