Overview

We Build the Wall, also known as the GoFundMe Border Wall, is crowdfunding campaign to build a wall along the United States border with Mexico. The campaign, which raised upwards of $23 million in donations, completed building its first segment of in Sunland Park, New Mexico in late May 2019.

Background

On December 17th, 2018, Florida resident Brian Kolfag created a GoFundMe^[1] titled "We The People Will Fund The Wall," proposing to raise money to help build the border wall. Within 72 hours, the campaign raised upwards of $6.8 million of its $1.0 billion goal (shown below).

In the campaign's description, Kolfage denounces illegal immigration and claims "“If the 63 million people who voted for Trump each pledge $80, we can build the wall.”

Developments

On December 20th, Redditor zzyzx66 submitted a photoshopped version of the campaign page, displaying "Ronald T Trump" as the sole contributor to /r/meme^[2] (shown below).

That month, Kolfage launched the @WeBuildtheWall Twitter feed, which gathered more than 10,000 followers over the next six months.

First Segment

On May 27th, 2019, Kolfage uploaded a video showing the construction of a half-mile wall segment in Sunland Park, New Mexico, along with the announcement that it was "nearly complete" (shown below).

On June 5th, 2019, BuzzFeed News^[3] published an article titled "The GoFundMe Border Wall Is Finished. It’s Not Stopping Migrants From Coming In."

Search Interest

External References