Christie Noem has announced the construction of a new seven-mile stretch on Arizona's President Trump's border wall. The Secretary of Homeland Security has revealed that illegal crossings have plummeted 95% under President Trump's administration.
The former South Dakota governor, 53, said in a video she shared from the border that she would begin construction on a fresh wall as part of a bid to “make America safe again.” With her X account on sunday.
“Guys, I'm here in Arizona, where you can see where the boundary wall ends,” she says in the video, posing in a baseball cap and jacket from the US border patrol.
“As of today, we are beginning a new seven miles of construction. We are keeping America safe again.”
The Trump administration continues to push its benefits after making great strides at the border in its first 50 days.
Compared to President Joe Biden's tenure, illegal border crossings fell by 95% under the Trump administration. Recent daily encounters have dipped to some of the recent numbers since Border Patrol began pursuits.
“Just recently we saw less than 200 encounters in a day. That's amazing. Now, our agents can go back to doing their job and implementing the law instead of dealing with it,” the secretary said. Noem told News Nation In a Saturday interview.
She was in Nogales, Santa Cruz County, Arizona, following reports that she had been at a level where illegal crossings were not seen since 1967.
The area was known as the cartel smuggler's highway. Cartel smugglers use vast open deserts to transport people and drugs across Mexico's borders.
Noem has dropped significantly to stricter enforcement policies under Trump and the construction of a reopened border wall.
Mexican cartels have become “more hopeless” in response to rising border security, she told News Nation.
“They recognize that we are enforcing federal laws. We are aware that people are not walking across borders anymore. We are building walls, we have borders and we are not going to continue this illegal activity,” she said.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has arrested more than 32,000 people since Trump took office in January, Noem said, about the same number of ice arrests made under the Biden administration in 2024.
On Saturday, Noem shared some of the inventive ways smugglers used to illegally try to acquire drugs and people across borders.
“Fentanyl hidden in watermelon. Humans smuggled in trucks. Methane hidden in charcoal. You name it and our customs and border security field officers find it,” she said. I wrote it on x.
“We are proud of the work our officers are doing to keep America safe at Nogales' port of entry.”
