Allies of influential Texas billionaire Tim Dunn are pushing ahead in Austin with efforts to create a private-school voucher system that could weaken public schools across the state. Meanwhile, Dunn’s associates in his hometown of Midland are working to defeat a local school bond proposal that his district says it desperately needs.

Dunn, an evangelical Christian, is best known for a mostly successful two-decade effort to push the Texas GOP ever further to the right. His political action committees have spent millions to elect pro-voucher candidates and derail Republicans who oppose them. Defend Texas Liberty, the influential PAC he funds with other West Texas oil barons, has come under fire after The Texas Tribune revealed that the PAC’s president had hosted infamous white supremacist Nick Fuentes for an October meeting and that the organization has connections to other white nationalists.

Less known are Dunn’s efforts to shape politics in his hometown of Midland, which will come to a head next week. On Tuesday, residents in the Midland Independent School District will vote on a $1.4 billion bond, the largest in its history, after rejecting a smaller measure four years ago. A dark-money organization whose leaders have ties to Dunn’s Midland oil and gas company, as well as to a prominent conservative public policy organization where Dunn serves as vice chairman, have become among the loudest voices against the bond.

On Sept. 21, less than two months before the Midland bond election, three Midland residents with deep connections to Dunn and his associated public policy organization registered a “social welfare” nonprofit called Move Midland.

The nonprofit is headed by Rachel Walker, a public affairs manager for Dunn’s oil and gas company, CrownQuest Operating LLC, according to public records. A second member, Ernest Angelo, is a former Midland mayor and board member of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank that Dunn has helped lead for more than two decades. The third member of the nonprofit’s board is Elizabeth Moore, a former West Texas development officer for the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

Within weeks, the nascent nonprofit had a website, campaign signs and a social media presence as its directors appeared on local radio shows and in community debates to oppose the bond. In the local newspaper, another former mayor urged residents to visit Move Midland’s website for insights about the election. That former mayor, Mike Canon, had run for the Texas Senate in 2018 to unseat Kel Seliger, a prominent Republican who opposed vouchers. Another PAC funded by Dunn, Empower Texans, provided the bulk of his war chest, nearly $350,000, in a losing effort.

Move Midland and its directors have not called attention to their relationship to Dunn and his entities in public appearances. Biographies of the three directors on the nonprofit’s website make no mention of Dunn, CrownQuest or the Texas Public Policy Foundation, where Dunn serves as vice chair of the board.

Walker and other members of the group did not respond to voice messages, emails, Facebook messages or requests made through the Move Midland website.

Dunn likewise did not respond to specific questions regarding the Midland bond and the role of his various entities. Defend Texas Liberty has condemned Fuentes’ “incendiary” views and replaced its president, but has not provided any details about its association with the white nationalist. Dunn has reportedly called the PAC’s meeting with Fuentes a “serious blunder.”

During a debate hosted by the Midland Reporter-Telegram, Walker said that the group is “more than just me. There is a group of informed and involved Midlanders involved in this organization. And we have every right to speak on this issue, because we are taxpaying citizens, just as the rest of the involved and informed community does.”

Walker has said that the group would be open to a scaled-down version of the bond in the future, but that should come when “our taxpayers feel like they have trust in the system, and right now, they just have an overwhelming distrust of how MISD is spending their tax dollars,” she told Marfa Public Radio.

Because Move Midland was formed as a nonprofit and not a political action committee, it is not required to disclose the sources of its funding. Organizations that engage in campaign activity but don’t disclose where their money comes from are typically considered “dark money” entities. A small number of states, including New York and Connecticut, require disclosure of donors who contribute to 501(c)(4) nonprofits that engage in lobbying or make political contributions.

The IRS allows such nonprofits to shield the identities of donors as long as political activity doesn’t constitute the group’s primary activity, though it rarely takes action against nonprofits that violate its rules.

According to its website, Move Midland is “dedicated to making Midland better” and plans to tackle various community issues. The bond election represents the group’s “current area of focus.”

Bond supporters, including a large chunk of the Midland energy sector, say it is crucial to relieving overcrowding and modernizing outdated facilities.

Supporters also have raised questions about the timing of Move Midland’s creation and expressed frustration that its donors are shielded from public view, unlike funders of traditional PACs.

“It seems disingenuous and also unfair and very odd that you would not disclose who’s behind it when as a PAC, they would have to,” said Josh Ham, a volunteer with the pro-bond PAC Energize Midland Schools.

Texas Ethics Commission records show the Energize Midland PAC has received more than $530,000 in contributions, most of it coming from Midland energy companies, which hail the election as an opportunity to cultivate a more robust labor force.

That far outstrips the $10,252 raised by Midlanders for Excellence in Education, a local PAC that opposes the bond. According to campaign finance reports, Midlanders for Excellence in Education has used much of that money to pay for signs and radio advertising.

Walker, the Move Midland leader, reported spending $33,432 to oppose the bond, including payments for direct mailings, text messages and yard signs. Texas law requires nonprofits that engage in independent campaign activity to disclose campaign-related expenditures to the state, but like the federal government, it does not require such groups to disclose the source of their funding. It is unclear if Dunn has given money directly to the group.

