New border walls won’t draw from prototypes

When President Donald Trump signed an omnibus spending bill last week, he noted the $1.6 billion it set aside as a “down payment” for a border wall with Mexico.

But the bill also stymies, for now, plans to incorporate new features gleaned from the yearlong, $20 million effort to build eight border-wall prototypes, which Trump inspected this month.

Congress set aside $641 million this year to build 33 miles of new border fencing in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley and $251 million for 14 miles of new secondary fencing in San Diego.

But the bill contains a notable cave-

at: It restricts the Trump administration to using only existing border-fence designs. “The amounts ... shall only be available for operationally effective designs deployed as of the date of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2017 ...such as currently deployed steel bollard designs, that prioritize agent safety,” the bill text states.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection — the agency responsible for securing the nation’s borders and awarding contracts to build new and replacement fencing — had anticipated the prototypes would influence new border barriers.

On Monday, CBP said those plans had not changed, despite the restrictions Congress placed on this year’s spending.

“The creation of the toolkit with new designs is ongoing and has not been affected by the signature of the omnibus bill,” spokesman Carlos Diaz said.

Trump’s visit in mid-March to the prototypes in San Diego capped the yearlong process to test designs for future border barriers. The eight designs, four made of concrete and four made of alternative materials, underwent military-grade testing by CBP, the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Based on their evaluations, CBP highlighted three features they will add to their “toolkit”:

Anti-scaling and anti-breaching features. Trump said he liked round features on top of the prototypes to prevent hooking or latching by people attempting to scale them.

See-through features that allow border agents to view what’s happening on the other side of the border.

Adaptability. With topography so varied along the U.S.-Mexico border, CBP said they also would incorporate designs that can be adapted to the terrain.

Those evaluations, including a survey of agents to get their input, are now in the hands of CBP leadership.

Diaz said the eight border-wall prototypes will remain standing in San Diego, for now.

“We have the option to keep them or remove them,” he said. “But it is likely that we’ll keep them in place as part of the border infrastructure currently in place.”

Congress allocated for border security the exact amount Trump asked for in his 2018 budget request. In all, he has asked for some $18 billion for new barriers on the Southwest border.

The omnibus bill also includes $196 million for the “acquisition and deployment” of technology along the border, and $38 million for the planning and design of future barriers.

“Much can be done with the $1.6 Billion given to building and fixing the border wall,” Trump tweeted last week. “It is just a down payment. Work will start immediately.”

In addition to new barriers in the Rio Grande Valley and San Diego, the bill sets aside $445 million to replace older fencing with newer, bollard-style designs.

Long stretches of the border — including urban areas that were among the first to be fenced — have aging barriers made of landing-mat panels or recycled scraps of metal.

In Calexico, California, CBP is replacing 21⁄4 miles of landing-mat fencing with bollards at an estimated cost of $18 million.

That project is being funded by money previously allocated for replacement work, not the new spending bill.

The fencing being installed in Calexico, however, measures 30 feet, the same height as Trump’s borderwall prototypes. By contrast, in early 2017, CBP replaced 71⁄2 miles of landing-mat fencing in Naco with 18-foot bollards.