Feds moving ahead with land seizures for South Texas border wall

[Elderberry]

Texas Tribune by Kiah Collier June 21, 2018

At a briefing in McAllen earlier this week, U.S. Customs and Border Protection told a group of South Texas officials the federal government plans to move forward with private land seizures in the Rio Grande Valley to build sections of President Trump’s border wall.

As a national debate raged about family separations at the border, U.S. Customs and Border Protection told a group of South Texas officials earlier this week that the federal government plans to move forward with private land seizures in the Rio Grande Valley to build sections of President Donald Trump’s border wall.

“They said that they got the money, they got the authority and they’re going to move on trying to acquire the land,” said U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Laredo Democrat who attended the briefing in McAllen of a few dozen officials from cities, counties and foreign trade zones along the Texas-Mexico border.

Cuellar, who serves on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, said land will be seized to build a section of wall that's already been promised funding; on Thursday, the Senate Appropriations Committee passed a spending bill that includes $1.6 billion for about 65 miles of fencing in the Valley.

“In the next week or so we’re going to find out how much more they’ll be asking for the fencing to be built,” Cuellar added.

McAllen Mayor Jim Darling, who also attended the briefing, said he has heard that about 167 notices have been sent out to Hidalgo County landowners, 300 of whom are expected to be impacted by wall construction.

More: https://www.texastribune.org/2018/06/21/feds-moving-forward-land-seizures-border-wall/

[InHeavenThereIsNoBeer]

Seize land?  Yes.

Build wall? 

I mean, trump promised, and he's a man of his word, right?

[WingNot]

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of a few. 

[RoosGirl]

What happens to the land if the wall never gets built?

[XenaLee]

What happens to the land if the wall never gets built?

You know what happens.  SSDD.... Government just owns more land.  More than Government can ever use or need.

[RoosGirl]

You know what happens.  SSDD.... Government just owns more land.  More than Government can ever use or need.

Yep.  Of course I'll be called a hater for pointing this out though, regardless that I think a wall is a damn good idea.

[ABX]

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of a few.

To each according to his needs, from each according to his ability.

[WingNot]

To each according to his needs, from each according to his ability.

Wrong movie Sparky. 

[ABX]

You know what happens.  SSDD.... Government just owns more land.  More than Government can ever use or need.

We already have the Roosevelt Reservation. That should be enough without stealing private property.

[ABX]

Wrong movie Sparky.

Same plot, just different characters, like the Ghostbusters reboot.

[WingNot]

Same plot, just different characters, like the Ghostbusters reboot.

LOL. Ah no...   But damn  man that GB reboot sucked.

[XenaLee]

Yep.  Of course I'll be called a hater for pointing this out though, regardless that I think a wall is a damn good idea.

Well... we've already been 'schooled' that.... without the votes of the rats (10, I believe?)....

we can't get needed immigration legislation passed.   What makes anyone think funding the wall legislation will be any different?

[Elderberry]

Texas land grab: How the federal government abused its power to seize property for the border fence

https://www.star-telegram.com/news/state/texas/article189747399.html

The federal government was going to build a fence to keep out drug smugglers and immigrants crossing into the United States illegally, they told property owners. The structure was going to cut straight across their land. The government would make a fair offer to buy property, the agents explained. That was the law.

But if the owners didn’t want to sell, the next step was federal court. U.S. attorneys would file a lawsuit to seize it. One way or the other, the government would get the land. That, too, was the law.

The visits launched the most aggressive seizure of private land by the federal government in decades. In less than a year, the Department of Homeland Security filed more than 360 eminent domain lawsuits against property owners, involving thousands of acres of land in the border states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.

Most of the seized land ran along the Rio Grande, which forms the border between Texas and Mexico. All told, the agency paid $18.2 million to accumulate a ribbon of land occupying almost half the length of the 120 miles of the Rio Grande Valley in southernmost Texas.

An investigation by ProPublica and the Texas Tribune shows that Homeland Security cut unfair real estate deals, secretly waived legal safeguards for property owners, and ultimately abused the government’s extraordinary power to take land from private citizens.

The major findings:

â–ª Homeland Security circumvented laws designed to help landowners receive fair compensation. The agency did not conduct formal appraisals of targeted parcels. Instead, it issued low-ball offers based on substandard estimates of property values.

