Wall of contention
Most Texans along the border don’t want Trump’s wall, and many doubt it will be built
Many Texans who live along the U.S.-Mexico border support President Donald Trump, but their affection for the New York real estate mogul-turned-politician comes with a caveat:
They do not want a wall.
The Star-Telegram recently visited a 325-mile stretch of the Lone Star State’s boundary with Mexico to gauge attitudes toward the proposed wall. The trip included stops in Presidio, Big Bend National Park, Del Rio and Eagle Pass in late April, and visits with a farmer, a rancher, a wildlife biologist, a sheriff and people from many other walks of life.
The reasons for their opposition to the wall are as varied as the communities that sit along the Rio Grande. Some are concerned about losing private land to make room for the structure. Others warned that building a continuous wall could cause massive flooding. Still others spoke against the potential impact on wildlife, and the state’s natural landscape.
And many border residents said they had serious doubts that such a wall would succeed in reducing illegal immigration or drug smuggling — the primary justifications often cited by supporters.
“Trump has done some good things with immigration, but he’s 100 percent wrong about the wall,†said Dob Cunningham, 83, a lifelong rancher and retired Border Patrol agent who owns hundreds of acres abutting the border in Quemado, north of Eagle Pass. “I haven’t found anybody — and I know people from Nogales [Arizona] to Brownsville — who wants that wall.â€
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