Walls go up in a border wall town
Fight for, against barrier continues without Trump
LOS EBANOS, Texas — The men showed up unannounced, but it did not take long for Aleida Flores Garcia to figure out why they were measuring portions of her backyard. “We are here to mark where a border wall would go,” they told her last summer as they surveyed the ranch her family has owned for five generations.
Garcia, the last surviving member of her family, had successfully fended off the federal government more than a decade ago, when a different president, George W. Bush, was intent on building a barrier that would cut across a large swath of her land. Now she stood guard as the men took notes and marked the path of an eventual barrier, tears streaming down her face, worried she would not be so lucky again.
This time, she feared, the border wall really was coming to Los Ebanos.
A tiny village with fewer than 300 residents, Los Ebanos sits on the edge of the Rio Grande, which snakes around the community in such a way that it essentially feels like an open-air barrier. It is the kind of border community where families with Spanish surnames have lived for generations, dating back to when Texas was part of Mexico. “The border crossed us,” Garcia and many residents of the Rio Grande Valley, which includes Los Ebanos, are fond of saying.
Now the community has found itself in the middle of a debate over shifting immigration policies as a surge in crossings has reached levels not seen in more than two decades and as the Texas governor has vowed to further fortify the border.
During a special session that ended late last month, state lawmakers approved nearly $2 billion in funding for border security. While it was unclear how exactly the money would be spent, Gov. Greg Abbott has said he would need more than $1 billion to build barriers along the border. So far he has raised more than $54 million from a website that solicits donations.
Many residents like Garcia are vocal opponents of a wall cutting across their properties, believing that it is both inhumane and also would barricade their binational and bicultural village from the rest of the border region. More than 100 landowners like her have been sued by the federal government, their land earmarked for parts of a wall that polls show most South Texans do not want.
“This town is too small for a wall,” said Flores, 61. “It would feel like we are trapped in our own homes, like a prison.”
But there is also a small but growing group of residents who have concluded that only a barrier could slow down what they see as a crippling surge in migration not seen in decades. So far this year, there have been more than 1.3 million interactions between migrants and border officials.
The debate has pitted some neighbors who favor a wall against the many who do not. A few doors down from Garcia, at least one family has publicly expressed desire for more fencing. They declined an interview.
The disagreements in Los Ebanos mirror those of many other communities across the Southwest border with Mexico, where divisions over a wall have been brewing since the Clinton administration. Every president since the early 1990s has authorized construction of fencing. The issue gained momentum after Donald Trump made it a cornerstone of his presidency, and during his four years in office, he pledged to build hundreds of miles of barriers, including in remote areas where few people had typically crossed.
Surveys have shown little appetite for a border wall in the Rio Grande Valley, or El Valle, as the Spanish-speaking majority calls the region.
In a 2018 poll conducted by the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, two-thirds of respondents said they did not favor one.
National polls show a majority of Americans oppose the expansion of a wall.
Still, the debate is sharply split along party lines, with about 8 in 10 Republicans supporting a borderwide barrier. “Build the wall” was a regular refrain at Trump rallies, and during his presidency, Trump built about 450 miles of new fencing, though mostly in Arizona and not in South Texas.
Many Texans thought the issue would subside once President Joe Biden took office. But in a move that critics said appeared designed to attract support from conservative voters before his reelection campaign, Abbott announced an ambitious proposal to pick up where Trump had left off.
He said he had set aside $250 million from the state’s general revenue to a wall and also asked people to donate online.
For the most part, the additional fencing would be erected on vacant ranch properties or land owned by the state or federal government. But residents fear that many areas under consideration include populated communities like Los Ebanos, those right on the border and frequent crossing spots for migrants.
Garcia has grown accustomed to the sight of desperate and thirsty migrants — many of them fleeing violence and poverty in Central America — wandering in her backyard. “They are human beings,” she said. “A wall is not going to deter anyone.”