美国国家公共电台 NPR Acquiring Private Land Is Slowing Trump's Border Wall（在线收听）

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

President Trump gets another $1.4 billion toward building his wall from the spending bill that passed the Senate yesterday. He wants to build 450 miles of wall by Election Day. But in south Texas, that looks less and less likely. Construction is already falling behind schedule because of the difficulty of taking private land. NPR's John Burnett has been looking into this.

CHAD WOLF: Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us here today.

JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: On a windswept day last month, acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf, the Trump administration's point person on immigration, is at a construction site in Texas's Rio Grande Valley.

WOLF: RGV is ground zero for the security and the humanitarian crisis at the border.

BURNETT: Steel panels atop a concrete levee wall 30 feet tall are rising from the sugar cane fields and bird sanctuaries of the Rio Grande Valley, which is really a river delta. This is the first section of new barriers built under President Trump. And Wolf says there's more to come.

WOLF: And on track to build 450 to 500 miles of new wall by the end of 2020.

BURNETT: That swaggering Washington confidence is not shared down here on the border, where few believe government can complete 450 miles in the next 12 months. The problem is the feds don't yet own most of the land they need to build the wall. In fact, the secretary's photo op was staged on a half mile of land recently acquired by the USA. But much of the property needed to complete that stretch of wall is still in private hands, according to county land records. Carmen Qualia is an assistant chief with the Border Patrol who's in charge of the RGV wall team.

CARMEN QUALIA: It's a big project. We're going to continue to do what we can to make it happen.

BURNETT: Throughout the Rio Grande Valley, construction starts have fallen behind schedule. One contract reviewed by NPR says construction isn't expected to begin on most wall sections until March of 2021, well after the election. Disorderly property records, complications with landowners and a cumbersome condemnation process have slowed progress to a snail's pace. That's despite an army of federal land specialists trying to rush the process to please the president. Consider this. The government plans to erect 110 miles of the total 450 miles of barriers here in the Rio Grande Valley. But as of last week, they still needed to acquire about 90 miles of land from private property owners. Asked about Trump's deadline of Election Day 2020, Qualia acknowledges it's slow going.

QUALIA: He said, hey, here's my deadline. Here's what I need you to do. So we're going to continue to work towards meeting that deadline. And we're either gonna make it or not.

BURNETT: But she says agents want the tall wall, along with floodlights, sensors, cameras and a wide patrol road in order to combat drug and human trafficking.

QUALIA: We've been asking for this technology. We've been asking for all this - the roads. And if it takes longer, it takes longer.

BURNETT: It will take longer in Texas. Unlike states to the west, where the border is mostly federal property, the Texas border is mainly in private hands. Some of the records go back to land grants made by the king of Spain. Under eminent domain, the government can take private property for public use, but they have to pay for it. And that process is legalistic and laborious. Roy Brandys is an eminent domain lawyer in Austin with long experience representing border clients. He thinks erecting the border wall in the RGV by next December is a pipe dream.

ROY BRANDYS: That'd be very aggressive schedule, very difficult to get accomplished just because of all the different issues that properties have.

BURNETT: Each step of the process is proving problematic. First, the government has to identify and make contact with each property owner in Starr County at the western end to the RGV. The government is planning 52 miles of border wall. So far, the contractor has only broken ground in one parcel owned by U.S. Fish and Wildlife. Ultimately, they'll need to acquire acreage on hundreds of individual parcels. But here's the hitch.

ROSALVA GUERRA: It's very difficult to know who the rightful owners are. That's the biggest challenge, I think.

BURNETT: Rosalva Guerra is the chief appraiser of Starr County, where property records are notoriously incomplete. She invites me into her tidy office and pulls up a map on her computer screen that shows all the properties in the county.

GUERRA: OK, let me see - www.starrcad.org.

BURNETT: The map is awash with red. That's the color they used to denote parcels where they're unsure of the owner. In Starr County, property has been handed down through many generations. It gets divided and subdivided between heirs. But Guerra says they rarely establish clear title.

GUERRA: Can you imagine the long list of heirs to partition that?

BURNETT: So it's a nightmare trying to get title to this.

GUERRA: It's a nightmare. Yeah, it's just going to take a long time to be able to do that. I don't think it's going to happen by 2020.

BURNETT: Identifying the owners is only the first step. Then the government must request access to survey the land. So far, the Justice Department has had to sue nearly 50 property owners in the RGV just to get that access. One of those defendants was Delfino Garza, an architect in Starr County. He didn't want the government surveyors coming on his property outside of Rio Grande City, where he's got a vineyard.

DELFINO GARZA: This is our wine room. And this is where we age it, and we ferment it.

BURNETT: As a sideline, he planted grapes a decade ago, clearing thick brush down by the Rio Grande for his vine rows.

GARZA: After about the third year, we started to make wine. And now in the last year or so, they came to us about putting a border wall on our property.

BURNETT: Today, Garza is fighting the border wall. He voted for Trump, but he says he won't do so a second time. He fears the wall will kill his infant winemaking business.

GARZA: There's a lot of work and money that went into this property. And a border wall on a vineyard is not what we were building this place to be. People don't go to wineries to go see a border wall. And we want this to be an attraction for this city. This is just hurting us.

BURNETT: Carmen Qualia, the Border Patrol official in charge of the RGV wall team, says government land people are trying not to be heavy handed. They're spending time talking to landowners like Delfino Garza about the placement of the barrier in his vineyard.

QUALIA: I think it's important to note that we all live here, too. Our kids go to school. We go to church. We really take that into consideration when we're sitting down and meeting with these owners.

BURNETT: And inevitably, those discussions with landowners will delay the project further.

QUALIA: Things that are complicated typically do take time.

BURNETT: Meanwhile, Trump is impatient. He has appointed his son-in-law Jared Kushner to oversee and speed up completion of the border wall. The president wants frequent updates. He reportedly told aides earlier this year, just take the land. In the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, it's not that easy. John Burnett, NPR News, Brownsville.

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