Authorities and landowners in South Texas have described Donald Trump’s border as an attack on Mexican-Americans in a lawsuit.
Two landowners and authorities in Zappa County, which sits on the Texas-Mexico border, submitted the lawsuit in Laredo on Monday.
The case argues against the wall’s construction on the basis that constitutional protections afforded to Mexican-Americans were under attack.
“The action of the government is based on animus toward a group, and that’s unconstitutional,” attorney Carlos Flores told The Texas Tribune. “You can’t make policy in governmental action based on animus toward a group”.
The case states that “second class United States citizen[s]” would be produced at the southern border due to president Trump’s executive order on the border wall.
Executive Order Number 13767 had also seen US citizens’ “land seized wholesale based on racist and white nationalist motives”, said the lawsuit.
That, said Mr Flores, violated the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause, which provides for equal protection under the law.
It states that “No person shall ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”.
Mr Flores told The Tribune that the Trump administration went ahead with border wall construction to boost his 2020 re-election bid, having made promises in 2016 that he would build the wall.
“This is something that hasn’t really been brought up before” added Mr Flores, who submitted the Zapata County lawsuit.
Two others, Laredoan Melissa Cigarroa and George C. Rincon, were also named on the lawsuit, said The Tribune.
The legal challenge is the latest border wall complaint against the Trump administration, who was blocked last month from using military funding to pay for the border wall’s construction.
