Award: Border infrastructure projects
Value: Approximately $2 billion
Location: Eagle Pass, Texas; Lukeville, Arizona; Marron Valley and Campo, California
Client: Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection
AIS Infrastructure, a heavy civil and infrastructure construction firm, has obtained approximately $2 billion in contracts from the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection, according to a Dec. 16 announcement shared with Construction Dive.
The projects are located along the southern border between the U.S. and Mexico near Eagle Pass, Texas; Lukeville, Arizona; and Marron Valley and Campo, California, east of San Diego.
Chattanooga, Tennessee-based AIS will complete the work through a subsidiary, BCSS, according to the news release. BCSS will work in a joint venture with Montgomery, Alabama-based Caddell Construction and Burnet, Texas-based Gibraltar to lead and manage all four projects.
DHS and CBP have announced billions of dollars in awards in October, and additional contracts in December, to engage firms for work along the southern border.
To that end, both Caddell Construction and Gibraltar are border work veterans — Caddell was tapped by the CBP to build 14 miles of contiguous new border wall in 2020, while Gibraltar has worked on over 30 site segments of border fence, according to the company’s website.
Other builders, including Watsonville, California-based Granite Construction, have also joined the fray. The infrastructure firm won the first border wall contract of President Donald Trump’s second term in March.
Each of AIS Infrastructure’s four projects are design-build efforts that are currently in the engineering phase, led by Omaha, Nebraska-based HDR, per the release. Fieldwork is anticipated to begin in January 2026, with construction expected to go on for 30 to 36 months per project.
The specific locations listed in the release all have a border crossing or a border patrol presence.
Each contract and its scope includes:
- DRT-1, $565 million, and DRT-2, $364 million, in Del Rio, Texas: focused on vertical and waterborne barriers, patrol roads, access routes and complex technical security systems.
- SDC-1, $483 million in San Diego, California: Covering vertical barriers, mountain access and patrol roads and advanced technical security systems.
- TCA-1, $606 million in Tucson and Yuma, Arizona: Combining existing barrier wall improvements, new vertical barriers and extensive drainage, patrol and access road networks, as well as advanced security and detection systems.
In addition, AIS Infrastructure plans to grow its workforce by 350 to 400 employees and deploy nearly 100 additional pieces of heavy equipment by March 2026 to meet the scale and complexity of the work, according to the announcement.
The company said it currently has $3.7 billion in indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contracts under review and feels well positioned for the $39 billion total allocated to the federal border wall program.
