Trump border wall

President Donald Trump has vowed to see 450 miles of border wall built by the end of 2020.

"I know that it's a big issue. People don't use the picnic area because they don't feel comfortable and that barrier would make the city safer," a city commissioner said.

As the Pentagon confirms the deployment of 1000 U.S. troops and six helicopters to the southwest border next week on August 15, documents obtained by Newsweek show drones and reconnaissance planes could be going with them.

"The situation is improving by every available metric, but, I want to be very clear that we remain at and beyond crisis levels in illegal crossings," said Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan.

The court allows the Trump administration to move forward with reallocating approximately $2.5 billion, originally appropriated for the Defense Department, to use for construction of the border wall.

Former Trump ally hits out over reports that the president has not built a single mile of new border wall in 30 months.

"The poor bear was euthanized for no reason. (Except that we don't have a wall on our border)," Coulter tweeted.

Is President Donald Trump's long-promised border wall an immigration deterrent or simply a "vanity project?"

The expanded ban excludes an additional 79 miles of the border near Tucson and El Centro, Calif., from being used for wall construction.

Back stateside, the photo showing drowning victims Oscar Alberto Martínez and 23-month-old daughter Angie Valeria sparked immediate outcry, with pundits and journalists drawing comparisons to other haunting photographs of war.

Trump tweeted a vague warning on Monday night that his administration would "begin the process of removing the millions of illegal aliens," but the right-wing pundit isn't buying it.

"We Build The Wall" organizers say they are ready to start construction on building more border wall across 10 different properties.

"The city has not provided any permits, it has not approved of the construction that has gone up already. They built the structure without authority or any building permits from the city," city spokesperson Peter Ibardo told The Texas Tribune.

"Buckle up, we're just getting started! If we can get this much done in three days, imagine what's about to be accomplished," the group posted on its Facebook page.

"It is about illegal aliens getting to vote for Democrats, as they see it, and recreate a Democrat plantation," Gorka told Fox Business.

The president has reportedly taken on the finer details of the border wall because he sees himself as a builder, said a former Homeland Security official who worked on the border barrier prototypes.

"We, and our Republican colleagues, must speak out against this contrived national 'emergency,'" former Republican Congressman Mickey Edwards said.

"We do have a crisis at the border, but it's a refugee crisis. Not a crisis of illegal crossings," the former senior DHS official said.

"It is dangerous when presidents write their own laws, impose their own taxes, spend money how they want and Congress looks the other way," Andrew Napolitano, Fox News' senior judicial analyst, said.

Money originally intended for the Airborne Warning and Control System and funding for U.S. allies has also been redirected to the southern border wall.

"It's a waste of money," one social media user said in response to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency's request for public comment.

Confusion over where the U.S.-Mexico border begins and ends led to Mexican soldiers temporarily detaining U.S. soldiers who believed they were in Mexican territory when they were in U.S. territory.

Defense Department documents obtained by Newsweek show a troop surge at the southwest border, a request made by the White House amid President Donald Trump's renewed push to stem the flow of undocumented immigrants.

There is a group, a family that has a United Methodist Church, they are preachers, they are the ones that started the sanctuary city. They are directly getting money from George Soros and others," Beck said.

Immigration officials struggle with "huge backups to process folks into the country," Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said.

"We're going to court to ensure that President Trump's desperate bid to fund his border wall with a bogus national emergency and taxpayer money fails," an ACLU staff attorney said.

"If we try to assert these very hard, fixed borders at a time when technology and information are borderless, not only will we fail but we'll see greater conflict and clashes between people," Barack Obama said.

"This is a fake emergency! Donald Trump is lying about the border in order to build his monument to racism," Omar tweeted on Wednesday.

Nielsen told Fox News' Tucker Carlson that every option was on the table to stop illegal immigration into the U.S.

Late-night TV host suggested that students planning to vacation in Cancun this year could spend spring break at Trump's wall instead.