Mary Ann Ortiz has deep roots on Vega Verde Road, which runs along the Rio Grande west of Del Rio. Ortiz was born and raised in this border town of 35,000 in Val Verde County, a couple hours southwest of San Antonio, where her father owned a sizable ranch on the north side of the road. When he passed away, the ranch was sold off in various parcels. She bought her 16 acres of land in the 1990s and raised her family here.
Nowadays, the retired teacher raises goats in a pen in her backyard. Her sister lives just down the road, as do her three children. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s home. It’s quiet and peaceful. Or it was—until all the construction trucks started whizzing by nonstop. And there have certainly been effects of increased migration from across the border. It’s not uncommon to see small groups passing through, and some properties on the river side of the road have been vacated by owners after migrants started squatting in the houses, she said.
The increased rate of crossings from Mexico into this rural community was part of the reason she and the rest of her neighbors agreed to let the Texas Military Department build a 10-foot fence along their land next to the roadside, free of cost, in 2021. It’s helped stop, or at least slow, migrants crossing through her property—though the visibly patched chain-link barrier obviously isn’t perfect. Plus, the tall cyclone fencing topped with razor wire makes her feel like she’s living in a prison.
Ortiz takes pride in the fact that you can identify where her property line starts and ends, along with the rest of her family’s, because they were the only ones who opted not to have razor wire installed on top. But now she’s dealing with the threat of another, bigger fence. Like many of her neighbors, land agents first contacted Ortiz early last year to see if she’d be interested in allowing the State of Texas to build a border wall along the back of her land. As it turned out, her home was right in the middle of a nearly 7-mile stretch of 30-foot steel wall that the state was planning to build on orders from Republican Governor Greg Abbott.
From the start, Ortiz was a firm “no.” But the land agent, who worked for a private company contracted by the state to acquire border properties, “kept coming back and coming back,” Ortiz recalls, giving an initial quote for payment, then coming back later with higher offers. “So he was kind of lowballing us at the very beginning,” she said. “I kept telling him, ‘You’re wasting your time.… I love my house. I love my ranch, no.’”
Ortiz’s predicament was the result of a highly politicized, multi-billion-dollar border security scheme rolled out by Abbott in 2021. Key to the governor’s border gambit, dubbed “Operation Lone Star,” was a promise familiar to anyone with a pulse during the administration of former President Donald Trump: to build a great wall dividing Texas from
