The Guy Who Spent $30 Million Building Trump's Wall Is Looking for Buyers

[Initech]

To get to Tommy Fisher’s private border wall in Texas, I drive south from the city of McAllen, then west on Military Road, past a chunk of redundant, abandoned federal border wall, and from there onto a dirt path through a sugar cane farm down to the Rio Grande. When I arrive, Fisher is waiting, wearing a Western-style plaid shirt, wraparound sunglasses, and a mesh baseball cap featuring his company’s logo. He’s 51 years old, with an ursine build and a disarmingly gentle voice.

By trade a builder of more prosaic infrastructure, such as dams and freeways, Fisher greets me by launching into a baffling sermon on his wall’s technical specifications. Mostly what I perceive is that we’re at its very edge, meaning we could theoretically walk around it and swim 100 yards to Mexico. Across the river, near the city of Reynosa, which has lately been wracked by unusually intense cartel violence, is a park with wooden docks and straw-roofed gazebos. Beyond the park, according to Fisher, is at least one cartel stash house, where drugs or people are stowed before being smuggled to America. As I poke around, Fisher says, “Make yourself at home.”

There are two private-sector border walls attempting to separate Mexico from the U.S., and Fisher Sand & Gravel Co. has built them both. The first, erected in the summer of 2019, is nestled in a mountainous half-mile stretch of New Mexico. The second—this one—is more ambitious. Completed last year, it’s about a 90-minute drive from the Gulf of Mexico, under the low, heavy skies of South Texas’ Rio Grande Valley. The structure is 3 miles long, hugging a severe bend in the river, and consists of roughly 15,000 18-foot-tall gray steel bollards, spaced 5 inches apart and set in a wide concrete foundation. (In this sense it’s more like a fence, but for simplicity’s sake I’ll mainly call it a wall.) Up close, one can easily see between the bollards. From a distance they appear to be a contiguous, glinting slab of sheet metal.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-07-22/trump-border-wall-builder-tommy-fisher-is-looking-for-a-buyer?utm_medium=social&cmpid=socialflow-twitter-businessweek&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_content=businessweek&utm_source=twitter

When you fall for a con artist, don't be surprised when you get conned.

[captain queeg]

1. The rio grande is a lot bigger there than I imagined.

[PJMcK]

2. Do you know what the river's name means? (n/t)

[captain queeg]

4. Big River. But I was under the impression that most of it had been diverted by the US

By the time it got to Mexico. Of course I don’t really know where that happens.

[Vinca]

3. Wonder why he doesn't ask a certain orange "billionaire" to invest in his project. LOL.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

5. He should talk to that guy from Nigeria

All he has to do is provide his bank account and routing numbers.