Ham said that he does not know who is funding Move Midland, but that its sudden appearance after two years of bond planning makes him question the motivation behind the effort. “To have someone just come along overnight and pop up with just a couple of talking points and with no real support is disappointing,” he said.

Dunn has not been quiet about his concerns over the bond. In an Oct. 15 commentary in the Midland Reporter-Telegram, Dunn accused bond supporters of not being forthcoming with voters about the bond’s tax impact. The district says the bond won’t raise tax rates because the new rates adopted in September were set lower than the previous year’s and included the bond’s impact. Dunn argued that the bond will soak up the $18 million in statewide property tax relief recently approved by the Legislature and that tax rates would be even lower if not for the bond.

While Dunn’s oil companies operate in multiple states, they control mineral properties that, combined, owed more than $1.3 million in estimated property taxes to the school district for 2023.

Dunn called claims that the bond won’t result in a tax rate increase “somewhere between materially misleading and factually false.”

In fact, Dunn noted, the actual ballot language Midlanders will find when they go to the polls will include the clause, “This is a property tax increase.”

Public policy organizations connected with Dunn played a central role in ensuring that the phrase is attached to every single school bond ballot measure in the state, regardless of the bond measure’s actual impact on local taxes.

The phrase, tucked into a 308-page bill in 2019, didn’t make headlines at the time, but those six words have since had an outsize impact on school bond passage rates. According to Dax Gonzalez, director of governmental relations at the Texas Association of School Boards, the phrase is at least partly responsible for the decline in school bond passage rates in subsequent years.

From 2000 to May 2019, about 75% of all school bond proposals passed, according to data from the state’s Bond Review Board. That passage rate has dipped to 64% since November 2019, which bond supporters have attributed to the new ballot language and pandemic-related worries. In elections this past May, that number rebounded to 78%.

“I really do believe that the sole purpose of that language is to decrease the amount of bonds that pass,” said Gonzalez.

Earlier this year, Dunn-backed entities marshaled opposition to attempts favored by public education supporters to give districts more flexibility in the required ballot language in cases where bonds don’t result in tax rate increases. None of the bills made it out of committee.

Dunn has weighed in on local Midland politics before. In 2019, Dunn cast doubts on the Midland school district’s $569 million bond proposal in an op-ed in the local newspaper in which he wondered whether school district officials were “sufficiently committed” to improving the quality of students’ education.

Although officials initially announced the bond had passed on election night, the bond proposal ultimately lost by 26 votes after Midland County election workers discovered a box of unopened ballots weeks after the election.

A few months later, Dunn threw his support behind a sales tax increase for the Midland County Hospital District, explaining in a newspaper column that “high property taxes violate a founding principle of America: private property ownership.”

Sales taxes, Dunn argued, “are the only broad-based, transparent and optional forms of taxation.”

The sales tax increase passed handily in July 2020.

A shift from property taxes to sales taxes at the state level has long been a goal of the various public policy organizations associated with Dunn. According to Texas Comptroller estimates analyzed by the Tribune, sales tax increases cost poor Texans more than wealthier ones, making it a regressive tax.

For some bond supporters, Dunn’s opposition to the current bond proposal is a reflection of his embrace of vouchers for private schools.

“Having a vested interest in a private school, while politically funding an agenda that includes private school vouchers, appears to present a pretty clear conflict of interest for Tim Dunn,” said Reagan Hignojos, a former Midland school board candidate and bond supporter. “These private schools would not be held accountable or be transparent by the same standards of public schools.”

Dunn is the founder of Midland Classical Academy, a private school that offers its approximately 600 K-12 students a “Classical Education from a Biblical Worldview,” according to its website. The school explains that through this lens, “human civilization is rightly understood to have begun in the garden with Adam and Eve.” The school believes in interpreting the Bible in its literal sense, which it takes to mean that marriage can only be between a man and woman and that there are only two genders.

Dunn’s school is currently unaccredited, however, according to data provided by the Texas Private School Accreditation Commission. Under legislation proposed by Texas lawmakers, including several state senators who have received campaign funding from Dunn and his associated PACs, private schools would need accreditation to be eligible for taxpayer dollars.

Dunn has not weighed in on whether his school would pursue voucher payments, and in 2014 he explained the lack of accreditation, writing that the requirements “deal mainly with processes and credentials rather than focusing on an excellent academic and student life opportunity.”

The school did not respond to questions about any potential accreditation or voucher plans.

According to its 2021 IRS filing, the most recent available, the school had $10.4 million in total assets and revenue of $6.3 million, a 66% percent increase compared to what it earned in 2020.

Dunn and his family own five million-dollar homes on land adjacent to Midland Classical Academy, where property taxes go to Midland ISD.

LA GRULLA, Texas — The federal government said it needed Ociel Mendoza's land on the outskirts of this tiny Texas town — and it couldn't wait any longer.

