Roque Haynes aimed his appeal directly at the mayor of Laredo last Friday as the border city in South Texas confronted an adversary that its citizens have been battling for nearly a decade: President Trump’s border wall.
“At this dark hour for Laredo, we need a man of courage, a man of conviction,” Mr. Haynes, a 56-year-old environmentalist, implored Mayor Victor D. Treviño at the Laredo City Council meeting, which had been called to address the border barrier that was once the symbol of Mr. Trump’s immigration policies. “We need from you the strength of a Winston Churchill to defeat this looming threat, not the appeasement and weakness of a Neville Chamberlain.”
Laredo may not be Munich on the Rio Grande, but for Mayor Treviño, who is also a family physician, Churchillian resolve seemed to be in short supply.
His city faces a determined administration in Washington, allied with a conservative state government and supplied by an accommodating Congress that this summer approved tens of billions of dollars to build a wall that had stalled during Mr. Trump’s first term.
For as long as the federal government has talked about a border wall, people in Laredo have opposed it. They’ve called it an “ugly monstrosity” that would trample over residents’ property and damage ties to Mexico, a critical trading partner with a shared history.
But the wall is coming “regardless of whether it works or not,” the mayor said in an interview. He added, “we might as well collaborate, or negotiate.”
In Mr. Trump’s first term, the border wall came to symbolize the president’s desire to address illegal immigration. But in the face of a stingy Congress and a barrage of lawsuits from landowners and environmental groups, his administration built about 453 miles of border wall, far short of the nearly 2,000 miles once promised. Then, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. largely halted construction.
During Mr. Trump’s second term, unauthorized border crossings have plunged, and federal immigration policies have shifted to interior enforcement and mass deportations. To the public, the wall has almost been forgotten.
Mr. Trump has not forgotten.
In July, Congress approved $46.5 billion for the border wall as part of the president’s signature domestic budget and spending law, a staggering increase from the $5 billion that Mr. Trump requested in 2018. Ten construction contracts, totaling $4.5 billion, were awarded in September for sections of the barrier outside of Laredo. In October, Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security secretary, waived federal procurement laws across the entire U.S.-Mexico border in order to assign construction contracts more swiftly.
Laredo, a major inland trading port that has long prided itself on its neighborliness with Mexico, received notice this month that the wall was coming, Dr. Treviño said. The Homeland Security Department intends to award contracts between now and next March, he added.
A Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman said approximately 108 miles of border wall were planned along the Rio Grande within Webb County, where Laredo is, and Zapata County, just south of it. Those plans align with a federal map on the agency’s website, which shows the barrier snaking along Laredo’s riverside neighborhoods, splitting municipal parks, and potentially cutting through a golf course and a water treatment plant.
The agency has also issued waivers that exempt federal contractors from at least 30 federal laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act.
Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said the Trump administration was simply “undoing the pro-illegal immigration policies” of its predecessor, which “allowed countless dangerous, unvetted illegals into the country.”
Illegal border crossings have always been low in the Laredo area compared with other parts of the border, but since Mr. Trump returned to office, the numbers have dropped sharply, 875 encounters in October, compared to 2,372 in October 2024.
Zapata and Webb Counties, like the entire Rio Grande Valley, is heavily Hispanic and has historically leaned Democratic. But the region moved dramatically toward Mr. Trump in 2024. He won Zapata County in 2020, then both Zapata and Webb in 2024.
Still, the wall has always been contentious. During Mr. Trump’s first term, residents filed lawsuits, organized protests and even plastered the words “Defund the wall” in bright yellow paint on a downtown street. Those words were removed last month, after Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas threatened to withhold road funding if they remained.
Tricia Cortez, executive director of the Rio Grande International Study Center, an environmental nonprofit, called the wall fight “a David versus Goliath battle.”
“The people aren’t afraid,” she said, “and we hope that the city leaders can also embrace that same courage.”
Caught between Laredo residents and the federal government, the City Council last week approved a new community advisory committee to weigh in on the wall’s designs. It also authorized the hiring of an external lawyer to help negotiate with the administration.
During the at times contentious meeting, dozens of community members urged elected officials to keep fighting.
“Don’t let them bully you,” said Ricardo de Anda, a Laredo lawyer whose property abuts the Rio Grande.
But reality is setting in.
“We know, basically, that the government will take over no matter what,” said Julio Ortiz, 48, a Laredo resident.
City leaders say they are not sure what standing firm will get them with an administration that has been more than willing to play hard ball. During the government shutdown, thousands of Laredo children and older residents lost food assistance as Mr. Trump moved to punish Democrats for demanding an extension of expanded health insurance subsidies as the price for funding the government. Democrats relented.
Mayor Treviño worried that if Laredo refuses to cooperate, the Department of Justice will acquire the city’s land through eminent domain.
“I don’t want the public to think we are giving away our property, saying yes to everything they say,” Dr. Treviño told angry residents, some of whom threatened to campaign against him in the mayoral election next year. “We are trying to dialogue with them so we can get the best advantage we can get.”
Discussions between Laredo and the Department of Homeland Security have focused on what the wall might look like, city officials said. Instead of the 30-foot-tall steel bollards, Laredo leaders want something more visually appealing. Renderings of the latest proposal from federal officials, presented to the public at the City Council meeting, show a concrete barrier along the river. The city may try to negotiate easements in certain parts of the city, which would let the federal government use the land without taking it over completely, Dr. Treviño said.
Representative Henry Cuellar, a Laredo Democrat, said he would ask the Trump administration to forgo the wall in certain areas.
“Whether they would do that or not, we don’t know,” Mr. Cuellar said.
One of those areas could be the 40-acre Las Palmas Nature Trail, along the Rio Grande. With $2 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, residents of the adjacent Azteca neighborhood have been uprooting invasive plant species that absorb huge amounts of precious water, ahead of sowing pollinator plants and having new trails paved.
“You have one federally funded initiative to restore Las Palmas and make it accessible for the people, and then you have another federally funded initiative to seal it off from the people,” said Mr. Haynes, the project’s manager.
To be sure, the wall has its supporters.
“The people spoke loud and clear in the 2024 elections that they wanted border security, and that included a wall,” Jose Salazar, chairman of the Webb County Republicans, said.
But Dennis Nixon, the chief executive of the International Bank of Commerce in Laredo, who said he voted for Mr. Trump in the last three presidential elections, called the wall “complete baloney” and the amount of money directed to it “obscene,” especially now with the border so quiet. Those funds, he said, should go toward protecting the Rio Grande, ranked one of the most endangered rivers in the country.
Adding to environmentalists’ worries is the prospect of buoys in the river. Customs and Border Protection intends to install “waterborne barriers” in the Rio Grande, which could resemble the orange buoys that Mr. Abbott put in the river at Eagle Pass, Texas.
Adriana E. Martinez, a native of Eagle Pass who now studies rivers, said the buoys caused sediment erosion and changed the flow of the Rio Grande, potentially violating international treaties with Mexico, which shares the river with the United States.
Near San Ygnacio, about 35 miles south of Laredo, Elsa Hull worried about the fate of her three-acre property, where she raised two daughters, laid down trails, promoted native plants and created a pond where she goes to meditate. The wall, as proposed, would cut through her property.
“I have tried so hard to maintain a wildlife sanctuary,” said Ms. Hull, 57, who was a plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the wall during the first Trump administration, “and I can’t imagine what’s going to happen if that wall comes through.”
Pooja Salhotra covers breaking news across the United States.
The post Trump’s All-but-Forgotten Border Wall Reaches an Angry Laredo, Texas appeared first on New York Times.
