Trump Border Wall Builders To Be Banned From San Francisco City Business

Vowing to continue the fight against Donald Trump, San Francisco supervisors joined community resistance leaders Tuesday to call for border wall contractors to be banned from doing business with the city.

Standing on the steps of a company that submitted a bid for Trump’s border wall, San Francisco city supervisors introduced legislation Tuesday prohibiting business who want to work on the controversial project from receiving city contracts.

The bill would affect contractors who submit bids, even if they’re not chosen to help build the border wall; it wouldn’t affect current contracts with the city, but would prohibit the companies from submitting future proposals.

The move by San Francisco supervisors follows a request for border wall proposals last week from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Homeland Security Department agency that will oversee the project.

T.Y. Lin International, the lead engineering design firm on the project replacing the East side of San Francisco’s Bay Bridge, announced it was bidding on the border wall contract shortly after the process opened. The proposal angered San Francisco supervisors who rallied in front of the company headquarters Tuesday to make their announcement, Supervisor Hillary Ronen said in a press release.

“We’re asking companies like T.Y. Lin International to continue building bridges, not walls.”

The legislation unites San Francisco with Oakland and Berkeley in divesting public money from businesses who get involved in construction on Trump’s border wall, as Oakland Councilmember Abel Guillen told the East Bay Express.

“If you want to do business with the city of Oakland, you will not participate in any way in building Mr. Trump’s wall.”

California Assemblyman Phil Ting has also proposed legislation allowing the state’s public employee and retirement systems to divest public money from businesses involved in Trump’s border wall project.

There are at least two dozen other Bay Area companies that have submitted bids or expressed a desire to help build the controversial border wall project, SF Supervisor Hillary Ronen told the San Francisco Chronicle.

“It is time to move beyond symbolism and use the power we have as a city to fight for the values we hold most dear.”

“What we are saying is that we are not going to spend billions of dollars and line the pockets of businesses that engage in work that goes against the values that we hold most dear.”

The feud between California and Trump has escalated since the president’s inauguration with the administration threatening to withhold federal support from Bay Area sanctuary cities.

In response, Governor Jerry Brown, sometime Trump nemesis, threatened to withhold California tax dollars from the federal government. The Golden State is the country’s fifth least federally dependent state, according to a new study released by WalletHub Tuesday.

Details on Trump’s border wall project remain scarce, but the request for bids indicate the president wants it to be at least 30-feet high, with a smooth face that looks good from the American side. It should be difficult to climb from the south, be sunk at least six feet into the ground, include 25 and 50-foot gates, and take at least an hour to cut through using hand and power tools.

New York lawmakers have joined their California counterparts in resisting Trump’s plan for a border wall with a call to ban the state from doing business with contractors who bid on the $12 billion project.

San Francisco also banned city workers from traveling to South Dakota on official business this week after the state passed a law that allows religious adoption agencies to discriminate against same-sex couples. Under city regulations, government workers are prohibited from visiting states that discriminate against the LGBTQ community while on official business. The list includes Kansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Tennessee.

What do you think about San Francisco’s ongoing feud with Donald Trump?

[Featured Image by Jeff Chiu/AP Images]