Construction on border wall prototypes to start in summer

WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security will start construction of prototypes for a border wall this summer in the San Diego area, agency officials said Tuesday, the first step in fulfilling a campaign promise made by President Donald Trump.

Homeland security officials said the prototypes would be added to the existing border walls in San Diego and would allow the agency to evaluate which barriers are most effective in giving Border Patrol agents time to respond to illegal drugs and human smuggling.

Officials said they planned to build four to eight prototypes but did not say when construction would begin.

“We own that land, have access to it and it’s a good place to start testing in a real-world environment,” Ronald Vitiello, acting deputy commissioner at Customs and Border Protection, said at a news briefing.

John Kelly, secretary of homeland security, has said that there are no plans to build a wall along all 1,900 miles of the border with Mexico, which Vitiello has also said.

Vitiello added that the agency had identified about 130 miles that would be unsuitable for a border wall because of bodies of water or other challenging terrain.

After Trump issued an executive order on a border wall in January, CBP in March issued two requests for proposals, for both a concrete wall and other wall types.

Officials at the agency say they have received hundreds of bids for prototypes, but the agency has not yet chosen vendors.

Despite the requests for proposals, funding for a wall was not included in the spending bill passed by Congress. But Homeland Security officials used $20 million allocated from other programs at the department to pay for prototypes.

Associated Press file Additions to the border wall, like this one in San Diego, are supposed to include features that prevent scaling as well as tunneling below it.