Thread: Trump’s Wall Faces a Barrier in Texas: Landowner Lawsuits

Trump’s Wall Faces a Barrier in Texas: Landowner Lawsuits

By RON NIXON
MAY 7, 2017

LOS EBANOS, Tex. — One of the principal barriers to President Trump’s border wall begins in Aleida Garcia’s expansive backyard.

She and her husband have built a small park alongside some scrubland on their 30 acres, and they enjoy a panoramic view of the Rio Grande Valley. They say they will fiercely resist any effort by the federal government to take over their property, the continuation of a fight that began a decade ago.

And they are not alone. More than 90 lawsuits involving landowners opposing the federal seizure of their property in South Texas remain open from 2008. The property owners have the support of many Texas politicians in a state where land ownership has an almost mythic resonance, and their opposition to a border wall could delay any construction by years while lawsuits wind through the court system.

Mr. Trump and John F. Kelly, the Homeland Security secretary, have said they can build a wall in 24 months, even though Congress did not include any funding for construction in its latest spending bill. Fresh legal challenges, along with the existing ones, make that timetable highly unlikely.

The landowners’ strategy is clear: Use the courts to forestall construction and try to outlast the tenure of Mr. Trump.

Indeed, those closest to the perceived dangers of illegal immigration are providing perhaps the most formidable opposition to the president’s plans. They are well aware that their land has become a major point of transit for drug traffickers and smugglers, and some have been victims of crime. But they also believe that the border is already heavily patrolled, by drones, federal agents and the local authorities, and contend that a wall would have mainly a symbolic value at the cost of their land.

While Mr. Trump made a border wall central to his presidential campaign, the concept is not new. In 2006, at the urging of Congress, President George W. Bush signed the Secure Fence Act, which mandated building physical structures to stop illegal crossings by people and vehicles. Nearly 700 miles of wall and fencing was ultimately built, mainly on federal land in California and Arizona.

But the government has taken very little land in Texas, which has 1,254 miles of the border with Mexico, most of it privately owned.

“Here in Texas, we take the concept of private property very seriously,” said Representative Henry Cuellar, a Democrat whose district includes nearly 300 miles of the border with Mexico. “We take pride in our land, which has often been passed down for generations. And Texans stand up for ourselves when the federal government tries to take what is ours.”

Ms. Garcia’s case shows how difficult seizing private land can be. Nearly a decade ago, officials from the Department of Homeland Security tried to take parts of her land in order to build a border wall. Ms. Garcia fought back in court, and this year the government decided that it didn’t need her property after all.

But now, she thinks, Mr. Trump’s plans could again imperil her land. “We’re just waiting and watching as they start talking again about building a wall,” she said.

Mr. Trump’s proposed wall would run through a vast swath of the Rio Grande Valley. In March, the Homeland Security Department issued a request for proposals to build a “physically imposing” wall on the border with Mexico. More than 100 vendors have submitted proposals, and department officials say they may notify winning contractors as early as next week. The construction of several wall prototypes is supposed to begin in San Diego this summer.

In addition, Mr. Trump wants to hire 20 lawyers to obtain land in the Southwest on which a wall or other security facilities can be built.

The Rio Grande Valley is among the busiest smuggling routes on the Mexican border. Last year, Border Patrol agents seized 326,393 pounds of marijuana, second only to the agency’s Tucson sector. It also seized about 1,460 pounds of cocaine, the most of any sector. Nearly 187,000 illegal border crossers were apprehended here in 2016, the most of any Border Patrol sector.

In documents presented to Congress, the Border Patrol has identified the Rio Grande Valley as a priority for new border fencing.

While the government has been able to persuade some landowners to give up land for barriers and walls, many of them balked, forcing the government into court to contest what landowners considered to be the unjust taking of their property. Over 300 condemnation cases went to court, records show. In total, the government spent at least $78 million to acquire land where fencing is now in place, according to congressional documents.

Efrén C. Olivares, a lawyer with the Texas Civil Rights Project in Alamo, Tex., said the federal government was likely to face similar opposition if it tried to construct a border wall in the area again.

“The sheer volume of condemnations the government will have to bring will bring significant delays,” said Mr. Olivares, whose organization represents several property owners here.

For landowners like Ms. Garcia, the decision to oppose the wall was about more than money. The property where she lives has been in her family’s possession since the late 1700s. The wall, she said, would have split the land where the little park she built sits, and would cut off access to the river.

“The Border Patrol said they would have built a gate in the wall so we could access the rest of our property, but who wants to do that?” she said.

Ms. Garcia said she had seen her share of drug smuggling and people crossing the border illegally. But she said the government should increase the number of Border Patrol agents and the use of security technology in the area rather than build a wall.

Others here in the community of 300 people share her view.

“They already have walls in some spots, and it hasn’t stopped anyone,” said Veronica Mendoza, Ms. Garcia’s sister, who lives nearby. “They need more people, not more walls.”

Along the 100 miles of Texas border where a wall was constructed, property owners have been trapped in what they call a neutral zone, where some homes and property are on the south side of the wall.

Jose Palomino, who lives in Los Indios, near Brownsville, said a concrete border wall bisects his property. The wall has also affected the value of the property, he said, and the government offered just $1,000.

