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# Homeland Security Will Issue Call for US–Mexico Border Wall Prototypes
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/wall-call-opens-for-five-days/
- Published: 2017-02-28T23:18:25.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:27:48.000Z
- Description: The Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection announced a call "for the design and build of several prototype wall structures in the vicinity of the United States border with Mexico."
- Author: Allison Meier
- Tags: In Brief, Architecture, Donald Trump, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:23 (2016, 2017, part 2)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2017/02/nogalesborder.jpg)

The concrete and steel fence between Nogales, Arizona (at left) and Nogales, Mexico (at right) (photo by Sgt. 1st Class Gordon Hyde, via U.S. Army/Wikimedia)

In a [notice issued on February 24](https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=b8e1b2a6876519ca0aedd748e1e491cf&tab=core&%5Fcview=0&ref=hyperallergic.com) on the Federal Business Opportunities site, the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection announced it will open an electronic call on March 6 “for the design and build of several prototype wall structures in the vicinity of the United States border with Mexico.” Applicants will have just a few days before the deadline of March 10 to send in their proposals, with awards “contemplated for mid-April.”

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2017/02/tijuanaborder.jpg)

The US–Mexico border fence at Playas de Tijuana (photo by Eekiv/Wikimedia)

[Dezeen](https://www.dezeen.com/2017/02/27/architects-will-have-five-days-submit-proposals-donald-trump-us-mexico-border-wall/?ref=hyperallergic.com) points out that the call for Trump’s campaign-promised border wall coincided with the president’s speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), in which he [crowed](http://www.france24.com/en/20170225-usa-mexico-border-wall-tax-trump-pieto?ref=hyperallergic.com) that the wall was “way, way, way ahead of schedule.” Never mind that Mexico [has no plans to pay](http://fortune.com/2016/11/10/mexico-donald-trump-border-wall/?ref=hyperallergic.com) for it, and any such construction across miles of the border would likely amount to [a heavy hit for US taxpayers](http://fortune.com/2017/02/27/border-tax-costs-investments/?ref=hyperallergic.com).

Why only give aspiring wall builders five days to fine-tune and file their proposals? While the project’s civil rights implications and [ecological impact](http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/02/17/514356130/the-environmental-consequences-of-a-wall-on-the-u-s-mexico-border?ref=hyperallergic.com) alone would be astounding, there remain numerous logistical and ethical issues to address, such as the potential division of [the Tohono O’odham Nation’s ancestral land](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/20/us/border-wall-tribe.html?ref=hyperallergic.com), which straddles the likely route of the proposed wall. Furthermore, the [Migration Policy Institute notes](http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/borders-and-walls-do-barriers-deter-unauthorized-migration?ref=hyperallergic.com) that the “funneling of migrants to alternative routes points to one statistic that correlates closely with the construction of more walls: an increase in the number of deaths.” Walls, in other words, will not stop illegal immigration, they will just cause people to find more dangerous paths.