"Like pissing in the wind": Local concerns bulldozed by Trump's border wall plan
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Photo illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Photos: Brandon Bell, Kent Nishimura/AFP, and Kaylee Greenlee/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The Trump administration has a blunt message for state and local officials trying to prevent construction of a wall and other security measures along the 2,000-mile southern border: Resistance is futile.
Driving the news: President Trump's envoys recently met privately with officials from Texas border counties where residents have pushed back against construction, saying the plans are unnecessary in rugged landscapes with few immigrant crossings and that they'd harm the environment.
- The officials were told bluntly at the closed-door meeting with Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott that there would be no negotiating.
- The government is now pushing ahead with plans to build hundreds more miles of the 30-foot, steel barrier in most counties, and says there will be vehicle barriers and other construction in the Big Bend state and national parks.
- "It is like my dad would say, it's sort of like pissing in the wind. You just, you know, it just ain't right, folks. This is completely asinine," Val Verde County Judge Lewis Owens said in a video statement about the meeting with the federal officials.
Zoom in: Scott told local officials that wall construction along a more than 200-mile stretch from Hudspeth County to Presidio County was "not negotiable" without giving a reason, Brewster County Sheriff Ronny Dodson, who was at the meeting, told Axios.
- County sheriffs and judges, the top elected officials in rural Texas counties, have been the only ones invited to make their case to Scott while he temporarily paused construction.
- Private landowners, ranch owners and eco-tourism business owners who will be impacted by any construction weren't invited to the meeting.
- "The people making the decisions above Commissioner Scott, they've never been down here," Owens said. "They don't know what the hell this place looks like, but yet you're making decisions on what's going to affect us that live here."
At the meeting, Scott acknowledged a lack of transparency by the federal government on construction plans so far, Dodson said.
- "They just paused for a couple of weeks and we are where we were before," said Susan Hays, who's running for a Presidio County commissioner's seat. She wasn't invited to the meeting but was given details by the county judge.
The latest: A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order pausing construction over the roughly 600 miles of border, but that order lasts only through the end of this month.
- Significant construction on private land is likely to be delayed — for now, at least.
- Only about 20 % of landowners in Presidio County, west of the state park, have signed away land access to the feds, while only about 31 % of landowners east of the park have, Deirdre Hisler, a Presidio County commissioner, told Axios.
- U.S. officials have made clear that landowners who don't comply risk an eminent domain lawsuit over their property.
What they're saying: "We are currently evaluating technology options to meet President Trump's mission of zero illegal border crossings while strengthening the most secure border in American history in highly remote and hard-to-access areas," a CBP spokesperson said in a statement.
The intrigue: Federal officials are giving Brewster County, home to much of the Big Bend national and state parks as well as the Black Gap Wildlife Management area, some room to negotiate.
- These areas aren't slated to have a 30-foot wall, but construction for planned patrol roads and vehicle barriers have alarmed locals who want to protect the parks' environment and its eco-tourism industry.
Dodson said he's been taking local CBP officials on site visits to try to persuade them from building a new road through the parks and limit the number of vehicle barriers CBP plans.
- "This county is concerned about tourism, and you may hear that word a lot," Dodson said. "But there's a lot of truth there because we don't have oil or gas or anything. We don't have much."
- He added that "the stuff that people are saying on Facebook, — 'Oh this wall, wall, wall, wall' — it's already scaring people off because our tourism is down right now."
The big picture: The pressure on local officials in the Big Bend area to submit to the construction plans is part of a pattern for CBP, which had built less than 200 miles of border wall as of last week.
- It recently started construction in Tohono O'odham Nation territory in Arizona, though the tribe has gone to court to try to stop the work.
- Even religious sites aren't being spared from eminent domain lawsuits and major construction.
