Armed Mexicans Were Smuggled In to Guard Border Wall, Whistle-Blowers Say

Liz Rogers, a spokeswoman for S.L.S., said in a statement that the company did not comment on litigation. Jesse Guzman, the president of Ultimate Concrete, said in a phone interview on Monday that he was not aware of the complaint, but he dismissed the accusations.

“Everybody can allege whatever they want to, and that does not make it correct or make it the truth,” he said, adding that it was two security officers who were angry that “something didn’t go their way.”

A spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Greg Davis, said the agency did not comment on litigation. “Lack of comment should not be construed as agreement or stipulation with any of the allegations,” he said.

One of the guards, who served as an on-site security manager for the contractors, told special agents with the F.B.I. that he had discovered through monthly audits of workers at the site in San Diego that many of the personnel working on construction and security were not vetted or approved by Customs and Border Protection.

S.L.S., a primary builder of Mr. Trump’s wall, has been awarded contracts worth more than $1.4 billion for work on multiple parts of the border. With those funds, the company is said to have allowed its subcontractor, Ultimate Concrete, to hire armed Mexicans and facilitate illegal border crossings that the president has worked to shut down.

Ultimate Concrete “constructed a dirt road that would allow access from the Mexican side of the border into the United States,” the whistle-blowers said in the complaint. “This U.C.-constructed road was apparently the route by which the armed Mexican nationals were unlawfully crossing into the United States.”

An S.L.S. project manager then pressured one of the whistle-blowers in July 2019 to not include information about the Mexican security guards in reports required to be submitted to the Army Corps of Engineers.