Arizona Ranch Sues Over Border Wall Construction

An Arizona ranch has sued the federal government claiming damages caused by the construction of the 30-foot-tall border wall between the United States and Mexico.

The Arizona Daily Star reported Friday a lawsuit filed Nov. 30 by the Diamond A Ranch and the Guadalupe Ranch Corp. claim the company working under contract with the federal government building the border wall “trespassed onto and destroyed private property belonging to the ranch without notice, authorization, or process.”

The construction project which began in July involves building a 30-foot-tall steel wall through a roughly 5-mile stretch of remote wilderness in the southeastern corner of Cochise County. The construction is located on a 60-foot-wide strip of federal land that runs between the international border and the ranch.

The Washington Post reported it is President Trump’s desire to build as much of the wall as possible before leaving office. But in addition to the Arizona ranch, other landowners object to the construction. Municipal water officials in El Paso told the Washington Post they deployed dump trucks last week to block construction work from cutting off their only road to a vital canal along the Rio Grande. And landowners in Laredo, Tex., are urging elected officials to pressure the incoming Biden administration to make clear that their private property will be safe from construction crews eager to finish the job.

In the lawsuit filed by the Arizona ranch, the owners claim “car-sized boulders” and other debris fell on their property when explosives were used to blast through rock at the construction site.

The terrain where the wall is being built through Guadalupe Canyon is “so steep that the land was accessible only by foot and mule. Even now, after rough construction, or pioneering, has begun, it can be traveled only with tracked vehicles,” according to the lawsuit.

Since the wall project runs across Guadalupe Creek, the ranch owners claim the project is “almost certain to lead to flooding,” and they said there is a “grave risk” that debris carried by water will “jam and block” the creek. If that occurs, flood waters could “wash away the road and cut the Ranch off from the outside world,” according to the lawsuit.

The ranch owners claim they tried to “engage in good faith negotiations” with federal officials, but were met with “empty promises” and “bad-faith dealings.”

According to the Arizona Daily Star, the ranch owners said the ranch is “not a political organization, and it has not filed this lawsuit out of opposition to (Custom and Border Protection’s) mission. The ranch has been adversely affected in the past by illegal border crossings and has supported efforts to improve border security and deter illegal crossings.”

The cost of the border wall near the ranch is roughly $41 million per mile, and Southwest Valley Constructors is building 88 miles of border wall at a cost of nearly $2.2 billion, according to the Army Corps of Engineers.

The ranch owners are asking a judge to order officials to stop wall construction near the ranch until the ranch owners are given notice of any “further incursions on Ranch land” and plans to prevent those incursions. They also seek a “meaningful hearing” with federal officials that will result in a plan to protect the ranch and “remediate past damage.”