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THE U.S.-MEXICO BORDER, THE WALL AND THE THOUSANDS OF ACRES BETWEEN THEM


Across the southern Rio Grande Valley, incomplete border wall segments isolate
residents, including Arturo Muñoz, and the Chimney Park neighborhood on the
strip of land between the barrier and the Rio Grande.





BETWEEN



THE BORDER



AND THE WALL



EXPANDING THE BORDER WALL IN SOUTH TEXAS WOULD LEAVE MORE U.S. LAND IN LIMBO


By Nick Miroff

, Kirsten Luce

, Laris Karklis

and Frank Hulley-Jones


Miroff, a reporter who covers the Department of Homeland Security, and Luce, a
photojournalist, drove more than 300 miles along the back roads of the lower Rio
Grande Valley to tell this story.

October 18, 2024 at 12:00 p.m.


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LA CASITA, Tex.

In the fields south of this farm town, unfinished segments of the U.S. border
wall jut from the ground with gaps between them as wide as a house.

The steel structures, painted jet black at the order of Donald Trump when he was
president, are the largest objects for miles around, looking more like an
abstract art project than instruments of U.S. national security.

Scrawled on one of the panels is the date they were installed: 1-13-21. One week
before President Joe Biden took office and brought construction to a halt.

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Trump is campaigning as the Republican nominee for president on a vow to finish
the project that fueled his first White House run in 2016 and has animated his
rallies ever since. Polls show there is more public support for the border wall
than ever. But a resumption of major construction would contribute to a peculiar
issue with the barrier in South Texas.

The U.S.-Mexico border is defined in Texas by the Rio Grande, but the government
does not install 30-foot-tall steel barriers in the middle of a river, let alone
on its looping, unstable banks. So the border wall in South Texas isn’t built on
the border.

At some locations, the wall has been placed as far as two miles away from the
Rio Grande, leaving thousands of acres in the liminal space between the border
and the barrier.

A map of the fences erected or planned in the Rio Grande Sector

Raymondville

STARR

CO.

HIDALG0

CO.

Falcon Int’l

Reservoir

TEXAS

Detail

U.S.

RAILROAD

La Casita

Rio Grande

City

Harlingen

Roma

Port

Isabel

La Lomita

Mission

CAMERON

CO.

Mier

La Feria

Miguel

Aleman

McAllen

Mercedes

Weslaco

La Joya

Camargo

Santa Ana

Nat’l Wildlife Refuge

LEGEND

Gustavo

Diaz Ordaz

Olmito

Planned

fence

Existing

fence

Nuevo

Progreso

Official

border

crossing

Brownsville

U.S.

Reynosa

RAILROAD

MEXICO

MEXICO

Rio Bravo

Rio Grande

Matamoros

U.S. territory between

the border and fence

10 MILES

U.S. territory between the border and fence

Existing fence

Planned fence

MEXICO

Falcon Int’l

Reservoir

NORTH

Mier

U.S.

Miguel

Aleman

Roma

Official border

crossing

TEXAS

Detail

Rio Grande

City

Camargo

La Casita

STARR

CO.

Gustavo

Diaz Ordaz

La Joya

MEXICO

U.S.

HIDALG0

CO.

La Lomita Mission

Reynosa

McAllen

RAILROAD

Santa Ana

Nat’l Wildlife Refuge

Rio

Bravo

Westlaco

Nuevo

Progreso

Mercedes

RAILROAD

La Feria

Harlingen

Official border

crossing

10 MILES

CAMERON

CO.

Olmito

Matamoros

Brownsville

U.S.

South Padre

Island

MEXICO

U.S. territory between the border and fence

Existing fence

Planned fence

MEXICO

Falcon Int’l

Reservoir

Mier

NORTH

U.S.

Miguel

Aleman

Roma

Official border

crossing

TEXAS

Detail

Rio Grande

City

Camargo

La Casita

STARR

CO.

Gustavo

Diaz Ordaz

La Joya

MEX.

HIDALG0

CO.

U.S.

