Posted on 12/19/2025 6:00:09 PM PST by BeauBo
(18 Dec 2025) The Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection announce the award of five new contracts totaling $3.3 billion for the construction of Smart Wall along the U.S. – Mexico border in Texas and Arizona. With these latest awards, the total contracts awarded for Smart Wall Construction now reach $8 billion. These contracts, which were awarded using funds from President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act...
...In total these five new contracts will add 97 miles of primary border wall system, 19 miles of secondary border wall and 66 miles of waterborne barrier system. This includes the installation of detection technology along with the border wall and waterborne barrier systems to create a Smart Wall. In addition, it includes approximately 149 miles of detection technology in locations where barriers already exist, but the Smart Wall is not complete.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbp.gov ...
The contracts awarded yesterday will put Border Wall Giants Fisher Sand & Gravel Co. and SLSCO Ltd back to work, and will wall off the Cities of Laredo, TX (US) and Nuevo Laredo (Mexico) for the first time.
Here is what Waterborne Barrier looks like (but there is a load of unseen detection technology included). An obstacle to swimmers (who will be detected), but a hard barrier to boats:
That looks great. Nice and colorful. Very cheery on the northern side.
In all but the most rural locations, that waterborne barrier will just be the first layer of the defenses, with one or two 30 foot bollard walls waiting on the shore, with all weather patrol road for fast response, cameras, motion detectors, etc..
With full funding for the whole project already approved up front in the Big Beautiful Bill, CBP did not need to economize in some areas, just to get some other areas basic barrier, like before.
Now every new mile awarded is the full Cadillac version of “Smart Wall” - the whole CBP wish list.
Outstanding reporting, beaubo!
Good to hear this great news
The US-Mexico border spans a total continental length of 1,954 miles.
The upper reaches of the Rio Grande, near downtown El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, are far from a mighty or wide natural river. Due to heavy upstream diversions for irrigation (primarily in New Mexico and Colorado), dams, and drought impacts, it often appears as a relatively narrow, shallow channel—more like a managed canal or ditch than a full-flowing river.
What keeps people from swimming under those plastic balls?
“I’m afraid President Trump will leave office and not much of the border secured.”
A lot of analysis and prioritization has gone into determining exactly what is needed to secure each mile of the Mexican Border. This planning and analysis was required by Congress in the first Trump Administration, and has continued since. The technical design has been finalized, and written into detailed contract specifications, with which qualified construction firms are already well familiar.
There is no learning curve this time around. The task is very well understood and already cost estimated - in detail.
Bottom Line: The whole package was funded up front in the already passed Big Beautiful Bill, and the Program Manager has scheduled efforts to complete the entire effort before the end of the current Trump Administration (January 2029).
Work has already begun with the prior year money that Biden had frozen (over 100 miles of tall strong bollards already constructed in 2025), but we are now in the heat of competitively awarding the more than $40 Billion provided in the Big Beautiful Bill.
There are typically a few months of lag time between contract award and the start of construction, but the first work funded by last Summer’s Big Beautiful Bill is already underway, and new projects will be getting underway all through 2026, increasing the pace of construction, as more newly awarded segments begin, concurrently with the growing number ongoing.
I anticipate that the great bulk, if not all of the funding (the whole Wall Program), will be awarded on contract by the end of 2026, with unprecedented Wall building activity underway, and continuing through 2027, to wrap up in 2028.
The bottom line is that there is enough time and money to complete the effort, given competent management - and President Trump happens to be a Master Builder.
I hope that the performance is better than building 8 EV chargers with $8 billion of available dollars.
“What keeps people from swimming under those plastic balls?”
I believe they anchor a chain net, but I am not sure. That might present a flood control risk from debris accumulating during hurricanes, which are an annual event in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, and a potential Treaty issue in the shared US/Mexican River.
They did go through some kind of a design analysis and testing process, so people were almost surely assigned to try to defeat the system in testing. For the Wall design in the first Trump Administration, US Special Forces soldiers were used to test the various wall designs, to select those most challenging to climbers.
I very strongly expect that something similar was done for the waterborne barriers - they have programmed for many hundreds of miles of these. Under the Federal Acquisition Regulations, I seriously doubt that they settled on a design without independent testers giving it the old college try to identify weaknesses. CBP would be certain to be concerned with the effectiveness of any such infrastructure they are installing - they will have to fight the infiltrators on that infrastructure every single day from now on.
“I hope that the performance is better”
The Trump style “Wall System” from the first Trump Administration (now called “Smart Wall”), has now been tested and proven for years, against well funded criminal cartels. It has been a total game changer, where it has been installed (e.g. San Diego/Tijuana).
Now instead of trying to just plug the biggest leaks first (due to insufficient funding), the (already fully funded) Program is to build everything needed for “Full Operational Control” of the entire Mexican Border, from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of America.
Great Stuff Amigo!⁴
Excellent reports, BeauBo. I have been wondering how the wall is coming along. Thank you.
Fun fact: The more you zoom in on a water boundary, the longer the water boundary becomes UNENDINGLY. As a straight line, El Paso is about 685 miles from the mouth of the Rio Grande near Brownsville. Adding the Big Bend but leaving the distance in only three line segments increases the distance to 745 miles. In about a dozen sections, it’s 814 miles. In about 60 sections, it’s 924 miles.
