Lawmakers Aim to Protect Private Landowners on U.S.-Mexico Border

On Friday, a day after Congress passed its spending package, the President declared a national emergency in order to obtain the funds from elsewhere to build the wall—funds that the spending legislation he agreed to sign did not provide.

This move is going to be challenged in Congress and in the courts, and may end up being temporarily blocked. But if the administration is able to forge ahead with a wall that spans the entire 2,000 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border, many homeowners may find themselves in the way. To proceed, the administration will have to use eminent domain, an unpopular power of government that allows it to take ownership of private property for public use. (Donald Trump has expressed a strange affinity for this authority in the past and even taken advantage of in his own real estate dealings.)