2026-06-25T09:00:26.805Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/25/politics/trump-border-wall-eminent-domain
唐纳德·特朗普总统正在加快推进边境墙修建工作，并设定了在其本届政府任期结束前完成全部工程的雄心勃勃的目标。为此，他需要美墨边境沿线的土地所有者出让土地，以完成边境墙建设。
近几个月来，美国司法部一直在招聘律师，其主要工作职责包括动用征地权为政府修建边境屏障征用私人土地。这承认了联邦官员在边境部分地区——主要是德克萨斯州——面临的现实：当地大量土地并非联邦所有。
“按当前的修建速度，征地耗时太久了。他们的土地储备消耗速度比获取新土地的速度更快，”一位熟悉当前相关工作的前国土安全部官员告诉CNN。
美墨边境全长1954英里。特朗普政府官员预计，到本届政府任期结束时，其中约1400英里将设置边境屏障，另有数英里将加装技术设施。这是一项庞大的工程，需要在2027年底前修建约775英里新围墙，并在2028年底前再修建数百英里二级屏障和水上屏障。前和现任美国海关与边境保护局官员表示，他们有望实现这一目标。
但其中一个障碍是土地征用。根据“征地权”这一法律原则，政府通常可为公共用途征用私人土地。往届政府修建的边境屏障大多位于土地归联邦所有的区域，但要兑现特朗普修建边境墙的承诺，就需要征用私人土地。
“进度超前且预算低于预期”
据CNN审阅的一份联邦文件显示，美国海关与边境保护局预计“到2027年6月将获得所有建筑所需土地”，并指出随着土地陆续到位，工程将“滚动推进”。
海关与边境保护局局长罗德尼·斯科特本月表示，边境墙建设“进度超前且预算低于预期”，他援引国会和总统此前划拨的边境墙建设资金，以及为修建工程拨款465亿美元的“宏伟法案”作为依据。
特朗普去年就职时，美墨南部边境已有约644英里的主围墙（即此前无任何屏障区域新建的围墙）和约75英里的二级围墙。据海关与边境保护局数据，自那以来，本届政府已新增约80英里新主围墙和约24英里新二级边境围墙。
“海关与边境保护局计划再修建约695英里主围墙和约608英里二级围墙。在所有建筑合同获批前，这些总里程数可能会略有调整，”该机构一位发言人在一份声明中告诉CNN，并补充说约535英里边境区域将配备技术设施。
“主边境围墙——我向总统承诺过——将在2027年底前完工，”斯科特在移民研究中心的一场活动中表示，他所指的是在此前无屏障的边境区域修建的围墙。
据斯科特介绍，这将覆盖从圣迭戈到墨西哥湾的区域，但存在部分缺口。
“我们不修建边境墙的唯一区域，是我们经过深思熟虑后认为不需要设置屏障的地方，”他提到了地形崎岖的偏远地区。包括二级屏障和技术设施在内的整套系统，预计将在2028年底前全部完工。
例如，该机构不计划在大弯曲国家公园、大弯曲牧场州立公园或黑峡谷野生动物管理区修建30英尺高的屏障。
一位熟悉相关规划的消息人士透露，该机构预计8月将以每周约10英里的速度推进施工，后续每周的施工里程还将增加。
“他们希望在本届政府任期结束前宣布完成全部工程，”那位前国土安全部官员表示。
国土安全部还通过豁免部分法律条款来加快施工进度。
征地权案件的核心区域
与此同时，征用私人土地的过程可能耗时费力。
据司法部一位发言人透露，在特朗普的第二任期内，司法部已提起39起土地征收诉讼，主要通过德克萨斯州南部地区的美国检察官办公室进行。该发言人还补充说，司法部正“与德克萨斯州、新墨西哥州、亚利桑那州和加利福尼亚州的土地所有者积极合作”，以获取修建边境屏障所需的土地。
德克萨斯州律师斯蒂芬·阿德勒目前正参与多起征地权案件，涉及联邦政府试图在德克萨斯州拉雷多和大弯曲地区征用土地。
阿德勒正在为三类土地所有者提供服务：希望了解围墙是否会设置通道以便仍能便捷使用自己土地的业主；愿意出售土地但希望最大化收益的业主；以及完全不愿土地被征用的客户。
“我认为他们目前招聘更多律师的原因之一，是想投入更多人力加快案件处理进度，从而更快推进工程，”阿德勒表示，他指出这类案件通常需要数年时间才能结案。
“他们似乎有大量土地需要收购，而土地所有者越是充分行使自身权利，整个流程就会越长、越复杂，”他补充道。
尽管征地权案件可能旷日持久，但通常不会阻止该机构推进施工。土地所有者往往会争取所谓的“公平补偿”——即他们认为符合自身财产价值的合理价格。
里奥格兰德河谷地区大部分土地为私人所有，因此成为征地权案件的核心区域。
与墨西哥共享约14英里边境线的拉雷多市，是政府试图通过征收获取土地的地区之一。自去年10月政府计划为修建围墙征用该市土地以来，该市一直在与联邦官员进行持续磋商。
“我们可以向他们提供信息，帮助他们做出比按原提案直接修建结构更合理的设计方案，”拉雷多市市长维克托·D·特雷维尼奥博士表示。“我们了解当地情况，也清楚由于我们提供的信息、协作和对话，他们已经修改了部分设计。”
这一点对该市市中心区域尤为重要，该市官员试图避免政府修建隔离桩围墙，特雷维尼奥将其描述为“弊大于利”。但官员们也担心城市水源和国际贸易可能受到屏障和河道浮标的影响。
“我们真的认为没有必要修建围墙，因为我们是整个南部边境非法过境率最低的地区之一，既然如此，就完全没有必要修建边境墙，”特雷维尼奥说道。
Trump is racing to finish his border wall. Here’s how he is planning to do it
2026-06-25T09:00:26.805Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/25/politics/trump-border-wall-eminent-domain
President Donald Trump is accelerating his effort to finish his border wall and setting an ambitious goal of completing it by the end of his administration. He’ll need landowners whose property runs along the US-Mexico border to hand over their land to finish it.
