The last time U.S. officials built a barrier along the border with Mexico, they left an opening at the small road leading south to Pamela Taylor’s home on the banks of the Rio Grande.
Taylor hadn’t been told where the fence would be built, and she doesn’t know now whether officials are coming back to complete it.
“How would we get out?” asked Taylor, 88, sitting in the living room of the home she built with her husband half a century ago. “Do they realize that they’re penalizing people that live along this river on the American side?”
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Taylor’s experience illustrates some of the effects that the border wall President Donald Trump has imagined could have on residents in the Rio Grande Valley, the sunny expanse of bilingual towns and farmland that form the southernmost point of the U.S.-Mexico border. The wall could seal some Americans on the “Mexican side” – technically on U.S. soil, but outside of a barrier built north of the river separating the two countries. Landowners could lose property, and those that already lost some for the existing fence are already preparing for a new battle.
Even if they don’t win, lawyers hope to tie up the wall in court long enough that politics could effectively stop it, either in Congress or after another election.
“That’s a fight that we’ve been ready to fight,” said Efren Olivares, a lawyer with the Texas Civil Rights Project.
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