Trump’s Big Border Wall Is Now a Pile of Rusting Steel
Tens of thousands of heavy steel slats, once destined to become part of former President Donald Trump’s border wall, are slowly rusting in the open air throughout the southwestern borderlands. The bollards—18- or 33-foot-long hollow posts, most of them reinforced with concrete and rebar—are worth at least a quarter of a billion dollars. The Department of Defense owns most of that steel, but it’s unclear what will—or can—be done with it. For now, it remains in spider-webbed stacks sunning themselves in vast staging areas along the wall.
President Joe Biden persistently campaigned on a clean break from the policies of the Trump administration. Perhaps in no other field did Trump’s critics hope for swifter and more complete reversals than in immigration and border policy. Those hopes have been dashed: Despite many promises, the Biden administration has effectively locked in, and in some cases even expanded, draconian anti-immigration measures implemented by Trump. The wall was supposed to be the easy change. But halting a project of this scale is never easy.
In the last, to erect more miles of wall. Within sight of Guadalupe Canyon, in the southeastern corner of Arizona, land made up of rounded buttes and steep canyons—critical habitat for jaguars and other endangered cross-border species—crews were dynamite-blasting into mountain sides in order to, as the chant went, build the wall.
