How many miles of new border barriers were completed by the end of 2025, by sector and type?
Executive summary
By the end of 2025, publicly available federal and state documents in the provided reporting do not supply a single, consolidated tally of “miles completed” of new border barriers broken down by Border Patrol sector and barrier type; instead the record is a patchwork of completed miles reported by a Texas state agency, federal contract awards and project plans that promise specific future miles, and agency maps and environmental notices that label many miles as “planned” or “under construction” rather than definitively completed [1] [2] [3] [4]. The clearest confirmed completion figure in these sources is a Texas Facilities Commission report on the state-funded Texas program (dozens of miles), while CBP releases and contract notices primarily enumerate miles to be added through contracts or projects rather than miles verified as finished by 12/31/2025 [1] [2] [5].
1. Texas state program: the only explicit completed-mile figure in these sources
The Texas Facilities Commission provided the most concrete “completed” number in the material: TFC reported 54.6 miles completed as of January 16, 2025 and updated that figure to 56.9 miles on February 20, 2025 and to 66.4 miles as of June 18, 2025 for the Texas border wall program—numbers specific to Texas county projects and the state program rather than federal Smart Wall claims [1]. These TFC numbers reflect state-driven construction activity distinct from the federal Smart Wall contracts described elsewhere and are the only explicit completed-mileage figures in the provided reporting; the sources do not include a comparable federal “completed by end of 2025” summary across all sectors [1].
2. Federal Smart Wall awards and project scope — promised miles by sector and type
Federal CBP press materials and reporting document multiple late‑2025 contract awards and environmental filings that specify miles to be constructed, but these documents frame the miles as contract scopes, planned construction, or locations receiving technology, not as final verified completions by year‑end. CBP announced five contract awards in November–December 2025 that together will add roughly 97 miles of primary border wall, 19 miles of secondary wall, 66 miles of waterborne barrier, and 149 miles of detection technology across Texas and Arizona sectors (noted projects include Del Rio, Tucson 2, and Laredo 1) [2] [5]. Separately, reporting summarized a tranche of September 2025 awards described as adding about 230 miles of “Smart Wall” and nearly 400 miles of new technology across seven sectors—again a description of awarded work, not a certified completion total as of 12/31/2025 [6].
3. Sector-specific planning documents: Tucson and El Paso project mileages
CBP’s environmental assessments and project notices provide sector-level planning numbers: a November 2025 Tucson‑sector filing outlined plans for approximately 222 miles of barrier system attributes in Pima, Yuma, Santa Cruz and Cochise counties including about 42 miles of secondary barrier and around 19 miles of new primary barrier in specified counties [4]. A November 2025 El Paso‑sector notice described roughly 88 miles of barrier system attributes—36 miles of primary barrier in Smeltertown and Fort Hancock and 6 miles of replacement barrier—again stated as planned project mileages [7]. These filings show intended scope by sector but do not equate to a post‑completion verification as of year‑end 2025 [4] [7].
4. What can and cannot be asserted from the available reporting
Available federal sources in this set consistently describe contract awards, planned miles, or technology deployments “to be added,” while only the Texas Facilities Commission reports discrete completed miles through mid‑2025 [2] [5] [1]. The reporting therefore permits confident statements about how many miles were contracted or proposed in late 2025 by sector and type (for example, the five contracts adding 97 primary miles, 19 secondary, 66 waterborne, 149 technology), but it does not permit a definitive, source‑backed accounting of how many of those miles were actually finished and certified as complete by the end of 2025 across each Border Patrol sector [2] [5] [4] [7].
5. Political context and risks to compiling a single completed-mile figure
The pattern in the sources—federal press releases and waiver filings emphasizing awards and planned scope, state reports giving partial completion counts, and watchdog/advocacy outlets summarizing miles promised—reflects competing incentives: agencies and contractors publicize contracts and planned program scale, states report local completions where they fund work, and watchdogs highlight environmental or humanitarian impacts; that mix complicates any unified end‑of‑2025 completion total and risks conflating “award/plan” with “completed” unless a single authoritative after‑action verification is published [2] [5] [6] [4]. In short, the supplied reporting supports a firm inventory of contracted/planned miles by sector and type but does not contain the consolidated, source‑verified miles actually completed by sector and type as of December 31, 2025 [2] [4] [1].