La Lomita Mission

Reynosa

McAllen

Santa Ana

Nat’l Wildlife Refuge

Westlaco

Rio

Bravo

Nuevo

Progreso

Mercedes

La Feria

RAILROAD

RAILROAD

Harlingen

Official border

crossing

MEXICO

CAMERON

CO.

Olmito

Matamoros

Brownsville

U.S.

10 MILES

Gulf of Mexico

Falcon Int’l

Reservoir

STARR

CO.

HIDALG0

CO.

TEXAS

Detail

La Casita

¯

¯

¯

¯

¯

¯

¯

¯

Raymondville

¯

¯

¯

¯

¯

Mier

Roma

Rio Grande

City

U.S.

Miguel

Aleman

Camargo

RAILROAD

La Lomita

Mission

La Joya

McAllen

Gustavo

Diaz Ordaz

Harlingen

Weslaco

La Feria

Santa Ana

Nat’l Wildlife Refuge

Mercedes

CAMERON

CO.

LEGEND

Port

Isabel

Reynosa

Existing

fence

Planned

fence

Nuevo

Progreso

Olmito

Official

border

crossing

U.S.

Rio Bravo

RAILROAD

Brownsville

MEXICO

Rio Grande

MEXICO

10 MILES

U.S. territory between

the border and fence

Matamoros

Falcon Int’l

Reservoir

TEXAS

STARR

CO.

HIDALG0

CO.

La Casita

La Lomita Mission

Rio Grande

City

McAllen

U.S.

La Joya

Roma

Mier

Camargo

Miguel

Aleman

Gustavo

Diaz Ordaz

Reynosa

MEXICO

U.S. territory between the border and existing/planned fence

Existing fence

Planned fence

Official border crossing

Harlingen

HIDALG0

CO.

CAMERON

CO.

TEXAS

La Feria

Mercedes

U.S.

McAllen

Weslaco

Olmito

Santa Ana

 

Nat’l Wildlife Refuge

Brownsville

Nuevo

Progreso

TEXAS

Matamoros

Detail

MEXICO

Rio Bravo

10 MILES

Falcon Int’l

Reservoir

STARR

CO.

HIDALG0

CO.

La Casita

TEXAS

McAllen

Rio Grande

City

U.S.

La Lomita Mission

Roma

La Joya

Mier

Camargo

Miguel

Aleman

Gustavo

Diaz Ordaz

Reynosa

MEXICO

U.S. territory between the border and existing/planned fence

Existing fence

Planned fence

Harlingen

CAMERON

CO.

HIDALG0

CO.

TEXAS

La Feria

U.S.

McAllen

Weslaco

Olmito

Santa Ana

Nat’l Wildlife Refuge

Brownsville

MEXICO

Nuevo

Progreso

TEXAS

Matamoros

Detail

10 MILES

Rio Bravo

The land is mostly farms and fields, but there are homes, historic churches and
entire neighborhoods essentially cut off from the rest of the United States. A
Washington Post analysis of U.S. Customs and Border Protection planning
documents shows that the completion of the wall in the lower Rio Grande Valley
would leave more than 100 square miles of U.S. territory — an area five times
the size of Manhattan — on the wrong side of the divide.

The other side of the wall can be a lonely place. “We’re kind of abandoned
here,” said Cesar Ortiz, 75, whose backyard edges up against the barrier near
the historic Jackson ranch and cemetery, settled by a Union loyalist and his
African American wife who helped enslaved people escape to Mexico.


Parishioners attend a sunrise church service at La Lomita, a historic chapel
along the Rio Grande in Mission, Tex.

Each Friday, Father Roy Snipes leads a sunrise service at the chapel, where he
blesses attendees with water from the Rio Grande.

The historic Eli Jackson Cemetery in Hidalgo County, Tex.

Cesar Ortiz, 75, repairs used vehicles at his home south of the border wall in
Hidalgo County.

Here as elsewhere in Texas, the Border Patrol has installed gates allowing
agents and landowners to pass through the wall. But Ortiz says he still feels as
if he’s living in a place that isn’t quite part of the United States, left on
the same side of the barrier as the traffickers who sometimes cross the river
after dark.

“I would feel safer if the wall were closer to the border,” Ortiz said.

