Donald Trump’s racist pandering about criminal immigrants and his failed promises of a border wall that Mexico would pay for have led his supporters to do some ridiculously crazy things. On Tuesday, a group that raised millions of dollars on GoFundMe to build a wall themselves between the United States and Mexico found out that Trump’s simple answers to complex situations just don’t work.
New tonight: The GoFundMe border wall was built without authorization on federal land, cutting off access to a public monument. Now officials have ordered a gate open indefinitelyhttps://t.co/cqNXMgDg9W
— Jon Passantino (@passantino) June 11, 2019
A group called We Build the Wall, frustrated with waiting on the constitutional process of legislation to play out, completed the building of a section of a border wall with donated funds recently only to find out that they had not only built their wall on federally-owned land, but had blocked access to a monument and a waterway.
Buzzfeed News reports that:
‘The viral crowdfunding effort to build a wall on the southern border aimed at deterring immigrants from crossing illegally was only recently completed, but on Monday the newly installed wall suffered a major setback — a large gate built into the barrier was ordered open indefinitely by officials.’
The IBWC is a fine example of over reach and growing to big. They are over stepping DHS, national security experts and undermining @realDonaldTrump as soon as they locked our gate open we noticed many other gates around el Paso just opened up!! They are planning for mass invasion
— Brian Kolfage (@BrianKolfage) June 11, 2019
Just as Trump has discovered that his simple “build the wall and make Mexico pay for it solutions” is not as easy as he thought it would be, and will become even more complicated should he ever get funding and begin seizing privately-owned land, the We Build the Wall group learned that permits are important and that vigilante action is illegal. In their misguided attempts to protect the country from people they believe are criminals, they’ve broken the law.
‘The controversial half-mile wall constructed along the US–Mexico border near Sunland Park, New Mexico, was erected earlier this month after organizers raised more than $23 million on GoFundMe, the online crowdfunding site. But We Build the Wall organizers failed to obtain the required authorization to build the barrier on federal land, cutting off access to waterways and a public monument.’
Arrested New Mexico border militia leader Larry Mitchell Hopkins allegedly said his vigilante group was training to kill Hillary Clinton, George Soros, and Barack Obama, because of their "support of Antifa" https://t.co/SSYRM2K4wX
— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) April 22, 2019
The ordeal could have been avoided if the group had done any research on the legal processes, but they don’t appear to be any smarter than Trump about how our government works. For now, the gates in the newly-built wall will remain open as the right to build in the location the group chose is reviewed. Lori Kuczmanski, spokesperson for the International Boundary and Water Commission, said that:
‘This is normally done well in advance of a construction project. They think they can build now and ask questions later, and that’s not how it works.’
Privately funded border wall ordered to keep gate open indefinitely https://t.co/eLnR8RK9GB pic.twitter.com/L68oPZwUkH
— Janet Shan (@hinterlandg) June 11, 2019
Featured image screenshot via YouTube
