Trump admin set to start construction on 7 miles of new border wall, Kristi Noem announces

Kristi Noem has announced the construction of a new seven-mile stretch of President Trump’s border wall in Arizona — a day after the Secretary of Homeland Security revealed that illegal crossings have plummeted by by 95% under President Trump’s administration.

The former South Dakota governor, 53, said that she would begin construction on a fresh stretch of wall, as part of her bid to “make America safe again,” in a video she shared from the border on her X account on Sunday.

“Everybody, I’m here in Arizona, and right at this spot, you can see where the border wall ends,” she said in the video, posing in a US Border Patrol baseball cap and jacket.

“As of today, we’re starting seven new miles of construction, we’re going to continue to make America safe again.”

The Trump administration is continuing to press its advantage after making tremendous progress at the border in the first 50 days in office.

Illegal border crossings have decreased by 95% under the Trump administration compared to President Joe Biden’s tenure — with recent daily encounters dropping to some of the lowest numbers since the Border Patrol started tracking them.

“Just recently, we saw less than 200 encounters in a day. That’s remarkable. Now our agents can get back to doing their jobs and enforcing the law instead of processing,” Secretary Noem told NewsNation in an interview on Saturday.

She was in Nogales, in Santa Cruz County, Arizona, following reports that illegal crossings are now at levels not seen since 1967.

That area was known as a highway for cartel smugglers, who would use the vast open desert to traffic people and drugs across the border from Mexico.

Noem put the huge decrease down to the stricter enforcement policies under Trump, as well as the resumed border wall construction.

The Mexican cartels are becoming “more desperate” in response to the increased border security, she told NewsNation.

“They recognize that we’re enforcing our federal laws, that we’re not letting people just walk across the border anymore. We are building a wall, we are securing our borders, and we’re not going to let this illegal activity continue,” she said.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has arrested more than 32,000 people since Trump took office in January, Noem said, almost as many as the total number of ICE arrests made under the Biden administration in the whole of 2024.

On Saturday, Noem also shared some of the ingenious methods smugglers have used to try and get drugs and persons across the border illegally.

“Fentanyl hidden in watermelons. Humans smuggled in trucks. Meth concealed in charcoal. You name it, our Customs and Border Protection field officers are finding it,” she wrote on X.

“Proud of the work our officers are doing to keep America safe at Nogales Port of Entry.”