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Thread: Trump’s ‘big, beautiful wall’ will require him to take big swaths of other people’s land

  1. #1

    Trump’s ‘big, beautiful wall’ will require him to take big swaths of other people’s land

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.4e6c4715b620

    The order has been issued for the immediate construction of a Mexico border wall. The specs have been outlined: 30 feet high and “aesthetically pleasing.” The next thing on President Trump's to-do list for building his “big, beautiful wall”: Hire more lawyers for a long and expensive battle over private 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.”

    Trump, in his recent budget proposal, is calling for the addition of 20 Justice Department attorneys to “pursue federal efforts to obtain the land and holdings necessary to secure the southwest border.” The Justice Department would not expand upon the details. Of the department's 11,000 attorneys, fewer than 20 currently work in land acquisition. Trump's budget would double that.

    The battle has been fought before. The last wave of eminent domain cases over southern border properties dates back to the 2006 Secure Fence Act authorizing President George W. Bush to erect 700 miles of fencing.

    Of the roughly 400 condemnation cases stemming from that era, about 90 remain open a decade later, according to the Justice Department. Nearly all are in the Rio Grande Valley in southwest Texas.

    The U.S. government has already spent $78 million compensating private landowners for 600 tracts of property for the construction of the existing pedestrian and vehicle fence, according to Customs and Border Protection. The agency estimates that it will spend another $21 million in real estate expenses associated with the remaining condemnation cases — not including approximately $4 million in Justice Department litigation costs.

    A 2009 Homeland Security inspector general report highlighted the difficulties in acquiring the necessary land: “Gaining access rights … delayed the completion of fence construction and may increase the cost beyond available funding.”

    Researchers and lawyers say eminent domain will continue to be a big issue for Trump, one that could even stymie his ambitious plans for an “impenetrable” wall.

    “It will be a huge challenge for his administration. It will clog up the courts,” said Terence Garrett, a security studies and public affairs professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in Brownsville. “It’s just an affront to property rights.

    The university became embroiled in the land dispute in 2007 when the federal government sought to build an 18-foot-high wall that would have divided the campus in two. Students would have had to obtain land crossing cards to go back and forth across campus, even though they were still in the United States, Garrett said.

    The university and government ended up compromising on a “pleasant looking” 10-foot-high fence that cut off the city golf course adjacent to campus, said Garrett, who served as a strategist for the university president during the lawsuits. The golf course ended up going out of business.

    “All the grass has grown up around it and it’s, in a sense, ceded back to nature,” Garrett said.

    But the fence provides a “false sense of security,” he said. People can easily climb over it. And it’s not continuous.

    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!’ ”

    Thus far, the government has yet to approach the family about the land. If and when it does, Barnard plans to convey the cooperative relationship the club has developed with Border Patrol and immigration officials in the past two years.

    When his family first took over the club, Barnard said, he would witness narcotics activity daily. There’s been a dramatic decrease in drug trafficking since the club hired a full-time security guard and cleared the river banks of weeds where drug runners hid. Border Patrol also uses the club’s boat ramp to launch patrol boats and protect the river.

    “It’s not like if you build a wall your problem is gone,” Barnard said. “We need more boots on the ground. More boats, more sensors, more drones that would be more efficient and more productive.”

    It remains an open question how much sympathy Trump would have for Barnard's situation — or that of any other private landowner standing in the way of Trump's wall.

    As a developer, Trump has wielded the power of eminent domain to make way for his properties. In Scotland, he pursued compulsory purchase to force neighbors out of their homes for the Trump International Golf Links near Aberdeen. When that didn't work, he built a five-foot-tall wooden fence — then tried to make his neighbors pay for it.

    Trump also famously tried seizing the property of an elderly Atlantic City widow to make way for a limousine parking lot for his hotel and casino. He has a consistent history supporting the use of eminent domain and praised the 2005 Supreme Court decision — denounced widely by conservatives — that said the government could force property owners to sell their land to make way for private economic developments that benefit the public.

    “I happen to agree with it 100 percent,” Trump said during a 2005 Fox News interview. “If you have a person living in an area that’s not even necessarily a good area, and … government wants to build a tremendous economic development, where a lot of people are going to be put to work and … create thousands upon thousands of jobs and beautification and lots of other things, I think it happens to be good.”
    Last edited by Zippyjuan; 03-21-2017 at 07:23 PM.



