A congressional watchdog group revealed new details about the testing and the costs associated with building prototypes of President Donald Trump's wall and the challenges with erecting them along the border with Mexico.

The eight prototypes remain standing on the slopes of a hilly area on the outskirts of San Diego, nearly seven months after U.S. Customs and Border Protection finished a series of military-grade field tests on the 30-foot-tall structures.

Although CBP has no plans to tear them down soon, don't expect those designs to be replicated and built on a larger scale along the border, based on construction and design deficiencies identified in the agency’s own tests and evaluations.

Until now, the federal agency in charge of border security has kept details about the results under wraps, deemed as law-enforcement sensitive. But earlier this month, the U.S. Government Accountability Office published a report describing testing and evaluation methods used, as well as a summary of some of the findings.

The conclusions listed in the report point to serious challenges in building some, if not all, of the prototypes as they were erected in San Diego, because of structural issues in their design or with construction.

CBP had said publicly that they never intended to select a single winning design, but rather would choose successful elements from each prototype to incorporate into future barriers along the Southwest border.

Still, the test results detailed in the report renewed concerns from critics and analysts about the speed of the process, as well as questions about how the government is using taxpayer money.

That same Government Accountability Office report had already generated concerns when it pointed out that costs for the construction of future barriers could be much higher than projected. The document said Customs and Border Protection had not taken into account certain factors such as terrain and land ownership in its costs estimates.

In a statement, CBP said the report was being misrepresented. Officials reiterated their assertion that, based on their experience, walls work.

"CBP stands firm that operational needs should always be primary, followed by cost analysis of the prioritized border wall segments," the statement said. "And will recommend necessary investments that meet border security requirements to prevent unlawful entry and take into account both the costs and benefits."

New details on the prototypes

Just days after his inauguration, Trump signed an executive order directing Customs and Border Protection to move forward with plans to build a wall along the Southern border with Mexico. The first step in the process was to test and build prototypes.

CBP outlined the requirements in two lengthy calls for submission, which netted hundreds of interested companies. But a USA TODAY Network review of submitted inquiries found many of the bidders were confused by the specifications and by shifting deadlines in the fast-paced process.

The agency selected six companies to start building eight prototypes in October — four made of concrete and four with alternate materials. By December, CBP began a series of tests analyzing five categories: breaching, scaling, constructability, engineering design and aesthetics.

The Government Accountability Office report addresses the test results for last three of those categories. Those results are gleaned from a report CBP compiled in February, but that wasn’t released publicly.

“CBP is committed to sharing as much information about the project as possible, while not compromising law enforcement sensitivities,” the agency said in a statement. “The results and data gathered during the test and evaluation phase are considered law enforcement sensitive.”

Results of the testing

The tests revealed many of the prototypes, as built, failed to meet the same design standards that Customs and Border Protection had set out in its calls for submission.

CBP test teams and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers carried out the evaluations. They assessed them by four categories based on the degree of changes they would need in order to meet CBP’s requirements.

For constructability, the six companies were required to build structures between 18 and 30 feet in height, as well as 6 feet below ground. During the test, engineers also looked at “how feasible it would be to construct the prototypes in other environments, based on their observations during the construction of the prototypes,” according to the GAO report.

The evaluations found that all four concrete prototypes had “extensive” construction challenges, the most serious of the four categories, meaning they would need the most work to meet CBP’s requirements. Of the four prototypes made of alternate materials, two had “substantial” challenges, the next category down, and the other two had “moderate” challenges. None presented “minimal” challenges, the fourth category requiring the least amount of work.

The report’s summary of the results said the sloping terrain presented a special challenge for the constructability of the prototypes.

“This assessment included factors such as whether the foundation would accommodate slope changes, distance from the border required during construction, weight of the construction materials, and the equipment — such as cranes or concrete trucks — needed during construction of the prototypes,” the report concluded.

For engineering design, CBP required the prototypes to be cost-effective to build, maintain and repair, and that they accommodate several operational and design elements.

Most significantly, the agency required that the structures be able to be built in slopes of up to 45 percent. But the testing and evaluation found that only half of them met that standard, and would still require some work to accomplish that. Another three were deemed to “be impractical for slopes over 15 percent,” nearly a third of what was specified. Notably, the evaluation found that the eighth structure “could not be constructed on any slope without a redesign.”

Engineers from CBP and USACE found that six of the eight prototypes needed “extensive” or “substantial” work to “accommodate surface drainage,” one of those required elements, given the propensity for flood waters and rain to flow across both sides of the border. The other two structures needed only “minimal” changes, according to the report.

CBP asked that the prototypes accommodate gates that Border Patrol uses along certain sections to access the other side of the structure, especially in areas where the barriers are built north of the actual borderline. The evaluation found that six of the prototypes needed “extensive” or “substantial” work to meet that requirement, while the other two needed “moderate” changes.

“What that tells me is that the government doesn’t know what they want yet,” Patrick Malyszek said. He’s the president of M3 Federal Contract Practice Group, a New York-based firm that provides consulting services to private contractors interested in bidding on federal government projects.

Malyszek's company did not consult with any of the bidders in this project. But Malyszek said the fact there were so many deficiencies with the prototypes, as identified in the report, points to several larger issues at hand.

