Half-built walls and ruined mountains: These photos and video show the remains of Trump's incomplete border wall.
All along the US-Mexico border, the machines are silent. On January 20, President Joe Biden gave workers seven days to wind down construction. His administration is reviewing all contracts and the costs of "terminating or repurposing" them. https://www.businessinsider.com/pictures-trumps-half-built-border-wall-and-ruined-landscape-2021-2
A total of 453 miles of new primary or secondary barrier were completed under Trump. Much of the project has left some areas, especially around southeastern Arizona, in disarray. Blasts continued in Guadalupe Canyon even on inauguration day.
In Arizona's mountainous regions, the stalled project has left lone segments of wall perched on steep outcrops, in areas were too inhospitable for people to attempt to cross anyway.
Laiken Jordahl, a borderlands campaigner for the Center for Biological Diversity, said it was infuriating to see parts of the border wall scarring an otherwise-protected landscape.
This drone footage taken on January 30 shows the extensive damage to remote landscapes such as Cuenca Los Ojos.
Border campaigners also said that in some mountainous locations, the construction had achieved the opposite to Trump's aim, making border security worse. The creation of switchback roads made some areas more passable to foot traffic. https://www.businessinsider.com/poor-trump-border-wall-construction-created-new-weakpoints-sources-2021-1
Here, the wall stops short of a completely new set of routes leading to the border wall site east of the Sasabe point of entry to the US. And beyond them is a road to the rest of the US.
It’s quiet at the border now. “It's pretty surreal just because at all of these places, there used to just be incessant construction activity. And now it's just deserted,” Jordahl said.
Insider commissioned photographer John Darwin Kurc ( @iamKurc) to document those parts of the border where work has suddenly stopped. Take a look at what he saw here: https://www.businessinsider.com/pictures-trumps-half-built-border-wall-and-ruined-landscape-2021-2