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The land where Nayda Alvarez lives has been in her family for five generations. The Texas property abuts the Rio Grande, the fourth longest river in North America, which carries snowmelt from Colorado to the mouth of the Gulf in Brownsville, Texas. This is the land where Alvarez learned to fish and hunt, and where her children and grandchildren come to celebrate Easter. 

“It’s where we grew up,” the public high school teacher told Prism.

Now, the Trump administration is quietly and rapidly moving forward with a proposal to build a border wall not only along the Rio Grande, but also in the river, cutting Alvarez and countless others off from the water that for so many generations gave residents a sense of place and purpose.  

The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) plan for the border wall would be catastrophic for residents who live along the Rio Grande in South Texas, where the federal agency wants to build over 500 miles of border wall in the sandy loam adjacent to the river, and emplace hundreds more miles of buoys in the river. Alvarez lives south of Webb County and Zapata County, both of which are considering the administration’s proposal. What each county decides will have a direct impact on her quality of life. 

Landowners and concerned community advocates say that if the federal government is allowed to proceed with its construction plans, the buoy system will exacerbate flood risk and endanger the lives of those who live along the river. The highly controversial project will also cost taxpayers more than $1 billion for the first 56 miles of the wall and 66 miles of buoys. But it’s not just the exorbitant cost that concerns residents. DHS has waived environmental laws to pursue the project, aimed at quelling migration, and locals are deeply concerned about the lightning-quick process of approvals that has allowed little time for public comment, awareness, and feedback for a project that will forever change the river system and the towns that depend on it.

Alvarez told Prism she’s concerned that it’s only a matter of time before federal workers come knocking on her door and demand access to her land through eminent domain. If built, the wall would stand 50 feet from her home, she said.

In the end, what Alvarez wants for her land likely will not matter. 

She lives on a parcel of land nestled between the towns of Laredo and McAllen, and she hopes that each municipality’s local leadership will take a hard stance in defense of the river. But there’s one problem: Alvarez said there’s a political climate in which local leadership is all too willing to acquiesce to the Trump administration. 

“People are afraid to stand up to the government, and no one talks,” Alvarez said. 

Since President Donald Trump regained control of the White House, he has placed much of his focus on what he has dubbed an “immigration crisis.” However, much of the chaos over the last year—including the shooting deaths of multiple immigrants and American citizens by federal immigration agents—is due to the quickly expanding powers of agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, now tasked with carrying out a historic effort of mass deportations that has played out in major cities nationwide. 

Along the border shared with Mexico, a different fight is playing out. The Trump administration wants to finish what it started in 2016 by establishing thousands of miles of border security, including concrete and steel barriers, so-called “smart” walls, and riverine blockades such as the buoys proposed for the Rio Grande. Trump wants DHS to build within and militarize parts of the country that no administration previously set its sights on, such as Big Bend National Park in southwest Texas, and the National Butterfly Center in Mission, Texas. The consequences for these overstressed, ecologically critical, and threatened areas could be devastating. Last year, the advocacy organization American Rivers listed the Rio Grande as the fifth most endangered river in the U.S. 

Further decimating already endangered habitats for numerous species around the Rio Grande not only poses a threat to their wellbeing, but also signals that there’s very little the Trump administration won’t do to accomplish its anti-immigrant goals.

Shortly after the start of his second term, Trump signed a slate of executive orders aimed at further financing and militarizing the border. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law on July 4, divested money from social safety nets such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to pay for construction projects at the border totaling nearly $47 billion. 

Cori Alonso-Yoder, an assistant professor of law at the University of Maryland Frances King Carey School of Law, told Prism that this “theatrics of immigration enforcement” is meant to have a “chilling effect, even if it has no deep, substantive results.” According to Pew Research Center, apprehensions at the southern border are at a 50-year low.

With billions of dollars in contracts issued for the project, the administration has pushed ahead and cut red tape. In December 2025, former-Secretary of DHS Kristi Noem waived 30 environmental and procedural laws, regulations, and requirements to fast-track construction. Without having to adhere to laws such as the National Environmental Policy Act or the Administrative Procedure Act, there would be no monthslong or yearslong review process prior to construction. The area surrounding a river is a floodplain, which requires federal agencies to obtain approval to build from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Noem also waived the safety law mandating prior FEMA approval.

A year after Trump restarted the construction effort, residents along the Rio Grande are trying to figure out how to halt the runaway train.

“I don’t know if people are aware of what the federal government is doing and has planned for the entire border,” said Tricia Cortez, the executive director of the Rio Grande International Study Center (RGISC), an organization fighting to preserve and protect the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo watershed and environment. “This is about a massive transfer of title where the U.S. government would seize as much public and private land as possible and own that land permanently.” 