“The initial prototype process of getting contractors to build them was too quick,” he said. “Secondly, that tells me that the government is actually fishing for ideas and concepts, even though they are seeking funding for the wall.”

Other outstanding questions he cited: “For example, is it earthquake proof? Number two, can it withstand high winds and storms, and all that kind of stuff.”



The GAO report did not disclose the cost-effectiveness of the eight prototypes.

For the aesthetics portion, looking at how pleasing the north-facing side of the prototype was, CBP had 76 “subject-matter experts” from the federal government look at photos of the designs. They chose three structures that had the highest ranking, but the report did not identify which ones.

Costs associated

Despite Trump's ongoing push to have Congress set aside funds to pay for a border wall, the $20 million allocated for the prototype process came from appropriations from the 2017 fiscal year. The report from the Government Accountability Office detailed how much and how that money was spent.

Customs and Border Protection reprogrammed $15 million from its budget designated for the Mobile Video Surveillance Systems, a network of cameras agents use to monitor the border. The remainder came from savings in a $44.7 million project to replace 7½ miles of pedestrian fencing in Naco in the first half of 2017.

According to the GAO report, CBP spent only about $5 million directly tied to the construction and testing of the prototypes themselves, including $3 million for the eight contracts awarded to the six companies, including two from Arizona.

Customs and Border Protection said the remaining $15 million was used for “planning activities such as environmental and real estate planning,” for the current fiscal year in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, the busiest area along the border, and the top priority to build additional fencing.

The costs to build the prototypes in San Diego are dwarfed by estimates to build barriers along the entire border. The GAO report placed CBP’s price tag at $18 billion for infrastructure projects at 17 priority areas, although the report concluded the costs would like be much higher.

Laura Peterson is an investigator with the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight. She said she’s seen lots of similarities between Trump and past administration in how they approached the construction of fencing and additional barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border.

She pointed to the Secure Border Initiative, a pilot program to incorporate technology and infrastructure along the Arizona border. The federal government cancelled it in 2011 over concerns about mismanagement and equipment failure. Today, as in 2006, she argued, the government is prioritizing politics over planning.

“Just because it’s a political project doesn’t mean you skip the planning stuff,” Peterson said.

“Immigration’s already down, been going on a downward trend for a long time. So, the impetus for building the wall is already in question,” she added. “So, it’s possible that CBP is saying ‘this is a political project, why do we need to put out plans based on risk and need and metrics like that?’ when it isn’t a need or metrics based project to begin with.”

CBP has actively disputed those claims, saying barriers have been successful, especially when coupled as a “border wall system,” using technology like cameras and sensors, as well as additional manpower.

“You think about in an area of our border where we have dense population environment on both sides of the border, we only have a very short window of time to try to interdict someone who’s crossing illegally or bringing the drug load across,” CBP Commissioner McAleenan said Monday during a White House panel on border security.

“If we can bolster our barriers, including replacing very old scrap metal barriers with modern wall systems, the cameras, the sensors, we’re going to be in a much better position,” he said. “And we’re already seeing that.”

Peterson said she hopes the federal government learns from past mistakes to avoid misusing or wasting taxpayer money. But as of now, she said, there’s cause for concern.

“We outlined a year ago that this was following a bad example from SBInet,” she said. “It’s traveling down the same path of pursuing a political objective without proper planning and budgeting and strategy. And there’s predictable results. And this GAO report just shows that you kinda get what you plan for or don’t plan for.”

What happens now?

Customs and Border Protection has repeatedly said the prototypes would help them influence the design and construction of future barriers along the Southwest border. It remains unclear how they’ll do that.

“CBP officials stated they planned to identify characteristics that improved or weakened the performance of the prototypes, and use that information to create new design standards, which could include concrete or other materials,” the Government Accountability Office report said in a summary.

But the document did not list the design elements from each prototype that worked, and could be used to customize border barriers in the future. CBP has said that information is law enforcement sensitive.

In February, shortly after CBP concluded its tests and evaluations of the prototypes, construction crews began to replace two miles of bollard-style fencing in Calexico. Notably, the height of the new barriers increased to 30 feet, the same as the prototypes, and far taller than the 18-20-foot bollards used elsewhere along the border.

However, CBP said the barriers’ height at the Calexico project had nothing to do with the evaluations from the prototype process.

“The decision to construct certain segments of wall at the height of 30ft is made based on the unique requirements for each area of responsibility,” CBP said in a written statement. In Calexico, “the wall height is being constructed to 30ft to mitigate the need for secondary wall to reduce impacts to the local community.”

To date, Customs and Border Protection has three additional ongoing construction projects along the Southwest border: in San Diego, New Mexico and El Paso. All of them employ existing barrier designs.

McAleenan said construction at these four sites has already made an impact on enforcement operations on the ground.

“It's moving the traffic away from areas where we have a short vanishing time, to areas where we have a better tactical advantage,” he said, adding that he hopes that additional funding from Congress will allow them to expand the construction of new and replacement projects.

Congress allocated $1.3 billion this year for the construction of new and replacement fencing along the border. The new barriers, including 25 miles of primary levee fencing in the Rio Grande Valley, must use existing designs.

CBP has requested $1.6 billion in 2019 to add 65 more miles of fencing to that area. Congress has yet to pass a spending bill for next year.

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