Texans on southern border vow to fight Trump’s efforts to take their homes for border wall

Brownsville, Texas — Salvador Castillo was yearning for tranquility when he became enchanted by a one-acre homestead close — but not too close — to the city, a place where cows graze beneath whispering mesquite trees on the property’s edge.

This was Texas living, the Afghanistan war veteran thought, not the thin-walled apartment and constant din that aggravated the emotional scars of his work providing security for Air Force operations.

Castillo and his wife bought the home using military benefits and grew their family into their new neighborhood — about half a mile from a bend in the Rio Grande, near where it ends its journey through mountains and deserts and the valley, spilling into a sandy delta at the sea.

They never imagined a border wall could dissect their property someday. But the first letter, stamped with an official government seal, arrived about a year ago. Their neighbors, the Carrascos and Trevinos, got them too.

The United States wanted permission to enter and survey their land — three homes targeted in two neighboring U-shaped Texas subdivisions — in preparation for construction of the Trump administration’s new border wall system.

“We were astonished,” Castillo said, noting that the government letter basically sought unlimited access to his family land with no preclusions. His wife, Yvette Arroyo, threw the first letter away, but the lawsuit that came next was a bit more intimidating. “We were like, ‘Hell no!’ We don’t like this. It’s very intrusive.”

President Donald Trump aims to build 166 miles of border barrier in Texas, almost all of it slated to go on private land that the government has yet to acquire — thousands of parcels along the river, an unknown number of them occupied by their owners, including churches and single-family homes.