Texas GOP Official Orders Halt to Construction of part of the "Big Bend Border Wall"
Texas Land Commissioner issues "cease & desist" demand
Texas Land Commissioner Dr. Dawn Buckingham has sent a “cease and desist” letter to US Customs & Border Protection (CBP) and one of its contractors (Barnard Construction) after she says Texas discovered they "illegally cleared over a mile of state land” in the Big Bend area.
Additionally, an LLC that leases the state land (which consists of more than 10,000 acres in three Big Bend Counties “for hunting, recreation, and grazing”) has been told that by allowing this activity without notifying or obtaining permission from the state, Texas considers it to be “in breach of the Lease.”
The Texas General Land Office says “Barnard illegally entered Sections 70, 71, 78 and 80”(shown on the map below) of public land in Presidio County where the damage occurred.
The non-profit news website “The Center Square” has reported that “the Department of Homeland Security awarded Bozeman, Montana-based Barnard Construction Company a $960 million contract to construct the BBT-3 Border Barrier Construction Project in Hudspeth, Jeff Davis and Presidio counties.”
Susan Hays, who is running unopposed as a candidate for Presidio County Commissioner, told Marfa Public Radio that the cleared state land is “100 feet wide and 2 miles long … (and) corresponded with a map county commissioners received from Barnard Construction, to be the exact location of the proposed border wall.”
In addition to all three of the involved parties being ordered by the State of Texas to “cease and desist all excavation and construction operations on these GLO lands immediately,” The Texas General Land Office says the “extensive damage done to these state lands” must be remediated and returned to its original condition.
This legal dispute over border wall construction through the Big Bend is the latest flashpoint in a growing movement opposing the wall there that is slowly becoming increasingly bipartisan as some Republican officials agree with the locals that a towering wall built atop rugged cliffs along the Rio Grande Border with Mexico makes little sense there. Most of those opposed to the wall support increased border security, especially the use of surveillance towers there.
Among them is West Texas Sheriff Thaddeus Cleveland. He spent decades as a U.S. Border Patrol Agent before becoming the top lawman in one of Texas “reddest” border areas: Terrell County. (He’s also a frequent guest on cable news shows likely to be closely watched in the White House).
He says the steep walls along the Rio Grande, and the vast (and often deadly) “badlands” above them, make a “Border Wall” here unnecessary.
“We’ve got a God-made barrier,” Sheriff Cleveland argues.
DHS bureaucrats in Washington, DC, have long been hell-bent on ramming a physical border wall through Terrell County into the “Big Bend” area, even as the historically (very) conservative, and reliably Republican-majority locals who live there, like Sheriff Cleveland and West Texas border landowners (many whose families go back generations), have tried, so far in vain, to convince federal authorities there is a better, cheaper, and far less destructive way to block the relatively few illegal crossings known to occur there:
Their pleas for “smarter” border security instead of a multi-billion-dollar wall many locals consider a border boondoggle are making for some strange political bedfellows, as GOP politicians outside the area are reluctant to be seen as opposing one of President Trump’s signature programs:
But some are coming around. Brandon Herrera (also known as the “A-K Guy” and the Trump-endorsed GOP candidate to represent the Big Bend in Congress) issued a statement in May opposing the wall “in Big Bend National Park” in favor of the border security measures Sheriff Cleveland and others have been arguing for.
Herrera’s statement says he also wants “passive border security strategies for Big Bend Ranch State Park and nearby areas where a physical barrier would not only be unnecessary but destructive to nature and the local economy.”
Which brings us back to the likely unexpected position Texas General Land Office Commissioner Dr. Dawn Buckingham finds herself. Her campaign website touts her office purchasing a property whose “problematic” owner was “blocking the border wall right-of-way” leading to construction of the wall there.
But by issuing her “cease and desist letters,” Dr. Buckingham now finds herself blocking construction of part of the Border Wall in the Big Bend, a position she explained through a statement in a news release whose title opened with “Don’t Tread on Texas”
“The people of Texas entrusted the General Land Office with more than 13 million acres of state land, and we take that responsibility seriously. We will work with our federal partners to keep the southern border secured, but we will not compromise the integrity of Texas state property to do it. State land is damaged, and it must be restored.” -Dr. Dawn Buckingham, Commissioner, Texas General Land Office
Do you support a physical or “smart” border wall in the Big Bend area of West Texas?
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Abrazos,
Jack Beavers
