The construction of hundreds of miles of what former President Donald Trump called his "big, beautiful" wall on our southern border was abruptly halted when President Joe Biden took over the White House in early 2021.
They had waived the normal environmental review process to get it built fast — and complaints rolled in about devastated landscapes, Native American burial sites and knocked down saguaros.
Then, inspectors from the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, went out to figure out how bad the damage had been. Anna Maria Ortiz led that investigation.
Ortiz is the director of GAO’s Natural Resources and Environment team and The Show spoke with her more about what they found.