Tempe company submits new $3.3B proposal to build wall by mid-2020

PHOENIX — Tempe-based company Fisher Industries submitted a new proposal to the Department of Homeland Security this week, offering to build 218 miles of border wall for $3.3 billion by June 2020.

The new proposal is cheaper than the company’s last offer to build 234 miles for $4.3 billion, well below the $8 billion President Donald Trump has sought for the project.

“People have been waiting. Forty miles have been put up in the past two years. That’s just not acceptable,” Tommy Fisher, the company’s president, told reporters Tuesday during a demonstration in Coolidge.

“And I thought if we sat on the sidelines and just dealt with regular government bureaucracy and didn’t become proactive, our border doesn’t really get protected the way it should.”

Paul Debs w/Advanced Technology Systems Co shows members of #Congress tech component of ⁦@FisherSandG⁩’s $3.285 billion #BorderWall proposal. ⁦@KTAR923⁩ pic.twitter.com/kA9BYiOacA

— Peter Samore (@ktarpetersamore) April 16, 2019

As part of the new proposal, Fisher Industries would use its patented hanging system to construct 42 miles of barrier near Yuma, 91 miles near Tucson, 69 miles near El Paso, Texas, and 16 miles near El Centro, California.

The proposal includes steel fencing, paved roadways, third-party inspection and surveillance technology provided by Virginia-based Advanced Technology Systems Company.

Fisher Industries held a demonstration of its building process last month, but Tuesday’s event also included a demonstration of this surveillance technology.

“So what we’re doing is our technology offerings are creating a multi-layer security package in addition to the physical barrier,” Paul Debs, president of ATSC, told KTAR News 92.3 FM at the demonstration.

“We are infusing surface and subsurface detection and classification of threats using a suite of technological offerings that we developed.”

Debs said the company can install sensors that detect and classify human foot traffic, gunfire, vehicle traffic, digging and animal movements near the border.

Republican U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana said the proposal and demonstration were “impressive.”

“Obviously the American people are a little frustrated, as is the president. It’s taken a lot money and yet it doesn’t seem like much progress has been made in terms of building protection along our southern border,” Cassidy told KTAR News at the event.

“Here’s a group that says we can do a mile a day at a higher quality, a lower cost, faster speed … and we’ll guarantee for five years.”

KTAR News 92.3 FM’s Peter Samore contributed to this report.