In an interview last August, Joe Biden made a pledge: “There will not be another foot of wall constructed in my administration.” It was the first time the then-presidential candidate made such a clear promise. On January 20, hours after assuming office, he took executive action to pause wall construction for two months, idling excavators and bulldozers along the U.S.-Mexico border. But Biden’s order did not cancel outstanding construction contracts, withdraw eminent domain lawsuits, or revoke the waivers of environmental and historic preservation laws that allowed the project to proceed without normal safeguards—leaving South Texans still fearing a border wall could soon rip through their backyards.
“I can’t breathe yet,” says Nayda Alvarez, a teacher in rural Starr County whose house sits less than 100 yards from the Rio Grande. Over a year ago, the government began the process of taking part of her land for the wall, but she still retains ownership. Now she just has to wait, unsure whether she can safely invest in planting new trees on her property, or repairing her roof. “I’m tired of not being able to plan for tomorrow because I don’t know what the hell’s going to happen.”
Since 2017, the federal government constructed some 450 miles of border wall—the vast majority in the form of replacing low-slung vehicle barriers in the Southwest with taller fencing on land the feds already owned. In South Texas though, where nearly all the land abutting the Rio Grande lies in private hands and often must be expropriated through lengthy legal proceedings, Trump proceeded at a glacial pace, with construction often falling months behind schedule. In the Rio Grande Valley, at Texas’ southern tip, Trump finished about 20 out of more than 100 miles in the works. Of that mileage, almost all is in Cameron and Hidalgo Counties, with rural and flood-prone Starr County still largely untouched. Further upriver, in Zapata County and Webb County, home to Laredo, Trump hasn’t broken ground on the more than 120 miles planned for the area.
