Designs for Trump's ‘powerful’ Mexico border wall include drones, watchtowers and a toxic trench filled with nuclear waste
Some proposals for Trump’s border wall may look like spoofs, but they provide a fascinating window into the lurid anxieties of middle America
Monorails, shipping containers and nuclear waste dumps are just some of the ways that US construction companies have interpreted US President Donald Trump’s call for an “impenetrable, physical, tall, powerful, beautiful wall” to march 3,200 kilometres across the country’s border with Mexico.
Up to 400 bidding contractors were expected to submit their schemes this week to the US Customs and Border Protection agency, in a militarised beauty pageant worthy of one of Trump’s own reality TV shows.
The parameters for proposals were as surreal as the idea for the wall itself; the solicitation notice tinged with the characteristic Trump cocktail of bluster, confusion and backtracking.
Rules state that the wall must be tough enough to withstand attacks from “sledgehammer, car jack, pick axe, chisel, battery operated impact tools … propane or butane or other similar hand-held tools” for up to four hours, but also be “aesthetically pleasing” – although obviously only on the northern, US-facing side. It must be “physically imposing in height”, ideally 30 feet, but the terms also state that shorter options of 18 feet “may be acceptable”.
After the initial call-out, a second request for proposals was published with an option for the designs to have “a see-through component”. As many predicted, the great impenetrable wall might simply end up being a mesh fence. If it even happens at all.