Each additional day of delay was costing the government $15,000 as contractors waited to begin construction on the border fence slated to go through Mendoza's ranch, the Department of Justice argued in court filings. By Nov. 24, the tab for the delay had reached nearly $1.6 million, the land acquisition manager for U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in an affidavit.

More than a year earlier, CBP had awarded a contract then worth $33 million to a New Mexico-based company to build 4 miles of fencing in Starr County. The county is one of the top targets of President Donald Trump's administration for a border wall and a place agents have called the most volatile stretch in the nation. Construction was slated to begin in November 2019, the agency announced.

There was one problem: The government had awarded the contract before obtaining the land it needed, including Mendoza's. This September, after more than a year without getting that land, CBP had to suspend the contract to Southwest Valley Constructors, accruing “substantial" charges along the way, according to court documents.

An investigation by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune has found that the government's strategy of awarding contracts before acquiring titles to the land in Texas has led to millions of dollars in costs for delays, according to calculations based on statements made by CBP officials in court filings. On at least two dozen occasions, the agency has used the argument, often successfully, to convince even dubious federal judges to immediately seize land from property owners fighting their eminent domain cases.

The situation could become even more complicated if President-elect Joe Biden makes good on his promise to stop border wall construction.

Mendoza, an entrepreneur, said the government's latest offer, which he said was about $136,000, fell short of the $200,000 he was seeking. The ranch is especially personal. It's a piece of land he vowed to own after he crossed the border illegally over the property as a teen more than 40 years ago.

“It represents a dream to me," said Mendoza, who became a permanent resident in the 1980s. “The American dream."

Since 2017, the federal government has awarded at least a dozen contracts in South Texas worth more than $2 billion prior to obtaining all the land it needed for the projects. The agreements are to build 146 miles of border wall and install nearly three dozen gates.

But very little construction has been completed. Out of the 110 miles the administration planned to build in the Rio Grande Valley, where most of the land is privately owned, 15 miles had been finished as of mid-December.

The Army Corps of Engineers generally requires land to be acquired prior to awarding contracts, but the policy allows exceptions if approved by high-level officials, said Grace Geiger, an agency spokeswoman.

While posing greater risks for the government, she said the practice doesn't have to lead to greater costs as, depending on the situation, the government may still be able to acquire the land before the contractor needs to enter the site.

Contract experts say the practice violates principles of sound procurement.

“It sounds like a formula for waste, or worse, to make the construction contract first and only acquire the land months or years later," said Charles Tiefer, a University of Baltimore contracting expert.

Austin Evers, the executive director of American Oversight and a senior counsel for the State Department during President Barack Obama's second term, said the practice should be investigated by federal watchdogs.

“The government is arguing that it has to seize these lands right now because it is being penalized under the contract it already signed," Evers said. “In plain English, what that means is that American taxpayers are seeing their money thrown away for no purpose because the government signed the contract before it could execute the project."

Federal judges hearing CBP's eminent domain cases in South Texas also have expressed frustration with the government's legal argument for immediate possession in Starr County. In recent weeks, a segment of border fencing has quietly gone up in a remote area near Mendoza's ranch.

While the government gets the title to the property as soon as it files what's called a “declaration of taking" and deposits the amount it deems reasonable with the court, it can't begin construction until a judge approves an order to possess the land. U.S. District Judge Micaela Alvarez, a George W. Bush appointee, blasted government attorneys' request to take immediate possession of Mendoza's ranch, arguing that the agency has had the funds to acquire private land in Starr County for nearly two years.

“The United States' delay until November 2020 to file its motion for possession is not within the Court's control ... and (does) not create an emergency for this court," she wrote Dec. 17. “The Court has repeatedly expressed its dissatisfaction with the United States' requests for expedited relief. The United States is not entitled to expedited relief, and should cease requesting such relief without good cause."

However, Alvarez said that under the Declaration of Taking Act, she had little option but to grant the government's request to take possession of Mendoza's land, noting that Mendoza had not responded in time and that the government had filed the correct documentation and deposited what it estimated it would pay for the land seizure.

Even as government attorneys continue to cite the growing costs of delays to judges, the agency has downplayed the issue outside the courtroom.

“CBP will not know if there are any associated delay costs due to real estate until the end of the contract, as the Contractor may be able to make up any potential delays incurred," CBP spokesman Matthew Dyman told ProPublica and the Tribune on Friday. Dyman declined to clarify the statement, citing the ongoing litigation.

CBP also insists that awarding contracts without first obtaining land is efficient.

“Once the border wall system design is approved by the Government, and sufficient real estate is acquired by the Government, construction activities can begin," wrote Roger Maier, a spokesman for CBP.

The government has been here before. A decade ago, CBP learned that building in this part of the border would be especially challenging, between acquiring the land — which in some cases took more than two years — and flooding concerns. Under the Bush and Obama administrations, several border wall fence projects, also awarded before the government obtained the land, died because the agency couldn't get them built before funding dried up.

The Trump administration's legal efforts have only intensified, with nearly 40 new eminent domain lawsuits filed in the Southern District of Texas since Election Day.

