In Arizona and Texas, border wall construction has sped up over the objections of residents and environmentalists
“New border wall system construction has not increased due to COVID-19,” said Matthew Dyman, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. “Any increase in border wall activities is solely due to the progression of the projects and additional funding received.”
The administration also built another 31 miles of new and replacement secondary wall north of the border, which it counts toward its total of 222 miles. Trump commemorated the 200th mile Dyman, the Border Patrol spokesman, said the new wall was funded two years ago, “planned in advance of the privately funded barrier” based on the agency’s “operational priorities and will be integrated with other segments of the border wall system.”
Since the pandemic started, government lawyers have filed twice as many lawsuits to seize land in the path of the border wall in Texas — 40 in total — covering more than a thousand acres, an area larger than New York’s Central Park. The federal government sued to seize land from individuals but also from a Catholic children’s home run by nuns in Laredo, Laredo Community College and the city of Laredo. Many have federal court hearings scheduled in coming months.
In April, federal lawyers persuaded a judge in South Texas to grant them access to survey a third of a mile in the Rio Grande Valley’s Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge after the administration promised to exempt the refuge from the border wall following local protests. Lawyers successfully argued that the land was exempt from protection because it’s beneath a government levee.
Alvarez insisted that since the pandemic started, surveyors have hopped fences and planted wooden stakes in her land, which she ripped out.She said armed Border Patrol agents visited her this spring and asked her to sign documents allowing surveyors onto her land. Roberto Lopez, outreach coordinator at the Texas Civil Rights Project, said he worried about so many workers flooding the rural area during the pandemic.Roberto Lopez’s group, the Texas Civil Rights Project, joined others to send a letter to Homeland Security, the Pentagon and the Justice Department demanding they halt wall work in March.
Federal officials halted wall construction during the pandemic for at least one site: a seven-mile stretch of Cocopah tribal land in Yuma, Ariz. Tribal leaders and the Sierra Club had fought the $3.8-billion project, arguing it would block the tribe’s access to the nearby Colorado River. Last month, the federal government abandoned the project, noting that “contractor pricing for certain projects and segments was higher than expected.
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