The comptroller general is expanding an investigation into President Trump’s border wall to look at a no-bid contract that will pay a whopping $32 million a mile — far higher than other wall sections — a senator said Saturday.

The comptroller general is expanding an investigation into President Trump’s border wall to look at a no-bid contract that will pay a whopping $32 million a mile — far higher than other wall sections — a senator said Saturday.
The award went to BFBC, an affiliate of Barnard Construction, whose chairman is a reliable GOP donor. The contract is worth $569 million, and calls for build 17.17 miles of wall in two locations in California.
Previous sections of Mr. Trump’s wall cost less than $25 million per mile, while fencing built under the Bush and Obama administrations cost between $4 million and $6 million per mile.
Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the Government Accountability Office will probe the contact. The GAO was already looking at how the government was spending the border wall money siphoned from the Defense Department’s accounts, under Mr. Trump’s emergency declarations.
Mr. Reed. said it was particularly worrying that the high-dollar contract was awarded at a time when the government is going so deeply into debt in order to deal with the coronavirus crisis.
“This raises troubling questions about the timing of this contract and how it was given to this private contractor,” the Rhode Island Democrat said.
While many government offices have shuttered and work has stopped thanks to shelter-in-place orders, wall construction remains on pace, according to Customs and Border Protection.
From March 6 through April 10 the government replaced 19 miles of outdated fencing and one mile of vehicle barrier with the new wall design. It also added four brand new miles of secondary fencing in some locations.
Democrats on Capitol Hill have called for that construction to be halted, saying the wall is not essential for blocking spread of coronavirus.
Border officials, though, say the wall helps shape the flow of migration, funneling unauthorized border crossers either into ports of entry or to where Border Patrol agents are prepared to nab them.
“Now more than ever, borders matter. Border security matters. The wall matters,” Mark Morgan, acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, told reporters earlier this month in defending the pace of wall construction.
All told, the government envisions 753 miles of wall being built under Mr. Trump.
As much as 450 miles of that could be completed by the end of this year.
Barnard Construction has been awarded previous contracts for wall-building, including $260 million to build wall near Yuma, Arizona.
In addition to the GAO, the Homeland Security inspector general is looking into a $400 million contract awarded to Fisher Sand & Gravel, another company run by a frequent GOP campaign contributor.
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