In his first public appearance since his speech that sparked a violent uprising last week in the United States Capitol building, President Donald Trump returned to a topic he often invokes in times of political conflict: immigration.
Trump visited the city of Alamo, in the Rio Grande Valley, Texas, on Tuesday to show the completion of the 450-mile border wall, which was instrumental in his 2016 campaign. It was a last-ditch effort to save his legacy and distract you from the impending impeachment process just days before your term ends.
Ignoring largely the crises that surround him, he talked about the many policies he sought to fundamentally reshape the immigration system in an appeal to his base.
“When I took office, we inherited a broken, dysfunctional and open border,” he said. “We reformed our immigration system and reached the safest southern border in the history of the United States.”
Trump limited how many asylum seekers can be prosecuted at the border daily and forced thousands of migrants to wait in Mexico for a chance to have their day in court in the United States under the “Stay in Mexico” policy, officially known as Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP).
He negotiated agreements with Central American countries that allowed the United States to send asylum seekers back to those countries and promulgated secret programs that allow immigration officials to quickly process and deport asylum seekers.
He has issued rules that prevent drastically reducing the circumstances in which people are eligible for asylum. And he invoked the pandemic as a means of expelling tens of thousands of migrants, including unaccompanied children.
But Trump also seemed aware of the impermanence of these policies, as President-elect Joe Biden took office.
“We cannot let the next government even think about taking it down,” he said of the wall.
The border has been a focal point of the Trump presidency
Trump began his presidential campaign in 2015 with a speech declaring that Mexican immigrants were “bringing drugs, they are bringing crime, they are rapists”, setting the tone for his agenda to restrict immigration during his term. On his last visit to the border as president on Tuesday, he returned to the same images, fueling the fear of violent criminals coming across the border and the formation of a new “caravan” of migrants.
“Donald Trump began his campaign with hateful rhetoric about Mexicans and his time in power will end when he highlights the most divisive symbol of his presidency, a wall that destroys our border communities,” said the Democratic Party president of Texas , Gilberto Hinojosa, in a statement. “In a week when we saw the dangers of Trumpism and Trump’s incendiary rhetoric, Donald Trump is returning to his most dangerous and hate-filled game book.”
The wall is a physical reminder of Trump’s efforts to prevent asylum seekers and other vulnerable migrants from entering by presenting a sign with his signature.
But despite what he promised in 2016, he did not build 1,600 kilometers of border wall and Mexico never paid for it; instead, the burden of more than $ 15 billion fell on taxpayers and was partially transferred from the Pentagon’s budget without Congressional approval. And he was only able to build it by renouncing environmental and hiring laws and confiscating private land.
Biden has promised to stop building walls as soon as he takes office, although it is easier said than done. It is unclear whether he could terminate existing construction contracts and what will be done with the unspent funds that were transferred from the Pentagon to the construction of the wall.
But despite Biden’s promise that “there will be no other wall built in my administration,” the new president’s team is likely to be tasked with maintaining Trump’s wall plan. And the hundreds of miles of fences that have already been built will serve as a physical testament to Trump’s immigration policy.