What’s bigger than the Hoover Dam or the Panama Canal? The Trump Administration’s
spending of more than $46 billion in taxpayer money on border walls, and buoy barriers across
the 1,954-mile border. The government mega-project is being carried out with little government
oversight, input from communities, and zero studies on environmental or wildlife impacts.
There’s also been no reliable government data, or a way to publicly track the border wall
construction, as it unfolds. This is why The Border Chronicle created a new community-powered
mapping project, Wall Watch, to track current awarded border wall contracts, surveillance
technology and other border infrastructure.

Border Chronicle cofounder Melissa del Bosque and Geographer Dugan Meyer, who built the
database for the interactive map, describe what you can find on Wall Watch from existing border
wall to community reports on wall construction, surveying, environmental impacts and buoy
barrier installation. It’s easy for border residents to submit a community report, and it helps build
an accurate picture of construction as it is happening across the U.S.-Mexico border region.

Del Bosque and Meyer also discuss the challenges of building Wall Watch, and finding reliable
government data for the map, how Wall Watch will help border residents understand the massive
mega construction project as it impacts their communities, and how residents can help build a
more accurate map by submitting reports on what they’re seeing on the ground. They also talk
about the kind of data you can find on Wall Watch, and how it’s available to anyone to download.
And they discuss the administration’s plan to build a “wall system” that includes two walls with
enforcement zones, patrol roads, surveillance towers and stadium lights along the entire southern
border. “When this administration is done, the southern border will look more like a federal
prison with double walls draped in concertina wire,” said del Bosque. “You only have to look at
San Diego where the wall system is already in place, and where they used the enforcement zone
between the two walls as an open-air detention site in 2023, to see what the plan is for the rest of
the border.”