Why private property owners may be the biggest obstacle to Trump’s wall

[corbe]

Why private property owners may be the biggest obstacle to Trump’s wall

By Sean Collins Walsh - American-Statesman Staff
Posted: 12:35 p.m. Friday, March 31, 2017
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MAVERICK COUNTY —
On a cliff overlooking the Rio Grande, Dob Cunningham got out of his four-wheeler, walked across a patch of wildflowers poking out from the rocks and stopped at a small, rough concrete block adorned with horseshoes, spurs and a Masonic emblem. Under raised letters reading “DOB,” the year 1934 was carved into the concrete, with a blank space to the right.

It was Cunningham’s headstone.

“That way it’s done,” he said. “I didn’t want anyone to go and spend a bunch of money on it.”

Working as a farm hand in his youth, serving 30 years in the Border Patrol in his prime and tending to an 800-acre ranch with his wife, Kay, in his golden years, Cunningham has spent his whole life on the border, and he’s seen it change. Growing up, he would wade across the river to play baseball with kids in Mexico, and those who came north were polite. In recent years, he said, migrants have broken into his house, and drug smugglers traverse his property regularly.

Cunningham voted for Donald Trump — more importantly, he said, he voted “against Hillary” because he and Kay “didn’t want to see the country go socialism” — and agrees with the president’s desire to secure the border. But he opposes Trump’s plan to build a border wall from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, saying it won’t work along the Rio Grande because of flooding. If the federal government tries to condemn part of his property to build the wall, Cunningham plans to fight as long as he can afford to.

“The government or the illegals won’t run me off,” he said. “We’ve lived here and we’ve raised a daughter here, and I’ve put a lot of sweat and blood in this place. We don’t want to just give it away.”

If it is built, Trump’s wall will have to cross miles of roadless mountains, traverse expansive deserts and parallel a serpentine river. But the biggest hurdle to building a coast-to-coast border barrier may not be the terrain but its inhabitants, especially those in Texas, where property rights are second to none.

There is little question the federal government has the legal justification to use its eminent domain power to build a wall. Condemnation proceedings, however, could nonetheless present a major obstacle because they can drag on for years, drive up the project’s price tag and create sympathetic victims.

“It could potentially be the nail in the coffin because the problem that the Trump administration is going to come across is the potential for public opinion backlash,” said Gerald Dickinson, a University of Pittsburgh law professor who studies federal eminent domain law.

During George W. Bush’s administration, the federal government built nearly 700 miles of fence along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border, but almost all of it was in the other three border states: California, Arizona and New Mexico. Except for small segments in some urban areas, including Eagle Pass, only about 10 percent of Texas’ 1,200 miles of border is fortified.

One reason so little was built is the relative lack of federal land along the border in Texas. Much of the barrier built in the other states was on land already owned by Washington, avoiding the need for the government to use its eminent domain authority.

Thanks to Texas’ unique history as an independent nation, a vast majority of land in Texas is privately held. In other western states, all unclaimed land was turned over to the federal government when the states joined the union. Under the terms of Texas’ admittance, the state retained the land and, over time, doled it out to private owners.

There are thousands of parcels of Texas land that touch the Rio Grande, county appraisal district data show. In Cunningham’s sparsely populated Maverick County alone, there are 209 parcels on the river, including land owned by a Native American reservation, a church, prominent Texas families such as the Basses and the Briscoes, and by a deep-pocketed Democratic state representative who would relish a showdown with the Trump administration.

“I’m somebody who can muster a lot of resources to try to make sure that that doesn’t happen,” state Rep. Poncho Nevárez, D-Eagle Pass, said while sitting in his living room, about 200 yards from the river. “I’m not going to go quietly into that good night.”

Other land owners in the area are wealthier and more influential than him, he said. “I’d be very surprised if part of that wall was ever built through that property,” he said of the Indio Faith Ranch owned by the Fort Worth-based Bass family. Lee Bass did not respond to a request for comment.

The Trump administration is readying for the fight. The president’s budget blueprint requested funding for 20 new Department of Justice lawyers “to pursue federal efforts to obtain the land and holdings necessary to secure the Southwest border.”

U.S. Rep. John Carter, R-Round Rock, said last week that he has counseled White House officials about the challenges they face in building the wall, which he supports “where barriers will work.”

“I’ve been trying to preach — and I’ve kind of got the White House and the Justice Department and other people to realize — that Texas is a very peculiar state, a very blessed state. … All that land along the river, along the border down there are owned by people and corporations. It’s private property,” said Carter, who chairs a budget-writing subcommittee that oversees the Department of Homeland Security and will play a key role in determining congressional support for the wall. “If they’re building a wall in Texas, it means they are building on private land, which means it’s harder, a lot harder.”

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http://www.mystatesman.com/news/national-govt--politics/why-private-property-owners-may-the-biggest-obstacle-trump-wall/WL4uZXLWYCGKwByV7goFqM/

[truth_seeker]

If we can build 700 miles of wall, under GW Bush, and thousands upon thousands of miles of interstate highways, railroads, public buildings, ports, etc. then we can build a border wall system, too.

The single new thing that I have learned this election, is how negative "conservatives" are.

No wonder they aren't good at changing voters' minds. Nattering nabobs of negativity.

[Elderberry]

If we can build 700 miles of wall, under GW Bush,

No wall was built under GW Bush. Only vehicle barriers and pedestrian fencing.


After over three years---Department of Homeland Security officials told us they have finished 649 out of 652 miles of fencing (99.5 percent), which includes 299 miles of vehicle barriers and 350 miles of pedestrian fence.

DHS reports there are currently 36.3 miles of double-layered fencing, the kind with enough gap that you can drive a vehicle between the layers. But the majority of the fencing erected has been vehicle barriers, which are designed to stop vehicles rather than people, and single-layer pedestrian fencing. The design specifications vary depending on geography and climate characteristics, but according to the Customs and Border Patrol website, it includes "post on rail" steel set in concrete; steel picket-style fence set in concrete; vehicle bollards similar to those found around federal buildings; "Normandy" vehicle fence consisting of steel beams; and concrete jersey walls with steel mesh.
 
That's not enough for some opponent of illegal immigration. "They are interpreting the requirements of the Secure Fence Act in a way that is clearly contrary to what Congress intended," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors tougher enforcement against illegal immigration.

There may be a role for the vehicle barriers, but "your grandmother could hop over them," he said, and "that's not what Congress thought it was voting for."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Fence_Act_of_2006

[Sanguine]

I suspect that most of you already know, but be very cautious of anything published in the Spacemen.  It's the paper for the Travis County Sanctuary Sally crowd.