Members of the Austin City Council are proposing a resolution to stop doing business with contractors involved in building President Trump’s proposed border wall.
The resolution is being offered by five members. The effort is led by Council Member Della Garza. The members are asking that the city manager conduct a study of the potential impacts a border wall might have on Texas capital city, the Austin Monitor reported. Austin is located 225 miles from the nearest point of U.S. border with Mexico.
Council Member Garza told the local news outlet that a border wall would not make “Texas or any other state safer, or reduce crime.”
The council is scheduled to vote on the matter on Thursday. If it passes, the city would join the ranks of Tucson and Flagstaff, Arizona, and San Diego, California, in telling city contractors they do not want them helping to design, construct, or finance the proposed border wall projects.
The resolution states:
President Trump’s executive order directing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security “to take steps to plan, design and build a physical wall along the entire international border between the United States and Mexico, (is) in direct conflict with the core values” of the United States as identified on the Statue of Liberty.
Council members seek to have the city manager develop a policy to oppose the president’s plans by applying the policy to the city’s contracting services, the resolution states.
Garza told the Austin Monitor she initially believe Trump’s border wall talk with just campaign rhetoric. But, “coupled with the president’s description of Mexicans as criminals and rapists, is extremely offensive to me as I am Mexican-American,” she said.
“I thought it was important to send a message to our community that we support them and we are welcoming, and we can choose not to do business with a company that I would think is not a good community partner,” Garza told the reporter.
Other council members supporting the resolution include Pio Renteria, Greg Casar and Ann Kitchen, and Austin Mayor Steve Adler.
“Our infrastructure is crumbling here in the United States and I just can’t see why we’re investing in a wall,” Council Member Renteria told the local news outlet. The council member said “Mexicans now are not coming over. Their economy is booming. They’re almost at full employment. There’s no slowing down that economy there. I think we’re just wasting our money. … And it’s sending a message to Mexico that we’re not going to be very good business partners.”
It is not known if any companies involved in border wall projects are actually doing business with, or are trying to do business with, the City of Austin.
At least one Texas company, Texas Sterling Construction Co. of Houston, won a contract to build a prototype section of the border wall, Breitbart Texas reported in September 2017.
Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for Breitbart Texas. He is a founding member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX, Gab, and Facebook.