U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is accepting bids of up to $400 million per task for the construction of barriers and other infrastructure along the U.S.–Mexico border.
According to the solicitation notice posted on Dec. 20, the five-year Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity contracts involve the design and construction of “border barriers, anti-climb features, enforcement zones, roads, gates, bridges, drainage control, cattle guards, lighting, detection systems, cameras, towers, and communication fiber.”
Construction costs for each contract range from $50 million to $400 million.
Offers on the contracts are due by Jan. 10.
Minding the Gaps
The solicitation’s posting comes on the heels of the Biden administration’s Dec. 13 announcement that it will commence work to close gaps along the border wall.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, those gaps include seven in the Border Patrol’s Yuma, Arizona, sector and one in the El Paso, Texas, sector—an area that includes western Texas and New Mexico.
New work will also be performed in the San Diego sector, which covers western Arizona and part of eastern California, and the El Paso sector.
In 2020, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden promised that, under his administration, there would “not be another foot” of border wall constructed.
That policy appears to have shifted, however, as the number of illegal border crossings continues to reach record highs.
According to CBP data published in October, U.S. Border Patrol encountered 2,378,944 illegal immigrants at the border during the 2022 fiscal year—the highest amount ever recorded for a single year.
Interestingly, the total number of fiscal year 2022 encounters that’s displayed on the CBP website—last updated on Nov. 14—reflects a lower count of 2,214,652.
CBP officials didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for clarification about the discrepancy.
The year also reportedly saw a record number of border crossing deaths, although the administration hasn’t officially published the data for either of Biden’s first two years in office.
