Border wall construction continues at historic cemetery

A small stretch of the levee immediately north of the cemetery had remained untouched, Leal said. By his most recent visit, the brush-covered slope from the cemetery to the levee has been cleared and graded. He said construction crews are expanding the levees and are laying concrete slabs topped with steel bollards, shorter versions of the fencing used for past wall construction.

He’s worried the construction is “affecting the headstones and the overall stability of the land right next to” the levee.

In a letter to wall opponents this year, CBP said contractors are repairing damage caused by earlier wall construction. The repairs will result in more than 15 miles of new concrete levee walls topped with steel posts.

Wall opponents say CBP is violating the law — Congress in 2020 passed legislation protecting the Eli Jackson Cemetery from border wall construction — and shows that the current administration is building border wall despite President Joe Biden’s pledge to halt construction.

Congressional Democrats during budget negotiations last month abandoned their effort to cancel about $2 billion in leftover wall funding allocated in 2018, 2019 and 2020, money that CBP must now spend. Earlier this year, the agency told Rio Grande Valley landowners it was conducting an environmental assessment as part of its plan to build 86 miles of new border wall, essentially walling off the Valley.

The construction near the Eli Jackson Cemetery is part of a less ambitious plan, according to a letter Ruynard Singleton, the executive director of the Border Patrol’s program office directorate, sent the Center for Biological Diversity after the center said it intends to sue and seek a halt to construction.

CBP is spending the leftover border wall funds to build 15.6 miles of new wall along flood control levees, which it says were damaged during Trump administration border wall construction, according to the February letter. CBP didn’t respond to questions, but Singleton wrote that construction is scheduled to be completed by January.

The agency is building six-to 14-foot concrete levees on the existing earthen levees, Singleton wrote. On top, crews will install roads.

“Because the levee road will (be) used by both the U.S. Border Patrol agents to patrol the border and by members of the general public, four-to-five-foot bollards are being installed ‘river side’ of the border road on top of the levee,” Singleton wrote.

Singleton wrote that CBP initially identified 13.4 miles of levee that needed repairs, but recently determined an additional 2.2 miles will need remediation. That includes a 500-foot stretch of levee next to the Eli Jackson Cemetery, said Paulo Lopes, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity.

Environmentalists say the shorter levee walls restrict the passage of the region’s wildlife, including the endangered ocelot. During floods, animals that would have scaled the earthen levees will now be trapped between the steel-topped concrete slabs and the rising Rio Grande. And opponents of the wall point out that Congress in 2019 and 2020 prohibited spending border wall funds for construction “within historic cemeteries.”

“If a historic cemetery is being turned into a construction zone, what’s to stop the Biden administration from using the guise of levee remediation to build Trump’s border levee wall through other places Congress protected?” Lopes said. “Congress protected these historic and wildlife-rich areas for good reason. These walls, roads and infrastructure will do irreversible damage. The Biden administration needs to stop pretending this is somehow less harmful than Trump’s wall.”

Congressmen Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, and Vicente Gonzalez, D-McAllen, whose districts include parts of Hidalgo County, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The Eli Jackson Cemetery is a unique Valley historic site. Rancher Eli Jackson, who died in 1911, was the son of Nathaniel Jackson and Matilda Hicks, a white man and Black woman who had helped people fleeing slavery in the U.S. Their descendants still live and work in the Valley.

Deana Limón, a descendent of Matilda Hicks’s daughter Emily, who was born before Hicks married Jackson, said she visited the cemetery last week and was disappointed to see construction equipment so near the graves. The oldest headstone in the cemetery is from 1898, Limón said. The most recent is from 2020.

Among the more than 100 people buried buried in the cemetery, she said, are two U.S. military veterans, a descendant of the Canary Islanders who settled San Antonio and the brother of a Texas Ranger. It’s also home to a memorial for Paulino Caseres and Federico Jackson, cousins and best friends born on the same day. The two were killed on the same day in 1920 by Texas Rangers, Limón said.

“These people are the pioneers of the Valley,” she said. “It kind of feels like the wall keeps moving forward. There’s no taking it down at this point.”

The family of Ramiro Ramirez, a descendant of Eli Jackson’s brother Martin, owns the nearby Jackson Ranch Church and cemetery. Ramirez said he grew up hearing stories about the Jacksons fleeing slavery and injustice in Alabama and helping others at the ranch near the Rio Grande. He’s concerned about the impact the construction will have on the 19th century structure. He’s also worried about access to the site for funeral services, maintenance and for emergency personnel in case there’s a fire.

“They’re going to put in a gate,” Ramirez said. “They won’t tell me whether it’s going to be locked. Whether there will be a code for access. Whether there’s going to be 24/7 security there. That’s a great concern for us to have access to the church and the cemetery.”

From 2017 to 2020, the cemetery and a nearby church were the site of an occupied protest by the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, descendants of people whose villages could be found on the Rio Grande banks when Spaniards arrived. The tribe has not been recognized by the federal government. Carrizo/Comecrudo members are concerned that wall construction, and clearing brush and grading for a 150-foot CBP “enforcement zone” will disturb burial sites and other tribal areas, said Chairman Juan Mancias.

“We know there were villages all along the river and we know there were ceremonies conducted in those villages, so they’re sacred sites,” Mancias said.

The Trump administration used legislation that allows government to waive federal laws, including the Endangered Species Act, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act and the Administrative Procedure Act, to expedite wall construction. The Biden administration is using the waivers for the levee remediation. Lopes wants Biden to rescind the waivers.

Singleton said in his letter to the Center for Biological Diversity the Biden administration considered alternatives to the levee project, but it decided to stick with the plan to avoid delays in the work, which it says is urgent.

The Department of Homeland Security “determined that the best course of action to ensure the safety of the 200,000 impacted residents was to proceed with the concrete levee design, which has allowed DHS to expedite construction by utilizing existing materials, funding, and contracts,” he wrote.