U.S. Customs and Border Protection in partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has begun installing the first panels for the new border wall system at the Rio Grande Valley in Hidalgo County, Texas.
The busiest sector in the nation, the Rio Grande Valley is the highest priority location for new border wall system construction. The Rio Grande Valley Sector accounts for approximately 40 percent of the illegal immigrant apprehensions and ranks first in seized cocaine and marijuana along the southwest border.
The majority of illegal activity is occurring in areas of the Rio Grande Valley with limited infrastructure and technology. The new border wall system will improve the Rio Grande Valley Sector’s ability to impede and deny illegal border crossings and the drug and human smuggling activities of transnational criminal organizations.
This project consists of approximately eight miles of new levee wall system in locations where no barriers currently exist. The contract for this project was awarded in November 2018.
This project is similar to the 76 miles of new border wall system recently constructed in the San Diego, El Centro, Yuma, and El Paso Sectors. In addition to a physical barrier, the new levee wall system also includes an enforcement zone, which will include technology to provide situational awareness, as well as an all-weather road for lateral access.
Since January 2017, approximately $9.8 billion has been identified to construct approximately 509 miles of new border wall system through a combination of Department of Homeland Security and Department of Defense funding and the Treasury Forfeiture Fund. This includes approximately 110 miles of new levee and border wall system within the Rio Grande Valley Sector in areas where no barriers currently exist.
