Former President Donald Trump promised his supporters an “impenetrable” border wall between the United States and Mexico. Instead, the $15 billion wall was reportedly breached thousands of times in areas where it was completed, and the smugglers who cut through it were able to do so with cheap power tools available in retail stores.
Unpublished data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection obtained via the Freedom of Information Act showed that Mexican smugglers cut through the wall 3,272 times over three years, according to The Washington Post. In some cases, they replaced the areas they cut with tinted putty, essentially creating secret passages.
“You have to look really closely to see it,” one source told the newspaper.
The incidents cited by the Post referred to cases where the wall had been cut. But it was also breached in other ways. One report last year found some smugglers were building effective ladders with about $5 worth of material. In another famous case from 2020, a stiff wind knocked over a segment.
Trump repeatedly promised to build a “big beautiful wall” across the southern border that Mexico would pay for.
Mexico did not pay for it. U.S. taxpayers did.
President Joe Biden has since suspended wall construction and said he would be returning the $2 billion Trump diverted from the Pentagon budget for the project.