Trump’s ‘big, beautiful wall’ will require him to take big swaths of other people’s land
The wall will cost a lot more — politically and economically — than Trump has publicly acknowledged. To build the wall along the nearly 2,000-mile border — and fulfill a key campaign promise — Trump will need to wield the power of government to forcibly take private properties, including those belonging to his supporters.
Much of the border, especially in Texas, snakes through farms, ranches, orchards, golf courses, and other private property dating back to centuries-old Spanish land grants. As a signpost to the troubles ahead, the government has still not finished the process from the last such undertaking a decade ago.
“It's going to be time consuming and costly,” said Tony Martinez, an attorney who is mayor of the border town of Brownsville, Tex. “From a political perspective, you have a lot of rich landowners who were his supporters.”
Thanks for the yuge win, now hand over a percentage of that cozy golf course you got there. Ask what you can do for your country and all that.
About 10 miles west of the university is another Brownsville golf course — the River Bend Resort & Golf Club that at the time managed to convince the Bush administration not to build on its property. The existing rust-colored border fence abuts the golf club’s eastern and western edges, but leaves a 1.7 mile gap in between.
The golf course’s new owners, who bought the club in 2015, say a wall running through the course would be disastrous for business. Fifteen of its 18 holes — and more than 200 homes — would be on the south side of the levee, where the wall would be constructed, said Jeremy Barnard, River Bend’s general manager whose father and uncle own the resort.
If the wall were to be built following its existing path along the levee, 70 percent of the 319-acre resort would be relegated to a sort of no man’s land between the levee and the natural border of the Rio Grande River, he said.
“My goal would be to get Trump out to play the course, appealing to the golf course owner and business side of him, and say, ‘Look, what would you do?’ ” Barnard said. “Seven of our holes are on the Rio Grande. You can hit your ball into Mexico, and it comes back into the United States. The beauty that comes with that, the natural landscape, 30-year-old oak trees — this is not a Walmart that I could just go reproduce on any other corner.”
Barnard, who voted for Trump, said he does not want to fight the Trump administration.
“We realize it’s a security issue. We are willing to work with them,” he said. “But we are not just going to hand over our land and say, ‘Here you go!’ ”
Fun to know that, in a forum united in its hatred of civil forfeiture, Donald nonetheless has rallied the troops into a staunch defense of eminent domain on the federal level. Quite a feather in his rhetorical cap, I'd say!
"Old World Blues.' It refers to those so obsessed with the past they can't see the present, much less the future, for what it is. They stare into the what-was...as the realities of their world continue on around them." -Fallout New Vegas
