Border Wall To Keep Out Hispanic Immigrants To Be Built By … Hispanic Immigrants

So a couple of weeks ago, we lampooned some contract notices posted on a government website by Customs and Border Protection (an agency of the Homeland Security Department).

The notices outlined what the Trump administration is looking for when it comes to the proposed border wall with Mexico. For those who somehow missed the absurdity, here’s what the notices said:

One of the CBP contract requests calls for a solid concrete wall, while the other asks for proposals for a see-through structure. Both require the wall to sunk at least six feet into the ground and include 25- and 50-foot automated gates for pedestrians and vehicles. The proposed wall must also be built in a such a way that it would take at least an hour to cut through it with a “sledgehammer, car jack, pick axe, chisel, battery operated impact tools, battery operated cutting tools, Oxy/acetylene torch or other similar hand-held tools.”

The government will award a contract based on 30-foot-wide sample walls that are to be built in San Diego.

Once you’re finished laughing at that (again), please review our assessment so you can laugh some more (again):

Now obviously, this whole idea was absurd from the word go, but in true Trump fashion, this takes the stupidity up a notch — one might even venture to call this “bigly” stupid.

First of all, just try and imagine the thought process that went into this. I mean what was the question that led to the “would take at least an hour to cut through” bit? Is that based on some assessment of available data on the average time it takes Mexican bandits to cut through concrete walls?

Also, this seems to suggest that the administration thinks Mexicans’ solution to the construction of a border wall will be to form chain gangs equipped with sledgehammers, car jacks, pick axes, chisels, battery operated impact tools, battery operated cutting tools, Oxy/acetylene torches [and] other similar hand-held tools (maybe trowels? screwdrivers?). Is that realistic? I mean what the f*ck are they going to do with all that equipment once they cut through the wall? Take it with them to America? (“What are you guys doing with those pick axes, chisels and Oxy/acetylene torches?” “Nothing.”) Leave it at the scene of the wall crime? Or will there be trucks there to take it back to Mexico where it will be loaned out to the next group of would-be wall cutters?

And then there’s the “sample walls.” So we’re going to have people building portions of trial walls in San Diego? Then what? Are you going to go hire some Mexicans, arm them with Oxy/acetylene torches and then time them to see how long it takes to cut through the prop walls?

Well as it turns out, the answer to the latter set of questions there (the ones in bold) is “yes.” Or at least “maybe.” Here’s WSJ to explain:

More than 200 companies have expressed interest in submitting plans to help design and build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, as the Trump administration seeks to fulfill a key campaign promise despite significant obstacles.

The companies, whose names were published on a federal contracting website, vary widely in size and capability–from construction giants like Kiewit Corp. to smaller, family-owned businesses.

Among those interested at this early stage are more than three dozen businesses owned by minorities, a Wall Street Journal analysis shows. Roughly 13% of the companies expected to submit proposals for the wall, for example, are owned by Hispanics.

Mario Burgos,  the son of an immigrant, owns an Albuquerque, N.M., construction logistics company and plans to submit a proposal. He said he viewed the project as more geared toward border security than immigration, and a surefire way to boost employment in job-strapped New Mexico.

“I am not against immigrants by any stretch of the imagination,” said Mr. Burgos, whose father came to the U.S. from Ecuador.

So you can write your own jokes here (although they really write themselves), but just sit back and think about how ridiculous this is for a second. Let it sink all the way in…

There is a very good chance that Donald Trump is going to end up paying billions of taxpayer dollars to Hispanic immigrants for their help in building a wall to keep out … Hispanic immigrants. 

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More color from WaPo who notes that the reaction from the Hispanic community has been, well, mixed…

Via WaPo

They’ve received death threats and had profanities and rocks hurled at them. One company’s tractor was stolen.

For the few Hispanic-owned construction firms daring to bid on building a piece of President Trump’s border wall, this is the emotional price of doing business.

Owners say they have been accused of betraying their community. Some say they have had to swallow their own qualms about Trump’s contentious immigration policies.

“A lot of people are saying, ‘You’re Latino. How can you build a wall to keep other Latinos out?’ We had to do a lot of soul-searching before we jumped into this because it’s obviously a very, very controversial topic,” said Michael Evangelista-Ysasaga, chief executive and owner of the Penna Group, a firm based in Fort Worth.

Evangelista-Ysasaga, whose grandparents immigrated from Mexico, said he fielded five death threats one morning alone this week from “random people calling into the office and just screaming.”

Every sovereign nation has a duty to defend its borders, he told callers. Unfortunately, he said, a “certain segment” of American Latinos have cast supporters of the border wall as “racist.”

Work on the border wall has stirred such impassioned reactions that only a tiny fraction of the country’s nearly half-million Hispanic-owned construction firms are even considering profiting from Trump’s wall.

Of the approximately 200 companies that have responded to the federal government’s two requests for proposals for a solid concrete border wall and another wall design, at least 32 companies are Hispanic-owned, according to a Washington Post analysis of a federal database. The deadline for proposals has been extended to April 4.

Construction executives, in interviews with The Post, said they weighed their misgivings about building the border wall against the benefits of providing jobs, growing their businesses, improving the local economy and having the ability to influence the construction of a safer, more humane wall.

“I try to be politically neutral in my decision-making process,” said Al Anderson, general manager of KWR Construction, a Hispanic-owned firm based in Sierra Vista, Ariz., that helped build the border fence as well as related roads and lighting. “We want whatever jobs here along the border that we can get, and set aside our personal beliefs to support our employees.”