Trump’s border wall is an expensive, ineffective application of eminent domain

  The Trump administration has made building a wall along the southwest border a cornerstone of its overall agenda. The proposed wall has generated intense debate, and Congress—even while under unified Republican control—has repeatedly refused to appropriate the amount of money demanded by President Donald Trump to fund the project. At the end of 2018, the standoff resulted in the longest government shutdown in American history.

  As President Trump continues to blatantly misappropriate government funds—including $3.6 billion in money allocated for military construction—to build the wall, he has ignored an equally important element: land. Building the wall will require the seizure of thousands of acres of privately owned land along the border. Existing laws, namely the Fifth Amendment and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) of 1996, allow the government to seize land for public use—specifically, the IIRIRA allows the government to construct border fencing. However, while Trump has referred to eminent domain as “a wonderful thing,” past experiences with the 2006 Secure Fence Act prove that massive government land takings generally are neither well-received nor easy.

What should and should not be in any Homeland Security funding deal

  It is almost hard to believe that the very same funding deal that President Donald Trump rejected in December when he drove the country into a partial government shutdown—and that Trump and all but six Senate Republicans rejected again last week—is the one that Congress finally adopted unanimously and that President Trump ultimately signed the very next day. The pain the shutdown caused to approximately two million federal government workers and contractors, as well as to their families and communities, was literally all for nothing. With this deal, Trump temporarily caved on his commitment to shut down the government for “months or even years” if he failed to secure $5.7 billion for wall funding. However, securing that funding remains his top focus heading into a bipartisan, bicameral conference committee that aims to produce full-year government funding legislation for both House and Senate consideration.

We already have a border wall. It’s an environmental disaster.

  As of Friday, the U.S. government has been partially shut down for 14 days due to the Trump administration’s demand that a new funding package include money for a border wall with Mexico. The new House Democratic majority intends to vote on a bill to re-open the government that doesn’t include such funding soon after it’s sworn in. The administration and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) have called the bill a non-starter.

  But ask anyone living along the U.S.-Mexico line, and they’ll tell you: We already have fences and walls, drones and helicopters, surveillance towers, checkpoints, and border patrol agents speeding their ATVs across the fragile biotic crust of the desert.

Why isn't Trump making Mexico pay for his wall?

  Correct me if I’m wrong, but my recollection is that in his campaign for the presidency, President Trump said that he was going to make Mexico pay for his 1900-mile wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. All I see today is Trump and his supporters getting angry over the fact that Congress is, so far, refusing to pay for Trump’s Wall.

  I don’t get it. Forcing Mexico to pay for Trump’s Wall is quite a bit different from forcing American taxpayers to pay for it. Why did Trump go from his initial position to his new position?

Jacob G. Hornberger: Immigration militarism

  Immigration statists are celebrating! Their icon, President Trump, has granted them their long-held wish. He has announced that he intends to militarize the U.S.-Mexico border by dispatching U.S. troops to that part of the country. You know — to defend our borders and our national sovereignty and, of course, to protect us from all those illegal immigrants who are “invading” our country (and stealing our jobs).

  Trump and his acolytes have been terribly frustrated over his inability to get his infamous wall built along the border. Not only has Trump failed to persuade or force Mexico to pay for it, he’s also been unable to get Congress to do so.

Questions the Trump administration needs to answer about the border wall

  In the U.S.-Mexico border region, an area that stretches nearly 2,000 miles, decisions about border security affect the daily lives of roughly 12 million people. The United States already has 653 miles of border fencing, and much of the rest of the border is comprised of the Rio Grande or located in some of the country’s most inhospitable locations, where a wall would be impractical and unnecessary. In addition to fencing, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, uses an array of surveillance and technology to monitor the border in real time.

  Yet both as a candidate and as president, Donald Trump has repeatedly called for the construction of a “big, fat, beautiful wall” along the entire U.S.-Mexico border. The administration recently concluded a request for proposals from firms to construct the wall, and it has already started to send out notices to landowners along the border notifying them that the federal government will likely be seizing their private property.

Jacob G. Hornberger: The wall of a dictator

  On Wednesday President Donald Trump ordered the construction of his much-ballyhooed wall along the U.S-Mexico border to begin. Obviously Trump doesn’t see any need to go to Congress to seek approval for his gigantic, socialist, public-works, multibillion-dollar edifice. He’s the president. He can issue “executive orders.” He can do whatever he wants. Who needs congressional approval? Anyway, Congress might turn him down. Or they might delay construction by deliberating and debating the issue. Who needs all that when one can simply issue an executive order to get the wall built?

  This is how dictators have always operated — simply by decree. They don’t need legislatures and, therefore, they either ignore them or they abolish them. And they expect the judiciaries to fall into line and support whatever they do.