Texas governor says he’ll use crowdfunding for his plan to build border wall

Last Thursday when Gov. Greg Abbott announced in Del Rio that Texas would build its own border wall, one of the immediate questions was who would pay for it.

Abbott has still not fully detailed his plan, but in a podcast released Tuesday he says the state will accept donations from across the country to help fund the wall.

“When I do make the announcement later on this week, I will also be providing a link that you can click on and go to for everybody in the United States — really everybody in the entire world — who wants to help Texas build the border wall, there will be a place on there where they can contribute,” Abbott said on “Ruthless,” a podcast about Republican politics.

Abbott noted in the interview that the Texas border wall donations will be “overseen by the state of Texas in the governor’s office.” He promised transparency, saying “everyone will know every penny in, every penny out, but the sole purpose for those funds will be going to build the border wall.”

This is not the first attempt to crowdfund a border wall.

We Build The Wall, which started as a GoFundMe campaign in December 2018, raised more than $25 million after originally planning to construct 3 miles of fence in South Texas. But in 2020, four people involved in We Build The Wall, including Steve Bannon, the former adviser to President Donald Trump, were charged with allegedly defrauding donors.

In 2011, the Arizona Legislature approved a law creating a fund to build a fence along the state’s border with Mexico, complete with a fundraising website. The fund received almost $270,000 by 2014, and in 2015 a state border security advisory committee decided to give most of the money to a county sheriff. The sheriff instead invested the money in border security technology such as GPS systems and binoculars, according to the Arizona Republic.