Armed Mexicans Smuggled Into U.S. to Guard Trump’s Wall, Whistleblowers Say
They went so far as to build “a dirt road to expedite illegal border crossings to sites,” the complaint says
Contractors used armed Mexican security units who were illegally smuggled into the United States to guard the construction sites of Trump’s border wall, according to a complaint by two whistle-blowers.
According to the
New York Times, in unsealed court documents the whistle-blowers allege that two companies, Sullivan Land Services Co. (S.L.S.) and Ultimate Concrete of El Paso (U.C.), who were awarded federal contracts, not only smuggled in armed Mexican security guards but
overcharged the government for construction costs.
Additionally, the report claims that
a supervisor at the Army Corps of Engineers approved Ultimate Concrete’s building of “a dirt road to expedite illegal border crossings to sites in San Diego, using construction vehicles to block security cameras.”
“This U.C.-constructed road was apparently the route by which the armed Mexican nationals were unlawfully crossing into the United States,” the whistle-blowers said in the complaint.
Sullivan Land Services Co. has been awarded more than $1.4 billion in government contracts to work on the border wall and, according to the
Times,
allowed its subcontractor, Ultimate Concrete, to hire the armed Mexican guards.
One of the whistle-blowers making the accusations is a former deputy sheriff in San Diego County and the other is a former F.B.I. special agent, the report said.
The whistle-blowers also claim that bogus invoices were submitted to the federal government by Ultimate Concrete employees and that the company’s president also submitted false claims and was “hiding the full extent of his profits on the Border Wall project.”
Finally,
when the concerns were brought to the Army Corps supervisor, one of the whistle-blowers claims to have been told to “stand down.”
