Homeland Security Uses Black Paint To Keep Out Migrants, Rust, and Reason
Some lunacies come with brass bands and fireworks. Others arrive with the slow squeak of a Home Depot roller brush. To wit: the Department of Homeland Security, under the hand-flapping majesty of Secretary Kristi Noem, has decided to paint the entire U.S.–Mexico border wall black. Why? Because the President—our Great National Contractor, Donald J. Trump—declared that black paint will make the wall hotter, and thus harder to climb.
This is not satire. This is the Republic of Hot Paint.
Let us pause. Somewhere between the pyramids of Giza and the Berlin Wall, humans learned that giant barriers are symbols first, solutions second. But here, in the Year of Our Lord 2025, the United States—wealthiest, loudest, most self-proclaimed ingenious nation—has decided to weaponize Sherwin-Williams. We have replaced “Give me your tired, your poor” with “Bring sunscreen and gloves, motherf***er, the wall’s been painted flat black.”
H.L. Mencken once wrote that democracy is the theory the people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard. Well, America has chosen its painter-in-chief. Trump wants a hotter wall. The citizens, like obedient parishioners at a revival meeting, nod and mutter “Amen.” And Noem, brush in hand, goes full Van Gogh of the frontier, splashing paint across a steel monument to futility.
It gets better. The Border Patrol claims the black paint will also deter rust. So not only are we building the wall to keep out the brown people, we’re making sure the steel doesn’t turn brown either. A full-spectrum chromatic war, waged at the taxpayer’s expense. Forty-six billion dollars of congressional cash to build what amounts to a world’s longest outdoor barbecue grill.
What history will note, if it bothers, is that walls don’t stop people. They didn’t stop the Mongols, they didn’t stop the Germans, and they sure as hell won’t stop some desperate family with a $40 ladder from Home Depot. But here we are, congratulating ourselves on “half a mile a day” of progress—as though wall-building were a holy crusade rather than a slapstick civil-engineering project.
One Big Beautiful Bill Act, they call it. A name straight out of Barnum’s circus tent. And what does it buy? Not security, not decency, not even deterrence. It buys the illusion that painting steel black will hold back the tides of poverty, violence, and human migration. It is as if the administration sat down and asked itself: “What is the dumbest possible way we can spend billions of dollars?” and then doubled down with a paintbrush.
So here’s the verdict: this is not governance, this is farce with receipts. America is now the homeowner slapping a coat of black paint over the termite-ridden siding, hoping the neighbors don’t notice the place is collapsing. And when the ladder goes up, and the handprints are scorched into the black steel, history will record that the richest empire in the world tried to solve human suffering with a gallon of Krylon.
