U.S.-MEXICO BORDER — The Trump administration is constructing a border barrier system described as a "smart wall," consisting of 30-foot-tall steel fencing and surveillance technology including sensors, cameras, and towers. As of mid-June 2026, Customs and Border Protection had constructed an additional 74 miles of border wall.

Customs and Border Protection has signed contracts for hundreds of miles of additional border wall construction. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin stated that a preliminary part of the wall would be finished by mid-2027. Commissioner Rodney Scott said the agency is constructing 6 miles of wall per week. The agency is also adding technology, lights, and roads to hundreds of miles of previously built wall.

Scott stated that the system maximizes the use of agents. "It's a smart wall. It's not just a barrier. It maximizes the use of our most valuable resource, which is our agents," Scott said. A GOP tax cuts and spending bill passed by Congress in 2025 requires Customs and Border Protection to purchase only autonomous towers. The agency is deploying an additional 95 autonomous towers and 12- to 15-foot-long cylinder-shaped buoys in the Rio Grande along the Texas-Mexico border.

Nayda Alvarez, a landowner, found cameras placed on her family's land and observed a surveillance tower about a quarter mile down the river from her house in late June 2026. "Are we expecting a war or something? It doesn't make me feel safer," Alvarez said. Customs and Border Protection is not planning to build a 30-foot-high bollard wall in the Big Bend area of southern Texas, a plan that had gathered bipartisan opposition.

Why It Matters

Congress provided $46 billion for immigration enforcement and border wall construction. The current efforts include the deployment of autonomous towers and fiberoptic cables, which companies like Sintela have contracts to install. Buried fiberoptic cables are used to sense movement and capture data analyzed by artificial intelligence. Approximately 535 miles of the roughly 2,000-mile-long border are not planned for physical wall construction due to rugged terrain; in these locations, ground sensors and towers will be used. Border crossings decreased shortly before Donald Trump returned to office in 2025 and continued to decline thereafter.