President Donald Trump has repeatedly vowed to help better secure the nation with the construction of an improved border wall, and a recent announcement from his administration revealed that a big step was just made to turn that promise into a reality.
According to The Washington Post, U.S. Customs and Border Protection acting deputy commissioner Ronald Vitiello announced Thursday that four finalists had been chosen to begin construction of prototype versions of a concrete barrier, each 30 feet high and 30 feet wide, to be built in the San Diego area within the next few weeks.
The selected finalists, who will receive a contract worth between $400,000 to $500,000, are: Caddell Construction of Montgomery, Ala.; Fisher Sand & Gravel/DBA Fisher Industries of Tempe, Ariz..; Texas Sterling Construction in Houston; and W.G. Yates & Sons Construction in Philadelphia, Miss.
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It is expected that in the next week or two the CBP will announce an additional four finalists who will begin constructing prototypes of non-concrete, see-through barriers that will supplement the solid concrete barriers.
“Today we mark a significant milestone,” stated Vitiello. “This is the first tangible result of the action planning that has gone on. This is the use of the resources we had available for this year.”
According to NBC News, once the prototypes are completed, CBP will spend between 30 and 60 days testing them in a variety of ways that Vitiello stated would “look at things like the aesthetics of it, how penetrable they are, how resistant they are to tampering and then scaling or anti-climbing,” among other things.
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While the funds to pay for the prototype contracts came from money already appropriated for border security in the 2017 budget, and the House has already agreed to provide additional funding for border wall construction in the 2018 budget, Senate Democrats and their spineless Republican counterparts could cause a heated fight over in the budget battle as it is debated this month.
The Daily Caller noted that construction of these prototype border wall sections was supposed to start in June, but had been delayed by contracting issues and protests lodged against the Department of Homeland Security by bidders whose designs had not been chosen as finalists.
Those protests were recently dismissed by the Government Accountability Office, allowing for the announcement of the four finalists and construction of the prototypes to commence.
President Trump has promised to protect the country with a border wall, and he is now one step closer to fulfilling that promise.
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