Trump’s wall facing big obstacles
Exclusive analysis shows border wall could disrupt thousands of properties, has no accurate cost estimates
PHOENIX — A USA TODAY Network examination of the 2,000-mile U.S.Mexico border reveals the challenges and consequences of President Donald Trump’s border wall plan in unprecedented detail.
Texas, which accounts for more than half the border, has almost no fencing, with hundreds of miles of open border at a stretch. A network investigation of public records found that walling the border in this wide-open area could require disrupting or seizing nearly 5,000 parcels of property.
In Texas, any new wall would have to be built some distance from the border, because the line itself runs down the middle of the Rio Grande. Dry-land property begins dozens or hundreds of feet north. To gauge the possible impact, the USA TODAY Network used the state’s open-records law to obtain digital property maps from all 13 Texas counties with border frontage. (A 14th county touches the border only at one point, accounting for a single parcel of property.)
All told, a network analysis shows, about 4,900 parcels of property sit within 500 feet of the international boundary in Texas. Most of these are privately owned, a fact that could complicate efforts to build a wall in a state that reveres private-property rights.
There is no public map of exactly where, or for how far, a future border wall would run. Some of the wall would surely be on land already owned by the federal government, such as levees. But the 4,900-parcel swath gives a sense of the massive land seizure and cost that the federal government could face.
Is such a seizure feasible? Consider the progress made after the 2006 Secure Fence Act, when federal officials under President George W. Bush pursued private land in Texas for the current border fences. More than 300 condemnation cases were brought against landowners, according to data compiled by the network.
Some cases were settled for as little as a $100 easement. In one, the U.S. paid $5 million for 6 acres. Many, though, have yet to be settled.
As of summer 2017, nine years after the first cases were filed, 85 of the more than 300 cases were still in litigation. Some landowners died while their cases made their way through the system.
Because property-taking cases for a border wall would be the region’s second round of condemnation, people will be ready to fight for just compensation for their property, said Terence M. Garrett, professor and chair of the public affairs and security studies department at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.
Based on what happened last time, about 20 percent of people will accept what the government offers them; 80 percent will not.
“It’s going to be much more difficult this time,” Garrett said. “People down here have seen what happened the first time, and they won’t be caught unaware.”
He said the more than 300 cases a decade ago were for just 110 miles of fence. Were the federal government to take the 600 to 800 miles of private property he estimates would be needed to complete the fence in Texas, Garrett said that could mean condemning in the high hundreds or thousands of properties.
“Here we are in a decade and the judge still has eminent-domain cases pending in his court,” Garrett said. “It’s really a thicket, if you will, of all kinds of legal problems. We are looking at years — decades — of court cases.”
An unprecedented survey
In summer 2017, journalists from the USA TODAY Network flew, drove and explored every foot of the nearly 2,000mile international border to document what exists now and to examine how and if a wall could be built, and what impact it would have on people near the border.
The network team used aerial footage from its helicopter flight of the entire border — along with previously published federal records, satellite maps and on-the-ground checks of GPS locations — to build the most current, comprehensive map of visible fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border. The digital map allows users to pick any spot on the map and see video footage of the line as it was in summer 2017.
The mapping shows that despite years of construction, much of the border is not fenced. Where fencing exists, it’s full of gaps.
About 650 miles of the 2,000-mile border are fenced, leaving 1,350 miles open. Of that 650 miles, about half is designed to stop vehicles, not people.
The 300-plus miles of vehicle barriers, X-shaped crossbars or short steel posts, are effective at stopping cars. But anybody on foot could can easily cross over, under or through. These fences often sit in harsh deserts that make crossing deadly on its own.
Much of the border sits hundreds of miles from the nearest big city, as reporters observed. Building new walls would first require constructing roads to get there.
In Texas, the fencing sometimes is close to the river and sometimes can be more than a mile away. Big chunks of
property in the U.S. sit on the “other” side of current border fences.
What we know about the proposed wall
Congress plans to discuss initial funding for the wall this fall.
