DHS Secretary Noem says entire southern border wall will be painted black to stop people from climbing it

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32. MaddowBlog-With black paint on border barriers, Trump and Noem are repeating a familiar mistake

Last edited Wed Aug 20, 2025, 02:25 PM - Edit history (1)

The last time the president ordered officials to apply black paint to border barriers, it was an expensive failure. Naturally, he’s trying it again.

As you see reports about Trump/Noem painting border barriers black, don’t forget the recent history:

When Trump made this same demand five years ago, it was an expensive and wasteful failure. True to form, he’s repeating the same mistake, expecting a different result. www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo...

— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2025-08-20T15:58:42.730Z

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/black-paint-border-barriers-trump-noem-are-repeating-familiar-mistake-rcna226052

The enormous amount of new spending will also includes money for, of all things, the president’s preferred paint color. The Associated Press reported:

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Tuesday that the entire border wall along the southern border with Mexico is going to be painted black to make it hotter and deter illegal immigration — and she credited President Trump with the idea. Noem spoke during a visit to a portion of the wall in New Mexico, where she also picked up a roller brush to help out with the painting.

The Cabinet secretary added that the paint project is being done “specifically at the request of the president, who understands that in the hot temperatures down here, when something is painted black, it gets even warmer, and it will make it even harder for people to climb.”

There was, however, one relevant detail that Noem neglected to mention: The Trump administration already tried this same idea, and it didn’t work.......

Trump first started pushing the idea in 2019, at which point administration officials tried to explain to him that the painting project would waste too much time and money in pursuit of a goal that wouldn’t make much of a difference anyway. Border officials were confident at the time that Trump understood their concerns and would focus his energies elsewhere.

They were mistaken. In 2020, when the president should’ve been working on the pandemic, he ordered his team to start applying black paint to the barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border, insisting that it would make the barriers hot to the touch and discourage climbers.

To the surprise of no one, Trump was wrong and those who tried to discourage him were right. Not only did the black paint fail to discourage breaches, it also started peeling off about a year and a half after it was applied. The whole endeavor was an expensive waste.

And so, naturally, the Trump administration is giving it another try, expecting a different result, spending a lot of American tax dollars on an initiative that only makes sense in the president's imagination.