The Department of Homeland Security will start building prototype walls on the San Diego border this summer. The New York Times reports that the process will reveal which prototypes would help prevent the smuggling of people and illegal drugs into the United States
This wall building idea came from President Donald Trump, who first proposed the concept during his campaign. Agency officials said that the prototypes would be added to the already existent walls across the border and each prototype would be evaluated to determine which one offers the greatest opportunity for border forces to respond in case of illegal drug or human trafficking.
U.S. to start constructing prototypes of border wall
Officials claimed that they would test out around four to eight new prototypes for the wall. However, the final wall will not stretch for the entire 1,900 miles of the U.S.-Mexican border. Around 130 miles of the border would be unsuitable for a wall since these regions either have water bodies or other natural features, which make wall building difficult.
The executive order for the border wall was issued in January by President Trump, while Customs and Border Protection proposed both concrete walls and walls made out of other materials in March. However, even after receiving bids from hundreds of sources, the agency has yet to pick out the vendors for its supplies at the moment.
Despite the executive order for the wall, funding was not assigned for the same, which complicated matters. The Homeland security scraped together $20 million from other programs for building the prototypes of the walls. The San Diego and Rio Grande regions have been selected for the prototype testing in real world conditions.
Donald Trump’s wall building plan
The president wanted to allocate around $3.6 billion in the 2017-2018 budget solely for the wall across the Mexican border. However, Congress scoffed at the idea and instead decided to allocate funds to expand technology on the border areas. The Customs and Border Protection asked vendors to send in their ideas for a border wall.
It also asked applicants to keep in mind that these walls would have to be high enough and strong enough to keep illegal immigrants and smugglers out of the United States. The height alone would also not do, as it would also need to have certain measures which would prevent outsiders from climbing in using a ladder.
Aside from this the agency is also looking for a structure which would provide some defense against smugglers trying to dig a tunnel under the wall and cross over into the U.S.
