WASHINGTON, DC — The Trump administration is accelerating efforts to seize private property for President Trump’s border wall, taking advantage of the coronavirus pandemic to survey land while its owners are confined indoors, residents along the Rio Grande say.
“Is that essential business?” asked Nayda Alvarez, 49, who recently found construction markers on the land in Starr County, Texas, that has been in her family for five generations. “That didn’t stop a single minute during the shelter in place or stay at home.”
The federal government brought a flurry of lawsuits against landowners in South Texas to survey, seize and potentially begin construction on private property in the first five months of the year as the administration rushed to deliver on Mr. Trump’s promise to build 450 miles of wall by the end of the year, which he downgraded on Thursday to 400. While Mr. Trump has built less than 200 of those miles, his administration has brought 78 lawsuits against landowners on the border, 30 of them this year. Continue reading.