Joe Biden's Border Patrol released 68,000 illegal aliens into America in a single month of April 2024.
Trump answered with $46 billion and a construction crew that hasn't stopped since.
What CBP is locking into every mile of that steel wall right now is something cartels never had to worry about before.
Obama's SBInet Virtual Fence Cost a Billion Dollars and Failed. Trump Is Building 6 Miles of Smart Wall a Week.
Barack Obama's DHS secretary pulled the plug on the so-called SBInet "virtual fence" in 2011 after Boeing burned through a billion taxpayer dollars and delivered exactly 53 miles of operational border technology in Arizona.
The sensors tracked animals instead of humans.
Cameras went dark when it rained.
Napolitano declared the project a failure and pulled DHS funding.
Trump's CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott just told Congress something very different.
"We're ahead of schedule and we're below budget on building border wall," Scott said. "Primary border wall, I've made a commitment to the president, will be done by the end of 2027."
That is six miles of new 30-foot steel bollard wall every single week.
The $46 billion for the smart wall came from the One Big Beautiful Bill Congress passed, and CBP is moving rapidly to put that funding on contract.
AI Surveillance Towers and Underground Sensors Are Sealing the Routes Cartels Relied on for Years
This wall is not the barbed wire that held the border for decades.
The fencing is topped with autonomous surveillance towers that detect movement across miles of terrain and send instant alerts to Border Patrol agents in the field.
CBP is adding 95 more autonomous towers under the One Big Beautiful Bill – each one covering up to 8 miles of border terrain without tying an agent to a control room screen.
Beneath the surface, buried fiberoptic cables detect footsteps and vehicle movement anywhere along the line, feeding data back for analysis even through dense terrain and riverbeds.
In the Rio Grande, large cylinder buoys stretch across the river at known smuggler crossing points, blocking water routes where steel fencing cannot go.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told the House Homeland Security Committee in June why a secondary wall follows behind the primary.
"The primary wall is the first wall up because of the way the cartels adjust," Mullin said. "They're criminals, they're thugs and they're terrorists."
Mullin pegged primary wall completion at June 2027, with the full secondary wall finished by summer 2028.
Border Crossings Down 95 Percent and 13 Straight Months of Zero Illegal Alien Releases Prove the Wall Is Working
The Democrat border record runs from Obama's failed technology experiment to Biden's deliberate open door.
Biden's answer was a catch-and-release pipeline with no ceiling and no end.
Trump reversed it in 13 months flat.
DHS and CBP confirmed on June 19, 2026, that Border Patrol released zero illegal aliens into the American interior for 13 consecutive months.
"What a difference, America," Commissioner Scott said. "The U.S. Border Patrol released zero illegal aliens into our country again this month, unlike April 2024 when more than 68,000 were released under President Biden."
Southwest border apprehensions have collapsed 95 percent – from more than 5,000 illegal crossings per day during Biden's worst stretches to 258 per day now.
That 258-per-day figure is what Biden's Border Patrol used to process in roughly 90 minutes.
Drug seizures are climbing even as crossings crater, with CBP logging 10,915 pounds of fentanyl and 186,359 pounds of methamphetamine in the first year of Trump enforcement alone.
Obama wasted a billion dollars. Biden wasted four years. Trump is making up for both.
Democrats spent years calling the border wall xenophobic, wasteful, and impossible to build.
Biden decided the wall was optional and left the door open on purpose.
Trump is proving both of them wrong at six miles a week – with AI, 30-foot steel bollards, and fiberoptic cables running through terrain that used to belong to cartels.
With tens of billions in contracts inked and CBP targeting 250 miles of new barriers by September 30 alone, the smart wall is not a promise anymore.
It is a construction site.
Sources:
- "Mullin Tells Congress Primary Border Wall Will Be Done by June 2027, Secondary Wall by Summer 2028," Fox News, June 2026.
- Christine Sellers, "Markwayne Mullin Estimates Primary Border Wall Will Be Done By Next Summer," Daily Caller, June 23, 2026.
- "CBP's Historic First Year Under the Current Administration," U.S. Customs and Border Protection, cbp.gov.