Eight border wall prototypes that were built near the boundary between San Diego, Calif., and Tijuana, Mexico, were destroyed and knocked to the ground Wednesday to make way for a secondary wall in the region.
A massive jackhammer grabbed the tops of each 30-feet-tall barrier and crushed them, knocking the strong barriers over and into the dirt. The whole process took under two hours.
While Michael Cohen is testifying and President Trump is in Vietnam, those border wall prototypes in San Diego are being torn down by @CBPSanDiego. https://t.co/hpDLQz05Ib pic.twitter.com/boNaBK1Qa8
— Danny Freeman (@DannyEFreeman) February 27, 2019
Six construction companies built the eight prototypes in late 2017 to give Customs and Border Protection a better idea of which would work best for the additional wall President Trump had vowed put up if elected to the White House.
The Department of Homeland Security solicited bids for four concrete walls and four walls built with other materials in mid-2017. Each cost between $300,000 and $500,000. Roughly $4 million was allotted for the trial projects.
Caddell Construction Company, Fisher Sand & Gravel Company, Texas Sterling Construction Company, and W.G. Yates and Sons Construction Company built solid concrete walls, while Caddell, Yates, KWR Construction, Inc., and ELTA North America Inc. built prototypes using “alternate materials.”
Border Patrol agents had previously told the Washington Examiner they would either incorporate the eight prototypes with the secondary wall they planned to put up behind the main wall or they would take them down and just have one uniform wall.
It is the end of the line for President Trump’s border wall prototypes which were knocked down in San Diego on Wednesday to make room for the construction of a secondary wall between México and the U.S.. pic.twitter.com/xK3E6aAagF
— John Gibbins (@JohnGibbinsSDUT) February 27, 2019
DHS announced two weeks ago that Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen had given CBP permission to ignore environmental and land regulations to expedite construction of a secondary barrier.
The secondary wall is meant to run for 12 miles and is expected to be 18 feet tall, a sector spokesman told the Washington Examiner during a visit to the region last year.
The Army Corps of Engineers was awarded the project in December.
The San Diego Sector is unique as a southwest border sector because it has had a double wall for two decades, but it has still seen active smuggling efforts and increased illegal immigration in recent years. Despite the double wall, people were easily getting over or through both of them, prompting the sector to step up its infrastructure.
The “primary” wall, or the one closest to Mexico, stretches 14 miles from Imperial Beach on the Pacific Ocean past the Otay Mesa port of entry and into the mountains, where it is difficult to travel on foot or by vehicle.
