The National Butterfly Center is in the middle — literally — of the border wall debate
Heavy construction equipment began arriving at the National Butterfly Center in the South Texas town of Mission Sunday, according to a Facebook post from the nonprofit.
“Effective Monday morning, it is all government land,” a Mission police officer said, according to the post.
He was talking about all land south of a levee that sits on the butterfly center’s property, which comes out to about 200,000 acres between the levee and the Rio Grande River, the center wrote in a news release last year. Surveyors’ stakes were put in the ground there in July 2018 in preparation for the land to be cleared for the installation of 33 miles of steel-slat style border wall.
That land currently harbors protected species such as the Texas tortoise and Texas indigo, as well as about 400 species of birds, according to the release. A 45-meter “enforcement zone” in front of the wall will also have to be cleared, the Associated Press reported.
The incoming border wall is not part of the current debate on border security funding, but rather, was approved in March 2018, when a sweeping $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill included funds for 25 miles of border wall construction in Hidalgo County and 8 more miles in neighboring Starr County. That bill notably staved off a looming government shutdown not unlike the five-week partial shutdown that was temporarily lifted on Jan. 25.
President Trump called the $1.6 billion allocated to its construction by the omnibus spending package a “down payment” on his border wall, according to the Texas Tribune.
“There’s not a single member of Congress who read that bill before they voted on it,” Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., who voted no on the omnibus bill, told McClatchy DC. “I made it to page 700 [of almost 3,000].”
The news release gave patrons and concerned citizens the contact information for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the region, to lodge protests against the land seizure for a border wall, but seven months later, this project appears to be moving ahead as scheduled. Construction on the 33 miles of border wall could begin as soon as the middle of February, according to the McAllen Monitor.
“This area whatever they wind up taking and bulldozing, will end up being devoid of life,” National Butterfly Center director Marianna Treviño-Wright told the newspaper in a more recent report. “By virtue of the elimination of habitat, the installation of this all-weather, rubberized road, an 18-foot concrete wall with 18-foot steel bollards on top, and the all-night bright lighting.”
But looking beyond the bugs and grass and natural habitats, Wright and the Butterfly Center say the land seizure is a fundamental violation of private property rights.
“The federal government had decided it will do as it pleases with our property, swiftly and secretly, in spite of our property rights and right to due process under the law,” the release states.
This story was originally published February 5, 2019 at 8:24 AM.
