Customs and Border Protection officials reportedly put a rush-order for a video surveillance system to guard construction on prototypes for President Donald Trump's border wall, citing a "threat environment."
According to the Los Angeles Times, the order bypassed competitive bidding, and the price of the system was kept secret from the public.
And though the Homeland Security Department issued a memo to local agencies warning of the potential for violent protests before construction, there was not a single protest or incident during the monthlong, $20 million building of eight prototypes, the Times reported.
According to the Times, the remote surveillance system was added to an existing contract held by General Dynamics; a document published on a federal government website Nov. 16 — two months after the decision was made to use it — blacked out its price.
The system was approved under a no-bid process because the agency decided it had to install the system before the construction start-date of Sept. 26. The normal bidding process would take weeks, the notice said.
The document makes several references to the "threat environment" surrounding the project and said it was "necessary to deploy surveillance technology to the construction site in order to provide situational awareness related to threats against the site and against the contractors building the prototype walls on behalf of CBP," the Times reported.
The contract for the surveillance system said it would stay in place for up to eight months, the Times reported; after that, it would be deployed to another Border Patrol sector in Texas.
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