JD Vance Provides Date For When The Border Wall Should Be Completed

Vice President JD Vance said the Trump administration will seek to complete building a wall across the entire southern border by the end of the term in 2029.

Touring the border in Texas along with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Vance provided more details about the plans. He said he was referring to the "physical structure," but added that "there are so many good technological tools" to complement the wall and deter immigration.

"So many great artificial intelligence-enabled technologies that allow us, for example — a camera, not a person, but a camera picks up somebody two miles away who's about to come across the southern border. ... We're using artificial intelligence to make us better at the job of border enforcement, but we've got to make sure that technology is deployed across the entire American southern border. We're going to do it as much as we can, as broadly as we can, because that's how we're going to protect the American people's security," Vance said.

The use of such tools is being complemented with the deployment of thousands of troops, with an additional 5,050 set to be deployed soon following an order from Hegseth to have a Stryker brigade combat team (SBCT) and a general support aviation battalion to "bolster military support" in securing the southwest area.

According to a statement from Pentagon Press Secretary Sean Parnell, the reinforcements will arrive to the border in the coming weeks, although he did not say where the troops would be sent specifically. The U.S. had already ordered thousands of Army, Navy and other personnel to be deployed to the border. In January, Trump ordered 1,600 Marines to be relocated, joining 2,500 service members already there prior to him taking office.

The announcement comes as the number of migrant crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border was among the lowest in decades during President Donald Trump's first full month in office, according to the White House.

Concretely, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents made an estimated 8,450 apprehensions in February, making it the first time Border Patrol averaged roughly 8,000 apprehensions since 1968 according to historical statistics.