Landowners in Texas ask court to stop Trump border wall
Indigenous groups, environmentalists and locals oppose the wall; Big Bend sees about 1 percent of border arrests.
A group of landowners, ranchers, businesses and a non-profit organisation have sued the administration of United States President Donald Trump to stop construction of a wall along the country’s border with Mexico in the remote Big Bend region of the southern state of Texas.
Trump officials “were woefully unprepared for the hornet’s nest they stirred up because they had no idea how much we love this place”, David Keller, an archaeologist and historian who specialises in the Big Bend and lives in the region, said in a news conference announcing the lawsuit on Monday.
The lawsuit was filed by Conserve Big Bend and six landowners, with the support of dozens more people along the border.
In Arizona, federal officials are pushing ahead with construction of the border infrastructure, even though it cuts through land belonging to the Tohono O’odham Nation, an Indigenous tribe that has said it does not want the barrier and that it is unnecessary.