Welcome to the peaceful Rio Grande valley,
located on the tip of Texas’s pendulous dong.
Home to quiet border communities,
pristine natural beauty,
and a good ol’ fashioned Texas shit show!
Where Trump’s diverting billions of dollars from the military
to build a 30-foot wall,
crushin’ critters and grabbin’ private property along the way!
Yeehaw!
Alright, let’s just get to it.
Mexico is not paying for it, but the wall is happening.
This is ACLU lawyer David Donatti,
whom I met in a wall with a giant hole in it.
Look, it’s a freakin’ metaphor, people!
Priority number one is construction in the Rio Grande Valley.
But in Texas, the vast majority of our border lands is owned by private citizens.
So Congress has empowered the administration to do something called a quick take
where they take the land, they build the wall,
and they can figure out just compensation later.
That’s right, with a quick take—
they just take your land,
then tell you what they’ll pay for it.
So how are Texans taking to government workers showing up
and saying their land’s being quick tookened?
Texas law gives me the right
to shoot these people.
This is Nayda Alvarez,
peaceful border resident,
spirited driver,
and wannabee Banksy.
So how did you end up graffitiing your own roof?
You know, after Trump said we're building this wall,
he comes over to the valley.
And I say he’s gonna fly by,
and he’s gonna see this.
You know he can't read, right?
I just didn't have a chance to put my middle finger up there.
Just for reference, that would look something like this.
Nayda’s been told that her backyard is about to get an exciting new addition.
The wall’s supposed to go a few feet from us.
Just like right here?
Yeah.
The government has informed Nayda that her property—
which has been in her family for generations—
is now condemned.
And they’ve sent more than just letters.
We had a pervert show up through there.
Someone hired by the government.
A government pervert?
There’s a little camera over there that caught them.
Very quickly—
Nayda’s camera captured a posse of trespassing surveyors.
One of them spotted the camera and began a strip-tease,
and then...
They claim that you threatened to shoot them.
I never threatened to shoot anybody.
What did you say?
I told them I was going to beat the shit out of them.
Oh, okay.
Those are two different things!
But not everyone can defend themselves as well as Nayda.
That’s because some of them are butterflies.
So tell me where we are.
You’re at the National Butterfly Center
in Mission, Texas.
We’re a 100-acre botanical garden
planted with host and nectar plants for butterflies.
Butterflies?
Surely the Trump administration would want to protect innocent little butterfl—
Actually, no.
The government sent contractors here.
I found five workmen cutting down our trees.
We had no notice. We had given no permission.
And I said, you must not understand the three F’s.
If you’re not feeding me, fucking me, and financing me,
I don't listen to you.
What if I’m f-interviewing you?
You got five minutes.
Wow, Texas ladies are tough.
So why piss them off?
Why take this land to begin with?
Because in this part of Texas, the border is the river,
which is made up of a substance scientists call water.
So…
What they’re actually doing is they have to go about a mile inland.
And a lot of the United States is actually going to be behind the border wall.
So to wall out foreigners, we just have to wall out our own citizens.
That’s exactly what’s happening.
The position of Trump’s wall will create a no man’s land.
In Spanish they call this “tierra de nadie,”
or, roughly translated,
“we just gave land back to Mexico!”
To speed the process, the Trump administration has ignored
dozens of environment regulations.
They’re violating the Rivers and Harbors Act,
the Clean Water Act,
the Solid Waste Disposal Act,
the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.
I’m sorry—they’re building it on a Native American burial ground?
All of this area was once inhabited by our indigenous peoples,
and their remains are throughout the region.
On the bright side, it can’t get any worse!
I’m kidding. Of course it can!
The government’s border wall isn't the only threat.
In November, they started building a private wall on the banks of the Rio Grande River.
A team of Tinder swipe-lefts—
yes, that’s Steve Bannon there—
raised $20 million on a Go Fund Me,
then joined forces with a pro-Trump contractor to build their own privately funded wall.
It’s illegal and stupid to build it right on the flood plain,
so they decided to build it right on the flood plain.
Behold, the private wall!
All in here, in this bend in the river,
there was hundreds of acres of just natural riverbank habitat like that.
Just wild habitat.
Father Roy Snipes is a local priest with property right next to the private wall.
He took me on his boat to show me what happens
when racism meets industrial- scale arts and crafts.
We always thought,
well, you couldn’t just bulldoze miles and miles
of beautiful riverbank.
You couldn’t do that. But they did it.
What do you think Jesus would feel about this?
That’s a good question.
The real moral issue would be demonizing people who are poor and just struggling to survive.
I think you just captured the entire GOP platform.
So, one last question:
how will this private wall then connect to the government wall?
Oh, it won’t.
It will be a freestanding sculpture.
Yep. The private wall will be walled off by the wall wall,
which will also wall off U.S. territory and citizens,
none of whom can really fight back.
There’s no invasion.
There’s no crisis.
It’s just a big shit show that people believe up north.
And Nayda would like to confront the emcee of this shit show, Donald Trump.
I would like to see him in the face.
I’m telling you, you wouldn’t.
I’m pretty sure he wouldn't want to be alone with me in the same room.
Now that I would like to see.
I bet you he’d run out like a chicken.
I see an incredibly lucrative pay-per-view opportunity in the future.