Biden is facing high hopes, tough choices on border wall
LOS EBANOS, TEXAS » The U. S. government has been trying to take Pamela Rivas’ land for a border wall since before Joe Biden was vice president.
From a brushy bluff, Rivas can look across the Rio Grande to Mexico on the other side. She spent her childhood fishing on the river. The government wants to bisect this property with steel fencing that would cut her off from the water, paying her just for the strip of land where it would build. In the meantime, the land is under constant surveillance from border agents who drive across it without her permission.
“We’ve been in court for 12 years now,” Rivas said. “It’s devastating. This is my inheritance from my family.”
Biden faces immediate pressure when he enters the White House in January to fulfill a pledge to stop border wall construction. But he also will confront tough choices left behind by President Donald Trump, whose administration has ramped up construction efforts across the Southwest in its final weeks, as well as skepticism about his own record on border walls.
As a senator, Biden voted for efforts to take private land under the Secure Fence Act of 2006. And while he was vice president to President Barack Obama, the government continued building and pursuing lawsuits against border landowners. About 650 miles (1,050 kilometers) of barriers were completed under that law through 2011.
In South Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, where Rivas and dozens of landowners are fighting construction,
Obama built more barriers than Trump.
“We’re a little less naïve than last time,” said Ricky Garza, a lawyer with the nonprofit Texas Civil Rights Project, which represents Rivas and other landowners. “What we saw 10 years ago was a failure to prioritize the border as an important place where policy was happening.”
Biden will inherit a massive wall- building effort that accelerated in Trump’s final year. Work crews are blasting through mountains and destroying treelike cactus and other habitat in Arizona and New Mexico. Almost all of the construction under Trump has taken place in wildlife refuges and Indigenous territory that already belongs to the U. S. government. While the work is considered “replacement” of older barriers, crews are removing small vehicle barriers and installing towering steel posts and lighting that are far more restrictive.
The Trump administration says it has completed
400 miles (644 kilometers) and pledged to reach 450 miles (725 kilometers) by the end of the year. And it has locked in contracts to build hundreds of miles more. More than two dozen projects are underway and contracts are signed with at least five construction companies, totaling $7 billion, according to government figures.
The U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, which oversees construction paid with military funds reappropriated by Trump under a national emergency declaration, “will not speculate on actions the administration may or may not take” and “expects contractors to continue work as obligated under their contracts,” spokesman George Jozens said in November.
Following the election, the Justice Department has continued suing landowners in Texas, with several new cases each week. It has faced the same obstacles as previous administrations in trying to determine whom to sue. Some properties sought for the
wall have dozens of potential heirs scattered nationwide.
That work at times has been haphazard, leading a federal judge during one land condemnation hearing to accuse the government of “wasting this court’s resources.”
“You don’t do your work to determine whether people have passed away,” said Judge Micaela Alvarez, an appointee of former President George W. Bush. “You have out cases where you name somebody and then, a month or two later, you come back to court and say, ‘ We want to dismiss them,’ because they died two, three, four years ago.”
The week after the election, the government sued Minnie G. Saenz, a 78-yearold widow who was with her son when they learned of the lawsuit from The Associated Press.
“They’re in a hurry — not in a hurry to pay, but in a hurry to build,” said her son, Leonel Saenz Jr.
Taken together, it will be difficult for Biden to stop immediately.