A so-called smart wall is on the way to the Arizona-Mexico border under a set of new contracts announced by the Trump administration.
Customs and Border Protection says it’s awarded $4.5 billion worth of contracts to build border barriers and infrastructure — things like surveillance cameras and lights.
A company called BCCG a Joint Venture is getting $607 million to build 23 miles of secondary border wall and 66 miles of what CBP calls “system attributes” in southern and southwestern Arizona.
The company was awarded $3.1 billion in total, also has a project in California and several projects in Texas this year. Another company called Barnard Spencer Joint Venture was also awarded some $199 million to build some 60 miles of system attributes along the California-Arizona border.
Erick Meza, borderlands coordinator at the Sierra Club, says questions still remain.
“It doesn’t specify what areas they will be installing lighting, if they’re going to go back to the areas they installed but never turned it on. So it is very vague,” he said.
The first Trump administration installed stadium-strength lights in places like Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, but hadn’t turned them on by the time former President Joe Biden entered office. Environmentalists warned they’d harm delicate desert ecosystems.
Border wall construction is already underway in southern Arizona — part of project announced by DHS earlier this year that includes some 27 miles of the San Rafael Valley.
Meza says it’s still unclear where the smart wall will be built and what it will entail.
“What we have seen on the ground is trucks with portable surveillance equipment mounted on the back of them. So we might see more of that. I mean what we’re talking about here is billions of dollars,” Meza said.
The funding comes largely from the “Big, Beautiful, Bill.” The massive, GOP-crafted, spending bill was passed this year and gives $47 billion to border construction alone.