▪ Larger, wealthier property owners who could afford lawyers negotiated deals that, on average, tripled the opening bids from Homeland Security. Smaller and poorer landholders took whatever the government offered — or wrung out small increases in settlements. The government conceded publicly that landowners without lawyers might wind up shortchanged, but did little to protect their interests.

▪ The Justice Department bungled hundreds of condemnation cases. The agency took property without knowing the identity of the actual owners. It condemned land without researching facts as basic as property lines. Landholders spent tens of thousands of dollars to defend themselves from the government’s mistakes.

â–ª The government had to redo settlements with landowners after it realized it had failed to account for the valuable water rights associated with the properties, an oversight that added months to the compensation process.

â–ª On occasion, Homeland Security paid people for property they did not actually own. The agency did not attempt to recover the misdirected taxpayer funds, instead paying for land a second time once it determined the correct owners.

The seizures were made possible by a piece of paper called a Declaration of Taking.

The Taking Act was passed by Congress during the Great Depression to help stimulate the economy. It was designed as an alternative to traditional, slow-moving eminent domain lawsuits. The idea was to expedite land seizures, allowing the federal government to quickly build public works projects and generate new jobs.

By using a so-called quick-take, a federal agency gained title to a person’s property on the same day it filed a declaration of taking in court. The bulldozers could roll as soon as a judge approved an order to possess the land. The landowner was almost powerless to stop the process.

To balance this muscular exercise of sovereign power, the law required the government to immediately deposit a check with the court to pay the landholder. The law required the government to pay fair market value. The landowner could take the money, but also could try to convince the government to pay more — a process that could take years.

“They can just grab the property now and worry about the price later,” said Robert H. Thomas, past chair of the American Bar Association’s eminent domain committee. “It’s a pretty potent tool.”

But not powerful enough for Homeland Security. The agency deployed a second tool to make it easier and faster to seize land. It issued a waiver that eviscerated a federal law designed to protect property owners from unfair seizures.

The so-called Uniform Act required the government to negotiate with the owners before seizing land. An agency couldn’t take coercive action to force a sale, and owners would receive a detailed description of the property to be seized.

Perhaps the most important provision was that the government had to formally appraise land worth more than $10,000 before taking an owner to court. The appraisal had to be done according to the exacting standards spelled out in the 262-page Yellow Book — the federal government’s bible for pricing land.

The idea was to prevent lowballing. The government’s initial offer to buy property was not an opening bid in a negotiation. It was supposed to be as close as possible to the final, full value of the land, priced at its “highest and best” economic use. So, for example, if you had fallow land that could be planted with crops, an agency was supposed to pay as though your fields were abundant.

There was an exception to the law. An agency could bypass any of the law’s requirements, so long as doing so would “not reduce any assistance or protection provided to an owner.”

With virtually no public notice, Homeland Security took advantage of the loophole. It waived the law’s requirements for negotiation and eliminated conflict-of-interest provisions. The agency also increased the appraisal threshold to $50,000 for property seized along the border.

In practice, the higher threshold meant that the agency did not have to formally appraise most of the property it wanted. Land is cheap in the Rio Grande Valley, and the government was appropriating only small strips for the fence. Of 197 tracts seized by Homeland Security, 90 percent were valued at less than $50,000.

In place of formal appraisals, Homeland Security directed the Army Corps to assign values to targeted land. Army Corps evaluators did not have to be certified appraisers. They did not have to abide by Yellow Book standards. They did not have to identify the owners, and they didn’t need precise legal descriptions, called metes and bounds, to spell out property lines.

[jpsb]

Yep.  Of course I'll be called a hater for pointing this out though, regardless that I think a wall is a damn good idea.

HATER!

[jpsb]

Well... we've already been 'schooled' that.... without the votes of the rats (10, I believe?)....

we can't get needed immigration legislation passed.   What makes anyone think funding the wall legislation will be any different?

Funding (1.6 billion) has already been approved for new fencing. The battle for "The Wall" occurs this Sept.

It helps to read the article.

[RoosGirl]

HATER!

♥

[IsailedawayfromFR]

To each according to his needs, from each according to his ability.

A stupid, out of the ether quote.

Can you at least stay within topic for once?