Trump says Mexico border wall is keeping coronavirus cases out of US, aims to build 400 miles more by 2020 end
President Donald Trump has brought back his focus on his pet Mexican wall project after a report was released by the government saying only three miles of the new primary wall had been put up. On Thursday, May 28, Trump said at the Oval Office that the wall has helped in keeping coronavirus cases in Mexico away from the US. He said the aim was to finish 400 miles of the border wall by the end of this year and another 100 miles by early next year. The president received a briefing on the preparedness against hurricanes as the season for the storms is set to begin on June 1.
Trump, who has been vouching for the wall since before becoming the president in 2016 as a step towards safeguarding America from the entry of illegal immigrants and drug traffickers, said: “Mexico is having a very, very hard time, as you know, with Covid, especially along the border, Tijuana and various places along the border. Fortunately, we have a brand-new wall along there, and the wall is saving us.”
The US is the worst-affected country in the world with more than 1.7 million people and a death toll of 101,000-plus. Mexico, on the other hand, has 81,400 people affected and just over 9,000 dead.
Trump said his administration was using powers and added that very few people were getting in. He said the government will immediately take out those people who are getting into the US.
The Washington Post received a report from Customs and Border Protection which said that while the wall has been built over a distance of 194 miles, the vast majority of the ‘new’ wall was replacing an old wall. Only 16 of those 194 miles saw construction of a new wall and again of that, 13 miles saw a new secondary wall while three were primary. In July last year, Trump complained on Twitter about not being credited for building a new wall replacing a broken barrier on the Southern Border. Recently, Trump boasted about the progress of the construction of the wall during a visit to a Ford Motor Co. plant in Michigan. “By the way, on our southern border, it's never been so secure,” the election-bound incumbent told workers. “We're up to almost 200 miles of wall. And we have never had - that whole area is - nobody comes through that area.” “The area where the wall goes up, that's the end of that,” he added.
Trump's preferred firm has bagged construction contract for 42 miles
Trump, who has been pledging to build the wall since his 2016 campaign, also claimed that Mexico would pay for it. However, a contract worth $1.3 billion has been given to a firm in North Dakota named Fisher Sand and Gravel to build 42 miles of fencing through southern Arizona. The contract was seen with suspicious eyes as the CEO of the firm, Tommy Fisher, praised Trump on Fox News. The CBP also told the Post that building the wall in that section of Arizona will be challenging because of geographical and logistical challenges.
Trump even called a partial shutdown of his government for more than a month in December 2018 and January 2019 to put pressure on the Democrat-dominated Congress to provide $5.7 billion to build the wall but eventually backtracked.