President Trump has falsely claimed that Democrats are playing Republicans over border security and Trump’s proposed border wall along the Mexican border because Democrats want open borders.
When will Republican leadership learn that they are being played like a fiddle by the Democrats on Border Security and Building the Wall? Without Borders, we don’t have a country. With Open Borders, which the Democrats want, we have nothing but crime! Finish the Wall!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 15, 2018
A series of walls and fences across the Mexican border already exist, consisting of relatively short border walls secured between sections with cameras and sensors monitored by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The border began being constructed in 1994 to curb the transportation of illegal drugs manufactured in Latin America, as well as a means to curb illegal immigration. Over 580 miles of barriers are in place along the Mexican border, which is 1,989 miles total in length.
It is difficult to construct the remaining sections of the wall due to the fact that the United States does not own the remaining sections of land outright, and there have been many protests from Native Americans and other American landowners over the proposed construction of the wall on their land.
Congressional support for the construction of the wall was bipartisan. In 2006, members of both the Democratic and Republican parties supported a bill partially funding a physical fence spanning 700 miles along the border. It passed in the House of Representatives by a margin of 283–138 and in the Senate by a margin of 80–19.
The photograph in the header of this article is © Tomas Castelazo, www.tomascastelazo.com / Wikimedia Commons
