The Trump Administration Is Facing Scrutiny for How It’s Handing Out Billion-Dollar Border Wall Contracts
When Tommy Fisher set out to build a section of border wall in South Texas during the first Trump administration, the project quickly became ensnared in controversy. Experts raised concerns about shoddy construction and signs of erosion.
Beyond that, Fisher’s company had received funding from a group called We Build the Wall, an influential conservative nonprofit that included President Donald Trump’s then-political strategist Steve Bannon as a board member. Some of its leaders eventually went to prison for their involvement in the venture.
Even the president denounced the project.
“I disagreed with doing this very small (tiny) section of wall, in a tricky area, by a private group which raised money by ads,” Trump wrote on X in response to reporting by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune in 2020 detailing problems with the wall project.
“It was only done to make me look bad,” the post continued.
But none of this stopped Fisher’s company from getting subsequent border wall contracts, including from the state of Texas. And now the federal government has awarded his company over $9 billion to build even more border wall — including a $1.2 billion contract in the Big Bend region of Texas, where residents have continued to press for answers about the government’s plans in and around one of the country’s largest national parks.
And, as during Trump’s first term, Fisher’s work is stirring up controversy again. A New York-based construction company has sued the Trump administration after it awarded the bulk of new Texas border wall contracts to North Dakota-headquartered Fisher Sand & Gravel and another company.
Posillico Civil Inc.’s lawsuit, filed in the Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C., on May 13, offers one of the first public glimpses into the procurement process along the border in Texas. The suit claims that out of the 11 prequalified vendors for the wall projects, U.S. Customs and Border Protection awarded nearly $14 billion — about 73% of the value of the contracts — to just two: Fisher’s firm and Barnard Construction, based in Montana. The work also includes wall projects around El Paso, Laredo, Del Rio and the Rio Grande Valley.
The Trump administration has come under scrutiny for awarding no-bid contracts and for the lack of transparency around its accelerated border wall construction plans, moves designed to help the president achieve his key campaign promise of securing the border.
During his first term, Trump’s moves also faced criticism. A 2020 investigation by ProPublica and the Tribune found that the government was awarding contracts before acquiring titles to the land, leading to millions of dollars in costs related to delays. A review of federal spending data by the news organizations also revealed how the first Trump administration had made hundreds of contract modifications, increasing the cost of the border wall project by billions.
The administration has shown no signs of slowing down: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security secured $46.5 billion to build the border wall in 2025, thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Having prequalified contractors is not uncommon, as the system is structured to help the government move through projects quicker, but it is not meant to remove competition, said Charles Tiefer, a leading authority on federal contract law and former member of the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
DHS “is picking contractors for loyalty and from confidence that they will do its bidding, rather than, as every other administration has done, picking contractors for best value,” Tiefer said, referring to reports that then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem awarded a $220 million ad campaign contract to a firm she had connections to. In response to ProPublica’s reporting, DHS said the department “has no involvement with the selection of subcontractors” and that it doesn’t control or weigh in on who contractors hire.
“They got huge blank checks, and they want to write them as fast as possible,” Tiefer said.
The White House declined to comment for this story. A CBP spokesperson said in a written statement that the bidding process has been fair. “Contracts awarded are based on the contractor’s qualifications to perform the work in a timely manner and at prices deemed fair and reasonable,” the spokesperson wrote, saying neither CBP nor DHS have an affiliation with We Build the Wall.
An attorney for Posillico declined to comment. The company has previously built 43 miles of federal wall in South Texas and also won a contract to construct sections of Gov. Greg Abbott’s state border project. The state project experienced many of the same construction delays and cost overruns as Trump’s border wall.
Posillico alleges in the lawsuit that it incurred “substantial bid preparation and proposal costs” drawing up plans for federal solicitations that were “not genuine competitive opportunities.”
While these are just allegations, Scott Amey, a contracting expert and general counsel at the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight, said border wall contracts have long been controversial and raised questions on what the government is getting for the cost, as well as the political connections of some of the contractors. Amey closely followed border wall procurement during the first Trump administration.
“There’s a cost, and ethics and contracting questions that all come up whenever you mention anything with the border wall,” Amey said.
Representatives for Fisher Sand & Gravel and Barnard did not respond to requests for comment. Barnard has filed as an intervenor in the case, meaning it isn’t a party in the suit but wants to participate.
