Border wall materials are actively being transported away from the border this week despite calls from President-elect Donald Trump and other prominent lawmakers for it to stop, according to footage obtained by The Daily Wire.
The video, recorded this Tuesday, shows trucks fully loaded with border wall panels departing the border. The steel bollard wall sections in the videos appear to be the same “32.91’ X 7.91’ Steel Bollard Wall Sections w/Grout” that were being sold on GovPlanet’s online auction site, until they were removed from the website following The Daily Wire’s investigative report published last week.
A source in the Border Patrol says that government contractors in Arizona are now picking up the wall early in the morning before the sun rises, an apparent attempt to avoid scrutiny for what Trump and others have characterized as a last-minute fire sale to undermine any future attempt to secure the border.
EXCLUSIVE: Video recorded this week shows truck after truck hauling border wall away from the border, despite calls from Trump for an immediate stop.
Footage obtained by @JamesLalino shows them leaving the border loaded up with steel panels, and arriving at the auction site: pic.twitter.com/1FEXfUBhcn
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) December 20, 2024
“The Biden administration is now moving the wall in the dead of night,” the source told The Daily Wire. “But we are always watching.”
This new development comes after Trump on Monday publicly called on President Joe Biden “to please stop selling the wall.”
On Thursday, Trump filed an amicus brief in support of an injunction to stop the Biden administration from continuing the practice, as well as an investigation into the legality of its conduct. Trump said earlier this week that it’s “almost a criminal act” what is being done in the weeks before he’s set to take back the presidency.
“It’s very expensive, and now it’s about double the price of what it would have been six years ago, and the administration is trying to sell it for five cents on the dollar, knowing that we’re getting ready to put it up,” Trump said earlier this week.
Videos show two separate companies, DP Trucking LLC and DL Delivery, transporting the border wall material. The material leaves the Arizona border en route to Pinal Airpark, where it is gathered to be sold off in auction.
DP Trucking is the same contractor that admitted earlier this month it was transporting the border wall materials as part of a government contract. DL Delivery is the DBA of PK Ranch LLC. It did not return The Daily Wire’s requests for comment.
It is unclear the status of the auctions. In the days following The Daily Wire’s initial report, the items up for auction vanished from the website of GovPlanet, which was holding the auction. In a phone conversation, a GovPlanet employee told The Daily Wire that the items were still up for sale, but that the listings were being updated. As of Friday afternoon, the listings were still absent from the website.
Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ), whose district borders the Pinal Airpark, told The Daily Wire that the new video shows the Biden administration is “persisting with its betrayal.”
“Even now as this sabotage has been brought to light, the Biden administration is persisting with its betrayal,” Crane said. “Undermining President Trump will not save Biden’s shameful legacy — it will only serve to devastate American families by making it harder to secure the border.”
Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) said he’s committed to uncovering all the details about how the sale of border wall material is being carried out, but complained that it won’t fix the problem.
“We’ll be able to expose the truth in the days ahead and to be able to hold agencies accountable by getting those documents and those details,” Lankford told The Daily Wire. “But, you know, they’re still gone, and that’s the challenge. Once he sells this off, we’re going to have to buy this fencing twice.”
“Buy it the first time to be installed, where Biden then just stuck it in the desert, held it as long as he could, and then sold it off,” he said. “Then we’ll have to buy it again to do real border security.”
The Pentagon, which has not responded to inquiries about the border wall sale, has told liberal outlets such as NPR that the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act gave it the authority from Congress to sell unused border construction materials.
But the provision the Pentagon is referring to originated with Senate Republicans, who actually wrote the legislation to stop the administration from actions such as what’s happening this month. The legislation requires the federal government to deploy the materials or transfer them to state governments who will use them for wall construction, not sell them off, according to the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Lawyers for Trump agree. In his amicus brief calling for an injunction, Trump argues that the Pentagon has no authority to auction off wall parts to private parties.
“That language does not mandate or authorize DoD to sell the excess border wall material at a steep discount to private parties,” the brief states.
According to a Border Patrol source who spoke with The Daily Wire, an estimated half-mile worth of wall is being transported each day, with a Christmas deadline to offload the whole supply.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has made it clear that there will be legal consequences for those involved in the sale of unused border wall sections, which he described as “a brazen abuse of power” and “theft of government resources.”
“To every official at the Department of Homeland Security, or anywhere else, who approves selling off incredibly expensive portions of the border wall for $5 a piece, you are engaged in theft of government property and you should expect the Department of Justice to investigate you and prosecute you,” Cruz said.
On the other side of Capitol Hill, the House Freedom Caucus is pushing for a rule that ensures “an amendment to stop Biden’s ongoing fire sale of border wall construction materials.”
Lankford says he has a plan to obtain all the relevant records to “expose the truth in the days ahead and to be able to hold agencies accountable.”
“What can be done is to be able to pull all the records that right now are being held by DoD, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and by DHS, to get all the records of how this happened, what happened, and to be able to expose the actors there that were trying to prevent the construction of the border wall,” Lankford said. “We’ll be able to expose the truth in the days ahead and to be able to hold agencies accountable by getting those documents and those details.”