The real estate fights at the border wall

A contractor says the government should buy or lease his wall, then hire him to build more

A portion of Fisher’s New Mexico fence for We Build The Wall
A portion of Fisher’s New Mexico fence for We Build The Wall

A contractor who owns hundreds of miles of property along the U.S-Mexico border says he’s got a deal for President Donald Trump.

Tommy Fisher says he’ll complete three miles of a border fence along the Rio Grande in just two weeks and for millions of dollars less per mile than what the federal government is spending to build Trump’s wall, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Fisher has already built 1,500 feet of the steel bollard fence and if he completes it within his deadline, he’d make good on his claim of efficiency — the federal government has built only about a mile of a border wall since Trump took office three years ago.

Fisher hopes to either sell or lease the under-construction wall to the federal government and win a contract to build more.

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It’s not Fisher’s first wall project. The Department of Homeland Security awarded his company, Fisher Sand & Gravel, a $400 million federal contract to build 31 miles of border fence in Arizona, although that contract is under a Department of Defense audit.

Stephen Bannon’s We Build The Wall group hired Fisher last year to build a half-mile fence in New Mexico for $23 million in 10 days. He also built a wall prototype in California.
Critics claim his fence is substandard compared to the federal government’s projects and neighbors say the work has worsened erosion and could lead to flooding downriver, destroying private real estate.

For the time being, it appears Fisher will be allowed to continue. Federal prosecutors the National Butterfly Center sued him to stop construction last year, but a federal judge ruled in his favor last week, allowing work to resume. [LAT]Dennis Lynch