Donald Trump Tells N.C. Rally: Border Toll Will Fund Border Wall

President Donald Trump tours a section of the border wall, Tuesday, June 23, 2020, in San
AP Photo/Evan Vucci
Neil Munro

President Donald Trump said September 8 that he will fund the southern border wall by setting “a small toll” on people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

“We’re over 300 miles now, and we will be finished with it very soon,” Trump told his September 8 rally in Winston-Salem, N.C. He continued:

Mexico is paying for the wall, just so you understand. They don’t say that. They never say it. But we’re going to charge a small fee at the border … It is the biggest border in the world in terms of people going across, in terms of industry … We’re putting a small toll on and maybe we’re going to do something with remittances. That’s why people come here, make money and they send it back.

“All the money that we spent on the wall will be coming back,” he said.

By the end of 2020, the construction program will have built 450 miles of Trump’s border wall along the border, complete with matched rods and surveillance devices. Most of the new wall replaces older, lower walls.

Trump zig-zagged on his criticism and praise for Mexico and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

Obrador signed a deal with Trump in June 2019 that transformed Mexico’s policy and attitudes against migrant smuggling, largely ending Mexico’s hands-off policies towards illegal migration into the United States.

Trump said:

So remember, I used to say, “Who’s gonna pay for it?” They’d say “Mexico!” That’s right. What happens if they fight us? Remember that answer? “It’s gonna get 10 feet higher.”

But now Mexico and I get along great. In fact, they have 27,000 soldiers along our southern border, protecting us from people coming into our country. Can you imagine?

…

The President’s been great. He’s a friend of mine, He’s doing a very good job … But the wall is almost completed and it’s a tremendous wall.

Trump is using more than $10 billion in federal taxes to build the wall that helps border agencies redirect and detect the movement of migrants and drugs through the border.

The wall complements the many regulatory reforms pushed by Trump. The reforms allow border agencies to legally deport more than 90 percent of migrants within a few hours, despite many lawsuits by pro-migration groups, often in courtrooms run by migration-friendly judges.

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