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  3. #2
    Yeah. Not good.
    Quote Originally Posted by dannno View Post
    It's a balance between appeasing his supporters, appeasing the deep state and reaching his own goals.
    ~Resident Badgiraffe




  4. #3
    WaPo most likely did not bring out the parallel... but if this claim is confirmed, it would be another thing common between this and Israel's Wall.
    Trump would make it very difficult for media, left wing neocons etc to attack his wall by comparing his wall to Israel's wall. He may have alreadyy done that infact.



    That's even 5 feet higher than wall of Israel, a country with highly discriminating taste when it comes to letting people in... other than approved selective influx of Syrian ISIS types wounded jihadis seeking medical help.




    Would be interesting ti see how left wing neocons/media owners/DGP's masters etc would try to attack Trump on this plan if he rolled out Israeli wall's architecture in front of them as a model.

  5. #4
    “I don’t think that there will be any curtailing of Donald Trump as president,” he said. "He controls the media, he controls the sentiment [and] he controls everybody. He’s the one who will resort to executive orders more so than [President] Obama ever used them." - Ron Paul

  6. #5
    Trump would make it very difficult for media, left wing neocons etc to attack his wall by comparing his wall to Israel's wall. He may have already done that infact.

    Found the old news.
    Caution, some may find Trump's tweet at below link highly controversial:

    Trump calls out Hillary Clinton for her support for Israel’s separation wall







    'They are not just taking a church - they are cutting our future and history'

    Residents of Beit Jala protest against the newest extension of Israel's separation wall, which will literally carve the heart out of their community
    Archbishop Atallah Hanna helped lead the protest. "We will not let Beit Jala stand alone, and we will not be silent. This is our holy land, and it's our history and we will protest always until they leave our land." (MEE/Abed al Qaisi)

    Tuesday 25 August 2015

    BEIT JALA, West Bank - The upturned land where olive trees once grew in front of Amira Abu Saad’s home portray what Abu Saad said she has already known for weeks: the battle for her community has been lost.
    Abu Saad, 62, lives on the edge of a residential block in Beit Jala, a Christian-majority town just outside Bethlehem in the central occupied West Bank. The western-facing windows of her traditional Jerusalem-stone home overlook the vast land of the Cremisan Valley - at least for now.
    Bulldozers and Israeli forces showed up outside her home last week and uprooted olive trees to make room for the newest extension of Israel’s separation wall.
    Protesters gathered around the bulldozers, chanting against their destruction, as Israeli forces stood guard. Small groups have gathered in the area every day since to voice their opposition.
    On Sunday hundreds of protesters showed up at the site in a large demonstration against the confiscation, chanting phrases like “Stop, stop the occupation,” and “Free Beit Jala,” as they marched down to a fenced area that separates the neighbourhood from the illegal Gilo settlement on the next mount.



    Cory Booker equates Walled Israel to dream of MLK

  7. #6
    “I don’t think that there will be any curtailing of Donald Trump as president,” he said. "He controls the media, he controls the sentiment [and] he controls everybody. He’s the one who will resort to executive orders more so than [President] Obama ever used them." - Ron Paul

  8. #7
    Just how much land does a wall need? It's not like the thing is 50 feet thick.

    Wouldn't it be on the edge of land somebody owns?

    It would probably take 4 feet for it's thickness at most. What's 4 feet off of the edge of somebody's land worth?

  9. #8
    “I don’t think that there will be any curtailing of Donald Trump as president,” he said. "He controls the media, he controls the sentiment [and] he controls everybody. He’s the one who will resort to executive orders more so than [President] Obama ever used them." - Ron Paul



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  11. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Dr.3D View Post
    Just how much land does a wall need? It's not like the thing is 50 feet thick.

    Wouldn't it be on the edge of land somebody owns?

    It would probably take 4 feet for it's thickness at most. What's 4 feet off of the edge of somebody's land worth?
    They usually want room to run a road along it too for access. Some of the current wall:

    Last edited by Zippyjuan; 03-21-2017 at 08:30 PM.