In order to build the proposed dual-wall system, DHS needs to gain access to a patchwork of land owned by private residents as well as the city of Laredo. The city owns a significant portion of the land along the Rio Grande, having invested millions to facilitate commerce through their international bridges that connect Mexico to southern Texas, making Laredo the largest inland port in the country.

Residents in Laredo rely on the Rio Grande for drinking water, recreation, temperature control, and culture—providing green space in an otherwise urban environment. 

“It goes far beyond the people who live on the border being treated like second-class citizens,” Cortez told Prism. “For us, this is about human lives becoming extremely vulnerable to catastrophic flooding because of the way this project is being structured. We’re deeply alarmed. It’s set off a firestorm in Laredo the past few weeks.”

With a border wall in the works but no research from federal or local government to account for its consequences, RGISC commissioned a study from FlowWest, an Oakland, California-based water quality and engineering organization, to evaluate the federal government’s proposal. 

FlowWest found that the massive border wall proposal would drastically, if not irrevocably, alter the “hydraulic and geomorphic conditions of the Rio Grande,” posing significant safety risk to those who live alongside it. 

We’re talking about people’s lives now.

Ricardo De Anda

Hundreds of miles of continuous buoys will collect trash and other debris, narrowing the flow of the river’s water, thus increasing the speed at which the water travels. As debris collects, buoys will inevitably break loose, causing portions of the wall to fail, according to the report. As the river’s course changes as water flows build, erosion along the banks is likely to occur, meaning that portions of the 30-foot wall are likely to fall into the river. At best, this could mean millions of dollars in upkeep and replacement. At worst, when floods occur, portions of the wall could be carried downstream, potentially harming people and homes. 

“It seems as though the design of the proposed system is intended to increase erosion of the U.S. riverbank and raise water levels throughout the river,” the report found. “The hydraulic, geomorphic, debris, and structural failure risks … will result in a more dangerous place for people and property along the Rio Grande River in Webb and Zapata Counties.”

It’s not a matter of if the river floods, but when, and how destructive it will be. 

For 25 years, Elsa Hull has owned three acres in Zapata County along the Rio Grande. When the river flooded in 2010, the water encroached mere feet from her house, she said. Hull, whose background is in drinking water treatment and surface water quality monitoring, has read the FlowWest report and is fearful of the findings. 

“This is a matter of life and death,” Hull said. “This flooding report has indicated that lives are at stake.”

Hull told Prism that this riverine border system has never really been tested, nor has modeling been made public as to the effects climate change will have on it.

“One of the big concerns with these buoys is that they have to drive heavy machinery into the river to remove all this debris [and] scoop out the sediment that’s accumulated,” Hull said, describing an intensive, time-consuming, and expensive process that’s already underway in a town 125 miles north of Laredo. “That’s for a 2,000-foot section by Eagle Pass. Now they want to put 500 miles of buoys, pretty much continuously from Lake Amistad all the way to Brownsville.”

Customs and Border Project has sent letters to landowners requesting the right of entry, and Hull told Prism that this is where residents can retain their power. “People don’t realize this isn’t a done deal. It doesn’t matter if they award the construction contract. They cannot build until they have the land. So don’t give it to them. Don’t make it easy for them. Fight for your land,” she said.

Hull is a founding member of the No Border Wall Coalition, a group of residents, landowners, environmentalists, and lawyers dedicated to fighting border wall construction in Zapata and Webb Counties. Through canvassing, town hall meetings, and online advocacy, the group helped push Zapata County commissioners to adopt a resolution opposing the border wall proposal in late March. Laredo City Council has not yet made a formal public resolution or comment on the proposal. Prism reached out for comment but did not receive a response by the time of publication. 

It’s largely up to local government to push back against the federal government’s desire for control of the river, but the silence of many municipalities is what concerns Alonso-Yoder. 

“There does need to be a greater attention paid to the cooperation of local officials, particularly in red states, with the administration, and the willingness that they’ve shown to push and advance the immigration policy platform of the administration,” the law professor said. 

Ricardo De Anda, a lawyer assisting the No Border Wall Coalition with legal efforts against border wall construction, characterizes the situation as one that the city government would rather not have to address. In the end, De Anda believes that Laredo “wants to cooperate with with the feds.” 

“More of our city council will be on the side of public safety than not, but I expect at this point … some of them are very concerned about this project, and others are very concerned about their future dealings with the federal government,” De Anda said.

But this isn’t about politics, he said. “We’re talking about people’s lives now.”

Editorial Team:
Tina Vasquez, Lead Editor
Lara Witt, Top Editor
Stephanie Harris, Copy Editor