Some obnoxious fake news TDS posting on Facebook said President Trump had only completed 16 miles... Doubt FB will lift a finger to fix it.
“posting on Facebook said President Trump had only completed 16 miles”
That is the old “New Wall vs Replacement Fence” canard. It doesn’t count (in their fevered TDS dreams) as new wall, if there was a strand of barbed wire there before.
They are not counting 30 foot bollards with new high speed all weather road, grid powered stadium lighting, full persistent day/night camera surveillance with multiple alarm systems as new wall (which fully halts a major flow of illegal traffic through an area, Like San Diego) - as long as something of any sort was there before, no matter how ridiculously ineffective it was.
The bottom line is that the new wall is carefully prioritized to go in where it will make the biggest impact first - regardless of whether some ineffective barrier was there or not.
So the conclusion of their misleading rhetoric (that no significant border control is getting accomplished by wall building) is the very opposite of reality. Those 229 new miles are making a major difference where they were installed - exceeding their design estimates so far.
Very fundamental border control is occurring, and the rollout now is an order of magnitude more rapid than it was in the first couple of years of the Trump Administration. We are off to the races, flooding the zone with more and more concurrent crews. About twice as much money is to be put on contract this year (~$12 bil), as the first three years combined (~$6 bil).
Those 229 already completed miles are near the top of the priority list. The first 300-400 miles on the priority list, account for over 80% of historical illegal traffic.
Although very high priority miles in the Rio Grande Valley Sector have lagged behind their priority order due to land acquisition and other special issues (like flood control and Treaty requirements), everything being built is in carefully prioritized, very impactful locations - far from random. The design of what is being built, is based on achieving full operational control of that segment - not just some marginal improvement.