  12. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by CPUd View Post
    Wow nice find CPuD, judging by the date on that letter it looks like Obama was starting to build a wall!

  13. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by Zippyjuan View Post
    They usually want room to run a road along it too. Some of the current wall:

    Okay, 8 feet. How wide is a single lane road?

    So now the land owner has a little road on the back edge of his property.

  14. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by RPtotheWH View Post
    Wow nice find CPuD, judging by the date on that letter it looks like Obama was starting to build a wall!
    Over 600 miles have already been constructed (not all continuously) starting from where California reaches the Pacific Ocean into parts of Texas.

  15. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by RPtotheWH View Post
    Wow nice find CPuD, judging by the date on that letter it looks like Obama was starting to build a wall!
    That particular case goes back even further:
    https://dockets.justia.com/docket/te...cv00206/590496
    Last edited by CPUd; 03-21-2017 at 08:34 PM.
    “I don’t think that there will be any curtailing of Donald Trump as president,” he said. "He controls the media, he controls the sentiment [and] he controls everybody. He’s the one who will resort to executive orders more so than [President] Obama ever used them." - Ron Paul

  16. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by Zippyjuan View Post
    Over 600 miles have already been constructed starting from where California reaches the Pacific Ocean into parts of Texas.
    Quote Originally Posted by CPUd View Post
    That particular case goes back even further.
    So why do you two keep calling it Trump's wall?

  17. #15
    So do they run the wall down the middle of the Rio Grande?

  18. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by RPtotheWH View Post
    So why do you two keep calling it Trump's wall?
    He wants to run it the rest of the way across the country.



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  20. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by RPtotheWH View Post
    So why do you two keep calling it Trump's wall?
    Because those other pussies just wanted to build a fence, President Donald will build the big beautiful wall that Mexico will pay for.

    “I don’t think that there will be any curtailing of Donald Trump as president,” he said. "He controls the media, he controls the sentiment [and] he controls everybody. He’s the one who will resort to executive orders more so than [President] Obama ever used them." - Ron Paul

  21. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by Dr.3D View Post
    So do they run the wall down the middle of the Rio Grande?
    That is one problem. Mountains are another.

    First, a 1970 boundary treaty governs structures along the Rio Grande and Colorado River at the Mexican border. It requires that structures cannot disrupt the flow of the rivers, which flow across Texas and 24 miles in Arizona and define the U.S.-Mexican border, according to The International Boundary and Water Commission, a joint U.S.-Mexican agency that administers the treaty.

    Trump has said his wall will not need to run the full 2,100-mile length of the border, but even excluding those portions blocked by geographic features, there are serious issues.

    In some places, treaty obligations and river flood zones would require the wall be built well into the United States, which would be awkward if the Mexican government is paying for it and overseeing the project. In addition to creating a no man's land between the wall and the actual border, one government or the other would have to buy large amounts of private property as well as land owned by at least one Indian tribe whose territory straddles the border in southern Arizona.

    In areas where the border is defined on dry land across New Mexico, most of Arizona and California, structures have to be built so that the wall doesn't obstruct natural run off routes or otherwise induce flooding. Building in those areas can be complicated and costly. In sensitive sand dunes in Southern California, for instance, a "floating fence" had to be built to allow the natural movements of the dunes.

    Then, there are the conservation issues. Environmental groups have sued over parts of the existing fence. And, federal regulations could prevent or at least delay or increase costs of construction.

    A total of 18 federally protected species may be found along the California border and at least 39 federally endangered, threatened, or candidate species live along the Arizona border, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
    https://www.usnews.com/news/politics...-great-hurdles

  22. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by Dr.3D View Post
    So do they run the wall down the middle of the Rio Grande?
    maybe a flotilla

    “I don’t think that there will be any curtailing of Donald Trump as president,” he said. "He controls the media, he controls the sentiment [and] he controls everybody. He’s the one who will resort to executive orders more so than [President] Obama ever used them." - Ron Paul

  23. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by Zippyjuan View Post
    That is one problem. Mountains are another.



    https://www.usnews.com/news/politics...-great-hurdles
    Not to mention water rights for cattle ranchers who use the river to water their cattle. The wall surely can't block the cattle from reaching water.

  24. #21
    What if I don't want a wall?
    There is no spoon.

