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Is the Biden Administration continuing to sue to obtain private property needed to finish the border wall?

Saturday, April 17, 2021
By Gus Fisher
YES

The Biden administration continues to pursue at least 140 eminent-domain lawsuits to secure land the Trump administration had sought to build a wall along the southern U.S. border. According to the nonprofit Texas Civil Rights Project, as cited by Politico on April 15, 2021, at least 114 of these lawsuits had progressed in some way since March 21.

Biden terminated the emergency declaration that Trump used to secure financing for the wall. But in a March 26 court filing, the Justice Department wrote that the step “left open the possibility that some aspects of the [border wall construction] project may resume.”

As of July 2020, the federal government had used eminent domain lawsuits to acquire 135 tracts of private land along the border, the Government Accountability Office reported. Some of this land was owned by small families and Indigenous nations, the Cato Institute found.

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