STARR COUNTY, Texas (Border Report) — The sun is high and the temperatures are in the triple digits as construction crews worked to complete a new segment of border wall this week in this rural county north of Roma, Texas.
This 30-foot-tall section is painted black and can be seen from miles away atop the historic Roma cliffs that also overlook the Mexican town of Miguel Alemán.
This section of border wall was started during the Biden administration in October 2023 when the Department of Homeland Security announced it was waiving 26 environmental regulatory laws in order to build 20 miles of border wall in Starr County. It was the first time the Biden administration had waived environmental laws to expedite border barrier construction.
At the time, former President Joe Biden said they were compelled to start construction because Congress had appropriated funds from Fiscal Year 2019 — during the first Trump administration — for a new border barrier here.
Now that President Donald Trump is back in office, construction appears nearly complete on a large segment that is expected to bisect a rusted section of border wall built in 2019 in the small border town of Fronton, Texas.
Border Report took winding unmarked dirt roads, and at times trails, to locate the end of this remote section on Thursday where several construction crews were hard at work in the grueling South Texas sun.
We also visited a neighborhood in Rio Grande City where the Trump administration wants to build more border wall.
On Wednesday, 87 notices for land condemnation were listed in The Monitor newspaper. In a letter printed in the newspaper with the notices, U.S. Attorney Nicholas Ganjei wrote the land is “for the public use in connection with the Secure Border Initiative.”
Many of the parcels are near a school and a border neighborhood where new houses are being built.
Environmentalist Scott Nicol of the nonprofit Friends of the Wildlife Corridor, tells Border Report that he is worried that the neighborhood will flood if a border wall is built there because it is in the Rio Grande Valley Flood Plain.
“Because of the design of the border wall there, it was designed with an opening upriver that is 275 feet wide. When a flood hits, a portion of the water will be channeled into the neighborhood,” Nicol said.
He says the area flooded with Hurricane Alex in 2010.
In a 2012 he wrote article for The Texas Observer opposing border wall construction here.
But as the new segment of border wall nears completion north of Roma, and the Trump administration aggressively tries to take land for new border barrier, he says he worries that soon construction will begin in Rio Grande City on this segment.
In order to build border wall in Starr County, waivers have been issued for the following environmental laws:
- National Environmental Policy Act
- Endangered Species Act
- Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act
- American Indian Religious Freedom Act
- Federal Water Pollution Control Act
- National Historic Preservation Act
- Migratory Bird Treaty Act
- Migratory Bird Conservation Act
- Clean Air Act
- National Wildlife Refuge System Administration Act
- Eagle Protection Act
- National Fish and Wildlife Act of 1956
- Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act
- Archeological Resources Protection Act
- Paleontological Resources Preservation Act
- Safe Drinking Water Act
- Archaeological and Historic Preservation Act
- Noise Control Act
- Solid Waste Disposal Act, as amended by the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act
- Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act
- Antiquities Act
- Historic Sites, Buildings, and Antiquities Act
- Farmland Protection Policy Act
- National Trails System Act
- Administrative Procedure Act
- Federal Land Policy and Management Act
Sandra Sanchez can be reached at SSanchez@BorderReport.com.
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