HIDALGO, Texas — As President Trump travels to the border in Texas to make the case for his $5.7 billion wall, landowner Eloisa Cavazos says she knows firsthand how the project will play out if the White House gets its way.
The federal government has started surveying land along the border in Texas and announced plans to start construction next month. Rather than surrender their land, some property owners are digging in, vowing to reject buyout offers and preparing to fight the administration in court.
“You could give me a trillion dollars and I wouldn’t take it,” said Cavazos, whose land sits along the Rio Grande, the river separating the U.S. and Mexico in Texas. “It’s not about money.”
Trump is scheduled to visit the border Thursday in McAllen, a city of 143,000 on the river.
Congress in March funded 33 miles of walls and fencing in Texas. The government has laid out plans that would cut across private land in the Rio Grande Valley. Those in the way include landowners who have lived in the valley for generations, environmental groups and a 19th century chapel.
Many have hired lawyers who are preparing to fight the government if, as expected, it moves to seize their land through eminent domain.
The opposition will intensify if Democrats accede to the Trump administration’s demand to build more than 215 new miles of wall, including 104 miles in the Rio Grande Valley and 55 miles near Laredo.
Legal experts say Trump likely cannot waive eminent domain – which requires the government to demonstrate a public use for the land and provide landowners with compensation – by declaring a national emergency.
Father Roy Snipes also fears the government will try to take the land his church is on.
Snipes leads prayers each Friday for his chapel to be spared. Wearing a cowboy hat with his white robe and metal cross, he’s known locally as the “cowboy priest” and sometimes takes a boat on the Rio Grande to go from his home to the chapel.
“It would poison the water,” Snipes said. “It would still be a sacred place, but it would be a sacred place that was desecrated.”
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