Has President Trump Kept His Promise to “Build That Wall”? Here Are the Facts

This appeared in The Millennial Source

To declare his candidacy for the 2016 US presidential election, Donald Trump delivered a speech in which he described Mexican immigrants as criminals, rapists, and drug smugglers. From that day forward, Trump has made an immigration crackdown the bedrock of his campaign and his presidency. In his rhetoric at rallies, the promised crackdown has always centered on his most famous campaign promise — that he would build a “big, beautiful, powerful wall” along the US-Mexico border.

Constructing such a barrier is not a new idea. About 700 miles of the nearly 2,000-mile-long US southern border already had fences, walls or other barricades in place when Trump took office. However, no other president has placed so much emphasis on constructing border barriers.

Chants of “Build that wall!” have been ubiquitous at Trump rallies since at least May 2016, when he egged on a Phoenix, Arizona crowd that had started the chant. Throughout his 2016 campaign, Trump repeatedly stated that constructing the massive wall would cause no hardship for US taxpayers, because Mexico would pay for it:

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox famously responded in 2016 that there was no way Mexico would “pay…