Las Vegas Review-Journal

A border wall: there’s not just one way to build it

Eight prototypes unveiled for proposed wall across southern states’ border

- By Jennifer Medina, Josh Haner, Josh Williams and Quoctrung Bui New York Times News Service

SAN DIEGO — They all stand neatly in a row: eight large panels on a barren dirt patch just a few hundred yards from the San Diego border with Mexico. Unveiled in late October, these are the prototypes for the border wall President Donald Trump has vowed to erect on the southern border. Later this year, the federal government will test the panels for strength and effectiven­ess.

These prototypes make clear that a border wall is not simple: It can vary considerab­ly in material, shape and cost. And while it is far from clear that Congress will pay for a wall or that any of these designs will be built at wider scale, they are reallife renderings of a promise that fueled much of Trump’s campaign.

Six contractor­s have made bids on the wall, and the specific details of their plans are not public. But they allowed us to visit the prototypes, and we asked border security experts and engineers what they saw in each design and what challenges each wall may face.

Every expert agreed on one thing: Finding a design that would work for the entire length of the border would be extremely hard, if not impossible. And many caution that such a wall may never happen.

The prototypes present the government with a number of choices:

Concrete or no concrete?

The prototypes include plain concrete walls and ones made of a combinatio­n of materials, what the government described as “other than concrete.” The term is intentiona­lly vague, a signal to contractor­s to be creative and bring a design that U.S. Customs and Border Protection had not considered.

Any barrier must be able to withstand at least 30 minutes of force from a “sledgehamm­er, car jack, pickax, chisel, battery-operated impact tools, battery-operated cutting tools, oxy/acetylene torch or other similar hand-held tools,” according to the instructio­ns for the prototypes.

Some “other than concrete” prototypes incorporat­e steel, which can be relatively easy to cut with a torch, while pure concrete is not. A hollow steel pipe whose walls are half an inch thick could easily be cut in less than an hour, according to

 ?? JOSH HANER/THE NEW YORK TIMES ?? Eight prototypes of a new border wall sit on the U.S. side of an existing border wall with Mexico in Otay Mesa, Calif., near San Diego. Later this year, the federal government will test the eight samples for strength and effectiven­ess.
JOSH HANER/THE NEW YORK TIMES Eight prototypes of a new border wall sit on the U.S. side of an existing border wall with Mexico in Otay Mesa, Calif., near San Diego. Later this year, the federal government will test the eight samples for strength and effectiven­ess.

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