00:00We're presently standing on the banks of the Rio Grande River with a three-mile border protection
00:04system behind me located about two miles south of Mission, Texas. Over the past year, the Fisher
00:10Sand and Gravel Company has won government contracts worth more than $8 billion, making
00:15the president, Tommy Fisher, and his two sons worth more than $1 billion, according to the
00:20Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The biggest winner in the Trump administration's aggressive immigration
00:25policy isn't a private prison company, defense tech firm, or deportation airline. It's a third
00:30generation family business that specializes in sand and gravel. Fisher Sand and Gravel is a 74-year-old
00:36construction business that's built bridges, levees, and dams across the western United States.
00:41Tommy inherited the business from his dad, Gene, and has been working on border wall projects for
00:46about a decade, ever since Trump made a key promise during his first campaign. He was a frequent guest
00:51on TV networks, pitching his plans for a wall. In 2021, Fisher hired Tom Homan, now Trump's
00:57borderizar, as a lobbyist. That was shortly after he built three miles of wall with private funding
01:02as a proof of concept. The Fishers have also incurred monetary penalties for environmental,
01:08labor, and safety violations. In 2009, the government ordered the company to pay a $1.2 million fine
01:14after executives pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States. The company also admitted
01:20responsibility for defrauding the U.S. at the time. Fisher Sand and Gravel didn't return multiple
01:24requests for comment when Bloomberg reached out for this story. The three largest contracts the
01:29Department of Homeland Security has written over the past year all went to Fisher. Several other
01:34companies have won awards for border wall work, including for a bulk steel order and barrier building
01:40in Texas. A CBP spokesperson said all contracts have complied with the Federal Acquisition Regulation.
01:46As federal officers have fanned out across the country, arresting immigrants and citizens,
01:51and DHS spends billions of dollars turning industrial warehouses into immigration jails,
01:56less attention has been paid to Donald Trump's border wall. The CBP said the money for the wall
02:01is a generational investment in border security and will be integral in helping agents keep our border
02:06secure at the historic low levels we are seeing today. Roughly $47 billion has been allocated to a
02:13new wall along the southern border, and there's tens of billions left to be doled out.
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