South Texas resort includes a pool, a golf course and, maybe, a border wall
BROWNSVILLE, Texas — Shirley Menard says she did not think all that much about Donald Trump’s proposed border wall when she cast a reluctant vote for him in 2016.
She is thinking about it a lot more now that plans call for part of what could be a 30-foot-tall stretch of wall to land in her backyard, dividing the River Bend Resort and Golf Club, which hugs the Rio Grande. About 70 percent of the community — some 200 properties — would be stranded south of the barricade but north of the river. Fifteen holes of the golf course could be there, too.
An unsettling lesson in unexpected consequences has left some residents rethinking their support for the wall and the president who has made it his signature project.
“I never thought they’d go through a subdivision,” said Menard, a former Houston schoolteacher who said she had been shaken since she was notified in June of plans to build the wall next year. “My blood pressure has not been normal since I got that letter.”
Despite President Trump’s promise to complete 500 miles of wall in his first term, the Army Corps of Engineers and private contractors have constructed only 60 miles of vehicle barriers or replacement fencing where existing impediments had been damaged. But he has made it clear he wants more sections of the wall built, no matter the obstacles, and the plans for River Bend are part of 19 miles of proposed border wall in Cameron County in South Texas.
A border wall built during the George W. Bush administration left farms and dozens of Texans on the south side of the wall but north of the Rio Grande.
The result is no small degree of consternation in a residential and golf community serving a 55-andolder clientele dominated by transplants and snowbirds from the Midwest. A typical sight last week was a man in socks and sandals and a red MAGA hat driving a golf cart with his dog riding shotgun.
The population in South Texas and in Brownsville is 94 percent Hispanic and strongly Democratic: Hillary Clinton won Cameron County, which includes Brownsville, in 2016 with 64.6 percent of the vote. Residents say River Bend, which is overwhelmingly white, was roughly split between Trump and Clinton voters. (A sample of residents in interviews turned up nine Trump voters and two Clinton ones.)
Nonetheless, in this middle- to upper-middle-class community, where RV lots go for about $35,000 and brick homes can cost north of $200,000, residents seem to unanimously oppose the plans to build a slice of the wall along a slightly raised flood levee, which is topped by a gravel road used by their meandering cars and golf carts.
“If there’s a good purpose for having that wall cut right through our little community, I guess I would go along with it,” said Susan Kaper, who voted for Trump and who moved from Michigan to care for her ailing sister. “But I’ve yet to hear any reason why to do that.”
Some residents said they were considering selling their homes, but it was not clear what the market there would be with a wall pending.
Jeremy Barnard, whose family owns the resort, said he has halted millions of dollars in construction expansion. He figures the wall is a done deal. “It’s not if, it’s when,” he said.
Both residents and the owners said it was difficult to prepare without concrete plans and timetables from authorities. The Border Patrol has met with residents, but the agents have been tightlipped about specifics and have postponed planned meetings.
No new sections of border wall have been built in the Rio Grande Valley during the Trump administration, but funding for 110 miles of it has been approved by Congress.