Although the vast majority of the new funding is going to Fisher and Barnard, several other companies got smaller percentages of the contracts: Spencer Construction LLC; Granite Construction Co.; and Southwest Valley Constructors, which recently won another $1.7 billion contract for barrier construction in and around Big Bend National Park. Representatives for the other companies did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Posillico’s lawsuit claims that the contracts issued to the other companies went beyond the original scope of wall construction work the federal government told bidders it was seeking.
In CPB’s Big Bend Sector project, for example, contractors were ultimately required to install cattle fencing and cattle guards — something Posillico’s lawsuit contends was not what the government originally asked of potential contractors. Had the government been clearer on the scope, the lawsuit argues, the company may have had a better chance of winning a contract.
As part of the new scope of work, winning contractors, including Fisher Sand & Gravel, will also have to work with the International Boundary and Water Commission, the federal agency that administers treaties around the Rio Grande and the physical border with Mexico.
Fisher has previously clashed with the commission. In 2019, the commission filed a lawsuit claiming Fisher had violated a binational water treaty between the U.S. and Mexico after the company constructed fencing in South Texas. The investigation by ProPublica and the Tribune found that a 3-mile stretch of border wall Fisher built on the banks of the Rio Grande was at risk of collapsing if not fixed. The company also built a segment of border wall in Sunland Park, New Mexico, without following proper procedures. Both projects involved We Build the Wall, the nonprofit.
In the end, four of the nonprofit’s top leaders, including Bannon, were arrested on fraud and other charges connected to the fundraising scheme. Three men, including an Air Force veteran, were convicted and sentenced to prison. Trump pardoned Bannon, who was awaiting trial.
Fisher and the government reached a settlement in 2022 in which Fisher Sand & Gravel agreed to conduct quarterly inspections, maintain an existing gate and keep a $3 million bond for 15 years or until the property was transferred to the government to cover expenses in case the structure failed.
“The Rules Don’t Really Apply”
The Posillico lawsuit offers a rare peek behind the veil at the high-dollar world of border wall construction, an industry that has sprung up over the past 10 years in response to Trump’s recurring campaign promise to build a wall.
The procurement process has been especially obscure around border wall contracting, thanks to Noem waiving dozens of laws regulating financial transparency and competitiveness in government contracting for the entire southern border. That act marked the first time in American history these waivers were applied to all 1,954 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border.
In its lawsuit, Posillico made explicit that it did not contest the use of waivers to expedite construction of the wall.
For residents of border communities, the waivers have meant that DHS has released very little information detailing the massive infrastructure projects coming to their communities. This spring, the Center for Biological Diversity filed two lawsuits in federal court related to border wall construction in the Big Bend area, specifically over DHS’ failure to respond to a series of Freedom of Information Act requests for documents related to the project and challenging the agency’s authority to waive laws without Congress’ approval. The government has not filed answers to the complaints yet, with a deadline of June 1 for the FOIA complaint and early June in the congressional authority lawsuit.
In the Posillico lawsuit, DHS moved to seal documents in the case, including any depositions or affidavits; Judge David A. Tapp signed off on the motion.
In the absence of publicly posted requests for proposals and direct communication from Washington, residents in the Big Bend region have been relying on an online map posted by CBP that says it tracks contracts as they’re awarded. Lines on the map have shifted dramatically over the past few months, raising questions about what the government actually plans to build. The agency briefly took the map down altogether, around the same time that protests about the possibility of a physical wall in Big Bend National Park reached a fever pitch. When the map was restored to the website, it appeared to show a mix of “vehicle barriers” and “patrol roads” planned instead of steel walls within park boundaries.
Fisher Sand & Gravel is currently slated to build a wall-related project in Big Bend Ranch State Park, bordering the national park to the west, though it hasn’t publicly released any plans for what alternate border barriers might look like. Landowners in communities adjacent to the park are still gearing up to face eminent domain challenges from the federal government.
Barnard is working on a project outside the parks. Documents in Posillico’s lawsuit revealed that CBP has flagged sections of wall in Hudspeth, Jeff Davis and Presidio counties for “fast-track” construction by the company. To support that work, a pecan farm near the small ranching community of Lobo has started clearing a swath of land for a 500-person camp and petitioning the local water conservation district for approval to use agricultural well water for the project.
Amey, the contracting expert, said the Trump administration seems to want to make the exception the rule, considering controversial practices like Noem’s decision to award the huge border ad contract and the fact the government has waived so many contracting rules to accelerate the wall’s construction.
“It seems as if this administration, especially this time around, has decided that the rules don’t really apply,” he said.
The post The Trump Administration Is Facing Scrutiny for How It’s Handing Out Billion-Dollar Border Wall Contracts appeared first on ProPublica.
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