The Rio Grande Valley has been the busiest corridor for illegal crossings for
much of the past decade. Securing the border with a wall is a challenge when the
border is a meandering waterway.

Border Patrol officials say the steel barrier is a valuable tool even though
it’s not at the physical boundary: It may not stop smugglers and migrants, but
it slows them down and gives U.S. agents more time to respond. And it allows the
Border Patrol to introduce roads, sensors and surveillance cameras into areas
that have long been inaccessible.

“The border wall is not intended to be 100 percent foolproof,” said Alberto
Olivares, a 26-year Border Patrol veteran now running as a Republican candidate
for sheriff of Starr County, whose communities are among the most isolated of
the Rio Grande Valley. “But we should build it where it makes sense to build
it,” he said supporting CBP plans. “And we should have done it years ago.”


Signs direct traffic through the barrier along the levee in Progreso Lakes, Tex.
Gates were built into the border wall so some property owners and farmworkers
could access land in Texas between the barrier and the river.

Alberto Olivares is a former Border Patrol agent now running for sheriff of
Starr County as a Republican.

A Border Patrol agent collects a piece of metal rebar from an improvised ladder
used to scale the wall.

Two men who said they were from Mexico are apprehended by Border Patrol agents
after climbing over the fence in Hidalgo, Tex.

Biden pledged during his 2020 campaign for president that he would not build
“another foot” of border wall and froze construction on his first day in office.
Since then, his administration has added some barriers in South Texas as part of
levee repair work.

In March, a federal court in Texas sided with the state’s Republican leaders and
ordered the administration to resume border wall construction using funds that
were specifically allocated for that purpose before Biden became president. CBP
officials have outlined plans for about 19 miles of new border wall in the lower
Rio Grande Valley, but construction has yet to resume.

The amount is significantly less than the 86 miles that Trump would build to
completely wall off the lower Rio Grande Valley. Vice President Kamala Harris,
who became the Democratic presidential nominee after Biden ended his reelection
campaign July 21, has not specifically addressed the barrier plans, but her
campaign has endorsed a border funding bill that would facilitate some new
construction.

CBP ranks several areas in the lower Rio Grande Valley as top priorities for
more wall construction, including parts of Starr County, the last section in the
region with relatively few barriers. The county has long had a reputation for
drug smuggling and illegal crossings.

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Starr lacks the federally built river levees that gave construction crews an
obvious path for the wall in the counties farther downriver. To build in Starr,
the government will have to purchase or seize land from hundreds if not
thousands of property owners. Many property claims, some dating to 18th-century
Spanish land grants, have never been formalized.

As Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) began building limited segments of border barrier
in Starr, state officials were also slowed by tangled or missing land records.

Trump faced such a headache during his presidency that he ordered aides to “take
the land” and told them he would pardon anyone who broke the law. He placed his
son-in-law Jared Kushner in charge of wall construction and directed the Army
Corps of Engineers to paint the wall black.

Much of the border wall controversy in the lower Rio Grande Valley died down
after Trump lost the 2020 election. His possible return to the White House has
some landowners back on edge.


Sabal Palm Sanctuary, a nature preserve south of the border wall in Brownsville,
Tex. The Rio Grande Valley is among the most biodiverse places in the United
States.

The Rio Grande flows past the sanctuary, a site popular with birders.

Barbara Barnett runs El Rio Park, a fishing spot and picnic site in Chapeño, a
tiny community on the banks of the Rio Grande below the dam at Falcon Lake.

Barbara Barnett, 84, said she would have to leave the home where she’s lived for
30 years if the wall was built through her property along the border. She runs a
private wildlife refuge she calls El Rio Park, renting day-use sites to visitors
who come to fish and barbecue along the riverbanks.

“I fell in love with the beauty of the river,” said Barnett. “Why would I want
to live here if the wall is built?”

With temperatures topping 100 degrees on a recent afternoon, Barnett sat
outdoors on a shaded patio with a Dean Koontz novel and a dog pack: Popo,
Troubles, Chiquita and Killer, a Chihuahua. A pink inflatable pool helped her
stay cool.

Barnett said her husband, Larry, passed away in 2023. He never finished building
their resort. “He was a dreamer,” she said.

