US

Landowners Criticize Texas Senators For Not Stepping In As Biden Seized Their Land

(Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

Daily Caller News Foundation logo
Kaylee Greenlee Immigration and Extremism Reporter
Font Size:
  • The Biden administration promised to end border wall construction, then seized over six acres of a southern Texas family’s land through eminent domain. 
  • The Cavazos family told the Daily Caller News Foundation they counted on President Joe Biden when he promised not one more foot of wall, since they had fought eminent domain claims to hold onto their land for years. 
  • The family criticized Texas lawmakers for not coming to their defense as they did for northern Texans when the Bureau of Land Management attempted to seize their land. 

Texas landowners criticized lawmakers for not standing up for them when the Biden administration continued to seize over six acres of their land for border wall construction, a member of the Cavazos family told the Daily Caller News Foundation Thursday.

Neither Texas Sen. Ted Cruz nor Sen. John Cornyn has spoken out about the Biden administration continuing to seize private land for border wall construction on the southern border of Texas, the Cavazos family told the DCNF. A  U.S. District Court ruled Tuesday that the federal government could use eminent domain to seize six acres of land in Hidalgo county from the Cavazos family, the Washington Post reported.

“This is one of the reasons we are fighting this so hard because we are tired of losing land, we are tired of people, you know, trampling on our rights. We are just tired of it,” Reynaldo “Rey” Anzaldua Cavazos told the DCNF.

“And what does Ted Cuz and John Cornyn do? They say ‘well you see you can’t be taking property from Texans through eminent domain, that’s not American,’ well what about us here, are we not U.S. citizens?” Anzaldua Cavazos said.

The government has seized hundreds of acres of land from the family in the last 60 years with little compensation, Anzaldua Cavazos told the DCNF. The government offered $347,887 for the 6.5 acres of land on September 4, 2020, according to the court order.

Cruz argued for $5.7 billion in funding for the border wall in January 2019 and Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet criticized him for allowing the federal government to take constituents’ land, Texas Monthly reported.

Several Texas lawmakers rallied behind landowners when the Bureau of Land Management attempted to claim small strips of land at the bottom of the Red River serving as the border between Texas and Oklahoma in 2019, Texas Monthly reported. Gov. Greg Abbott told the agency to “come and take it” and the claim was dropped when former President Donald Trump took office.

However, lawmakers did not raise the same concerns when Trump’s proposed border wall would require the government to seize large amounts of private land to build a buffer zone, fences, access roads and other technology like lights and surveillance, Texas Monthly reported.

Cornyn said eminent domain is sometimes necessary to put up fencing on private property in south Texas, Fox News Radio reported. (RELATED: Border Agents Report Being Overworked, Understaffed And Exposed To COVID-19 During Migrant Surge)

Cornyn added that property owners in south Texas “want the protection that comes with [the border wall] because they’re being overrun by the drug dealers and the human traffickers as well as the coyotes who are moving people from Central America.”

“And they’ll say ‘well it is different because there is a problem with national security.’ That’s baloney, there is no problem here with national security,” Anzaldua Cavazos told the DCNF. “As far as the border wall, there is no need for border walls. What the government needs to do is address the real, root cause of the problem, which is drug addiction and the need for immigrant labor. Until they address those problems, this is never gonna stop.”

The Cavazos family tried to delay the seizure of the land for the last few years and believed President Joe Biden when he said in August that there “will not be another foot of wall constructed on my administration,” Anzaldua Cavazos told the DCNF. The Cavazos family isn’t sure whether the Biden administration plans to build a physical or “virtual” wall.

“Either way, it doesn’t make any difference. It’ll be an intrusion and it will be a problem for the landowner and the environment because they’ll have floodlights and all those sorts of things out there and the Rincon Village is the only property where there’s a wooded area that will support wildlife,” Anzaldua Cavazos told the DCNF.

Construction on the border wall stopped for one week after Biden was inaugurated and has not stopped since, Aurora Anzaldua Garcia, Rey’s sister, told the DCNF.

“I live right next to the border wall, there is a levy behind my house and I see the construction and the machinery going back and forth, the work trucks going back and forth, and they stopped for exactly one week,” Aurora told the DCNF.

Migrants cross through Aurora’s property nearly every night, she told the DCNF. She added that Customs and Border Protection agents are trying their best to respond to every incident but that they’re overwhelmed.

Neither Cornyn or Cruz responded to the DCNF’s request for comment.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel