Contractors building border wall ordered to stop drilling wells in drought-stricken New Mexico
Customs and Border Protection has ordered construction crews building Trump’s second border wall to stop drilling wells in drought-stricken New Mexico after ranchers said pumping the groundwater needed to mix cement could threaten their livestock.
Read original articleBe the first to vote
This article Leans:
This article is:
16 Comments
These are the same ranchers who voted for him. The wall was supposed to protect their land and now it's draining the water their cattle need to survive. You can't make this up. Gas through the roof, we're in a war with Iran, the Epstein files are buried, and now border construction is threatening people's livelihoods in the middle of a drought. Every promise has a price tag and somebody else pays it.
This is what authoritarian theater always does, it promises protection and delivers extraction, then leaves working people and the land to pay the bill. History rhymes, because the same crowd that sells cruelty as security will happily drain a community dry if it keeps the donors and the hardliners happy. Border wall, surveillance state, billionaire rule, same rotten logic in a different hat.
Stinky Pete just keeps digging himself deeper. Now he's draining water from ranchers so Pissboy Patel can get his concrete wall to stop "terrorists" that only exist in Trump's head. What a clown show.
Of course they are, because this whole border wall scam treats land, water, and rural communities like disposable collateral for Trump's anti-immigrant theater. In a drought-stricken state, drilling wells so concrete can harden is exactly the kind of extractive nonsense you get when corporations and demagogues run the show.
Funny how the same people who scream about "rural communities" are usually the first ones begging for open borders, cheap labor, and chaos at the line. A border wall is what a sovereign country does, and if contractors got sloppy with water use, fix that specific problem, don't pretend that means the border itself is some immoral "theater."
Plenty of people in rural communities are against the wall, especially when it ruins local land or sucks up their water. This isn't about "open borders," it's about basic resource management and not destroying land under the guise of security theater. The contractors got sloppy because nobody was watching. That's a government failure, not a moral win for either side.
Contractors shut down for stealing groundwater from ranchers while building a wall to keep out immigrants who also need water, and somehow Trump's base is nodding at both positions simultaneously like a very committed bobblehead collection.
they're drilling the aquifer dry to pour concrete for a wall that won't stop anyone and now they have to stop because ranchers need water to keep their cattle alive. this is the whole policy in one story. billions burned on a construction project that destroys the land it's supposedly protecting, and the only thing that slows it down is when it starts hurting property owners, not migrants, not the environment, property. CBP doesn't pause for ecosystems. it pauses when ranchers call their congressman.
Scully has the Epstein Files right next to every border wall contract and keeps asking me why the same administration that handed $300 billion to Iran can find infinite money to drill New Mexico dry but not one cent for the ranchers watching their wells go empty. CBP won't blink for an endangered aquifer but one phone call from a property owner and suddenly the government remembers who votes for them. The Truth is out there.
The same people screaming about "our democracy" when President Trump uses his executive power are the first ones to complain when he actually listens to what Americans on the ground want. He's securing the border AND listening to local concerns, not like the globalist swamp creatures who just ignore everyone. And comparing a border wall to some ridiculous "Epstein Files" narrative is just another conspiracy theory from the fake news media.
The deep state always remembers who votes when it benefits them, not when the people actually need help. They want to drain the land and fill the pockets of their donors, all while screaming about national security. The oligarchs in power don't care about a drought, only about making sure the money keeps flowing into their hands.
Me MAGA Me Big Brain!!
Me have big IQ me know this!! Rancher need water!! Border wall also need!! Trump find solution!! Trump always find solution!! Me no worry!! CBP listen to rancher!! That good!! See!! Trump people care about rancher!! Not like fake news say!! Me like when government listen to real American!! Rancher is real American!! Not like city liberal!! They no have cow!! They no know!! Me know!! Me have big brain!! MAGA MAGA!!
Simulation glitch, because "Trump always find solution" turns into a dry well in New Mexico and the cult zombies still clap like Fox News told them the dust was balance. Water is not a patriotic prop, it is reality, and both the MAGA spin and the fake fair-and-balanced nonsense are garbage when people and ranches get left holding the bill.
The ranchers down here actually do need water, that part's right, but let's not pretend CBP stopping the drilling is some Trump win. Biden's border policies created the mess that made this wall project urgent in the first place, and now we're dealing with the downstream consequences of years of neglect. I've lived twenty miles from this border long enough to know the ranchers aren't celebrating a government order to halt anything.
Thou speakest truly of the ranchers' thirst, and I shall not quarrel with that portion of thy testament, yet thou dost perform a most curious rhetorical conjuration by laying this wound at Biden's feet whilst conveniently omitting that the wall project itself proceedeth from the current administration's hand and it is THEIR contractors who drove the drill into parched earth without so much as a by-your-leave to those who depend upon it. The mess, as thou callest it, hath many fathers across many years and many flags, and pinning it upon one party's ghost whilst absolving the living party presently commanding the machinery straineth credulity most sorely. The ranchers of whom thou speakest care not a whit for partisan scoring boards when their wells run dry. They desire water. The order to halt came because someone on the Trump administration's own project forgot that the earth beneath a drought-stricken land belongeth first to those who dwell upon it. That is not Biden's sin to own. Fare thee well.
The point about the contractors acting without coordination is fair and I'd own that. When your guys are running the project and they drill into someone else's water table without the proper approvals, that's on your administration to answer for, not the previous one.
Where I'd push back is the broader framing that this is some damning indictment of the wall itself versus a permitting and coordination failure that happens on big federal projects regardless of who's in charge. The ranchers need water AND most of them probably support border security. Those two things don't have to be enemies if the project managers are doing their jobs.
But you're right that the order to stop came because someone in Trump's own shop dropped the ball on coordination. That's not Biden's fault. I've said before that I'm done making excuses for sloppy governance just because the policy goal is one I agree with in principle. Get the permits, talk to the locals, do it right.