Over the years, Barnett said, she has seen drug traffickers passing through,
migrants drowning in the river and once a black bear rumbling up the banks.

“When you live along the border, you see everything,” she said. “I don’t care
how big a fence they build, or how many miles long it is — if people want to get
across, they’ll get across.”


ONE PROJECT, TWO BORDER WALLS



An unfinished span of the border wall, separated by gaps and constructed during
the Trump administration, in San Pedro, Tex.

Trump added 458 miles of new barriers at a cost of more than $11 billion, but
construction was so uneven that he ended up building two border walls, not one.

In New Mexico, Arizona and California, the government laid down hundreds of
miles of new wall in neat straight lines through the desert, mostly on public
land. A federal easement along the border dating to the Theodore Roosevelt
administration facilitated the work.

That was the low-hanging fruit of border wall construction.

A map of U.S. / Mexico border depicting border wall and U.S. public lands

Public land along the border

Public and protected areas

Fence/wall

ARIZ.

N.M.

TEXAS

CALIF.

Gulf of

Mexico

El Paso

Eagle Pass

Tucson

Ciudad

Juarez

Rio

Los Angeles

Piedras

Negras

Laredo

Grande

Brownsville

San Diego

Nogales

Tijuana

Reynosa

Pacific

Ocean

MEXICO

200 MILES

Sources: U.S. Border Patrol and USGS

Public land along the border

Public and protected areas

Fence/wall

CALIF.

NORTH

Los Angeles

Tijuana

NEV.

San Diego

U.S.

MEXICO

ARIZ.

Tucson

Nogales

N.M.

Ciudad

Juarez

El Paso

U.S.

MEXICO

TEXAS

Piedras

Negras

Eagle Pass

200 MILES

Laredo

Reynosa

Sources: U.S. Border Patrol and USGS

Brownsville

Gulf of Mexico

Public land along the border

Public and protected areas

Wall

NORTH

CALIF.

Los Angeles

Tijuana

NEV.

San Diego

U.S.

MEXICO

ARIZ.

Tucson

Nogales

N.M.

Ciudad

Juarez

El Paso

U.S.

MEXICO

TEXAS

Piedras

Negras

Eagle Pass

Laredo

Sources: U.S. Border Patrol and USGS

Reynosa

Brownsville

Gulf of Mexico

Public land along the border

Public and protected areas

Fence/wall

NEW

MEXICO

TEXAS

ARIZONA

CALIFORNIA

Gulf of

Mexico

El Paso

Eagle Pass

Tucson

Ciudad

Juarez

U.S.

Rio

Los Angeles

Piedras

Negras

Laredo

Grande

Brownsville

San Diego

Nogales

Tijuana

Reynosa

MEXICO

200 MILES

Pacific

Ocean

Sources: U.S. Border Patrol and USGS

The project in Texas was different. The Rio Grande forms roughly two-thirds of
the 1,954-mile U.S.-Mexico border. The land along the river has long been
valuable — unlike most of the borderland farther west — because it has water
access. Many parcels in Texas consist of narrow slivers of land running
perpendicular to the river, allowing owners to draw water for cattle or crops.

To create a wall along the border, the government has to chart a path across
every strip of land.

“These walls would cut off almost the entire Rio Grande Valley from the Rio
Grande,” said Scott Nicol, an art instructor in McAllen who has led opposition
to the project for the Sierra Club and other organizations. “Landowners will see
their property condemned, and residents will be cut off from the river that, in
all cases, was the reason for the founding of their towns.”

The barriers inflict “tremendous damage upon communities, landowners and the
environment,” Nicol said, urging the government to remove them.


Farms are bisected by the barrier. Landowners have gates allowing their workers,
some of whom are undocumented, to pass through to pick crops.

Workers try to access water from the irrigation canal at a farm in Donna, Tex.

A turtle basks in the sun near the Retamal dam along the river in Hidalgo
County.

Environmental activist and art professor Scott Nicol at the Santa Ana Wildlife
Refuge in Alamo, Tex. The border wall threatened to bisect the refuge, and the
area remains one of the few places in Hidalgo County where there is no barrier
along the river levee.

