http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2007
By Stephen Dinan
Members of the Texas Border Coalition yesterday said Department of Homeland Security officials “lied” about reaching out to Texas landowners over the U.S.-Mexico border http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4585, and filed a class-action lawsuit against Secretary Michael Chertoff demanding he give landowners more say before the fence is built.
Under the suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, the group of border mayors, county judges and community leaders said the federal government violated the rights of landowners and intimidated them into signing away, for a $100 payment, rights to come on their land and prepare for building the fence.
“What’s being forced upon us is not the American way,” Brownsville Mayor Pat M. Ahumada Jr. told reporters and editors at The Washington Times.
“The fact that they hoodwinked the stakeholders into believing they had no choice but to give the government the right to http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4127 to the land for six months to do whatever they want was dishonest, disingenuous and I think illegal, and that’s why we’re filing the lawsuit,” Mr. Ahumada said.The suit is the latest escalation in what has become a bitter back-and-forth between the federal government and local officials on the Texas border.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080517/NATION/171977269/1001