Over recent months, the Department of Justice has been hiring attorneys whose primary job includes invoking eminent domain to seize private land for the administration to build barriers. It’s an acknowledgement of the reality federal officials face along certain parts of the border, primarily in Texas, where a lot of the land is not federally owned.
“It’s taken too long to buy land at the pace they’re building. They’re running out of land faster than they can get land,” a former Homeland Security official familiar with the current efforts told CNN.
The US-Mexico border is 1,954 miles long. By the end of the Trump administration, officials project that around 1,400 miles of that will be covered with barriers, with additional miles reinforced with technology. It’s an enormous task that will require the administration to build around 775 miles of new wall by the end of 2027, and several hundred more miles of secondary and waterborne barrier by the end of 2028. Former and current US Customs and Border Protection officials say they’re on track to achieve it.
One hurdle, though, is land acquisition. Generally, the government is allowed to acquire privately owned land for public use, under the legal principle known as eminent domain. Border barriers built under previous administrations have largely gone up in areas where land was federally owned, but extending the wall, as Trump pledged to, requires taking privately owned land.
‘Ahead of schedule and below budget’
US Customs and Border Protection is expecting to have “all real estate available for construction by June 2027,” according to a federal document reviewed by CNN, which notes that as land becomes available, construction will occur “on a rolling basis.”
CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott said this month that border wall construction is “ahead of schedule and below budget,” citing previous border wall money appropriated by Congress and the president’s “big beautiful bill” which allocated $46.5 billion for construction.
When Trump took office last year, there was around 644 miles of primary wall, meaning barriers where none previously existed, and about 75 miles of secondary wall along the US southern border. Since then, the administration has added roughly 80 miles of new primary wall and about 24 miles of new secondary border wall, according to CBP.
“CBP is planning to construct an additional ~695 miles of primary and ~608 miles of secondary wall. These total numbers may change slightly until all construction contracts are awarded,” an agency spokesperson told CNN in a statement, adding that approximately 535 miles of the border will be covered by technology.
“The primary border wall — I’ve made a commitment to the president — will be done by the end of 2027,” Scott said at a Center for Immigration Studies event, referring to wall that was built along parts of the border where no barriers previously existed.
That would cover San Diego to the Gulf of Mexico, with some gaps, according to Scott.
“The only places we’re not building border wall is places where we’ve made a conscious decision that we don’t need it,” he said, citing remote areas where there’s rough terrain. The whole system, including secondary barriers and technology, is expected to be finished by the end of 2028.
The agency, for example, is not planning to build 30-foot-high barrier in Big Bend National Park, Big Bend Ranch State Park, or the Black Gap Wildlife Management Area.
The administration is projected to build around 10 miles of barrier a week in August and increase the number of miles erected weekly moving forward, according to a source familiar with the planning.
“They want to say they’re finished by the end of this administration,” the former Homeland Security official said.
The Department of Homeland Security has also moved to expedite construction by waiving certain laws.
The epicenter of eminent domain cases
The process of acquiring privately owned land, meanwhile, can be laborious.
In Trump’s second term, the Department of Justice has filed 39 land condemnation cases, primarily through the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas, according to a department spokesperson. The department is also “actively working with landowners in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California” to obtain property for purposes of border barrier, the spokesperson added.
Stephen Adler, a Texas-based attorney, is currently involved in eminent domain cases where the federal government is trying to seize land in Laredo, Texas and the Big Bend area.
Adler is working with property owners who are looking for information on whether the wall will have a gate so they can still easily access their property, others who are willing to sell but want to maximize what they can get for the property, and some clients who don’t want their property to be taken at all.
“I think that one of the reasons they’re allocating or trying to find more attorneys right now is they’re trying to put more manpower against the processing of these cases, so they could move more quickly,” Adler said, noting cases can take several years before they’re resolved.
“It looks like they have a lot of pieces of property they want to acquire, and the more the property owners seek to fully exercise the rights that they have, the longer and more involved the process gets,” he added.
While eminent domain cases can be lengthy, they generally don’t keep the agency from being able to proceed with construction. Landowners are often fighting for what is known as just compensation – what they deem a fair price for their property.
The Rio Grande Valley is largely privately owned and therefore an epicenter of eminent domain cases.
The city of Laredo, which shares roughly 14 miles with the Mexico border, is among the areas where the administration is trying to acquire land through condemnation. The city has been in ongoing discussions with federal officials since the administration sought to acquire the city’s land for wall construction last October.
“We can give them the information that will make them do the correct designs better than just putting the structure as they propose,” said City of Laredo Mayor Dr. Victor D. Treviño. “We understand what happens here, and we understand that they’ve changed some of the designs already because of our information and our collaboration and our dialogue.”
That’s particularly important for the city’s downtown area where city officials are trying to avoid the administration putting up bollard wall, which the mayor described as “more detrimental than functional.” But officials are also concerned about the city’s water source and international trade, which could be impacted by barriers and river buoys.
“We really don’t think it’s needed because we’re one of the areas that has one of the least illegal crossings in the whole southern border, so if you have that situation, there’s really no need for a border wall,” Treviño said.