U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez is seeking a meeting with the president to urge him to take swift action on two pressing issues facing residents in his district — the risk of flooding from gaps in the Rio Grande Valley’s levee system, and the taking of private land — both related to the construction of a border wall the president has pledged to halt.
Gonzalez, D-McAllen, announced his intent to meet with President Joe Biden in a letter released Wednesday.
“This administration cannot repeat the mistakes of the past with respect to our border communities,” the letter reads, in part.
“Our people should not be left on the wrong side of the wall, detached from the rest of the country, and left with land worth less than it was absent a wall, and with no compensation for that loss. Our community continually bears the burden of failed policy, and when we offer solutions to the problems in our back yards, it appears that our voices are not heard,” the letter further reads.
Shortly after Biden was sworn into office on Jan. 20, he issued the first of several executive orders to halt or reverse some of his predecessor’s policies. Among them was a proclamation calling for a 60-day halt of border wall construction along the nation’s southwest border, as well as an assessment of the wall’s funding.
While the 60-day moratorium on construction has since passed, the fate of the border barrier remains uncertain, with construction sites left half-finished and dozens of private landowners left wondering if their land will ultimately be taken from them.
But one family received an abrupt answer to that question when, earlier this month, a federal judge granted immediate possession of their land to the federal government for a border wall project that had been initiated during the Trump administration.
“We were in shock about that, and blindsided with her decision without us really knowing,” said Baudilia Cavazos Rodriguez, whose brother and sister own the 6.5 acres of riverside property near Mission that U.S. District Judge Micaela Alvarez ruled now belonged to the government.
Alvarez’s April 12 decision wasn’t just a surprise for the Cavazos family, but for lawmakers, as well — including Gonzalez, who assumed the president’s January proclamation meant the dozens of land condemnation lawsuits pending in the federal courts would be halted as surely as the construction equipment had been.
“My letter is bringing this back to his (Biden’s) attention, because I think he may need to amend his executive order to assure that that doesn’t happen,” Gonzalez said via phone Wednesday.
“I think that the president may have to amend his executive order to assure that they cease taking anymore property and that the U.S. Attorney just halts all their actions and what they were doing, and taking people’s private property,” he said.
Cavazos Rodriguez said she and her family have been left in limbo. While the judge’s order has officially stripped them of their land, some 30 tenants continue to rent space on the property.
Her family has until June to appraise the land’s value, while government attorneys have until the end of the summer to come up with a valuation of their own, she said.
“Then Nov. 16 is the final… court date. And at that point, I really don’t know what’s going to happen. We’re still trying to see,” Cavazos Rodriguez said.
She’s hoping Biden will issue an order that will undo the court’s decision and give her family back their land, to keep his campaign promise of “not one more foot.”
“The way we were told is our only chance is if Biden reverses what she said, reverses the giving over the land to the government. But he has to say it,” she said.
Gonzalez said that’s his hope, too — especially as the family’s June appraisal deadline approaches.
“I hope this gets resolved before June, and we’re doing everything in our power to make sure that we’re pulling the president’s collar and getting his attention to what’s happening down here,” Gonzalez said.
The Cavazos family is facing a lonely limbo. Theirs is the only case that has advanced to the loss of their land. Other cases that have gone before the courts in recent months have thus far remained in a holding pattern.
As to those other cases, Gonzalez said he is not aware of any new directives given to the Department of Justice by the Biden administration, so it remains unclear what the government plans to do in the pending litigation.
And as recently as this month, the DOJ’s own attorneys seemed unsure about how to move forward.
On April 15 — just three days after Alvarez handed down her order — Ryan K. Patrick, who served as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas until his resignation at the end of February, said his office had never been given guidance from the White House regarding the suits.
“At no time were we told to rescind cases or give back land. We worked with DHS to pause where we were, but never got any guidance from D.C.,” Patrick’s tweet reads, in part.
For the Gonzalez, guidance is exactly what he’s hoping to achieve if given an audience with the president.
“The process was well underway under the prior administration and to stop it I think it requires … you can’t just stop it, you gotta cease all those cases. You’ve gotta dismiss the lawsuits,” Gonzalez said.
“It’s got to be a full, holistic package on how we respond to this. And I think you’re going to be seeing that pretty soon,” he said.
The Valley representative said he will be asking the president to dismiss all the lawsuits.
But, on the same day Gonzalez sent his letter to the president, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas published notice in The Monitor of dozens of such lawsuits — most of which were initially filed last year, but also two that were filed just days before Biden took office.
