Vance visits the border and reveals Trump's plans to build the entire wall

Vice President JD Vance visited the country's southern border Wednesday along with Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.  The group visited the city of Eagle Pass in Texas and observed a section of the border fence during an aerial tour. At a press conference, the vice president revealed that one of President Donald Trump's biggest goals is to materialize his promise to build the entire wall, adding that the Republican leader hopes this can happen before the end of his term.

"I think the president's hope is that by the end of the term we build the entire border wall. And of course that's the physical structure, the border wall itself, but we even heard today, there are so many good technological tools. 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," Vance said.

Border policy success

At another point in his press conference, Vance commented that the latest figures handled by the Trump administration demonstrate a real success in its border policy having decreased illegal crossings from 1,500 a day to 30 and reduced border deaths by 85%.

"It turns out we didn't need new laws. We didn't need fancy legislation. We just needed a new President of the United States. And thank God, that's exactly what we have. Every single day that we continue to keep this border safe, that means less migrant crime. That means less fentanyl coming into our communities. That means more safety and security for the people of the United States of America," Vance explained during the press conference.

Mexico and tariffs

Vance, Hegseth and Gabbard arrived at the border a day after the U.S. government imposed tariffs of 25% on goods imported from Mexico and Canada. On this decision, the Trump administration argued that it was forced to take this action after the governments of Canada and Mexico failed to handle the situation at the border.

Regarding this decision, a Mexican journalist asked Vance what Mexican authorities could do to reverse the tariffs, to which the vice president responded that the best thing they could do was to take border security more seriously. "Well what the president says is we need a sustained commitment from the government of Mexico to take the job of border security seriously. Fentanyl is the single-largest cause of death among young Americans, and we know that a substantial portion of it is — the precursors are made in China, they come to Mexico, they're manufactured in Mexico, and brought across the border by the Mexican drug cartels. We want to see fewer Americans dying of these terrible fentanyl overdoses. We're going to apply as much leverage as possible to the Mexican government," the vice president stressed.