County records show company sought permits before contract was awarded
On March 5, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) awarded Barnard Construction Company of Bozeman, Montana, a $960,423,540 contract for a “border barrier construction project” that will follow the course of the Rio Grande from the Hudspeth-Jeff Davis County line to the town of Ruidosa in northwestern Presidio County. That same day, Barnard was also awarded contracts for wall construction upstream in Hudspeth County (around $1 billion) and downstream through the city of Del Rio (around $600 million).
Records obtained from Presidio County via the Texas Public Information Act show that potential contractors started contacting the county judge’s office around the middle of January. On January 28, Uqba Manzoor, an engineer-in-training with Barnard, called Presidio County Road and Bridge Supervisor Ruben Carrasco to chat about sewage permits. “We are building the border fence,” Manzoor wrote in an email later that afternoon. “We will have to build an RV park that will require sceptic [sic].”
Barnard Construction was founded in 1975 by CEO Timothy Barnard. “We offer expertise in all aspects of construction, including dams, reservoirs, hydroelectric power, tunnels and shafts, oil and gas pipelines, utilities, power transmission, and environmental efforts,” their website reads. “Barnard delivers innovative solutions for challenging projects.”
Per Open Secrets—a campaign finance database—Barnard and his team have given millions of dollars to Republican politicians around the country. (Records show that Barnard and his wife also donated $4,000 apiece to recently-ousted DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.)
In October, ex-Secretary Noem waived a number of laws regulating financial transparency in government contracting in order to expedite the construction of border barriers in the Big Bend. Barnard’s hometown newspaper, the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, reported in 2020 about a different billion-dollar-plus cluster of border wall contracts, conveying local concerns about the financial transparency of the bidding process. “There’s always questions when it comes to federal contracting on what we are buying and how we are buying it, and this certainly raises a lot of those red flags,” Scott Amey, an attorney with the D.C.-based Project on Government Oversight, told the Chronicle. “Contracts are supposed to go to responsible bidders only, and these contracts are supposed to be without favoritism.”
(A representative for Barnard was not immediately available for comment. The Sentinel will update this story as more information becomes available.)