Texas Landowner Fails in Eminent Domain Appeal Over Border Wall

A Texas farm owner should receive only the value of land the government took from her to build a US-Mexico border wall segment, not the value of the barrier itself as well, the Fifth Circuit said.

The government was acting under its eminent domain powers because it constructed the wall for a public purpose, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed Thursday.

Mary Bennett is “certainly entitled to compensation for the value of the taken land,” said Judge James Wesley Hendrix of the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas, sitting by designation, on behalf ...