President Donald Trump paid a visit to Arizona on Tuesday to mark the completion of hundreds of miles of the wall along the US-Mexico border, claiming it has “stopped everything” including COVID-19.
“Our border has never been more secure,” said Trump, who made cracking down on illegal immigration a linchpin of his 2016 presidential campaign.
“This is the most powerful and comprehensive border wall structure anywhere in the world,” Trump said at a roundtable briefing in Yuma on border security before a visit to a section of the wall. More than 200 miles (322 kilometres) of the wall has been built.
“It has technology that nobody would even believe, between sensors and cameras and everything else,” he said.
Trump said at least 450 miles of wall would be completed by the end of the year and “we’ll be very close to 500 miles.”
He also said the border wall has cut back on human trafficking and drug smuggling from Mexico and helped prevent a “coronavirus catastrophe on the southern border.”
“It stopped COVID, it stopped everything,” Trump said.
The past two months have seen the “lowest number of illegal border crossings in many years,” he added.
Trump’s visit to Arizona comes as the southwest state reported a record 3,591 cases of COVID-19 and a high of 42 deaths.
The trip to Arizona is taking place three days after Trump visited Tulsa, Oklahoma, to hold his first campaign rally since the pandemic began.