I really like that waterborne barrier.
“I really like that waterborne barrier.”
Blocking the use of boats, turns the river itself into a much more formidable obstacle.
Putting the early detection tripwire out there in the middle of the River gives the defenders a lot more time to respond to alarms, before infiltrators would have a chance to disappear.
With full “Smart Wall” once intruders are detected, they are under observation for identification and tracking from the Command Post.
Great that these contracts are going to smaller local companies, not just Bechtel, Kiewit, etc
“Great that these contracts are going to smaller local companies, not just Bechtel, Kiewit, etc”
There is generally some percentage of small business set asides, but the scale and speed of the ramp up required for this Program is also going to mean all hands on deck - lots of sub-contracts, and lots of supply chain activity. Lot’s of “Man-Camps” in the boondocks, coming into town on Friday night with fat wallets.
I rode portions of the wall on my motorcycle in March and April 2021. I wanted to see what was done and what was doing on.
In early April 2021 I rode the section west of the commercial port of El Paso (which is about 5 miles west of El Paso). From there heading westward was old 20’ fence for 5 miles, then new 20’ fence for about 20 miles and then 30’ fence the next 40 miles to the Columbus NM crossing.
There were problems on that stretch of new 20’ fence where people were getting over it pretty easily. One such place it was coming down the east side of a hill by a sharp drop that you could put a plank horizontally from the hillside to the top of the wall.
While I was riding that section I came upon a interesting situation - the were about half a dozen BP officers that were in the process of detaining several people who had just come over the wall. I stopped and talked to the head guy... interesting discussion.
Anyways, are they intending on upgrading that section to the 30’ stuff? Almost none of that section had the ‘Smart Wall’ sensors in, and the cap wasn’t up either.
In early March 2021 I rode from Mission upstream to Roma - what a mess! Very little done and vary little connected leaving big gaps.
In late March 2021 I rode from 20 miles west of Presidio to 20 miles east of Presidio - no barriers and none needed.
You can see what CBP is publicly reporting here: https://www.cbp.gov/border-security/along-us-borders/smart-wall-map
That lays out the total new construction program funded in the Big Beautiful Bill, not including stuff built this year with previously frozen funds.
It does not detail exactly what is going where, but 630 miles of new secondary barrier is going to cover a lot of areas outside of the cities. They keep stats on crossings, and prioritize infrastructure investment according to those stats, so bad areas are going to naturally get reinforced.
According to the map on the CBP website, there is already new construction going on in about a 10 mile segment in Sunland Park, as you head West From El Paso, West of Mt. Cristo Rey. I believe that is secondary barrier. Then they show that some kind of new construction has already been awarded (construction not yet underway) heading all the way out West (80 miles?) to where the border drops into the “bootheel” part of New Mexico.
My understanding is that this time around, they are more aggressively biting off some of the tougher, steeper areas that they shied away from during the first term, because of the higher cost per mile, difficulty (risk to schedule and performance), and the high profile blasting that would be required. Fisher is already blasting heavily in the Eastern mountainous part of their new segment (Huachuca Mountains) in Arizona.
There is about 100 miles of Replacement Smart Wall in the Program, so some of the previous primary barrier (perhaps that ineffective stretch of 20 footers on steep terrain that you observed) will be getting upgraded.
The Rio Grande Valley Sector is South Texas (Mission, Roma, McAllen, Brownsville) is a bigger challenge, because of the patchwork of many private landowners along the riverfront. The whole length of the border in California, Arizona and New Mexico has a pre-existing Government easement for right of way, called the Roosevelt Reservation, but not Texas. The shifting and flooding Rio Grande River as border, further complicates infrastructure construction in Texas - the Lower Rio Grande worst of all.
These big and well funded construction firms are going to eat up the miles in NM, AZ and CA once they get rolling, mountains or no. But South Texas is the tough nut. I would not be surprised if they dragged the contracting out down there until after the midterms, because they will likely have to condemn people’s land, and take (forcibly buy) it for public use to do a lot of the building down there.
The did however just award the whole urban area of Laredo, just upriver from there, yesterday. So maybe they have cracked the code on the Texas right of way issue.
I think that this coming Summer (26) you would see a lot of construction activity if you took the same ride, and next Summer you would see a lot of finished wall and smart technology.
Something like 750 miles of new Primary Barrier, 630 miles of new Secondary Barrier, and well over a thousand miles of new technology coverage by the Summer/Fall of 2028.
Yeah, that section west of El Paso is where the private wall was built.
Going eastward to the commercial crossing at that time there was about 2 miles of old 20’ barrier, then they had taken the old 20’ barrier out in preparation to building new wall.
Then Biden stopped everything.
So, they took the recently removed sections, propped them up with stands, and chained them together.
The section where they had taken them out and then put them back was 1-2 miles long to the eastern edge of the mesa.
This was just south of the landfill.
Indeed, that is how I got out of there - there was a good road down thru the landfill.
I didn’t ride west from Columbus NM, but they had 15 or so miles of 30’ until it was going up a mountain to the west just before the boot heel corner.
Virtually none of the section from the commercial crossing (Sunland) to west of Columbus had the ‘Smart’ stuff finished.
It was kinda spooky riding it... I could feel eyes on me at one point... looked thru the barrier and sure enough - a guy was squatting under a bush on the side watching me go by.
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