Who Owns the Border?
They are among the nation’s richest people, owning land in some of the most remote places in the country. They are multigenerational ranchers and recent arrivals, heirs to Fort Knox-like fortunes and the inheritors of fallow dirt patches along America’s southern border.
Fiercely independent, they do have one thing in common: They will take center stage yet again if President Donald Trump moves forward with his promise to wall off the border with Mexico. As such, the question of who owns the border and how they will be compensated looms large. But many owners say they have no intention of giving up their land without a fight.
Over the past two decades, Bill Addington has grown accustomed to battling outsiders treating his far-flung Hudspeth County ranch in West Texas as a massive dumping ground for New York City sewage and a proposed nuclear waste site. So far, despite Trump’s rhetoric, the federal government has shown little interest in erecting a wall on his family’s land, where flocks of snowy egrets swoop over flooded pastures yards from the Rio Grande. Still, he sees little difference between past schemes and the latest barrier proposal. “Trump,” he says, “will build a wall on my land over my dead body.”
Reveal, from the Center for Investigative Reporting, combed through property records from all but one of 22 counties along the international boundary from California to Texas and found that less than one-quarter
