In Starr County, Texas, Trump's Border Wall 'Still Highly Unpopular'
As the Trump Administration prepares to accelerate construction of a border wall, Nayda Alvarez is preparing for the possibility that it will cut directly through her backyard.
Alvarez, a high-school teacher, received a letter last year from Customs and Border Protection about plans to build the wall on her family land in Starr County, Texas, that backs up to a bend in the Rio Grande.
"All this area was my grandfather's," she says. "So we've been here for about five or six generations. ... This is where we come fishing. We have our cookouts. We spend Easter here."
President Trump scored a major victory last week when the Supreme Court decided he can use a national emergency to divert billions of defense dollars to pay for the wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. Before, Trump had been limited to congressionally appropriated funding.
Starr County provides a glimpse of what a new era of wall-building will mean for border communities. The barrier planned for Starr County is part of the longest stretch of new border wall so far constructed under Trump
