Follow this tag to curate your own personalized Activity Stream and email alerts.
In an attempt to pick up border wall construction where former President Donald Trump left off, a state lawmaker in Texas has introduced legislation that would see the construction of a border wall along the Texas-Mexico border.
HB 2862 would create a special "border security enhancement fund" to pay for the projects [...]
— Construction Dive
The legislation, introduced by Republican Texas House Rep. Bryan Slaton, also proposes to name the fortification system the "President Donald J. Trump Wall." Construction Dive points out that it was "only a matter of hours after Biden was sworn in that he rescinded Trump's national emergency... View full entry
A newly erected section of the border wall on the US-Mexico border toppled over in high winds this week. The section fell over onto the Mexicali, Mexico side of the border just across from Calexico, California. Luckily, no one was injured due to the failure. According to local agent Carlos... View full entry
President Trump is preparing to divert an additional $7.2 billion in Pentagon funding for border wall construction this year, five times what Congress authorized him to spend on the project in the 2020 budget. — The Washington Post
According to The Washington Post, the funding would give the government enough money to complete about 885 miles of new fencing by spring 2022, far more than the 509 miles the administration has slated for the U.S. border with Mexico. So far the Trump administration has completed... View full entry
...construction workers on Wednesday began building the first new border wall in South Texas just south of the town of Donna...it will connect to an existing border wall that was built in 2008 under the 2006 Secure Fence Act.
On Sept. 29, CBP in partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers awarded a contract to Gibraltar-Caddell Joint Venture for up to $296 million to build 22 miles of noncontiguous border wall starting east of Santa Ana.
— Border Report
The new construction has prompted concern from locals in the area, as the work has begun on private land. According to Border Report, "many other landowners in the region have so far refused CBP access to survey their lands, and have not sold their properties for wall construction." View full entry
The president and his administration said last week that they plan on building between 450 and 500 miles of fencing along the nearly 2,000-mile border by the end of 2020, an ambitious undertaking funded by billions of defense dollars that had been earmarked for things like military base schools, target ranges and maintenance facilities. — The Columbian
The construction has commenced in Yuma, Arizona, where the 30-foot-tall fencing will replace existing shorter barriers. "The Trump administration says the wall—along with more surveillance technology, agents and lighting—is key to keeping out people who cross illegally,"... View full entry
It may seem like an ordinary scene: Children and adults playing on pink seesaws, carelessly laughing and chatting with each other
But this is a playground unlike any other. These custom-built seesaws have been placed on both sides of a slatted steel border fence that separates the United States and Mexico.
— CNN
The binational Teetertotter Wall intervention, connecting Sunland Park, New Mexico with Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, is the brainchild of Ronald Rael, a professor of architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, and Virginia San Fratello, an associate professor of design at San... View full entry
And the prototypes came tumbling down. [...]
They have been used most dramatically as a backdrop for a presidential visit last March and for protest art. [...]
On Wednesday, slabs from seven out of the eight prototypes fell in clouds of dust in under two hours, no match for a jackhammer. At the point of destruction, an owl fled from a steel tube atop one section.
— The Guardian
And just as quickly as they came, they're gone again: seven of the eight prototypes for a lofty 1,954-mile border wall project to Mexico were bulldozed and turned into piles of expensive rubble on Wednesday morning... View full entry
The Trump administration is looking to build tent cities at military posts around Texas to shelter the increasing number of unaccompanied migrant children being held in detention.
The Department of Health and Human Services will visit Fort Bliss, a sprawling Army base near El Paso in the coming weeks to look at a parcel of land where the administration is considering building a tent city to hold between 1,000 and 5,000 children...
— mcclatchydc.com
Over 11,200 migrant children are held without a parent or guardian by The Office of Refugee Resettlement at HHS who oversees around 100 shelters. As these shelters fill up with children separated from their parents, the Trump administration considers building tent cities to accommodate this... View full entry
President Donald Trump took a firsthand look today at the eight massive border wall prototypes that he had commissioned in San Diego for the “big, beautiful wall” he wants to build along the Southwest border, favoring a mixture of see-through capability topped with rounded concrete to make it impassable by climbers. — San Diego Union Tribune
It's been a busy Tuesday morning for Donald Trump today: after firing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson via a 5:44 AM Tweet, he traveled to San Diego to personally inspect the 8 border wall prototypes that had been erected last fall mere yards away from the actual U.S. border with Mexico. One of... View full entry
This post is brought to you by the Vilcek Foundation When Vilcek Prizewinner Teddy Cruz first emigrated from Guatemala, he had no idea that San Diego was a border town. He did not speak English, and his relatives had warned him that going downtown would be risky and dangerous. "It took me almost a... View full entry
The proposed $25 billion wall along the US/Mexico border raises questions that have proven divisive to society. [...]
In 2017 and 2018, AIA state components and chapters in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas wrote resolutions and letters with the support of their boards of directors opposing a border wall and questioning its cost-benefit relative to infrastructure projects all over the country that they deem higher-priority.
— AIA
AIA state components and chapters in each of the four states bordering Mexico—Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas—are organizing their opposition to Trump's border wall proposal and have passed formal resolutions. "Robert Miller, AIA, 2018 president of AIA Arizona, led the charge in... View full entry
The prototypes for Donald Trump’s proposed border wall with Mexico have been completed, and the six participating companies, whose names have been publicly released, are beginning to face some serious pushback. Since the bidding process began, companies vying for the construction contract... View full entry
[...] prototypes for President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall with Mexico have been completed and will be subjected to punishment to test their mettle — by workers wielding sledgehammers, torches, pickaxes and battery-operated tools.
The testing lasting up to two months could lead to officials concluding that elements of several designs should be merged to create effective walls [...]. That raises the possibility of no winner or winners.
— Associated Press
The six companies that were awarded contracts to build prototypes of Trump's border wall with Mexico earlier this year have completed their full-scale models on a site near San Diego and will see their creations undergo rigorous testing for nonclimbability, nonunderdiggability, and resistance to... View full entry
The Trump administration has awarded contracts to build four border wall prototypes using non-concrete "other materials," U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced Thursday.
The contracts came a week after the administration announced four companies that will build prototypes of concrete border walls. In all, the eight prototype walls will cost about $3.6 million.
— The Hill
Adding to the four firms already selected to build border wall prototypes last week, Trump now also contracted another round of companies that will specifically build non-concrete prototypes of his favorite campaign promise. By encouraging 'other materials' border wall designs, Trump hopes to... View full entry
First, given their robust physical characteristics, like, reinforced concrete, between 18-30 feet high, the concrete border wall prototypes are designed to deter illegal crossings in the area in which they are constructed.
Second, the concrete border wall prototypes will allow CBP to evaluate the potential for new wall and barrier designs that could complement the wall and barrier designs we have used along the border over the last several years.
— U.S. Customs and Border Protection
On Thursday, CBP announced that it had awarded contracts to build several 30-foot-high concrete wall prototypes, which are supposed to inform future design standards and will likely continue to evolve to meet the U.S. Border Patrol’s requirements. The four companies that will build the... View full entry
