Trump set to seize people’s homes on Mexico border to build wall

This March 2, 2019, file photo, shows a Customs and Border Control agent patrolling on the U.S. side of a razor-wire-covered border wall along the Mexico east of Nogales, Ariz. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File)

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration gave Nayda Alvarez five days to decide whether to let a U.S.-Mexico border wall run through her back yard.

If she refuses, she says, her house along the Rio Grande in Texas will be expropriated, just like that.

Trump’s obsession with keeping undocumented foreigners from entering the United States and expelling the ones already in it helped get him elected to a second term in 2024.

That crackdown -- including plans to seal the border with Mexico more tightly -- is an essential part of the aggressively inward-looking, Americans-first policy that Trump will discuss in his State of the Union speech to Congress on Tuesday night.

Trump is now targeting the border in and around Laredo, Texas, a mostly Hispanic town of 250,000 located along the Rio Grande, which forms the natural border between the United States and Mexico.

All along the river in Laredo are homes, parks, bike and jogging paths, fishing spots and even a cemetery. There is no wall.

But this month at least 60 area homeowners received a letter from the federal government that read, “Notice of Interest - Property Located Near Planned Border Barrier Construction Projects.”

Edgar Villasenor, an activist at the Rio Grande International Study Center, said “the issue in Laredo, Texas, and all of south Texas, and all of the riverfront properties along the Rio Grande, is that they’re basically doing a massive land grab.”

The Trump administration plans to build a so-called “smart wall” along parts of the 3,000-km (1,900-mile) border with Mexico that remain unfenced.

Trump did some wall-building during his first term. Between that and walls that predate him, a third of the border already had some kind of barrier when Trump started his second stint in January 2025, the government says.

The new plan calls for physical walls or, depending on the area, water barriers, patrol roads and technology designed to catch people trying to sneak in from Mexico.

AFP asked US Customs and Border Protection about the letters homeowners are receiving but got no answer.

Consider your options

“The wall would be in the backyard,” said Alvarez, a 54-year-old teacher who lives in La Rosita, a tiny town 87 miles (140 km) southeast of Laredo.

She said the letter she received this month outlined her options: she could let the government build in her backyard for US$1,000, or negotiate a deal to sell the house or rights to the backyard to the government.

If she does neither, the letter said, the government would assert eminent domain -- the right to take private property for public use, paying compensation for the seized assets.

“Either you comply, you negotiate, or they’re gonna take it away,” Alvarez said, adding that she has not yet decided what to do. Although the five-day deadline has passed -- the letter was dated Feb. 13 -- she has had no new word from the government.

Villasenor’s advocacy group helps people understand their options and defend themselves. He said some homeowners have gone along with the government out of fear, pressure or ignorance, but most have refuse to sign.

Security first

“In President Trump’s first year back in office, we have delivered the most secure border in American history,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in early February.

She said January was the ninth month in a row that border agents released zero undocumented people inside U.S. territory. This is what the agency does with people who are not sent right back into Mexico and instead are awaiting a court date to determine if they can stay.

The main park in the border town of Eagle Pass, 112 miles (180 km) northwest of Laredo, was militarized with troops in January 2024. They and a barrier of large orange buoys in the river are meant to deter illegal crossings. Access to the river is also blocked with barbed wire.

This ruined 65-year-old Jessie Fuentes’ business offering kayak trips on the river.

He said the administration cares only about security, not the environmental impact of what it is doing to keep people from crossing the river.

“Like you see, it’s all dead behind me,” he said as he stood at a ten-foot (three-metre) fence blocking access to the water.

Villasenor said claims by Trump and other conservatives that migrants who enter the United States illegally are criminals bent on causing harm to Americans are bogus.

“The need for the wall is very false, but they’re saying this. The people that are saying this is people in Washington, DC,” said Villasenor.

“The landowners, the people that live right there along the river, are not scared of anything,” he said.