Category Archives: border

3 Bits Info. Eminent Domain Activism in Texas- legal activism edition.

The legal activists:  Texas Civil Rights Project

The Texas Civil Rights Project goal is to:

  • Educate Texas landowners by producing videos, in English and Spanish, that spell out landowners’ Constitutional rights
  • Holding “know your rights” training sessions for property owners with lawyers & legal volunteers

The target land owner: Border land owners

Corpus Christi Caller Times | Texas Civil Rights Project teaches landowners faults of ‘wrongheaded’ border wall policy

Eminent Domain Issue Du Jour: The Border Wall. 3 Property Rights Trends Emerging.

  • New kid on the block defending property rights on the border: Texas Civil Rights Project
  • The border wall would trigger a federal use of eminent domain, and not Texas’ use of eminent domain
    • An alleged leaked memo says an actual fence will be built on roughly 36 miles of land in the Rio Grande Valley
  • In 2006 when a wall was last attempted, 100s of lawsuits were filed 

 

Valley Central | Border wall plans spur effort to help Texas landowners with eminent domain

Eminent Domain and the Texas Border Wall. 3 Key Points.

  • The President’s budget proposal includes $4.1 billion for land acquisition & 20 new DOJ attorneys
  • DHS offered $1200 for 1.2  acres from a land owner
  • The notice land woners received was entitled “Declaration of Taking.”

Houston Chronicle | Report: Texans on Mexico border receive letters threatening eminent domain for Trump’s wall

Texas Observer | Texans Receive First Notices of Land Condemnation for Trump’s Border Wall

Dallas Morning News | White House defends use of eminent domain for…

Eminent Domain and the Border Wall. 3 Things to Learn from the Existing Border Fence.

  • Eminent Domain was used to erect current border divisions.
  • Nearly all the land on the Texas border is privately owned
  • Its not going to be a fast process, the last litigation process was long and costly for the government. 

Houston Chronicle | Border residents wonder what it will be like to live in shadow of President-elect Trump’s wall

Private Property Rights. 4 Ways TX Drone Law Unconstitutional?

Who is arguing that Texas drone law is unconstitutional? A former federal judge

Is the Texas drone law being challenged in court as unconstitutional? Yes.

What are the issues taken with the Texas Drone Law?

  • Violates Privacy of Texans on the Border by not applying privacy to 25 miles from the border
  • Treats Texans on the Border different from other Texans violating Equal Protection
  • No legitimate Texas law enforcement purpose for treating the border differently for privacy…

12+ Texas Land Owners Lawsuits. Pecos Pipeline. 1st Pipeline of its Kind. What the Attorney Says.

What the land owner attorney says about the eminent domain lawsuits for the pipeline to Mexico :  

  • No one has ever used eminent domain to build a pipeline that only delivers oil and gas to Mexico.
  • The Railroad Commission does no investigation on whether the pipeline is a common carrier.

News West 9 | Pipeline company files eminent domain lawsuits against Big Bend landowners

 

 

 

INTERIM. Trend: Border Wall Meets Eminent Domain. Meet the King of Spain. Meet the Texans.

Land along the border is largely privately held. To build a wall, private land has to be aquired by the government. Here’s one view:

Land transfered by the King of Spain was aquired to build the current partial border wall? Yes, land that had been held by the same family since the initital land grant from the King of Spain in 1767.

Surely the feds own some of the border lands? Yes, about 33% of the land is either federal or tribal lands

Where is most of the 67% of private land? TEXAS

…

Private Property Rights: State vs. the Feds. 3 Things to Know about the Northern Border Property Rights Fight.

  • Land shifted along the Red River, as river banks do. This caused the state border to shift. The federal Bureau of Land Management stepped in to save the day and took control of 113 acres along the border.
  • 7 Texas landowners sued. GLO joined the suit to help the Texans.
    • Local county officials have also joined the lawsuit to help the Texas landowners.
  • The landowners ahve the blessing of conservatives like TPPF.

CBSDFW | Bush’s Texas Agency Joins Lawsuit Alleging Federal…

Eminent Domain and the Border Wall

Connecting the dots, HotAir explains that to build a border wall, requires that land be acquired.  Acquiring land by a governmental entity,  lends itself to eminent domain when landowners aren’t willing to give up their land.

Eminent Domain for a border wall is being called:

  • more symbolic than substantive
  • serious limits on what a fence can do
  •  sharply declining returns on those fencing investments
  • costly
  • inefective

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