All of which leaves the incoming Biden administration and hundreds of Texas landowners in a web of title and compensation disputes, multimillion-dollar contracts and a string of unfinished — and disconnected — projects all along the Rio Grande.

Biden has said he will cease wall construction and drop all the lawsuits on day one. His transition team didn't respond to a request for comment as to how exactly the administration would go about canceling existing contracts nor what it would do with land it now owns as part of the eminent domain push. Biden could save up to $2.6 billion if he halts construction, according to Army Corps of Engineers documents reviewed by The Washington Post.

This will not be the first time Biden confronts this issue. Last time he was in the White House, the Obama-Biden administration allowed the lawsuits and contracts to proceed. By the end of their first term, 54 new miles of border fence had been built in South Texas.

Starr County

One of CBP's toughest fights over eminent domain centers on Starr County, a poor, mostly rural county where family properties date back to original Spanish land grants issued 250 years ago, well before the Rio Grande served as an international boundary.

For more than a decade, residents and county officials have resisted the agency's push to build a border wall in Starr County, which the government has said in court filings is the No. 1 county for narcotics seizures across the entire southern border of the United States.

Starr and neighboring Hidalgo and Cameron counties are part of the agency's Rio Grande Valley sector, which accounts for 40% of immigrant arrests and 43% of the marijuana seizures along the southwest border.

Under the Trump administration, Starr has become one of the agency's top priorities for the border wall. Hidalgo and Cameron counties already have about 60 miles of border fencing, built upon concrete levee systems.

But Starr County, which lacks a levee system, had no wall before the Trump administration first proposed building there in 2017. Three years later, CBP has awarded contracts for 55 miles, but only about 5 miles have been built, mostly on U.S. Fish and Wildlife refuge land in remote corners of the county.

As it was a decade ago, the government's effort is once again mired in complicated eminent domain legal battles that have so far prevented construction on the remaining miles.

Of 70 condemnation cases filed by the government since September in South Texas, 53 are in Starr County, where the government has only accelerated legal action since Election Day (25 lawsuits have been filed in this county since Nov. 3).

In one case filed at the end of November, the government is seeking to seize a triangle of land smaller than 2 acres in the county. Despite the tract's small size, there are more than 30 individuals with possible ownership rights, scattered across Texas and as far away as Washington state, according to court records.

Lawyers say that as land has passed through the generations, many partitions have not been documented properly in official records, resulting in a thicket of potential land ownership that the government has struggled to unravel.

“The title issues in Starr County seem to be far more complicated and difficult than what we've seen in the other border counties," said Roy Brandys, an Austin-based eminent domain attorney who represents border residents in these cases. “On several of the cases we've been working on in Starr County, one of the reasons they have not progressed even faster is because the government and frankly, we as the landowners' representatives, are trying to work out the title issues before they move forward."

According to a recent Government Accountability Office report, title issues in Starr have slowed construction timelines considerably. “Some counties in South Texas, such as Starr County, do not have the infrastructure or funding to maintain recordkeeping systems," the report says.

But where the federal government sees as a maze of legal hurdles, local officials see a reflection of the region's heritage.

“For many, the land has been in their families for generations," said Joel Villarreal, mayor of the Starr County seat of Rio Grande City. “We have a large number of residents that own land and they are proud of that heritage to own land. They speak of it as something to be cherished, the idea of having land."

Fight Over Land

On a recent morning, Mendoza, 60, stood in front of his ranch as orange survey markers fluttered in the wind around him.

At regular intervals, he has built steps into his own mesh and metal tube fencing, allowing would-be border crossers to climb over. He said Border Patrol agents have asked him why he built them. “I tell them for one, I was undocumented when I came here," he explained. “And two, so they don't break down my fence!"

The ranch holds a special place in the heart of Mendoza, who owns several businesses and properties in Starr County. In 1979, he crossed the border as an undocumented immigrant, passing through the same piece of property on his way to a new life in Houston. Thirty years later he bought the ranch when it came up for sale, and he is loath to lose it.

If the wall comes through the front of his ranch as proposed, Mendoza said he would have to move the fence and an expensive front gate, as well as the corral for the 40 or so cattle he raises on the land. Worse, he said, the wall would render the ranch virtually worthless by placing it almost entirely behind the barrier.

“It won't have any value afterwards" he said. “Anything could happen on the other side of the wall. I won't be protected inside there."

The government first made Mendoza an offer to buy his land in April, according to court documents. Five months later, federal prosecutors sued to take part of his ranch, depositing about $93,000 with the court as a “just compensation."

The government claimed in Mendoza's case that the cost of suspending work was about $15,000 per day. In other cases, the government contended that delays have added as much as $100,000 per day, depending on the size of the contract, according to a review by ProPublica and the Tribune. The expenses came from what officials called de- and re-mobilization and from having equipment and crew on standby beyond the date construction was scheduled to begin.

In four Rio Grande Valley projects alone, where the government has detailed the costs of delays in court filings, the total is nearly $9 million, as of the date the court granted the order for immediate possession, which is when work can begin.

