MCALLEN, TEXAS (CN) – Eleven-year-old Isaiah Soto grew up exploring the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, near his South Texas hometown of San Juan in the Lower Rio Grande Valley.
Since the 1930s, 95 percent of the native habitat found in the valley has been cleared for agricultural or urban development. But the 2,088-acre federally owned refuge, nestled against the U.S.-Mexico border, teems with life.
It’s home to more than 400 species of birds, half of all butterfly species in North America, rare snakes, coyotes and bobcats. It is one of the last places in the nation where you can find ocelots and jaguarundis.
And it may soon be home to the first piece of President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall.
On Sunday, Isaiah and mom Linda joined hundreds of people at the refuge for a protest, where they formed a human chain – too long to be captured in a single photograph – along the levee where the wall could be built.
“I’m very humbled to see the number of people that came out, that we are all in agreement that the wall should not be built,” Linda Soto said. “Corridors and bridges are always a better idea than building walls and keeping people out.”
She said she’s as concerned about the effect the wall would have on wildlife as she is about the effect it will have on the people who reside in the borderlands.
“The concern is both for the wildlife – I mean, it would be unnatural for them to all of a sudden have a wall and not be able to move freely as they did in the past – and it would be unnatural for us as well, people that have lived here for many generations,” she said.
Border wall plans for Santa Ana
According to a map obtained from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the government proposes 28 miles of new border wall in the McAllen-Edinburg-Mission Metropolitan area in Hidalgo County, including a nearly 3-mile concrete and steel barrier through Santa Ana that would essentially destroy the refuge to make room for an enforcement zone.
Since the border is halfway across the Rio Grande, much of the wall would actually be constructed inland along a levee, putting land that’s technically American soil on the other side of the wall.
The map is labeled as “pre-decisional,” and, according to Customs and Border Protection public affairs specialist Roger Maier, does not reflect “any final decision” as to where the wall will be built.
“I think the most important thing to mention here is that we are in the research and planning process for construction of new wall, so it would be premature to speak about specific locations,” Maier said in an email.
He said at this point the only specific projects his agency is working on are 35 gates which will close gaps in the current Rio Grande Valley wall, projects authorized by the 2017 budget Congress passed this past January.