Written by Amrita Prakash, a grade 7 student.

Steve Bannon, the former adviser of US President Trump, has been arrested on fraud charges. He has been accused of cheating thousands of people who donated money for a campaign called, ‘We Build the Wall’. The campaign had raised (collected) more than USD 25 million.

Mr. Bannon is said to have received more than USD 1million, some of which he is believed to have used for his personal expenses.

Mr. Bannon was very close to President Trump and one of his main advisors during Trump’s 2016 presidential election victory.

What’s the ‘We Build The Wall’ campaign and what exactly did Mr.Bannon do?

During the 2016 election, President Trump promised to build a wall along the entire border between Mexico and the US (2,000 miles) – to stop illegal immigrants from coming into the country. He said that immigrants were stealing American jobs and he promised to stop that by building a wall.

The “We Build the Wall” campaign was started to collect funds (money) from people who supported Trump’s idea – because the cost would come to billions of dollars.

However, now it has been found out that Mr. Bannon (and some others who were part of the campaign) took the money from the donors, but it was not going to be used to build the wall, as promised.

Is it possible to build a wall that long?

That’s what Mr. Trump promised.

Before he became the president, there was about 1,000 km of barrier along the southern border. Trump said he would build a wall along the border’s entire 2,000-mile length. But later he said that only half of that was needed, because mountains and rivers, etc, covered the rest.

There is already some fencing on the border, but Trump wanted to build a wall. However, so far only 260 miles have been done – but this is not in new areas, this is the replacement and secondary walls. In terms of the new wall – only 5 miles have been done so far and that too its a steel fencing, not a real wall – as that’s turning out to be too expensive.

The entire stretch of the wall will cost 12 billion dollars and the costs are rising – there isn’t enough money to make the wall now.

Here’s what the border looks like: