GoFundMe Campaign for Border Wall Will Shatter All Records

We are witnessing something truly extraordinary. In merely 19 days, a GoFundMe campaign to raise private contributions to build sections of the wall along the Mexico border has raised an astonishing $19.0 million. It will soon be the most successful GoFundMe campaign ever—the current record holder is the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund for victims of sexual assault, which raised $22 million in 2018 over a much longer period of time. The campaign to build the wall should blow past that number in a few days.

Let’s put this in perspective. Consider the Presidential Election Campaign Fund Tax Check-Off, which is promoted by the IRS through the 1040 tax form and doesn’t require a contributor to give any money beyond what he is already paying in taxes. In April of 2016—normally the highest contribution month during a presidential campaign year—it raised $9.9 million. In a typical month, it raises less than a million dollars.

The GoFundMe wall campaign was started on December 16, 2018, by Air Force veteran Brian Kolfage, who lost three limbs while serving in Iraq in 2004. As Kolfage told me, “People are angry about the inaction on building the border wall. They’re opening their checkbooks to donate as a way of making their voices heard.”

The astonishing number of contributions that this project has received from ordinary Americans demonstrates just how important the wall is to the American people. Citizens see the crime, wage depression, and other negative consequences of illegal immigration, and they want something done about it.

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