When asked by the USA TODAY Network whether they support the president’s initial $1.6 billion budget request to begin construction, only 69 of the 292 Republicans on Capitol Hill said “yes.” Three Republicans said they oppose the money, several evaded a direct answer, and the rest simply refused to respond to the question.
The network asked all 535 members of the House and Senate whether they support the $1.6 billion down payment and found fewer than 25 percent of Republicans willing to stand up for the plan.
To date, there is no cost-benefit analysis for what a border wall is supposed to accomplish or what cost is acceptable, reporters found. Government analyses show that border officials have never established a measure to determine whether previously built fences are effective, either.
No one knows how many miles of wall will be built, or in what locations, or what type of construction will be used. In August and September, months behind schedule, Homeland Security officials announced six construction companies had won bids to build wall prototypes of two varieties, one using concrete with “see-through features” and one of “alternate materials.”
The prototype designs have not been made public, but they will be 30 feet long and up to 30 feet tall. The Department of Homeland Security waived 37 environmental laws and regulations to build the prototypes and replace existing border infrastructure along a 15-mile stretch of the U.S.-Mexico boundary near San Diego.
Trump’s description of the border wall has shifted over time. During his campaign, he indicated the entire border would be walled, but later said only 1,000 miles required a wall. In July 2017, he told reporters the border might need only 700 miles of wall.
The nature of the wall was fluid as well. Initially, he seemed to say the wall would be a new piece of construction, and usually referred to it as concrete, unlike current steel fences. In his wideranging February news conference, Trump said, “We are going to have a wall that works, not going to have a wall like they have now which is either nonexistent or a joke.”
But more recently, Trump’s statements indicate he may consider existing fences to be part of his wall plan. His July remarks included this: “We’re fixing large portions of wall right now.”
Trump’s January executive order on border security called for a comprehensive study of how to secure the border, due in 180 days. It mandated a “strategy to obtain and maintain complete operational control” of the international boundary.
To date, no such review has been publicly released or is known to have been completed.
Unknown stories, unintended consequences
Network reporters spent six months reporting from the border and found:
The debate over the wall comes at a time when border crossings are declining. Based on Border Patrol apprehension data, illegal traffic on the border is at its lowest point in four decades. It has been falling consistently since 2000, and in many areas is at 10 percent of its peak levels.
At the same time, the number of migrants found dead in the desert is on the rise in 2017, and trends show that as
“It’s really a thicket, if you will, of all kinds of legal problems. We are looking at years — decades — of court cases.” TERENCE M. GARRETT CHAIR, PUBLIC AFFAIRS AND SECURITY STUDIES DEPARTMENT, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS RIO GRANDE VALLEY
border security tightens, migrants will venture to more dangerous areas to cross, driving the death rate up even if crossings decline. Fencing may inhibit drug trafficking, but it won’t stop it. The San Diego area has some of the most secured and fenced border in the U.S., but it is also the area where agents find the most drug smuggling. Agents detained more than 31,000 undocumented migrants and seized more than 9,100 pounds of marijuana and 1,300 pounds of cocaine in the San Diego Sector in fiscal year 2016, which ended Sept. 30.
Ranchers in border communities often welcome security but sometime take a dim view of walls and fences. They note that any fence has to be guarded or it is merely a speed bump for illegal crossings. Native Americans who occupy traditional lands that straddle the border
say they’ll fight a border wall, as it could block members from services and disrupt sacred pilgrimages.
Family members of victims killed by border bandits or others without legal status support a wall, saying it might have stopped the crimes that claimed their relatives.
Biologists say the jaguar would become extinct within the U.S. without a connection to Mexico. Only a handful of jaguars have been photographed in Arizona since 1996, none definitively verified to be female. Building a wall would end the connection to the female jaguar population and any chance for jaguars to re-establish themselves naturally in the U.S.
Produce growers in Mexico say any new tariff on their exports will be ultimately paid by U.S. consumers. Mexico provides much of America’s fresh produce, especially tomatoes, and growers say any increased tariff would raise prices.
A human smuggler told the USA TODAY Network that a wall won’t stop people from trying to cross — but it will allow him to charge more money to help them.