Despite not having been able to break ground in 18 months, the original $33 million contract to Southwest Valley Constructors is now worth $42 million thanks to contract options the government has exercised. An earlier review of federal spending data by ProPublica and the Tribune found modifications to contracts have increased the price of the border wall by billions, costing about five times more per mile than it did under previous administrations.

Francis Rooney, a Republican U.S. representative from Florida and longtime real estate developer, called the practice “ridiculous." From a contractor point of view, he said, there's the risk of inflation and rises in labor or material costs, for instance, as work on those sites is delayed.

“That sounds a little reckless to me, but I'm not surprised given some of what this administration has done," he said, in reference to Trump declaring a national emergency and using military funding to accelerate border wall building.

ProPublica and the Tribune reached out to the companies with contracts in the Rio Grande Valley awarded under the practice. Most didn't respond and Kiewit Infrastructure West, an affiliate of Southwest Valley Constructors, referred questions to the Army Corps of Engineers.

Raini Bruni, another spokeswoman with the Corps, said border wall contracts are written in a way that puts much of the risk on the contractor, who can request compensation in cases where there's a delay or suspension, approved on a case-by-case basis.

But beyond the risk to the government and contractors, the practice can lead to a loss of protections to landowners, experts said.

Due process is at the heart of the government's power to take private property, said Evers of the nonpartisan watchdog American Oversight. But it is being ignored by rushing things through based on emergencies of the administration's own creation, he added, “which runs counter to basic American values."

Beyond the fight over the value of his land, Mendoza doesn't believe the wall will achieve its goal. “The people won't stop," he said. “It wouldn't have stopped me, I would have jumped over."

“They Use the Legal System as a Threat"

About 20 miles upriver from Mendoza, the Muñiz family is also fighting the government's attempt to seize its land in a case that shows the pressure government agents have put on local landowners, especially in the final months of 2020.

On Sept. 1, the government sued Noelia Muñiz and offered to pay $5,500 for about an acre of land. According to court documents, she felt harassed by constant phone calls that she said were taking a toll on her health.

“They call every day, they threaten that if you don't show your face they will take you to court," said her brother Noe Muñiz Jr., 63, outside their home. “They use the legal system as a threat. ... It's very stressful for her."

Usually the government first tries to settle with landowners but sues when they can't reach an agreement or it's unclear who owns the land.

Since the beginning of the Trump administration, the government has filed 193 lawsuits — three-fourths just in the past year — asking Texas landowners to relinquish, temporarily or permanently, more than 5,800 acres, according to information provided by the Texas Civil Rights Project and court documents.

Noe Muñiz Jr. said the family has been going through the process without an attorney because it can't afford to pay one. “We have no support at all," he said. “If you want support it takes money and no one has money. ... I'm pretty sure they wouldn't do this in a place where the majority of people are white. Here you have Mexican people and they are poor, so come on."

In a normal condemnation case there would be safeguards in place such as environmental reviews, hydrology reports prior to starting the project, said Brandys, who has represented border residents under the current and previous administrations.

But due to what he calls the politicization of border wall construction, the U.S. attorney and those building the wall are under significant pressure from Washington to get as much done as possible. All of which can significantly impact the landowners, he said, adding, “Unfortunately in some of those situations you won't know until the wall is built and the projects are up and we see what the effects are."

The Department of Homeland Security has a record of abusing the eminent domain process to build border barriers.

In 2017, a ProPublica-Tribune investigation found DHS had cut unfair real estate deals, secretly waived legal safeguards for property owners and ultimately abused the government's power to take land from private citizens. In some cases, the DOJ bungled hundreds of condemnation cases, taking property without knowing the identity of the owners and condemning land without researching facts as basic as property lines.

Under the George W. Bush administration, the federal government filed more than 360 eminent domain lawsuits along the U.S.-Mexico border as part of an effort to build up to 700 miles of fencing by December 2008. Along the Rio Grande, the agency built 50 miles in disconnected strips and seized a total of 564 acres for which it paid $18.2 million, ProPublica and the Tribune reported.

There are still 20 cases pending in South Texas from that era, involving about 440 owners, according to the DOJ.

While lawyers and residents say some things have improved, such as the government providing more details about the property it is trying to take, the pressure on landowners has not eased.

Daniel Villarreal, a 56-year-old bail bondsman in Rio Grande City, said government negotiators told him earlier this year he either had to accept their offer or they would take it anyway.

But following Biden's victory, he is starting to feel pangs of regret about selling about an acre of his riverfront property to the government.

He didn't want to say how much he agreed to but said it's not life-changing money. “They say they gave me market value, but how long is that going to last? A year or two?" he said. “And then what you're left with is a monument to a man I don't even like."

The wall would also cut Villarreal off from the beauty of the river's edge, a fear echoed by other property owners.

Growing up, Noe Muñiz said he and his siblings swam daily in the river. As he grew older, the river offered respite after a long day of working in cantaloupe and onion fields. He still fishes there but worries that after a wall is built, the river would become too dangerous to visit inside the no man's land that would be created south of the barrier.

