WASHINGTON – U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), in partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), has awarded a contract to construct approximately eight miles of levee wall system in the U.S. Border Patrol’s (USBP) Rio Grande Valley (RGV) Sector, funded with CBP’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2018 appropriations. The contract for this project, referred to by CBP as RGV-02, was awarded on November 11, 2018, to SLSCO in the amount of approximately $167M. Construction is scheduled to begin in February 2019.
The RGV-02 project consists of five segments located south of Alamo, Donna, Weslaco, Progreso and Mercedes, Texas within Hidalgo County. This project includes the construction and installation of tactical infrastructure including a reinforced concrete levee wall to the height of the existing levee, 18-foot tall steel bollards installed on top of the concrete wall, and vegetation removal along a 150-foot enforcement zone throughout the approximately eight miles of levee wall system. The levee wall system will include detection technology, lighting, video surveillance, and an all-weather patrol road parallel to the levee wall.
The RGV Sector remains an area of high illegal cross border activity. In FY 2017, USBP apprehended over 137,000 illegal aliens, and seized approximately 260,000 pounds of marijuana and approximately 1,192 pounds of cocaine in the RGV Sector. Once constructed, this levee wall system will serve as a persistent impediment to transnational criminal organizations, while still allowing river access for property owners, other federal/state/local officials, local emergency responders, and USBP.
CBP continues to implement President Trump’s Executive Order 13767 – also known as Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements – and continues to take steps to expeditiously plan, design, and construct a physical wall using appropriate materials and technology to most effectively achieve operational control of the southern border.
