Eminent domain fights could take years.
Tamez fought the government in federal court. During seven years of litigation and negotiation, she became famous for resisting the border fence. The government eventually paid her $56,000 for a quarter-acre the fence sits on and gave her a code to open a gate so she can access her land to its south... Only about one-third of the land the wall would sit on is owned by the federal government or by Native American tribes, according to the Government Accountability Office. And much of that territory is already fenced. The rest of the border is controlled by states and private property owners.
.. As it happens, the president has plenty of experience attempting to seize land on the East Coast.
President Donald Trump’s First Negotiation Was A Humiliation | The Last Word | MSNBC
Lawrence O’Donnell explains why Mexican President Peña Nieto’s decision to not attend a scheduled meeting with Pres. Trump over the border wall is Trump’s first humiliation on the global stage and sends a message to other world leaders about future negotiations.
Trump’s immigration rope-a-dope
After diplomatic turn in Mexico, a fiery immigration speech proves the GOP nominee’s moderation to be a ruse.
Having ditched his traveling press corps, Trump’s lie that he and President Enrique Peña Nieto didn’t discuss who would pay for his border wall wasn’t exposed until the Mexican president tweeted that they had a few hours later
.. Trump and his campaign had used Peña Nieto as a prop in an opening act that served only to set up an evening stemwinder. The farce was, in hindsight, clear even before Trump approached the mic, as two of his warm-up speakers, Rudy Giuliani and Jeff Sessions, donned Trump hats that read “Make Mexico Great Again Also.”
.. He reverted to the tough talk he was unable to muster on foreign soil just hours earlier about Mexico paying for the wall.
.. Toward the end of his speech, he used the personal anecdotes of mothers whose children were killed by undocumented immigrants to further demonize “illegals.”
.. Trump’s revived bombast and the 10-pronged list of immigration policy ideas were actually a clumsy effort to obscure the fact that he is no longer vowing to immediately deport every undocumented immigrant in the country illegally
Migrants and Smugglers Won’t Be Stopped by Donald Trump’s Wall, Ranchers Say
The solution favored among ranchers is infused with a fatalism that nothing will change — government being government, and the cartels always one step ahead — so why bother. But here it goes:
Intensive, round-the-clock patrols along the border are required for a fence or wall to work; otherwise, those determined to cross will always find a way. But, they argue, if you have boots on the ground, you will have no need for anything so beautiful as the Great Wall of Trump.
.. 262 miles of border — there were 63,397 arrests in the 2015 fiscal year, compared with 10 times that in the 2001 fiscal year.Paul Beeson, the patrol’s chief agent for the Tucson sector, attributes the drop to an increase in officers and tactical equipment, an improvement in the Mexican economy, and the fencing erected along the border about a decade ago.
.. But Mr. Ladd and other ranchers say there has been an unsettling swap: fewer migrants, but many more drug traffickers... “They don’t have to move their product today,” he says of the cartels. “They can move it tomorrow. They can sit and watch, and they do that. Watching us. Watching us watching them.”.. “Nothing seems to work, because we keep buying what they bring to sell,”