"We built over 100 miles in only 90 days,"
explains James Bonk. Bonk was a consultant and manager among the team of companies who in
2006-2008 built and extended much of the border wall that already exists today
along the USA's southern border with Mexico, in the Goldwater and Yuma sectors. The
prime contractor was Boeing, but there were many
subcontractors. More recently, Bonk has been involved in planning
border walls in Spain and in Israel. He has worked with a variety of
major companies and different engineering designs for fences and barriers.
Actual
experience in building miles of border wall argues for a so-called Bollard wall or fence, or the design of vertical steel rods
or "slats" (perhaps some other metal, but metal) promoted by Trump
more recently. ("Bollards are upright steel posts mounted in or
alongside roads and parking lots to control, direct, or obstruct vehicular
traffic or impact," says the
Long Fence Co.)
James Bonk came to speak at the Northern
Virginia Tea Party, skeptical of discussions about Trump's border wall being
solid concrete slabs. From his years of experience, transporting
giant concrete slabs to the middle of nowhere would be expensive and
inefficient. He has worked on concrete wall projects but would not
recommend that design on the wilderness frontier. Mixing and pouring
concrete slabs on site in the middle of nowhere would be difficult. Logistics
and transport of components are an important part of any such project.
Opponents
of a border wall keep saying we must listen to experts. Along with
border patrol agents on duty, those experts include those like James Bonk, who
have actually built the parts of the border wall we have now. But
those experts and border patrol agents on site are calling for a metal wall of
vertical pipes or slats they can see through, which is exactly what Trump is
now promoting.
James Bonk is concerned that bureaucrats a
decade ago sabotaged and undermined the project with "designed to
fail" illogical requirements and that ideas being discussed today are
similarly aimed at intentionally failing in the project. The wall-building project abruptly stopped when
Barack Obama became president. Nevertheless, despite the hindrances,
they successfully built hundreds of miles.
This
author asked James Bonk about the problems of building in or near the Rio
Grande in the flood plains along the border of Texas. Not even remotely a problem was
among the lessons learned from experience. A concrete foundation
would not need to be laid in the lowlands.
One
of the best techniques would be to dig a trench and then bury a steel
"footer" deep into the ground. The metal plate serving as
the buried foundation would have legs or wings out to each side to make the
wall stay upright. The vertical slats or pipes forming the actual
fence or wall would then be welded or bolted into the footer. A
second level of footer may be added with side legs or wings just beneath the
ground level. Then the entire footer is buried.
Another
design involves massive metal bases seated into the ground by
pile-drivers. Each such base attaches to one large vertical pipe or
a section of vertical fence.
This
design will allow flood waters to freely flow through the openings without
obstruction. Strong winds would flow through
easily. Irrigation channels or pipes can be installed through the
fence to bring water from the river to farmers and ranchers.
Trump's
new sections would be probably be 30 to 40 feet, rather than the 12-foot-high
sections constructed in 2007-2009. Bonk emphasizes that teams then
were prohibited from building a high wall out of fear that trespassers would
climb over and then fall. In the past, bureaucrats did not want a fence that
would actually work.
Solar panels mounted on the ground on
the north side of the access road along the fence would power motion sensors or
movement differential radar mounted up on the top of the fence, triggering
radio alerts back to Customs and Border Patrol; lights; video cameras; and
loud-speaker-recorded warnings of potential injury if climbing the fence is
attempted. If anyone tries to damage the fence, the video recordings
would get him put in jail with felony convictions, not released into U.S.
society. A win.
Recall that it is
already the law of the land that a border wall shall be built along the
"entire" United States' southern border. In
late 2006, Congress enacted and President George W. Bush signed into law the Secure Fence Act of 2006.
The
wording of the act is not about a "fence," but about any
kind of barrier customized to the particular terrain in each location to the
extent necessary to "the prevention of all unlawful entries into the
United States, including entries by terrorists, other unlawful aliens, instruments
of terrorism, narcotics, and other contraband." That is
"all" — as in "all." So the Secure Fence
Act of 2006 requires building "whatever it takes" — not a
"fence" per se. And it requires operational
control of the "entire" border of the United States.
The Secure Fence Act of
2006 was never fully implemented because Congress did not appropriate the funds
to pay for a barrier along the entire border. Because the project is
already a construction project "authorized" by Congress, the only
remaining question is to supply the funding needed through appropriations by
Congress or by Trump repurposing funds from other budgetary line items and
applying those funds to finishing the border wall.
In
2007, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) led passage of an amendment that did
not actually change much. The amendment clarified that the secretary
of homeland security has discretion to determine the type of wall or barrier
appropriate for each location along the border. That means that if
Trump's DHS secretary determines that an extensive wall of vertical slats 100
feet high is necessary, the Secretary's determination becomes the absolute law
of the land.