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Friday, March 29, 2024 | Back issues
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Texas Landowners Prepare to Fight Against Border Wall

The federal government has started surveying land along the border in Texas and announced plans to start construction next month, but rather than surrender their land, some property owners are digging in, vowing to reject buyout offers and preparing to fight the administration in court.

HIDALGO, Texas (AP) — The federal government has started surveying land along the border in Texas and announced plans to start construction next month, but rather than surrender their land, some property owners are digging in, vowing to reject buyout offers and preparing to fight the administration in court.

Father Roy Snipes, pastor of La Lomita Chapel in Mission, Texas, shows reporters around the Rio Grande. The federal government may seize part of his church land to build border walls and fences. (AP photo/John L. Mone)

"You could give me a trillion dollars and I wouldn't take it," said Eloisa Cavazos, whose land sits along the Rio Grande, in south Texas. "It's not about money."

President Trump is to visit the border Thursday in McAllen, a city of 143,000 on the river.

Congress in March funded 33 miles of walls and fencing in Texas. The government has laid out plans that would cut across private land in the Rio Grande Valley. Those in the way include landowners who have lived in the valley for generations, environmental groups and a 19th century chapel.

Many have hired lawyers who are preparing to fight the government if, as expected, it moves to seize their land through eminent domain.

The opposition will intensify if Democrats accede to the Trump administration's demand to build more than 215 new miles of wall, including 104 miles in the Rio Grande Valley and 55 miles near Laredo. Even a compromise solution to build "steel slats," as Trump has suggested, or more fencing of the kind that Democrats have previously supported would likely trigger more court cases and pushback in Texas.

Legal experts say Trump likely cannot waive eminent domain — which requires the government to demonstrate a public use for the land and provide landowners with compensation — by declaring a national emergency.

While this is Trump's first visit to the border in Texas as president, his administration's immigration crackdown has been felt here for months.

Hundreds of the more than 2,400 children separated from their parents last summer were detained in cages at a Border Patrol facility in McAllen. Three "tender-age" facilities for the youngest children were opened in the region.

Trump also ordered soldiers to the border in response to the expected arrival of immigrant caravans before the November midterm elections. The troops had a heavy presence in the Rio Grande Valley, though they have since quietly left. A spokeswoman for the border security mission said they closed their base camp along the border on Dec. 22.

But Trump's border wall will last beyond his administration. Building in the region is a top priority for the Department of Homeland Security because it's one of the busiest areas for illegal border crossings. More than 23,000 parents and children were caught illegally crossing the border in the Rio Grande Valley in November — more than triple the number from a year earlier.

Homeland Security officials say that a wall would stop many crossings and deter Central American families from trying to migrate north. Many of those families are seeking asylum because of violence in their home countries and often turn themselves in to border agents when they arrive here.

The number of families has surged, though total attempts at illegal entry have not. DHS said Wednesday that it detained 27,518 adults and children traveling together on the southern border in December, a new monthly high for family detentions.

With part of the $1.6 billion Congress approved in March, U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced it would build 25 miles of wall along the flood-control levee in Hidalgo County, well north of the Rio Grande.

Congress did not allow construction of any of Trump's wall prototypes. But the administration's plans call for a concrete wall to the height of the existing levee, with 18-foot steel posts on top. CBP wants to clear 150 feet in front of any new construction for an "enforcement zone" of access roads, cameras and lighting.

The government sued the local Roman Catholic diocese late last year to gain access for its surveyors at the site of La Lomita chapel, which opened in 1865 and was an important site for missionaries who traveled the Rio Grande Valley by horseback.

It remains an epicenter of the Rio Grande Valley's Catholic community, hosting weddings and funerals, and an annual Palm Sunday procession that draws 2,000 people.

The chapel is a short distance from the Rio Grande. It is in the area where CBP wants to build its "enforcement zone."

The diocese said it opposes a border wall because the barrier violates Catholic teachings and the church's responsibility to protect immigrants, as well as the church's First Amendment right of religious freedom. A legal group from Georgetown University has joined the diocese in its lawsuit.

Father Roy Snipes leads prayers each Friday that his chapel be spared. Wearing a cowboy hat with a white robe and metal cross, he's known locally as the "cowboy priest" and sometimes takes a boat on the Rio Grande to go from his home to the chapel.

"It would poison the water," Snipes said. "It would still be a sacred place, but it would be a sacred place that was desecrated."

The Cavazos family's 64 acres were purchased by their grandmother 60 years ago.

They rent some of the property to tenants who have built small houses or brought in trailers, charging some as little as $1,000 a year. They live off the earnings from the land and worry that a fence would deter renters and turn their property into a no man's land.

On the rest of the property are plywood barns, enclosures for cattle and goats, and a wooden deck that extends into the river, which flows serenely east toward the Gulf of Mexico. Eloisa's brother, Fred, can sit on the deck in his wheelchair and fish with a rod fashioned from a long carrizo reed plucked from the riverbank.

Surveyors examined their property in December under federal court order. The family hasn't yet received an offer for their land, but their attorneys at the Texas Civil Rights Project expect a letter with an offer will arrive in the coming weeks.

"Everybody tells us to sell and go to a better place," Eloisa Cavazos said. "This is heaven to us."

Categories / Civil Rights, Government, National, Politics

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