Disputed border lot headed for auction
Feds want state trust land for wall; land commissioner wants to be rid of feud
Seven-and-a-quarter-acre plot. Desert views.
For less than the price of a new pickup, you could own your own piece of the U.S.-Mexico border.
In a move to wash New Mexico’s hands of an ongoing feud with the federal government over a small stretch of state trust land on the international boundary, Land Commissioner Aubrey Dunn said Thursday he plans to auction off the property to the highest bidder.
With the commissioner planning to
do the bid calling himself Dec. 3 in front of the Doña Ana County courthouse, the auction could end up being the strangest turn yet in a bizarre dispute between the state and federal governments over a parcel that sits right where President Donald Trump has pledged to build a wall. Dunn has demanded the federal government pay to access the property near Santa Teresa and for building a fence at the site. But he has rebuffed previous offers from Washington as less than than what his office could ordinarily get for a lease. So, it’s off to the auction block.
The sale effectively will take New Mexico’s government out of this novel, if not exactly high-dollar, fight.
“This is my last fiasco,” said Dunn, a Republican-turned Libertarian who is forgoing re-election and leaving office at the end of the year.
But with the federal government still wielding the power of eminent domain and the right to condemn property such as this, it is unclear whether selling the site could do much to stop construction of a new wall.
The federal government controls a 60-foot-wide buffer zone along much of the border under a 1907 proclamation by President Theodore Roosevelt.
But the federal government already had conveyed the patch of land in question to the territory of New Mexico in the late 1800s, and it remains state trust land.
Nonetheless, the federal government has installed a fence on the site, and the Border Patrol uses a road running through the property.
Dunn erected “no trespassing” signs on the property earlier this year, denouncing what he called a federal land grab.
The land commissioner controls around 9 million surface acres of state trust land. Leasing the land for oil production, livestock grazing and development generates funds for New Mexico’s public education system as well as other institutions, such as hospitals.
The commissioner said he will not take anything less than what the state could get for either a 35-year lease — that’s about $20,000 — or a 99-year lease. That would amount to about $54,000.
Dunn will open bidding at $40,000. The State Land Office will keep the mineral and geothermal rights as well as certain water rights.
What can you do with this land?
“Well, you can own a mile of the border wall,” Dunn said.
State Rep. Stephanie Garcia Richard, the Democrat running to succeed Dunn, questioned whether the sale really will be in the best interests of the trust. The legislator from Los Alamos said she opposes selling any state trust land if it is not in the interests of the beneficiaries.
The Santa Teresa area is booming, she noted.
“Why would you take your stake out of a booming economy?” said Garcia Richard. “The wall aside, it doesn’t make economic sense to me.”
The sale also will leave New Mexico with one less possible bulwark against a wall.
Garcia Richard sponsored legislation earlier this year that would have prohibited the New Mexico government from allowing any of its property to be used for constructing a border wall. The bill would have barred selling state land for that purpose, too.
The bill did not pass, but it reflected the fact that plenty of New Mexicans are not inclined to help Trump build the border wall he promised.
Meanwhile, the federal government has used eminent domain to obtain other property on the border. But many landowners say they have received inadequate compensation in that process.