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PartialImmigration & Border Security

On day one, we will begin working on an impenetrable physical wall on the southern border...and Mexico will pay for the wall.

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PartialFact-checker reviewConfidence: 85%

Independently verified all three cited sources as real, live, and accurately quoted. This is a compound promise: (1) begin an impenetrable physical wall on the southern border, and (2) Mexico will pay for it. Component 1 was partially delivered: CBP data (via PolitiFact) shows 458 total barrier miles built, but only ~52 miles of genuinely new primary wall where none existed before; the remainder (~351 primary + 22 secondary) replaced pre-existing, dilapidated barriers, and FactCheck.org confirms 'most of the wall constructed to date has been replacement.' It was neither impenetrable nor a completed new wall. Component 2 failed entirely: Mexico never paid, and roughly $15 billion of construction was borne by US taxpayers; PolitiFact's Trump-O-Meter rates 'Build a wall, and make Mexico pay for it' a Promise Broken. Trump championed the effort hard (shutdown, national emergency), but CHAMPIONED (+0.75) would over-credit given the wholesale failure of the funding pledge and the mostly-replacement, non-impenetrable wall. Negative outcomes are inapplicable — he engaged heavily and worked for the promise, not against it. PARTIAL ('kept some but not all') is the fair, nonpartisan fit; the same record from any party would earn the same label.

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