Trump's Border Wall Is Back--And So Is His Fight With Texas Landowners

Source: msn/WSJ

10h


RIO GRANDE CITY, Texas—Orange survey flags waved in the wind as Alejo Clarke Jr. walked across the land he has hunted and fished all his life, but which is soon to be blocked off completely by an 18-foot border wall. “This is the piece they want to take out of me,” said Clarke, who is fighting back against the government’s push to take control of his land. “My entrance y todo.”

President Trump’s border wall is back—and more expensive than his first term. Congress recently allocated $46 billion in taxpayer funds to pay for it. Construction of the wall was a signature promise of Trump’s first term, when he said it would cost $8 billion and Mexico would ultimately pay for it. He ended up allocating $18 billion before leaving office in early 2021, mostly to rebuild stretches of wall on federal land in New Mexico and Arizona. Trump made little progress in Texas, where land to build wall must be seized from private owners.

Now that process is restarting, with money from Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.” For South Texans, that means again grappling with a confusing and highly unpopular eminent domain process, in a region where many family ranches predate their inclusion in the U.S. and rely on access to the Rio Grande as their only source of water. Since Trump regained office, border encounters have fallen further to their lowest levels since the 1960s.

The government this year has filed dozens of eminent domain lawsuits against Texas landowners, continuing a process that began in the first Trump administration. The cases are complicated, often involving small patches of land with poorly-documented titles and generations of owners. One pending case, where the government is seeking to take just over one-tenth of an acre, lists 130 defendants, many of them “unknown heirs” of deceased former owners.

Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/trump-s-border-wall-is-back-and-so-is-his-fight-with-texas-landowners/ar-AA1JOptm