Trump’s wall may soon be forgotten to many, but it is not gone

Becky Schuster Jones drove to the land she grew up on, ripe with childhood memories, on this striking South Texas border. She stared at the looming wall stretching across the family farm. Their land is sliced in two by the border wall — an 18- to 30-foot-tall barrier that casts a shadow on the estimated 700 acres that her father, Frank Schuster Sr., passed on to her and brother Frank John. Hundreds of acres are on the southern side.

“Trump rearranged the borderline and that’s the most un-American thing, because we’re essentially ceding hundreds of acres of land,” said Becky. “Trump did something Gen. Santa Anna was unable to do — establish the borderline north of the Rio Grande.” The Schusters are among the families and communities who must live in the shadow of former President Donald Trump’s border wall even though President Joe Biden has stopped construction. Like many others who use historical cemeteries and nature reserves, or who live in small communities along the border, they’re divided by the wall. Now they must find a way forward. Both siblings lean conservative, though Becky has been more outspoken, walking the halls of the Capitol in Washington, “astonished” that Republicans who talk a good game about protecting private property never stood up to Trump, or for border landowners. “My greatest disappointment was held for several legislators who represented Texas,” she said. “Did they not learn in seventh-grade Texas history class that the Rio Grande marked the boundary between Texas and Mexico?”