  25. #22
    Quote Originally Posted by Ender View Post
    What if I don't want a wall?
    Move to Canada?

  26. #23
    Quote Originally Posted by Dr.3D View Post
    Not to mention water rights for cattle ranchers who use the river to water their cattle. The wall surely can't block the cattle from reaching water.
    Rivers as borders can be unnecessarily tricky in the modern age:

    BLM Plans to Take 90,000 Acres From Texas Ranchers
    “I don’t think that there will be any curtailing of Donald Trump as president,” he said. "He controls the media, he controls the sentiment [and] he controls everybody. He’s the one who will resort to executive orders more so than [President] Obama ever used them." - Ron Paul

  27. #24
    Quote Originally Posted by Dr.3D View Post
    So do they run the wall down the middle of the Rio Grande?
    In order to have minimum impact on wildlife , livestock and land owners , a fence down the middle of the river would be the best option.
    Do something Danke



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  29. #25
    http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/...rder-wall-bill

    Per The Wall Street Journal:

    Last week, administration officials asked Congress for $3 billion in immigration funding for fiscal year 2017, including $1.5 billion for additional border-security measures. That includes beginning work on President Donald Trump’s promised wall along the southern U.S. border. He proposed even more for next year’s budget.

    On Monday, more details emerged about the Trump plan. According to a congressional official, the administration is asking for 20 miles of new wall construction, including 14 miles in the San Diego area and six miles in the Rio Grande Valley, Texas, area. The San Diego stretch, estimated at $251 million, would cost nearly $18 million per mile. The Texas stretch, at $146 million, would cost $24 million per mile.

    In addition, Team Trump has asked for “a new levee-wall system over a 28-mile stretch in the Rio Grande Valley,” at a cost of almost half a billion dollars, plus “14 miles of replacement fence in the San Diego area, at $102 million, or about $7 million per mile.”
    Current estimates (and government estimates are usually very wrong on the low side) is that it will cost over $20 billion.



    Existing fencing:


    The U.S.-Mexico border fence system today. Pedestrian fence is colored dark orange, vehicle fence in light orange.


    Multiple layers of pedestrian fence between San Diego and Tijuana.


    A mountain cuts through sections of border fence southeast of Yuma, Arizona.

    https://www.revealnews.org/article/t...-a-tall-order/
    Last edited by Zippyjuan; 03-21-2017 at 09:16 PM.

  30. #26

    Oh boy, Vanity Fair Magazine. What's next--a foreign policy analysis from Good Housekeeping?
    Quote Originally Posted by TheCount View Post
    ...I believe that when the government is capable of doing a thing, it will.
    Quote Originally Posted by Influenza View Post
    which one of yall fuckers wrote the "ron paul" racist news letters
    Quote Originally Posted by Dforkus View Post
    Zippy's posts are a great contribution.




    Disrupt, Deny, Deflate. Read the RPF trolls' playbook here (post #3): http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...eptive-members

  31. #27
    Quote Originally Posted by NorthCarolinaLiberty View Post
    Oh boy, Vanity Fair Magazine. What's next--a foreign policy analysis from Good Housekeeping?
    They were actually quoting the Wall Street Journal. I would have used that but it requires registration. Trying to get some more posts deleted? The pictures are from the Department of Homeland Security. Link to those at the bottom of the post.

    Per The Wall Street Journal:
    Last edited by Zippyjuan; 03-21-2017 at 09:26 PM.

  32. #28
    Quote Originally Posted by Zippyjuan View Post
    They were actually quoting the Wall Street Journal. I would have used that but it requires registration. Trying to get some more posts deleted? The pictures are from the Department of Homeland Security. Link to those at the bottom of the post.

    So you quote a third hand source? You need primary sources. Those are from places like OMB, congress, sh*t like that. Do it now.
    Quote Originally Posted by TheCount View Post
    ...I believe that when the government is capable of doing a thing, it will.
    Quote Originally Posted by Influenza View Post
    which one of yall fuckers wrote the "ron paul" racist news letters
    Quote Originally Posted by Dforkus View Post
    Zippy's posts are a great contribution.




    Disrupt, Deny, Deflate. Read the RPF trolls' playbook here (post #3): http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...eptive-members



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