Other critics note that the barriers in Texas have done little to deter illegal
entries. Migrants who cross the river can easily reach U.S. soil, where they are
eligible to request asylum under U.S. immigration law. Border Patrol agents take
migrants into custody after they cross, then drive them through gates in the
wall.

In recent months, the border has been quieter than at any point in years.
Illegal crossings in the Rio Grande Valley have plunged more than 90 percent
since reaching a peak of more than 81,000 per month in the summer of 2021, the
latest CBP statistics show.

U.S. authorities attribute the change to new legal and bureaucratic barriers
rather than physical ones. Mexico has carried out a crackdown on migrants
transiting its territory, and Biden issued emergency measures this year that
effectively deny those who cross illegally access to the U.S. asylum system.


SHIFTING POLITICS



A pile of leftover steel bollards alongside a portion of the border wall near
Falcon Dam.

The Rio Grande Valley is not a valley per se, but a flat, wide delta leading to
the Gulf of Mexico. Construction in its floodplain is regulated by decades of
U.S.-Mexico treaties and water-sharing agreements. The area is vulnerable to
hurricanes because it is so close to the gulf.

Engineers say the risk of building a wall closer to the Rio Grande — and
therefore closer to the border — is that debris could pile up against the
structure and obstruct the flow of water during a major flood. The accumulating
force could cause the barrier to collapse and float away, sending tons of steel
and concrete hurtling downriver.

Keen to avoid this and bound by international treaties, the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers builds on higher ground, not at the water’s edge. The Rio Grande
curves and doubles back on itself, and because the barrier requires a straighter
path, it is built at a distance from the riverbanks.


The pool at River Bend Resort and Golf Club, with the Rio Grande behind it.

The resort is located on the banks of the Rio Grande, and barrier construction
along the river levee would split the property.

This barrier was constructed with private donations and promoted by We Build the
Wall. Three of the group's founders were later convicted of fraud.

Mark Barnard, owner of the River Bend Resort and Golf Club outside Brownsville,
Tex., said his brother used to perform a trick: driving a ball from his green
that would sail over Mexico and land back in the United States.

The levee running through Barnard’s property parallel to the river is one of the
few places in the area that does not have a border wall. Closing the 1.5-mile
gap would sever the resort, leaving dozens of homes on the other side of the
barrier. Property values would crash.

But Barnard says he sees smugglers sometimes run drugs across the river through
the golf course, dashing to a pickup spot along the highway nearby.

“I don’t want the wall, but I can’t be selfish,” Barnard said. “I know about the
drug-trafficking problems affecting the rest of the country.” He said he’d
prefer for the wall to be built along the banks at the edge of his fairways.

Barnard’s evolving views mirror a broader shift in the Rio Grande Valley.

Story continues below advertisement
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Its majority-Hispanic counties had long been a reliable stronghold for the
Democratic Party, but support for Republican candidates surged as illegal border
crossings soared. In 2016, Trump won 19 percent of the vote in Starr County,
which is 96 percent Hispanic. In 2020, he received 47 percent.

Richard Sanchez, 69, a writer and retired nurse in McAllen who enjoys fishing
along the river, said the wall remains “a conundrum” for border communities
despite its environmental toll.

“At the beginning, everybody was against it, but as time has gone by, and more
and more immigrants have been coming, there is more talk about how it can help,”
Sanchez said. “People are saying we need it and we want it.”


FROM FARMS TO BUFFER ZONE



U.S. farmland south of the border wall in Progreso Lakes, Tex.

Some of the Americans who have been left in the space between the border and the
wall are poor or elderly residents. Economic marginalization has become
physical, too.

Arturo Muñoz, a 77-year-old Vietnam veteran, lives alone with his dog Bear in a
house south of the wall a half-mile from the Rio Grande. He has no neighbors.

Resting in the shade of his patio beside a whirring swamp cooler on a sweltering
day, Muñoz said he has refused offers from the government to buy his land. The
former refinery worker doesn’t want to leave the home he bought for retirement,
and where he has lived for 20 years.

He comes and goes through a gate the government installed for him last year. The
Border Patrol always leaves it open, he said, so it hasn’t caused him any
problems.