Even though the Muñiz family will likely lose the battle to keep its land, it is trying to get what it considers just compensation, he said, and holding onto hope that Biden will cancel the wall contract in the area. “You can't give up on the land. It's not the government's land," he said. “It's hard to let go."

On the same day in May 2019, the Army Corps of Engineers awarded a pair of contracts worth $788 million to replace 83 miles of fence along the southwest border.

The projects were slated to be completed in January 2020, the Corps said then. Four months into this year, however, the government increased the value of the contracts by more than $1 billion, without the benefit of competitive bidding designed to keep costs low to taxpayers.

Within a year of the initial award, the value of the two contracts had more than tripled, to over $3 billion, even though the length of the fence the companies were building had only grown by 62%, to 135 miles. The money is coming from military counter-narcotics funding.

Those contract spikes were dramatic, but not isolated. A ProPublica/Texas Tribune review of federal spending data shows more than 200 contract modifications, at times awarded within just weeks or months after the original contracts, have increased the cost of the border wall project by billions of dollars since late 2017. This is particularly true this year, in the run-up to next week's election. The cost of supplemental agreements and change orders alone — at least $2.9 billion — represents about a quarter of all the money awarded and more than what Congress originally appropriated for wall construction in each of the last three years.

President Donald Trump made construction of the border wall a signature issue during his 2016 campaign, claiming that his skills as a builder and businessman would allow his administration to build the wall in a more cost-efficient way than his predecessors. “You know the wall is almost finished," he told a crowd of supporters in Arizona recently, and they weren't paying a “damn cent" for the border wall. It was “compliments of the federal government."

Yet an accounting of border wall contracts awarded during his presidency shows that his administration has failed to protect taxpayer interests or contain costs and stifled competition among would-be builders, experts say. In all, Trump's wall costs about five times more per mile than fencing built under the Bush and Obama administrations.

Experts say the frequent use of so-called supplemental agreements to add work or increase the price has amounted to giving no-bid contracts to a small group of pre-selected construction firms, many with executives who have donated to Trump or other Republicans.

Some contracts and add-ons have been handed out without press releases or announcements, making it harder for the public to track the expanding costs.

Charles Tiefer, a University of Baltimore contracting expert, said the contracting actions involving the border wall project are unusual for the normally restrained Corps, whose contracts aren't typically characterized by massive price increases. Tiefer called the amount of money awarded through modifications “amazingly high."

“These (border wall) modifications do not look like something the Army Corps of Engineers would get by competitive bidding," Tiefer said. “The taxpayer is paying much more than if the whole contract were out for competitive bids."

The Government Accountability Office told ProPublica and the Tribune that it was looking into the contract modifications as part of a broader review of the process the Corps has used to award border wall contracts using military funds. The report is expected to be released early next year.

While adding work to a contract is not unusual on its own, some of the very rapid and significant supplemental agreements in some of the border wall contracts raise red flags and don't always provide enough information to determine if they are problematic, said Stan Soloway, president and CEO of Celero Strategies and former deputy undersecretary of defense for acquisition and reform during the Clinton administration.

Raini Brunson, a spokesperson for the Corps, said she couldn't comment on specific contracts, instructing reporters to file records requests for more information. But she added that modifications are “made all the time for a variety of reasons." And while the Corps doesn't provide specific updates on a regular basis, she said contract awards and modifications are posted on federal procurement websites and in databases accessible to the public.

But the sites can be difficult to navigate, and the databases often don't reflect recent changes. Neither U.S. Customs and Border Protection nor the Corps publicly maintains a comprehensive list of all border wall contracts and their modifications. Some projects lack enough detail on government websites to even determine basic facts, such as what the additional work is for.

Some of the border wall contract modifications essentially amount to new projects that in some cases then undergo their own modifications.

A review of recent Corps non-border wall contracts shows no recent contract add-ons that approach the scale of border wall awards. Two contracts for walls surrounding a Florida reservoir awarded in early 2019 for about $130 million have had no cost increases, according to federal procurement data.

Of the Corps' five largest active non-border wall contracts in fiscal 2020, three received no additional money through supplemental agreements, and a fourth received three supplemental agreements totaling $584, according to usaspending.gov. A fifth contract, to replace locks along the Tennessee River, did increase substantially, but 98% of the rise was due to pre-agreed contract options, not after-the-fact supplemental agreements or change orders that have been added on to so many border wall contracts.

Building a wall along the southern border has been one of Trump's core promises and perhaps one of his most politically divisive battles.

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a lawsuit brought by advocacy groups over a move to shift billions of dollars from the military for border wall construction after Congress refused to fully fund the project. The federal government's own watchdog agencies are reviewing some of the contracts after lawmakers raised concerns that political favoritism played a role in how the government awarded them.

Among the biggest beneficiaries of the wall contract changes is Galveston-based SLSCO, which has won the second-most in border wall contracts since 2017, about $2.2 billion, including nearly half a billion dollars in supplemental agreements. North Dakota-based Fisher Sand & Gravel has also won more than $2 billion in contracts since building a controversial private border fence in the Rio Grande Valley, which a ProPublica/Tribune investigation found was in danger of toppling if not fixed and properly maintained. On May 6, federal officials gave the firm a $1.2 billion contract, first reported by the Arizona Daily Star; the government did not publicly announce the massive award. The company's CEO, Tommy Fisher, could not be reached for comment. SLSCO officials referred questions about its border wall contracts to CBP.

