Weeks after President Donald Trump criticized it as “done to make me look bad,” a private border wall built by his supporters in South Texas has undergone further erosion due to a tropical storm that hit the weekend.
HOUSTON – Weeks after he was criticized by President Donald Trump as “made to make me look bad,” a private border wall built by his supporters in South Texas has undergone further erosion in a weekend tropical storm that was the first major weather test of the project. .
Heavy rain and Hanna’s winds left large cuts in the land in front of the fence, which is next to the Rio Grande, the now swollen river that separates Texas and Mexico. While the fence posts are still standing, some of the holes in front of the fence are several feet deep, suggesting that part of the barrier could become unstable, according to opponents of the project.
Despite a widely shared viral video purporting to show the storm tearing down a border wall, neither the private fence nor the government-built border barriers were knocked down by the storm. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection Office said Monday that the video shows a border wall construction site in New Mexico in June.
But a legal battle continues over the strength of the private border wall, which was built in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas by North Dakota-based Fisher Industries, a company that has since been awarded a $ 1.3 thousand wall contract. million from the United States government, the highest award to date. The project has been regularly promoted by We Build the Wall, a nonprofit group created by Trump supporters whose online fundraiser has raised more than $ 25 million. Organizers of Build the Wall have repeatedly claimed to have the support of the President.
A tweet sent by Trump indicates otherwise.
“I did not agree to make this very small (small) section of the wall, in a difficult area, by a private group that raised money through ads,” he wrote on Twitter July 12 after initial reports of erosion at along the fence. “It was only done to make me look bad.”
A day later, former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who joined We Build the Wall as general counsel and is running for the United States Senate in Kansas, said the president had personally applauded me “We Build the Wall “multiple times.
Fisher Industries installed fence posts just 35 feet from the Rio Grande. That is much closer to the river than the government normally builds border barriers due to concerns about erosion and flooding that could violate the obligations of the United States treaties with Mexico.
The nonprofit National Butterfly Center has sued We Build the Wall and Fisher Industries, arguing that the fence posts and the work done to tilt the land in front of the fence will change the flow of the Rio Grande and cause new flooding in both sides.
The butterfly center is located next to the fence built by Fisher. He provided photos taken Monday of several places where the riverbank has eroded in front of the fence. According to the butterfly center, the areas showing erosion are the same places that Fisher’s teams repaired earlier this summer before Trump’s tweet.
“It looks worse now after the repairs than before the repairs,” said Javier Peña, a lawyer for the butterfly center. “We all have to worry about Fisher destroying part of the river for profit and then moving on.”
Tommy Fisher, the company’s CEO, said any erosion would eventually go away once the soil has been fully planted or replaced with synthetic material. The fence posts and underlying concrete remain strong, said Fisher, who said earlier this month that the project “will last 150 years.”
Crews are already smoothing out cracks in the ground found Monday, Fisher said.
“If he was going to fall, good luck,” he said. “You better bring a lot more wind.”
The National Weather Service estimates that about 15-17 inches (38-43 centimeters) of rain fell near the fence site during Hanna, with winds of 33 mph (53 km / h) reported in the adjacent town of Mission.
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Associated Press reporter John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas contributed to this report.
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