GovPlanet Auction Site to Return Up to $350M in Unused US-Mexico Border Wall Materials

GovPlanet—the federal government surplus public sale web site owned by tools and supplies auctioneer Ritchie Bros. mentioned it intends to return to the federal authorities building supplies valued at between $260 million and $350 million that initially was supposed for a deliberate U.S.-Mexico border wall however deemed surplus by the Biden administration. 

An unnamed third-party agency that has been contracted for wall building will take receipt of supplies over the following 90 days, in response to an Aug. 8 settlement between GovPlanet and the Workplace of the Border Czar within the Dept. of Homeland Safety. 

GovPlanet didn’t reveal the title of the contractor, however wall tasks in each Texas and California have been underneath building since April by contractors Granite Development, the Barnard/Spencer Joint Enterprise, Fisher Sand & Gravel, SLS Co. and the BCCG three way partnership.

Metal tubing, bollards and concrete supplies had been bought in the course of the first Trump administration for border wall building however went unused. Alejandro Mayorkas, earlier administration Homeland Safety chief, tried to promote the supplies by way of GovPlanet in August 2024 however was stymied by an order from a federal decide in Texas that they should be used for border wall building, since Congress appropriated funds for that objective. 

In 2023, the Biden administration said it would restart border wall construction, however precise work by no means resumed, with supplies transferred to GovPlanet websites in Arizona and New Mexico. Federal officers mentioned talks restarted with the public sale home in January to reacquire the supplies. Whereas they had been valued at as much as $350 million when bought in 2017, neither the public sale home nor Homeland Safety might verify if their present situation situation is appropriate for brand spanking new building.

“We’re happy to have been capable of accomplice with the Workplace of the Border Czar and members of President Trump’s administration to return the border wall supplies at price, serving to to guard the thousands and thousands of {dollars} that U.S. taxpayers had already invested on this initiative,” a GovPlanet consultant mentioned in an announcement. “We’re expediting the switch of those supplies to assist … border safety plans. We worth our longstanding partnership with the U.S. authorities … persevering with to assist America’s federal companies.”