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Trump's border wall may collapse as funds linked to Steve Bannon's non-profit: 'They're cutting corners everywhere'

A section of Trump's border wall along Rio Grande is about to collapse due to heavy rain events and erosion, engineering expert says
UPDATED SEP 4, 2020
(Getty Images)
(Getty Images)

A part of the border wall built by President Donald J Trump is on the verge of collapse, as per a new engineering report that is set to be filed in court this week. 

The report has found that a three-mile stretch of the border fencing which moved along the Rio Grande is in danger of collapsing given massive erosion, the Texas Tribune reports. The border wall had been built earlier this year by Fisher Sand and Gravel. 

The owner of the company, Tommy Fisher, had referred to this section of the barrier the 'Lamborghini' of border walls and had said that it could stand for a 150 years. However, several engineers have looked at the new reports and have questioned the claims made by Fisher. A professor of civil engineering at the University of Texas at El Paso, Alex Mayer, said, "It seems like they are cutting corners everywhere."

"It’s not a Lamborghini, it’s a $500 used car," Mayer continued. The documents had been initially reported on by ProPublica and The Texas Tribue. The border wall had been partly funded by private donors from the 'We Build the Wall' which is a non-profit organization. They were able to raise $25 million to help Trump's project. 

Former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon exits the Manhattan Federal Court on August 20, 2020 in the Manhattan borough of New York City. Bannon and three other defendants have been indicted for allegedly defrauding donors in a $25 million border wall fundraising campaign (Getty Images) 

However, the organization is currently being indicted after the founder, Brian Kolfage, a former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, and two others were accused of using the donor money to clear their personal debt. All the four men involved in the case have pleaded not guilty. 

Bannon has been accused of getting around $1 million in the reported scheme and then used hundreds of thousands on 'expenses'. It was just last year that Fisher had agreed to an inspection of the border as part of some ongoing lawsuits which had been filed by the National Butterfly Centre and the International Boundary and Water Commission.

A construction roller flattens land for a section of privately built border wall on December 11, 2019 near Mission, Texas. The hardline immigration group We Build The Wall is funding construction of the wall on private land along a stretch of the Rio Grande, which forms the border with Mexico. The group, led by former Trump strategist Stephen Bannon claims to have raised tens of millions of dollars in a GoFundMe drive to build sections of wall on the southwest border with Mexico (Getty Images)

However, the federal judge overseeing the case was not convinced to stop the construction of the wall until the impact of the Rio Grande section had been discovered. According to an environmental engineer who specializes in river management, Mark Tompkins, who spoke in a separate report, there had been erosion and scouring at the border given heavy rain events such as Hurricane Hanna which struck in July. 

Tompkins shared, "Fisher Industries' private bollard fence will fail during extreme high flow events." He also called out Fisher Sand and Gravel's quarterly inspection plans and dubbed them as 'completely inadequate'. In an affidavit to be filed in court, he added, "When extreme flow events, laden with sediment and debris, completely undermine the foundation of the fence and create a flow path under the fence or cause a segment of the fence to topple into the river, unpredictable and damaging hydraulics will occur."

POTUS Donald Trump on the other hand has tried hard to keep himself distant from the project this month. Trump had said, "I know nothing about the project, other than I didn't like — when I read about it, I didn't like it. I said, 'This is for government. This isn't for private people'."

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