“Spiraling Costs"

When Trump first touted his plan to build a “beautiful" wall all along the southern border, he said it would cost $8 billion — $12 billion tops — and that Mexico would pay for it.

The nation's self-anointed “best builder" bragged in 2017 that his construction know-how and savvy would bring the price of his border wall “WAY DOWN!" once he got involved in the process.

In the last three years, the administration has awarded nearly 40 contracts to 15 companies worth at least $10 billion to build more than 500 miles of fencing plus roads, lighting and other infrastructure, according to the most recent usaspending.gov data compiled by ProPublica and the Tribune. (Initially, the president proposed building 1,000 miles of wall, but he later revised that figure down to 450 to be completed before the end of his first term.)

In an October update, the administration said it had identified $15 billion — most of it from military funds — to build a total of 738 miles, which comes out to roughly $20 million a mile.

That's compared with the $2.4 billion the government spent from 2007-15 to build 653 miles of fence, as well as gates, roads, lighting and other infrastructure, according to the GAO.

Roger Maier, a CBP spokesman, said it's not reasonable to compare prior expenses to current ones. “CBP is constructing a border wall system which includes a combination of various types of infrastructure such as an internally hardened steel-bollard barrier 18' to 30' high, new and improved all-weather roads, lighting, enforcement cameras and other related technology to create a complete enforcement zone," he wrote in response to questions. “This is very different than the barriers we constructed in 2007-2009 where it was just the 18' steel-bollard barriers in some locations and vehicle barriers in others."

So far, Trump's administration has completed 360 miles, with an additional 221 under construction, according to CBP. Very little of that has added new fencing where there was none, though. Most of the work has been replacing shorter vehicle barriers and dilapidated fences with more imposing 30-foot bollard poles largely on land already owned by the federal government in Arizona and California.

Much less work has been done in Texas, one of the busiest border regions in terms of drug and migrant crossings, but which features the border's largest stretch without barriers. That is due both to the Rio Grande that snakes its way along the 1,200-mile Texas border, dividing the U.S. and Mexico, and the fact that most of the land is privately owned.

Trump declared a national emergency in 2019 after the Democrat-led House refused to give him more than $5 billion to fund the border wall, instead offering $1.4 billion to build fencing in the Rio Grande Valley Sector. The impasse led to a 35-day partial government shutdown before Trump bypassed Congress. By declaring a national emergency, Trump was able to shift billions of dollars from the Department of Defense and the Treasury Department. The rest comes from CBP appropriations.

To those following the border wall construction closely, the contracting process has triggered alarm.

“I'm just extremely concerned about the spiraling costs of the border wall … and about the amount of money that they are having to take away from DOD projects to build this wall," said Scott Amey, general counsel of the Project on Government Oversight, which is tracking the increasing costs of border wall-related contracts.

“Trump is trying to make good on a campaign promise that he made four years ago, and he's rushing through the construction of the wall," he added.

In February, the administration waived 10 federal contracting laws to speed up construction along the southwest border, doing away with rules that promote contract competition and small-business participation, as well as requiring justifications for the exercise of contract options, which prompted experts to issue warnings about the potential outcome.

In awarding additional money through contract modifications, the agency has frequently cited “unusual and compelling urgency" to further erode rules requiring a competitive bidding process. Experts say that “urgency" has little credibility and has led to environmental and other damage along the border.

“Whenever you do that, there are some compliance risks, and ... there's the risk of not getting really adequate, robust competition," Soloway said. “The more and better competition you have, the more and better decisions you can make."

A July report from the DHS Office of Inspector General said costs for the border wall could grow exponentially due to CBP's poor planning ahead of construction in an apparent rush to build the wall.

The agency “has not fully demonstrated that it possesses the capability to potentially spend billions of dollars to execute a large-scale acquisition to secure the southern border," the inspector general reported.

Until it improves its acquisition planning and management, the DHS watchdog said, “any future initiative may take longer than planned, cost more than expected and deliver less capability than envisioned to secure the southern border."

In response, DHS and CBP said they were being “chastised" for following the president's executive order from 2017, which directed the “immediate construction of a physical wall."

The inspector general countered that DHS' lead role in building the border wall doesn't exempt it from “following congressional requirements and established acquisition practices to safeguard taxpayers dollars from fraud, waste, and abuse."

A Track Record of Violations

There's no universal list of all border-wall-associated contracts. ProPublica and the Tribune found 68 contracts since late 2017 using CBP news releases, DOD and Corps announcements, and a search of federal databases for a group of 12 companies given pre-approval status by the Corps. Roughly two dozen of these contracts have only been awarded a minimum guarantee of about $2,000 but no border wall work yet. Not included in this list are millions more awarded to companies for peripheral services including acquiring land, aerial imaging, the removal of munitions debris and cactuses, and environmental monitoring.

