The administration has selected four companies to begin building prototypes for President Trump’s border wall plans, announcing the decision Thursday in what officials said was the “first tangible result” of months of planning for the wall.
All four of the prototypes will be concrete and are meant to be backup walls, set off from the border by 150 feet. Non-concrete prototypes, which might be more appropriate for the border itself, will be announced over the next week.
Test-building will take place this fall in San Diego, setting up a full round of wall-building for next year — if Mr. Trump can get Congress to appropriate the money.
“We were looking for a substantial border barrier,” Border Patrol Chief Ronald Vitiello said in announcing the selections in Washington.
The test walls will cover a 30-foot section of the border, will run 18 to 30 feet tall and are meant to look imposing.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection will test the barriers to see how readily smugglers could cut through them and whether they can deter efforts to climb over them.
CBP also wants to see how well the designs can accommodate the technology that agents say is just as important as the wall when it comes to getting a handle on border security.
The winners of the concrete design contract were Caddell Construction Co. in Montgomery, Alabama; Fisher Sand & Gravel Co. in Tempe, Arizona; Texas Sterling Construction Co. in Houston; and W.G. Yates & Sons Construction Co. in Philadelphia, Mississippi.
There is already enough money to build the prototypes, but Mr. Trump is struggling to win support for wall construction in the 2018 spending bills pending in Congress.
Democrats have said they will oppose any bill that includes a penny for the wall.
Wall opponents, meanwhile, said Mr. Trump’s timing on the announcement sent a bad signal amid relief efforts in Texas after Hurricane Harvey.
“The wall prototypes will be literal concrete reminders of this administration’s harsh plot to target immigrant families for deportations that would shatter lives and shred the fabric of tight-knit border communities,” said Dan Millis, borderlands organizer for the Sierra Club.
He said the prototypes and any construction plans should be nixed.
The wall is so controversial that companies that merely expressed interest in the project this year were subject to calls for boycotts. Some jurisdictions floated plans to refuse to do any business with companies involved in the project.
The announcements Thursday seemed to catch some of the contractors off guard.
“You know more about it than I do,” said one man at Caddell Construction.
Fisher Sand & Gravel, meanwhile, said it was ready to get to work.
“We are extremely excited and grateful for the opportunity to be a part of this important project,” said Thomas Fisher, the company’s president.
The prototypes are meant to test different designs and help the Border Patrol figure out changes to its current versions of fencing.
Chief Vitiello said the concrete wall isn’t appropriate for right along the border but will be tested as secondary fence instead.
Some 354 miles of the 1,952-mile border currently are protected by a pedestrian fence. About 36 miles have another secondary fence set back from the border.
That double-wall design is used in high-traffic urban areas such as San Diego and Yuma, Arizona. It is intended to create an enforcement zone between the two layers so that if anyone gets over the fence that sits along the border they have to take more time jumping the secondary fence — and patrol agents can arrest them.
CBP already has $20 million to build the prototypes, but beyond that the border wall is iffy.
House Republicans passed a bill to spend $1.6 billion for wall construction next year, good for 32 miles of new fence and 28 miles of new levee wall in Texas, and for replacing 14 miles of fencing in San Diego.
But Senate Democrats have signaled that they would filibuster the money when the bill comes to the floor in the upper chamber.
Both Democrats and Mr. Trump have indicated that they would be willing to brave a government shutdown over the issue.
Mr. Trump proposed a concrete wall during his election campaign and vowed that Mexico would foot the bill. He has since said U.S. taxpayers will have to fund the wall but is still working on ways to make Mexico reimburse the U.S.
While he said during the campaign that a wall would run the length of the border, as president he has said only 700 to 900 miles will likely need fencing. It wasn’t clear whether that was total or in addition to the 354 miles already covered by a fence.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.