The Trump regime did not mount a substantive response of any description during the month of March while the noval coronavirus spread across the country, but here's what they did do: they filed a record number of lawsuits to seize land from private citizens.
Trump still wants to build sections of his glorified border fence ahead of the 2020 election and, to that end, they're accelerating their plans to take private land from Americans.
In the past 12 months, the administration opened 41 cases in federal court to seize land to build a wall along the southern border of Texas. Nearly half of those cases – 16, or 39 percent - were filed in the past two months.
The bulk of the new filings came in March, when the administration opened 12 cases, the most in any month under Trump, a Reuters review of federal filings found.
The administration wants immediate possession, bypassing traditional procedural steps and forcing landowners to move more swiftly, records show.
You know, a Democratic administration would be excoriated for seizing land in this manner under any circumstances and even if they had a legitimate reason to do it.
Trump doesn't have a legit reason and he's doing in the middle of a global pandemic that killed nearly 4,600 Americans in just the last 24 hours. And one wonders if that's the whole point; it's more difficult to legally defend your land when most of the country is quarantined.
Nayda Alvarez, a 49-year-old public school teacher, was served court papers in March. She and her extended family - including her elderly father who suffers from several health issues - live on 6-acre (2.4-hectare) ranch along the Rio Grande river that the administration wants to take immediately.
“It’s very scary. My hands are tied because we are quarantined and fighting the federal government, literally,” said Alvarez, who is working with the ACLU and another group, the Texas Civil Rights Project, in her defense.
She was preparing to go to federal court on Tuesday, donning a mask and gloves, but her lawyers were able to delay the hearing until June.
There is a relatively high chance that Trump will successfully seize land from Americans along the border in the coming months only for the next administration to take office and cancel the fake wall.