Since the announcement of his candidacy, President Trump has been advocating for a border wall along the southern boundary of the United States to act as a barrier to protect the US from illegal immigration from Mexico. Since then, there has been much development of Trump’s plan and advocacy and even more debate over this progression of events. This blog post will take you through a comprehensive timeline of the series of events regarding the border wall debate that have transpired since the commencement of the argument.
16 June 2015: Trump announces his candidacy, immediately calling for a wall to be built at our southern border, saying:
“I will build a great wall–and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me–and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.”
June 2015 – November 2016: Trump’s campaign takes off in full swing, using the border wall as a major argument in his rallies and debates.
18 July 2016: The Republican party holds its national convention, amending the platform to include a mission to build a border wall:
The border wall must cover the entirety of the southern border and must be sufficient to stop both vehicular and pedestrian traffic.
08 November 2016: Trump is elected as President of the United States, and in his acceptance speech, makes no nods to the border wall being built. His address was meant to be a bipartisan one, calling attention to the need to work towards unity after a very divided election season.
10 November 2016: Newly elected Trump is seen all over every news channel, his wall being a big topic of discussion. Rudy Giuliani, an advisor of Trump’s, first brought up the idea of using an executive order to build the wall in a CNN interview:
“The wall is going to take a while. Obviously, he’s going to build it. It’s a campaign promise. He’s not going to break a campaign promise..he can do it by executive order by just reprogramming money within the, within the immigration service…And not only that, they have actually approved a wall for certain portions of the border that hasn’t even been built yet. So you could take a year building that out, with what has been approved.”
13 November 2016: Trump goes on air with 60-minutes in his first post-election interview, stating that he would be open to sections of the wall being a fence rather than a wall:
STAHL (60 Minutes): “You’re— you know, they are talking about a fence in the Republican Congress, would you accept a fence?”
TRUMP: “For certain areas, I would, but certain areas, a wall is more appropriate. I’m very good at this, it’s called construction…there could be some fencing.”
25 January 2017: Trump issues the Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements executive order, stating:
“In accordance with existing law, including the Secure Fence Act and IIRIRA, take all appropriate steps to immediately plan, design, and construct a physical wall along the southern border, using appropriate materials and technology to most effectively achieve complete operational control of the southern border;”
26 January 2017: The idea of a twenty-percent import tax on all goods from Mexico is floated by White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer as a way to pay for the wall.
24 February 2017: The federal government posts to FedBizOpps.gov, announcing that bids from construction companies to build the wall will be requested on March 6th:
“The Dept. of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) intends on issuing a solicitation in electronic format on or about March 6, 2017, for the design and build of several prototype wall structures in the vicinity of the United States border with Mexico. The procurement will be conducted in two phases, the first requiring vendors to submit a concept paper of their prototype(s) by March 10, 2017, which will result in the evaluation and down select of offerors by March 20, 2017. The second phase will require the down-select of phase 1 offerors to submit proposals in response to the full RFP by March 24, 2017, which will include price. Multiple awards are contemplated by mid-April for this effort. An option for additional miles may be included in each contract award.”
28 February 2016: Trump addressed a joint session of Congress for the first time, saying:
“We must restore integrity and the rule of law to our borders…For that reason, we will soon begin the construction of a great wall along our southern border. It will be started ahead of schedule and, when finished, it will be a very effective weapon against drugs and crime.”
16 March 2017: Trump sends out his 2018 budget, including $2.6 billion set aside in the spending outline of the Department of Homeland Security to fund the building of the wall.
28 March 2017: Public debate and discussion begin concerning the funding of the wall as a potential shutdown looms over the heads of the USFG.
06 January 2018: Trump delivers a speech and answers questions at Camp David meetings, stating:
“As you know, we’re negotiating NAFTA, we’ll see how that goes. Yes. But Mexico will pay — in some form — Mexico will pay for the wall.”
22 December 2019 – 25 January 2019: The USFG shuts down over the border wall funding conflict between the Democrats in Congress and Trump.
05 February 2019: Trump delivers his State of the Union address, alluding to a future emergency declaration in order to fund the border wall.
15 February 2019: Trump declares a national emergency in order to acquire funding for the wall without Congressional approval.
14 March 2019: Congress (every Democrat as well as twelve Republicans voting in favor) passes a resolution to block Trump’s declaration of national emergency. Trump responds by promising a veto on March 26th.
The story will surely continue to develop, and I suppose we’ll just have to see whether or not we get a wall.
Over and out.
-Courtney
I find this topic to be really interesting, and I really like how you laid out the complete history of the wall in your post. I think some aspects of politics are interesting, but the thing that keeps me from being more involved is how complicated they are. I often feel like I need a thorough history of the issue in order to understand what’s going on now. So this was really helpful!