Trump will visit Calif. border wall prototypes
Stop in San Diego marks end of yearlong process
President Donald Trump will visit California on Tuesday and stop in San Diego to inspect eight possible versions of his border wall, USA TODAY has learned.
Trump has mentioned visiting the border wall prototypes on several occasions in recent months. “I may be going there, very shortly, to look at them in their final form,” Trump told his Cabinet in December.
The prototypes are located just north of the U.S.-Mexico border in San Diego. They tower over landing-net fencing that currently marks the international boundary there.
The visit will be Trump’s first to California since his election.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed during a briefing Wednesday that Trump would travel to California, but gave no details.
The president’s visit will likely mark the end of a yearlong process to develop more-imposing border barriers. The process has been marked by confusion and shifting deadlines.
Completion of the prototypes is the biggest step toward fulfilling Trump’s campaign promise to build a wall along the southern border. His efforts to fund construction of the wall, however, haven’t been met with similar success.
His most recent request, that Congress set aside $18 billion for construction over the next decade — in exchange for his signing off on a pathway
to citizenship for undocumented migrants brought to the U.S. as children — failed when he tried to also link to it reductions in legal immigration.
On March 17, 2017, U.S. Customs and Border Protection launched the prototype process when it posted two reof quests for proposals with very tight deadlines compared with other federal contracts.
CBP planned to complete the process in about four months and set aside $20 million from its budget last year for eight contracts to build 30-foot-tall prototypes, four made of concrete and four made of alternate materials, by the end of summer. But CBP changed the request several times and repeatedly extended the deadline to submit propos- als. It led to confusion among the more than 600 interested bidders about what CBP wanted, and when.
It wasn’t until late August that CBP announced the six companies, including two based in Arizona, that were awarded the eight contracts.
Construction started in late September on the outskirts of San Diego, and was finished in about 30 days.
CBP gave the prototypes a month for concrete to cure before it began a series military-grade tests to determine how difficult it is to climb over and breach the structures. Testing ended in December, but the prototypes are still undergoing evaluation, CBP said.
The federal agency said it could choose multiple winners, given the varied topography along the U.S.-Mexico border, or just one winner. Another option, officials have said, is to combine the best features of each design into future barriers.