Of the awarded contracts identified by ProPublica and the Tribune, four companies earned the vast majority of the funds — about $9 billion. The analysis focused on the total value of the contracts, rather than the amount spent to date. Top officials at the firms have been frequent donors to Republican candidates, and records show some of the companies have a host of safety violations from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration for offenses including failing to provide adequate shade to workers and not operating equipment safely, as well as wage violations.

One contract obtained by a Montana company shows how the awards can grow to several times their original size. In May 2019, BFBC LLC, a subsidiary of Barnard Construction, won a$142 million contract just a few days after it learned it was one of 12 construction firms selected by the Corps.

The contract called on the firm to replace about 5 miles of aging, low-slung vehicle barriers with 30-foot-high steel bollards near Yuma, Arizona. The project, one of the first to be paid for with diverted military funds, was widely publicized and featured a quick turnaround, with completion scheduled for Jan. 31, 2020.

What was less publicized was that the contract was open-ended. In technical terms, it was “undefinitized," which is allowed when the government seeks to begin work immediately, but which experts say provides little incentive to keep costs contained.

Four months later, the contract was “definitized," bringing the cost to more than $440 million. A DOD announcement says the money was for “replacement of El Centro and Yuma vehicle and pedestrian barrier," but it gives no additional details.

Six months later, in March 2020, the Corps issued a $172 million change order. This time, no press release or announcement hailed the contract modification; a federal database says the money is for “additional miles" near Yuma, but it provides no details.

Then, in April, a week after Democratic members of Congress urged border wall funds be redirected to the then-exploding coronavirus pandemic, BFBC received its biggest contract modification to date: $569 million for 17 additional miles in San Diego and El Centro — or $33 million per mile. A Corps spokesperson told the Daily Beast it awarded the half-billion-dollar contract add-on without competitive bidding because the firm was already “mobilized and working in close proximity."

Congressional Democrats called on the GAO to investigate what Sen. Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, called a “no-bid contract to an apparently politically connected, private contractor" as part of the federal watchdog's broader review of Corps contracts. Campaign finance reports show BFBC's owner is a longtime GOP donor who has given nearly $200,000 since 2017 to Republican causes and candidates, including to those in his home state of Montana as well as Texas and Arizona. Company officials could not be reached for comment.

Southwest Valley Constructors, a New Mexico-based affiliate of Kiewit Corp. that formed several months after Trump's inauguration, has received the most in border wall contracts since 2017. This subsidiary alone has been awarded contracts worth at least $2.7 billion for about 100 miles of border wall work in Arizona and Texas. More than $2 billion of that has come from the single May 15, 2019 contract and subsequent modifications.

While most of the work is ongoing, U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials in Arizona have already raised concerns that the company's work is dropping groundwater levels at a wildlife refuge, according to emails obtained by the Arizona Daily Star. In South Texas, a judge issued a temporary restraining order against the company after descendants of the family that started the Jackson Ranch Church and Cemetery accused it of working in such “hurried manner" that it was causing excessive shaking and vibrations at the historical sites.

The firm already faces three serious OSHA violations related to excavation safety rules that stem from a single inspection, sparked by a complaint. Southwest Valley Contractors is contesting them. Kiewit and its subsidiaries have a long track record of violations related to worker safety, the environment and employment. Since 2000, it has paid more than $5 million in penalties, records show. Kiewit representatives did not respond to a request for comment.

The $2.2 billion Texas-based SLSCO has won since 2018 has been for at least nine contracts for border wall construction, including about $300 million to build 13 miles of fencing on top of concrete levees in the Rio Grande Valley. That fencing skirts the Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park, La Lomita Chapel and the National Butterfly Center, which Congress exempted from border wall construction in 2018.

The firm's work has come under scrutiny previously: A section of fencing built by the company in Calexico, California, blew over in January during the construction process, which officials blamed on high winds and drying concrete.

The firm has also received more than $410 million in supplemental agreements to a $390 million contract originally awarded in April 2019 to build fencing west of El Paso. Some of that money went to pay for an additional 2.4 miles of fencing; it's not clear what the rest went to.

As the presidential election approaches, both contractors and administration officials are racing against the clock: Former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic candidate, has pledged to cancel the existing contracts if he is elected. If this happens, construction firms would likely be awarded termination fees and get paid based on the amount of work they have completed by the time contracts are canceled.

While there's not an overall estimate of how much that could cost, court documents filed by the administration as part of the legal battle over the use of military funds provide a window into what a Biden administration might face come January: A single contract awarded to BFBC in November 2019 for 33 miles of fence replacement in Arizona, currently valued at about $420 million, could cost the government nearly $15 million to terminate.

“While ending construction is easy to say, it might not be so easy, because he'll have to consider the phase of construction, gaps in the wall that could be exploited and the termination costs for existing contracts, which can come with a high price tag for taxpayers," said Amey, with the Project on Government Oversight. “President Trump might have boxed in Biden, requiring completion of certain portions of the wall whether he likes it or not."