"For everybody in the United States, everybody in the entire world that wants to help Texas build the border wall, there will be a place there where they can contribute to Texas building the border wall," Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said in an interview on the conservative podcast Ruthless.
The state will publish a website through which anyone can contribute to the project, likely to cost billions of dollars if it is in line with the projects that were undertaken during the Trump administration. Wall construction includes technology, paved roads, and lighting, and it averaged $20 million per mile under former President Donald Trump. The governor's office told the Washington Examiner that he will share details on the project later this week, but it has not said how much cash it hopes to bring in through the crowdfunding action or if taxpayers will be on the hook for any part of it.
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Abbott declared last week that he would end Trump's border wall to stop noncitizens and drug smugglers from illegally crossing from Mexico into Texas. The state has seen far more illegal crossings this year than Arizona, California, and New Mexico.
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Since January, tens of thousands of people found by the Border Patrol have been released into the country instead of being delivered to Mexico or other countries of origin. The releases have taken place despite tourists in Mexico and Canada not being permitted to enter the U.S. since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020.
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Former homeland security officials and border security experts suppose Abbott to have two challenges in constructing the wall: legal obstacles and getting privately owned land.
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In its mission to dominate private land, Texas could use the process known as eminent domain, which occurs when a government pays a landowner in exchange for private land. The United States tried that approach under Trump, and it is still in the midst of legal battles with Texas landowners who refuse to sign away their land.
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"There's a reason why there's been a delay in kind of announcing what exactly this will look like," said Mike Howell, senior adviser for government relations at the conservative Heritage Foundation and former lawyer at the Department of Homeland Security's Office of the General Counsel. "That's because it's going to be a difficult, difficult thing to do."
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Jones suggested Texas may have a leg up over the U.S. government. "It is possible, although certainly not a guarantee, that the state may be able to offer a higher price than the federal government for privately owned land, or that Texas landowners would be more inclined to agree to move forward (without appeal) with the Texas state government eminent domain claim than that of the federal government," Jones wrote in an email.
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