President Donald Trump praised DHS Secretary Kristi Noem for moving forward with plans to paint the entire southern border wall black, saying the change will boost the wall’s effectiveness and make it “untouchable” for illegal crossings.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Friday, Trump said he was surprised when Noem acted on his earlier suggestion.
“I didn’t know she was listening,” Trump remarked. “So, I turn on last night and I see Kristi is painting the wall, and it looked beautiful when that paint went on. If it’s white, it’s not hot. If it’s black, it’s going to be very hard to climb that sucker.”
The president also defended the wall’s construction. “I built the same wall that the Border Patrol asked me to build,” he said, describing it as high-grade steel reinforced with thick rebar and 9,000-pound concrete.
Noem announced Tuesday that the wall would be painted black as part of the administration’s strategy to make it more difficult to scale and to help preserve the structure.
Standing near a section of wall in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, Noem said the paint would serve a dual purpose—making the steel hotter in the sun and protecting it from rust.
She credited the “one big, beautiful bill” passed by Congress in July, which she said provided “an incredible amount of resources” to continue building at a pace of about half a mile of new wall per day.
According to Noem, the decision to paint the wall came directly at the president’s request. “He 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,” she said.
Noem added that the goal was to discourage illegal entry while encouraging legal immigration. “We want people to come to our country the right way so they can become citizens and pursue the American dream,” she said.
At the White House on Friday, Trump recounted his original conversation with Noem. “I said we’ve got to get a coat of paint on it. It should be black because black makes the steel very hot. It’s untouchable. You could fry an egg on it,” he said. “If you use a good, black, flat paint, it looks beautiful and it preserves the steel from rust. That was it, and I gave it to her along with 30 other things.”
Turning to Noem, who stood beside him, Trump asked if the job required one or two coats of paint. “Just one coat,” Noem replied.
Trump joked in response, “The two-coat job will take place in three years from now, we’ll do the second.”
“But it looks beautiful,” he concluded. “I didn’t know you were listening. We talked about so many things, and then I saw you out there painting with a lot of painters. It was a beautiful thing to see.”