“It's not a nice view,” he said. “And to tell you the truth it hasn’t stopped anyone.”

While lawsuits are one obstacle to building a wall, the local geography is another, more permanent one.

The Rio Grande cuts a winding path through most of the area and spills over from the riverbed during heavy rains, prompting flooding and erosion that complicate construction.

Lawsuits and geography aside, another obstacle to the wall is bipartisan opposition from the Texas congressional delegation.

Senator John Cornyn, a Republican, has questioned the effectiveness of a border wall, telling reporters, “I don’t think we’re just going to be able to solve border security with a physical barrier because people can come under, around it and through it.”

Others are more blunt.

“It’s a stupid, stupid idea and a waste of taxpayers’ money,” said Representative Filemon Vela, Democrat of Texas, whose district includes a broad swath of the border. “We don’t need a wall with Mexico. It’s our ally and one of our largest trading partners.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/07/u...-in-texas.html

Just a couple of thoughts.

I do think there are some areas where more Border Patrol and security technology could and would work just as well as the wall, most people in the business of border security believe the wall or physical barriers if built right will work. The existing fencing, that doesn't work, any of these young drug runners can and do climb right over them. The new wall will be designed to make it very difficult to scale.

People also need to remember that everyone who has been part of an imminent domain action loved their properties and didn't want to sell. No one wanted to move, no one liked the amount offered, because their properties weren't for sale to begin with. But that's how you have government property, government buildings, roads, highways, railroads, dams and so much more. In my home state, entire towns were flooded by hydroelectric dams, the entire community lost, and these communities are now deep down under the lakes, like little underwater ghost towns.

Millions of Americans over the years have lost homes, towns, farms and businesses to government, transportation and utility development projects. It's how the country progressed, whether right or wrong, fair or not, it's just how it got done. And if it hadn't gotten done, well, things would be very very different and not in a way that most people would like very much.

Americans are fed up to the gills with illegal immigration in all of its components and all of its aspects. We're fed up with the population growth we can't sustain, the cost burdens of supporting these people who can't support themselves, the jobs they steal and the wages they deflate from American Workers, the interference they pose in our schools, hospitals and political system, the additional crime from the additional unwanted illegal population, the drug running, the criminal enterprises, the gangs, the murders, the schemes, plots and frauds .... it's all bad because when they are in our country in violation of US immigration law, they are all bad. They may be great people if they were back home in their own country (although doubtful), but whether they would be or not, when they're here in violation of our laws, they are all "bad ones" and gotta go!

There are two steps to this, one is to get all the ones already here out of here and two is to keep others from coming and the ones we've deported from returning. The wall helps do the second. It's a shame to me that we must do this, I would prefer not to need a wall, I would prefer the people of these other countries didn't violate our laws, jump our borders and disrespect US in this way, I would prefer their governments would stop encouraging them to come here, I would prefer a lot of things. But nothing else has worked, so I reluctantly support the wall, at least for more areas. Trump has said we don't need it along the entire border, he thinks about 1,000 miles of border with enhanced security in areas where natural barriers pose their own impediments, but in other areas, everyone in the know such as BP agents support the wall.

I hope they're right, I hope the portion of wall we build is cost-effective and does the job in a way that makes it extremely difficult for illegal aliens to enter the US. From the sound of the prototype specifications, they are attempting a design that prevents tunneling, scaling and a wide array of other technical characteristics that will largely discourage the vast majority. We'll still have increases in the number of Border Patrol Agents and other security measures on top of the wall, and altogether, it should work very well to drastically reduce new illegal immigration and when coupled together with ramped up deportations from the interior, it's highly probable that we can and will end illegal immigration into the United States once and for all in a very short period of time.

We won WWII start to finish in 3 years and 8 months. We'll see what kind of a country we have now by seeing how fast we end this invasion.

Finally, although the CORRUPT MEDIA hasn't reported it, the monies that were in the CR funding bill includes money to purchase land for the wall, as well as build new fencing, levees, and other types of border security measures, it just restricted actual bricks and mortar for the wall itself. That funding will come in FY18 hopefully with a mechanism to offset payments to Mexico and other measures that result in Mexico paying for the cost of the wall, one way or another or in a combination of ways.

This was discussed on 04/20/2017 at this thread also.

Texas Residents Brace For Border Wall Eminent Domain Battles
https://www.alipac.us/f12/texas-resi...attles-346249/

Article at this thread;
Mexican drug cartels said to be buying U.S. border land

by The Associated Press on Aug 01, 1996, under News

WASHINGTON – Ranchers along the Southwest border with Mexico are being forced to sell their property to Mexican drug cartels seeking new routes into the United States, witnesses at a Senate hearing said.
http://tucsoncitizen.com/morgue2/1996/08/01/199777-mexican-drug-cartels-said-to-be-buying-u-s-border-land/

If I owned a large peice of property along the border, I too would probably be against a wall. However, 99.?% of the country's population doesn't live along the Texas border and feel a quality wall or fence is a necessary to secure the border. More border patrol agents and surviellance is great, but unfortunately it doesn't complete the puzzle.