How many miles of new border wall had been completed, under construction, and planned by the end of 2025 according to CBP?
Executive summary
By CBP’s public accounting, roughly 400 miles of “new” border wall system had been completed during 2025, while additional projects and contract awards during the year put hundreds more miles into construction pipelines and planning — including CBP announcements of contracts that will add about 230 miles of Smart Wall and agency plans to obligate funding for another 44 miles from prior appropriations [1] [2] [3]. CBP’s Smart Wall map and press releases stress that these figures are dynamic and updated as projects move between planned, under construction, and completed status [4].
1. Completed: CBP’s headline number — 400 miles of new system celebrated
CBP issued a proclamation celebrating “400 miles of new border wall system” as a milestone in 2025, explicitly describing that figure as miles of new system completed and noting construction was averaging roughly 10 miles per week at the time of that release [1]. That 400-mile figure comes from CBP’s own media release and is framed as “new” system mileage completed since the administration’s January 20, 2025 directives [1]. CBP’s other public materials reiterate that the Smart Wall program combines barrier panels and technology and that the agency treats completed mileage as an aggregate of these new physical barriers and system attributes [2] [5].
2. Under construction: contracts and project awards commit hundreds more miles
Across 2025 CBP announced multiple contract packages it said would add hundreds of miles of Smart Wall that are either already being built or moving into construction; a September 2025 CBP release described 10 construction contracts that “will add 230 miles of Smart Wall” along with nearly 400 miles of new detection technology [2]. Additional contract awards late in 2025 — described in CBP announcements totaling roughly $3.3 billion — included discrete projects such as approximately 15 miles of primary and 16 miles of waterborne barrier in the Laredo sector and roughly 19 miles of primary plus 19 miles of secondary wall in Tucson-sector work [5]. CBP’s public Smart Wall map also identifies which projects are “Under Construction,” a status that the agency updates weekly [4].
3. Planned (funded or to be obligated): dozens more miles tied to prior appropriations
CBP and DHS documentation show planned miles beyond what was already completed or under construction; the DHS fiscal report for FY2025 Q1–Q2 states that CBP planned to obligate Fiscal Year 2021 funds in 2025 to build an “additional 44 miles of new border wall and waterborne barriers” [3]. CBP’s Smart Wall map separately marks areas “planned for construction” (though the map itself is a running operational tool rather than a single static tabulation) and notes that it covers barriers constructed prior to January 20, 2025 as well as new projects being planned, under construction, or completed [4].
4. Why reconciling totals is messy: definitions, prior barriers, and shifting contracts
CBP’s accounting uses a specific baseline (barriers “prior to 1/20/2025”) and distinguishes “primary” and “secondary” walls, waterborne barriers, and system attributes like detection technology, so headline mileages mix different kinds of work [4]. CBP also aggregates new contractual commitments (for example, the 230 miles tied to September awards) with completed miles and with smaller discrete contract notices (e.g., 7, 27, 15, 19 mile awards reported across 2025) making exact sums time-sensitive and dependent on CBP’s weekly map updates [2] [5] [6]. State-level programs such as Texas’s separate reporting provide alternate tallies for state-funded work — the Texas Facilities Commission reported dozens of miles completed in its state program during 2025 — underscoring that multiple actors and funding streams complicate a single nationwide sum [7].
5. Bottom line and transparency caveats
The clearest CBP-published markers by the end of 2025 are: roughly 400 miles of new border wall system completed (CBP’s milestone) [1]; contractual awards and CBP statements indicating roughly 230 miles added by September contract packages that are in the construction pipeline [2]; and agency plans to obligate funds for roughly 44 additional miles using FY2021 appropriations [3]. CBP’s Smart Wall map and releases are the agency’s contemporaneous sources and the primary place to watch for mile-by-mile changes, and the agency notes the map is updated weekly [4]. Where reporting or advocacy cites other totals, the discrepancy typically reflects differing start dates, inclusion or exclusion of secondary/waterborne barriers, or separate state-funded projects rather than a single CBP contradiction [4] [7].