Construction is not resuming on hundreds of miles of border wall that Trump promised

While in office, President Donald Trump didn’t fulfill his promise to build a wall along the southern U.S. border and make Mexico pay for it.

So, is his successor now picking up the slack? That’s what one Facebook post would leave readers to believe.

"Biden changes his mind and now wants to resume building Trump’s wall," read the headline on an April 3 post that included a link to an April 2 story on the American Web Media website.

The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)

But the headline is misleading and gives the false impression that construction will commence on hundreds of miles of border wall that Trump promised. That’s not what’s happening.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is planning repair work on the existing border wall,  including closing gaps, cleaning up work sites and stabilizing eroding areas. The work will address "life, safety, environmental and remediation requirements," the department said in a December 2021 press release.

Regarding the gaps, "in the scramble to build as quickly as possible before Biden took office, construction crews in several areas of southern Arizona skipped over locations that required additional engineering or custom wall panels," the Washington Post reported. Some gaps are a few feet across and others are much wider, and they have become crossing points for migrants and smugglers.

In one area where remediation work is needed, demolition crews carved roads and gouged paths through the mountains in preparation for sections of the wall that were never built. Now, "the abandoned border wall site is a liability for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, with loose rocks and boulders sliding down the mountainsides," according to the Washington Post.

On the day Biden was inaugurated, he signed an executive action that called for a pause of border wall construction with the goal of ending it. His campaign promises included saying that there would "not be another foot" of the wall constructed.

Featured Fact-check

Threads posts

stated on November 20, 2024 in a Threads post

“Texas just gifted Trump 355,000 acres for deportation camps.”

The Texas Tribune reported on work underway on a 13-mile section of new construction in Texas. Critics noted that it looks like a border wall. But the government says it isn’t. It says earthen levees are being replaced with concrete levees topped with guard rails.

The headline on a Facebook post says, "Biden changes his mind and now wants to resume building Trump’s wall."

The headline gives the false impression that construction will commence on hundreds of miles of border wall promised by the Trump administration.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is planning repair work on the existing border wall, including closing gaps, cleaning up work sites and stabilizing eroding areas. But this work is not indicative of Biden’s effort to "resume building Trump’s wall."

We rate this claim False.