“But if they decide to close it and don’t give me a code,” said Muñoz, “I’ll
have to go raise hell.”


Arturo Muñoz, who lives south of the wall in Donna, accesses his driveway
through a gate in the wall. He said it has never been closed.

The Chimney Park RV Park, popular with “winter Texans,” on the banks of the Rio
Grande near Mission, Tex.

Crews remove a tree for a street-widening project in a residential area south of
the wall in Hidalgo County.

An open gate along the border wall in Brownsville. Many of the gates remain open
to allow local landowners, workers and law enforcement access to the thousands
of acres of land between the barrier and the Rio Grande.

The push for barrier construction in South Texas has been part of a broader
land-use change. Farms are disappearing or going fallow, transforming fertile
land along the river into a depopulated buffer zone for federal law enforcement.

Decades of drought have battered towns that once thrived on cotton, citrus and
sugarcane. The reservoir at Falcon Lake, at the west end of Starr County, was at
a 20-year low this spring, at about 13 percent capacity.

The decline in agriculture has left more land preserved for wildlife
conservation amid efforts to bring back the endangered ocelot and other species.
Barrier construction threatens that habitat, and leaves larger animals unable to
reach higher ground in the event of a flood.

Where crops are still planted, some farmers must bring their workers — including
those who are undocumented — back through the wall to reach fields cut off by
the barrier. With fewer farms and fewer people around, the land outside the wall
feels more and more abandoned.

“So many people aren’t farming anymore,” said Lance Neuhaus, a third-generation
grower.

In 2019, Neuhaus allowed a private contractor and a group called We Build the
Wall to install a three-mile-long border barrier on riverfront land where his
family used to grow sugarcane. The group, led by former Trump adviser Stephen K.
Bannon, raised more than $25 million to build border barriers with private
funds.

We Build the Wall and North Dakota contractor Tommy Fisher promoted what they
described as a design superior to the one used by CBP and the Army Corps of
Engineers. They put it right along the banks of the Rio Grande.

The Trump administration completed its own barrier through the area not long
after — on the river levee’s higher ground — making the private wall redundant.
Traffickers no longer pass through the area, Neuhaus said. “The wall has worked
well,” he said.

From the river, the privately built wall appears to have some sections that are
out of alignment. Fisher, who now owns the barrier and paid about $1 million for
the land, said unstable soil along the river has led to some “minor settlement”
issues. The wall is “all good, still standing,” he said.

After the private barrier was completed, Bannon and three co-founders from We
Build the Wall were charged with pocketing donations.

Two of the co-founders pleaded guilty and another was found guilty at trial.
Those three received prison sentences in 2023.

Bannon was pardoned by Trump before he left office in 2021, but was indicted in
New York state court for his alleged role in the scheme, a case that prosecutors
could bring because presidential pardons apply only to federal allegations.
Separately, he has been serving a four-month prison sentence for refusing to
comply with a subpoena issued during the congressional probe into the Jan. 6,
2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Fisher went on to receive $2 billion in federal contracts from Trump to build
the border wall in Arizona.

ABOUT THIS STORY

Writing by Nick Miroff. Photography and video by Kirsten Luce. Maps by Laris
Karklis. Design and development by Frank Hulley-Jones.

Editing by Efraín Hernández Jr. Photo editing by Natalia Jiménez. Graphics
editing by Tim Meko. Video editing by Erin O’Connor, Whitney Leaming and Jessica
Koscielniak. Design editing by Madison Walls. Copy editing by Anne Kenderdine
and Martha Murdock.


IMMIGRATION

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307 Comments
Nick MiroffNick Miroff covers the Department of Homeland Security for The
Washington Post, with a focus on immigration enforcement and the southern
border. He was a Post foreign correspondent in Latin America from 2010 to 2017,
and has been a staff writer since 2006.@NickMiroff
Laris KarklisLaris Karklis is a senior graphics reporter specializing in
cartography. He has been working at the Post since 2000.@karklisCarto
Frank Hulley-JonesFrank Hulley-Jones is a designer and developer for The
Washington Post. He produces interactive pieces to help audiences engage with
complex and important news stories.@tobefrankj


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