State purchases Starr County ranch to build more border wall

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The 1,402-acre ranch along the Rio Grande at Starr County’s border with Mexico. (Courtesy: Texas General Land Office/GLO)

The Texas General Land Office has announced the purchase of an expansive tract of land in Starr County where it intends to build 1.5 miles of border wall.

“(T)he Texas General Land Office (GLO) has acquired a 1,402-acre ranch along the Rio Grande at Starr County’s border with Mexico. This property’s frontage on the Rio Grande makes it a crucial location for enhanced border security and placement of a border wall,” the GLO stated in a news release Tuesday morning.

The purchase marks another major initiative in Texas’ attempts to wrest border enforcement authority away from the federal government and into the hands of state agencies.

“For too long, the federal government has abdicated its job to secure our southern border,” Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham stated in the release.

“This is why I am stepping up and acquiring this 1,402-acre property in the heart of the border crisis. … (O)ur agency will take matters into our own hands and partner with the State of Texas to secure this section of Starr County by building a fortified 1.5-acre mile wall,” she further stated.

The parcel of land sits along the river and is currently used for farming row crops such as onions, canola, sunflowers, sorghum, corn, cotton and soybeans, according to the GLO.

Aside from constructing a border barrier on the land, the GLO intimates that it plans to continue using it to produce crops.

“The GLO is proud to foster acreage that provides state-grown produce for Americans and aims to acquire land constantly to generate revenue for the school children of Texas through the Permanent School Fund,” the GLO stated.

The GLO contributes to the 170-year-old Permanent School Fund, which funds primary and secondary public schools, through the sale or lease of public lands under its control.

But little else is known about the Starr County land the GLO just purchased, including where, precisely, it is located, who owned it previously, or how much the state of Texas paid for it.

Neither Starr County Judge Eloy Vera, nor officials at the Starr County Clerk’s Office had any knowledge of any recent sales of such a substantially large piece of land, which at least one real estate agent estimated would be worth millions. The sale has not yet been recorded on the county’s books, officials in the clerk’s office said.

This isn’t the first time that the GLO has taken on the mantle of border security.

Last year, Buckingham and the GLO declared that Fronton Island, a 170-acre jut of land bisecting the Rio Grande, belonged to the state of Texas, thus clearing the way for the Texas Military Department and the Department of Public Safety to access it.

This photo released by the Texas Military Department on Nov. 9, 2023 shows Fronton Island. (Courtesy: Texas Military Department)

Crews clearcut vegetation on the island and installed concertina wire.

State officials, including Buckingham and Gov. Greg Abbott, said the island, along with other border properties, was a hotbed of activity for Mexican cartels.

It was a claim Buckingham reasserted in Tuesday’s news release, stating that certain vegetation on the GLO’s newly acquired ranchland was used as “‘rape trees’ where migrants would display various arrays of women’s clothing as ‘trophies’ after sexual abuse.”

But the matter of who has claim to Fronton Island remains in dispute.

Earlier this year, the U.S. International Boundary and Water Commission said the island was federal property that falls under federal jurisdiction.

The IBWC claimed that the GLO’s actions not only constituted trespassing, but that altering the vegetation on the island threatened to affect the international boundary line in violation of a 1970 binational treaty with Mexico.

As such, the IBWC asked Texas to remove its modifications to the island.

“We respectfully request that the Texas General Land Office direct the removal of the obstructions and reestablish the flow in the existing channel north of the island,” Ramon Macias, principal engineer with the IBWC, stated in an April 30 letter addressed to the GLO.

But thus far, the GLO has not taken any steps to comply with the IBWC’s request.

Instead, last month, Gov. Abbott fired back in a letter of his own addressed to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, accusing them of abrogating their responsibilities on the border.