Only I can fix it · 2016 campaign · № 4
Only he could fix the unsecured southern border
“Our Southern border is unsecure. I am the only one that can fix it, nobody else has the guts to even talk about it.”
- Said
- , Post on Twitter (@realDonaldTrump)
- Subject
- the southern border
- Topic
- Immigration
- Era
- 2016 campaign
What happened
He repeated the claim in other forms, e.g. at a Feb. 26, 2016 Fort Worth rally ("there's going to be a real wall... I'm the only one that knows how to build it"). By January 2021 the administration reported about 450 miles of barrier, but only 47-52 miles of it was new primary wall where none existed before; the rest replaced existing fencing, and U.S. taxpayers, not Mexico, paid the roughly $15 billion cost. Southwest border apprehensions hit 851,508 in fiscal 2019, more than double fiscal 2018, and were 14.7% higher in his final year than in 2016.
Sources
- Tweets of July 3, 2015
- Tweet: 'Our Southern border is unsecure. I am the only one that can fix it'
- Fact check: Mexico never paid for it. But what about Trump's other border wall promises?
- Southwest Border Migration FY 2019
- Trump's Final Numbers
- Speech with Robert Jeffress, Rally, Fort Worth, TX (transcript)