'A fight at every step': Trump's wall will have to battle the people who live there

[Elderberry]

Yahoo Finance by Adriana Belmonte 11/26/2019

President Trump declared a national emergency in February in his most direct attempt to secure the funding for his signature campaign promise: a “big, beautiful” wall along the U.S.-Mexican border.

But even if he gets the billions of more dollars he would need to be the border wall — which is actually a combination of vehicle barriers and pedestrian fencing — the massive construction project faces a major hurdle, according to legal experts: The people who live along the border may not want to give their land up to the government.

The circumstances raise the issue of eminent domain: That is, the power of the government to take privately owned land and convert it to public use — with compensation to the landowners.

Eminent domain is a “big impediment to the wall and has been an impediment to fencing,” Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told Yahoo Finance. “People don’t like their land taken, and usually don’t think they’re getting what the land is worth. … The whole thing is going to be a fight, and it’s going to be a fight at every step of the way, with a lot of things going to the court.”

Garza recalled one client who has been battling an eminent domain case for over a decade.

“Nothing was built on her land because she’s been fighting it in courts,” he said. “And that case was first filed in 2008 and it is still unresolved as of October 2019. So that definitely isn’t the typical case, but it is possible because of some flukes in the law and because of choices the government’s made and in litigation, those cases will go on for years and years without resolution.”

More: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-border-wall-eminent-domain-191651556.html