Update to this story.
Via The Monitor:
About 150 protestors gathered here at the National Butterfly Center and Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park, locking hands along the levee where a border wall was supposed to be erected.
Before the 2019 government spending bill passed on Friday, these popular environmental destinations in addition to other similar sites were on the path of 33 miles of border wall construction funded by the March 2018 omnibus spending bill. Local congressmen, however, secured language in Friday’s bill that protects environmentally sensitive sites such as these from wall construction.
But it also secured funding for 55 miles of additional border wall in the Rio Grande Valley.
“There’s a value in the spaces that aren’t open to the public also,” said Tiffany Kersten of the Lower Rio Grande Valley Sierra Club.
Scott Nicol of the Sierra Club Borderlands Campaign said the compromise fell short of protecting landowners with property along the border and the unincorporated nature sites along the banks of the river.