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Two weeks after the Trump administration was sued over its plan for a border wall through the Big Bend region of West Texas, with plaintiffs claiming the plan violated a federal law, the administration responded by waiving that law entirely for the wall project.
The lawsuit was filed last month by the Presidio Municipal Development District, a local economic development group. PMDD claims that potential flooding, and the border wall in general, will harm the entity’s property and initiatives. The group is asking a federal judge to issue an injunction that would effectively stop construction of the wall in the region while the case plays out in court.
In the lawsuit, the district claims that border agencies are not coordinating as legally required with other arms of the government in potentially altering a local levee to build the border wall, which the group has said could lead to “deadly” flooding in the area.
“The levees protect the entire City of Presidio and its residents, and flooding would threaten lives, homes, businesses, and infrastructure,” the lawsuit said.
The court case largely centers on an obscure federal law called the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899. DHS previously waived a slew of environmental, cultural resource protection and contracting laws to expedite construction of the border wall in the Big Bend region, but it didn’t initially include that 1899 law in its waiver.
On July 2, the agency updated its waiver notice to add just that law.
“ When faced with our lawsuit raising the government’s non-compliance with the Rivers and Harbors Act and related safety concerns, of course DHS’s response was to rush to waive the legal requirements of that law too,” Skye Perryman, president and CEO of the national nonprofit Democracy Forward Foundation, which is representing the plaintiffs, said in an interview.
The levee in Presidio, known as the Presidio Flood Control Project, is owned by the International Boundary and Water Commission and “provides flood protection to approximately 52 square miles of urban and agricultural land in Presidio,” according to court documents. The levee underwent millions of dollars in upgrades after a catastrophic flood in 2008.
The Rivers and Harbors Act requires engineering approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers when significant alterations are planned for a levee system. PMDD argues that interagency coordination hasn’t happened, despite wall construction moving forward at a rapid pace.
John Kennedy, PMDD’s executive director, said DHS’s new waiver does not answer the flood safety concern that led his group to bring the case in the first place.
“The government is now acknowledging in court that it does not intend to comply with the Army Corps process and that interagency review remains unfinished,” Kennedy said in a statement. “That is exactly why this case matters: no construction affecting Presidio’s levee or floodplain should be allowed before the legally required safety assessment is conducted.”
In early July, the Trump administration responded to the lawsuit in court documents, saying plans for the border wall in Presidio are not yet finalized, despite the original construction timeline beginning as early as August.
DHS said in its response that CBP is in regular contact with both the Army Corps and the International Boundary and Water Commission and intends to coordinate with them further when a wall design is in hand.
“Once CBP receives a proposed design from the construction contractor, it will perform its own analysis and consult with the (boundary and water commission) and the United States Army Corps of Engineers,” the government’s response said.
Border agencies also said in court documents that multiple designs for the border wall around the levee area in Presidio are still being considered. One design consists of a “reinforced concrete levee wall that is constructed to match the height of the levee, coupled with 30-foot steel bollard panels that are installed on top of the levee.” Also being explored, according to the court documents, is a traditional bollard wall closer to the river behind the existing levee.
Fisher Sand & Gravel, a company that was previously sued by the federal government over poor wall construction in South Texas, was awarded a $1.2 billion contract in March to build the section of wall that goes through Presidio.
The legal fight comes after months of Presidio area officials trying to get more detailed information on the wall plan from federal border agencies.
Communications between those border agencies, obtained by Marfa Public Radio through a Freedom of Information Act request, show in-depth discussions about the project between the federal agencies had not yet occurred as of late March, even after construction contracts had been awarded.
On March 18, Kennedy – the PMDD head – sent a letter to the IBWC and CBP asking specific questions about the impact of the wall on the Presidio levee.
A day later, an IBWC engineer forwarded the letter to other engineers and a real estate staffer via email, asking if they “have any information on this.” In the March 19 email, the engineer wrote that a March 17 meeting about the project was canceled by CBP and the agencies were still trying to reschedule for early April.
IBWC and CBP attorneys went back and forth on their official responses to PMDD’s inquiry days later on April 1, according to the documents obtained by Marfa Public Radio. In the exchange, IBWC repeatedly asks CBP to clarify the planned design of the border wall.
A senior attorney for CBP answered that “the river side of the earthen levee will be replaced with a concrete levee wall with the bollard panels mounted to the top of the concrete wall,” similar to wall designs in South Texas.
Nowhere did the attorney state that wall plans were still up in the air, as the government said in its recent court filings.
As the lawsuit plays out, DHS is asking that if an injunction halting border wall construction is granted, it be limited to just the levee’s expanse – 12.75 miles – instead of the entire 175-mile Big Bend area wall project. Still, the government is urging the court to reject the plaintiffs’ request for an injunction.
“If the Court entered such an order, it would force CBP to issue ‘stop work orders’ to all construction contractors in that Sector, which in turn could leave it liable for delay claims and costs incurred from demobilization and remobilization of the contractors,” DHS said in court documents.
The government’s response repeatedly cites the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 — which gave the DHS Secretary broad authority to waive legal requirements to install barriers and roads “in areas of high illegal entry” along the border — and states that other legal challenges to those waivers have failed.
“Over the past two decades, every judicial challenge to the Secretary’s exercise of his waiver authority has been rejected, including by multiple judges in this District,” court documents state.
While the Big Bend Sector is the geographically largest along the border, it is also one of the least trafficked.
Perryman said her group isn’t deterred by the government’s response, and will continue to fight for the PMDD and the safety of the Presidio community.
“ We’re quite confident in the positions in our case and are looking forward to following up with a brief with the court later this week,” she said.
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This story was originally published by Marfa Public Radio and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.
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