05-08-2025
Texas families offered just $3,000 by the government in exchange for building Trump's wall on their land
The Trump administration has become embroiled in legal battles with families in Texas as it tries to take their land to finish off the president's border wall pet project.
In a renewed effort to finish the $46 billion wall , Trump has started seizing land, mostly in the state's Starr County, and paying just thousands of dollars for it.
Nearly all the land in the state of Texas is privately owned, including the land adjacent to Mexico's northern border. The Trump administration is now threatening to proceed with eminent domain-empowered land seizures if the homeowners don't play ball.
Dozens of eminent domain lawsuits have been filed this year by the government. In many cases, the land at the center of those lawsuits is land that families have worked for generations, the Wall Street Journal reports.
One man under the gun, Alejo Clarke, 76, told the WSJ that Trump is trying to take his land, and that if successful, the president will run a wall through his property that separates him from hunting and fishing grounds he's used for decades.
Clarke lost his land to Trump's border wall aspirations during his first term, but regained it under President Joe Biden.
The government is offering Clarke just $3,000 for his land.
Raquel Olivia, 75, is also facing the potential loss of her land, telling the outlet that while the wall only requires three acres, it would cut her off from more than 100 acres she used for crops, hunting, and a gas well.
As Trump insists his extreme border policies are necessary to fight an invasion of illegal immigrants, Olivia said the only invasion she sees is the federal government onto her property.
"Now it feels like an invasion of the government on us," she told the WSJ.
Eminent domain battles under Trump will be interesting to watch play out. Courts could rule in favor of the landowners, but court rulings have only sometimes stopped Trump from doing whatever he wants.
The Trump administration took an opposing view on the use of eminent domain in June when it pushed back against Cranbury, New Jersey, after the city tried to seize a family farm.
U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins threatened that the administration was looking into the seizure and insisted that "we must protect family farms at all costs," according to Fox News.
"Whether the Maudes, the Henrys or others whom we will soon announce, the Biden-style government takeover of our family farms is over," she wrote in a now-deleted June 17 post. "While this particular case is a city eminent domain issue, we @usda are exploring every legal option to help."
