San Antonio Express-News By Dudley Althaus August 5, 2018
MCALLEN - With a fresh flurry of tweets and comments, President Trump has thrown his long-sought border wall back on the national agenda, with vows to shut down the U.S. government if he can't get it built soon.
“It's time we had proper border security,†the president said last week. “We're the laughingstock of the world.â€
Those words already may have faded for many Americans amid the drumbeat of crises and controversy that punctuate public life these days. But here on the lower reaches of the Rio Grande, Trump's demands have served up a new thump of worry about a long-looming threat.
Now, landowners and anti-wall advocates are suiting up for another round, bolstering their argument with liberals and conservatives alike with calls for both protecting the environment and respecting property rights.
“We’re ground zero. Ground zero-zero,†says Becky Schuster Jones, who has been told by federal officials that any new fencing will first go up through the border-front farmland her family owns downriver from McAllen.
“It’s like a lava flow,†she said. “You know it’s coming. Now what do you do to stop it?â€
National debate about Trump's wall has dwindled since Congress reached a funding compromise in March to allocate $1.6 billion for new wall construction, far short of the president’s demand for up to $25 billion. Public concern faded even further amid this summer's crisis involving the plight of Central American migrant families separated at the border.
While prohibiting a wall through a three-mile stretch of the Santa Ana Wildlife Refuge, which had been slated for the first new section of it, the March agreement provided enough money for building it most everywhere else on this stretch of border.
Because of the river's snaking path as it nears its mouth, 25 miles of new wall in Hidalgo County will be built on flood control levees, often a mile or more from the border itself. That will leave thousands of acres of land, and the homes of U.S. citizens, on the “Mexican†side of the wall.
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