The truth is that no Democrats support what he claims that they support. While it is true that Democratic Congressmen have in the past voted to fund walls along the border, those barriers, which in great part still stand today, were part of a broader plan for border security and immigration policy.
No one believes that there shouldn't be a border, or that we shouldn't screen people who want to immigrate to the United States. What Trump's opponents do believe is that our immigration policies should be more humane and that the process should be more expedited than it is today.
The Wall itself (when referring to Trump's idea of a wall at the border, I will capitalize Wall), however, isn't part of an integrated immigration and border security policy. Trump's policies (if you can call them that) are more often than not slogans that garnered excitement and applause at his campaign rallies in 2016. Trump may be incoherent, ignorant and incompetent, but one thing that he is good at is reading a crowd and feeding them lines that will keep their interest and stoke their enthusiasm. Trump tapped into a vein of bigotry that ran through significant portions of the electorate. Immigrants, especially those who entered the country illegally, were a convenient scapegoat for many of the problems perceived these people. When Trump needed to convince the immigrant-haters that he was their guy, did he craft, with the help of experts, a thought through plan for securing the borders? No, he found a simplistic, easy to articulate applause line: that he would build a "big, beautiful, Wall". This Wall was predicated on bigotry and became a "campaign promise" because repeating it over and over fed into the feedback loop between Trump and his supporters that was a typical Trump rally. Since being elected, the Wall concept (stretching the meaning of the word "concept") hasn't gained any more solidity. It's still a vague and nebulous thing wherein the specifics change depending on Trump's mood. In addition, illegal immigration has been steadily decreasing over the last decade. And there's much evidence that the criminals and drugs aren't coming in over the supposedly unprotected border, but by sea, through tunnels, smuggled in trucks. Budgets for monitoring and interdicting this illegal activity have been reduced since Trump was inaugurated. He has focused exclusively on a Wall. Trump has also not addressed how the Wall will deal with the long river border between Mexico and Texas, or all the private land that will have to be seized through eminent domain.
Trump has always promoted himself as a great deal-maker, it was one of the things that many of his supporters claimed would make him a great president. He appears to have no inclination to actually negotiate. Negotiation in good faith requires that you give something up, or give something to the other party to get what you want. But he has proved that for him, making a deal means making a demand and then digging in his heels until the other side acquiesces. The same with bipartisanship. For him bipartisanship is the other party doing what he wants. What's ironic is that, back in February, a bipartisan deal was on the table. The Democrats were willing to fund a border Wall in exchange for a path to citizenship for people in the DACA program. Trump refused to sign it because it did not include several other immigration-related things, such as an end to family-based migration (what he called chain migration ).
Trump doesn't have a plan for border security, he has an ego-driven desire for "a win" by getting funding for an applause-line campaign promise based on bigoted assumptions. He doesn't know how to deal, he has a toddler-level "understanding" that tantrums are a great negotiating tool.
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