The Texas-Mexico border is not a blank slate for the projection of campaign promises. It’s a real place where some 2.5 million Texans live, love, and bury their dead.
In December, Congress passed a funding bill that included $1.375 billion for new border fencing and failed to prevent President Donald Trump from mugging other federal departments for further border wall cash. But the bill did include a new protection for border communities: Trump’s fence may not be built “within historic cemeteries.”
The cemetery exemption came on the heels of intense activism and media attention focused on a specific graveyard in Hidalgo County—the 155-year-old Eli Jackson Cemetery—that lies in the path of Trump’s wall. U.S. Representative Henry Cuellar, who claims credit for the cemetery provision, sent a press release citing the preservation of that specific graveyard in December. But the bill’s language appears broad enough to shield other cemeteries along the U.S.-Mexico border—and historic preservationists are taking notice.
