Once the government makes its request, landowners don’t have many options, according to experts in eminent domain law. They can go to court to get more than the offered compensation. But their chances of winning the right to keep the government from taking the land are slim to nil, especially when eminent domain is undertaken in an emergency, which is what the Trump regime has labeled the situation at the border—a situation that the White House has done a great deal to exacerbate with rotten, inhumane policies. The government can start building on land it wants before payment arrangements are settled, which often take years of litigation.
Kanno-Youngs notes that after President George W. Bush signed a 2006 bill to install fencing along the border, the feds filed more than 300 cases to pry land from its owners. More than a decade later, 46 of those cases are still being argued, according to the Texas Civil Rights Project. Trump’s team has filed 48 new lawsuits as the government seeks to build on other properties.
The feds plan to build the wall on 12 acres of the Drawe family’s land, for which it has agreed to pay $42,000. But this will cut the Drawes off from 350 of their 525 acres that will lie between the wall and the Rio Grande River, which marks the international boundary. They are getting $197,000 to cover the lost value to the property the wall will cause.
All these piles of money spent to build a barrier that will not solve our immigration problems.
Pamela Rivas has been in court fighting the government for 11 years, Kanno-Youngs reports. The feds took her to court in 2008 to acquire some of her land at Los Ebanos, Texas, an entry port to Mexico. She refused to agree to payment for the land that’s been in her family since 1890. Construction of the wall there hasn’t started yet, but it could at any moment. Rivas’ son, Michael Maldonado, said maybe elections will make a difference: “The longer that we can endure it, maybe something might change. Maybe a new administration comes in and says, ‘you know, we’re not going to deal with this.’”
For so many Americans and would-be Americans, that particular hope covers a lot more than the border wall.