The federal government filed a third lawsuit against a private landowner in Cameron County and it’s the second one targeting a homeowner in a small neighborhood west of Brownsville.
The litigation targets one acre owned by Jaime R. Treviño and Rocio Treviño for the purposes of surveying and testing for proposed construction of roads, fencing, vehicle barriers, security lighting, cameras, sensors and related structures for securing the border.
The homeowners live in a small neighborhood in San Pedro, a community off of Military Highway that is just west of Brownsville.
The government is seeking access to another homeowner’s property in the same neighborhood.
Last month, a federal lawyer filed suit against Salvador J. Castillo and Yvette Arroyo, seeking access to their property for the same surveying purposes. The litigation targets 0.9987 acres of land they own.
The first lawsuit filed in the years following the first actions that brought border wall to Cameron County in 2008 is against Wanda Hollon and Robert R. Mathers.
This litigation targets 114.14 acres of agricultural property approximately one mile north west of the Silas Ray Power Station, which is located off of Power Plant Drive on the western edge of Brownsville.
President Donald Trump’s efforts to build a border wall in the Rio Grande Valley have mainly focused on Hidalgo County, but in October of 2018, the Department of Homeland Security announced its intention to fill in 11 gaps in the existing 18-foot border fence built here more than a decade ago.
U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez has scheduled initial conferences in the land condemnation cases against Castillo, Arroyo, Hollon and Mathers for July 30.
Trump’s signature campaign promise was to secure the border and stop illegal immigration and the flow of illegal drugs into the United States.
Since his election, he has battled with Democrats over funding to build the border wall. U.S. Customs and Border Protection has since awarded several multimillion-dollar contracts over the last year to construction companies, but construction has yet to start in Hidalgo County.
However, in Cameron County, construction workers have been seen working on border wall gaps in the Southmost area and by Los Indios.
