How does CBP define 'new' versus 'existing' barrier miles on its Smart Wall map?
Executive summary
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Smart Wall map distinguishes "existing" barrier miles as those barriers that were already in place before January 20, 2025, and treats "new" barrier miles as segments planned, under construction, or completed after that date—categories the map labels as Planned, Under Construction, and Completed [1]. CBP also separately tallies miles of detection technology deployed in places where barriers already existed, indicating the agency differentiates physical barrier mileage from technology-mileage overlays [1] [2].
1. How CBP separates the timeline: the Jan. 20, 2025 cutoff is the defining line
CBP explicitly uses January 20, 2025 as the temporal dividing line on the Smart Wall map, labeling barriers constructed prior to that date as pre-existing and showing where new Smart Wall projects—planned, under construction or completed—have been added since that date [1]. That single-date cutoff is the principal criterion CBP publishes for distinguishing legacy barriers from the agency’s “new” Smart Wall mileage, and the interactive map is continually updated to reflect progress after that baseline [1].
2. What “new” means on the map: planned, under construction, completed
On CBP’s Smart Wall map, “Planned” denotes total mileage that has been planned and funded but for which contracts have not yet been awarded; “Under Construction” represents projects where border wall panels or waterborne barriers are currently being constructed or deployed; and “Completed” represents total mileage finished since January 20, 2025 [1]. CBP’s news releases and project summaries reiterate those categories when announcing contract awards and mileage additions, specifying how contract awards add primary, secondary and waterborne barrier miles to the map’s “new” totals [2].
3. What “existing” includes and how technology is counted separately
CBP’s public materials make clear that the Smart Wall map includes barriers constructed prior to January 20, 2025 under an “existing” umbrella while separately showing where CBP is deploying detection technology in locations that already have barriers—CBP reports deploying approximately 549 miles of technology in places with previously constructed barriers [1] [2]. The agency’s FAQs describe the variety of pre-existing barrier types—steel bollard wall, legacy pedestrian fencing, concrete levee wall with bollards and temporary barriers—indicating that “existing” is a heterogeneous set of physical structures that predates the 2025 Smart Wall push [3].
4. Numbers and context reporters use — corroboration and limits
Reporting that cites CBP data gives context for the split between prior and new miles—for example, outlets and CBP statements reference hundreds of miles of pre-Jan. 20, 2025 primary and secondary barriers and subsequent contract awards adding hundreds more miles of primary/secondary/waterborne barriers and system attributes [4] [2] [5]. However, the official CBP pages provided define the categories and show map status labels but do not publish a single line-item methodological white paper explaining measurement rules (for example, how partial replacement vs. new alignment is scored), so there is a limit to what can be asserted about finer counting conventions beyond the temporal-and-status definitions on the map itself [1] [3].
5. Competing framings and implications
Advocacy and local reporting frame the Smart Wall either as an expansion onto previously unwallable terrain or as the completion and augmentation of existing defenses with technology, and those framings both rest on CBP’s categorical split between pre-2025 “existing” miles and post-2025 “new” miles—an implicit political and operational boundary [6] [5]. CBP’s separate accounting for system attributes and technology miles where barriers already exist also enables the agency to claim additional coverage without changing the physical barrier-mile baseline, an important nuance for anyone comparing “miles of wall” claims in media and political statements [2] [1].