First panels of border wall project installed
On Thursday, Customs and Border Protection, in partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, began panel installation for approximately 11 miles of new border wall system in place of dilapidated and outdated designs in Calexico within Border Patrol’s El Centro Sector.
This project will include the construction of 30-foot-tall steel bollards and technology improvements. The construction start for this project was announced earlier this month, along with the new border wall project in Tecate.
Construction for both of these projects, which total approximately 15 miles, is anticipated to continue into 2020, a CBP news release stated.
These projects are funded by CBP’s fiscal year 2018 appropriation and are not undertaken pursuant to the National Emergency Declaration, nor do they draw from any other source of funding, including appropriations available to the Department of Defense.
On Dec. 20, 2018, on behalf of CBP, USACE awarded a contract to SLSCO Ltd. for approximately $127 million to do the construction.
The San Diego and El Centro Sectors are areas of high illegal entry and are experiencing large numbers of individuals and narcotics being smuggled into the country illegally, CBP said.
The agency added that construction of border infrastructure within these project areas will support DHS’s ability to impede and deny illegal border crossings and the drug and human smuggling activities of transnational criminal organizations.
CBP said it continues to implement President Trump’s Executive Order 13767 — also known as Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements — taking steps to expeditiously plan, design and construct a physical wall using appropriate materials and technology to most e ectively achieve operational control of the southern border.