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The state General Land Office announced this week that it has bought a massive ranch in the Big Bend region and a smaller ranch in Starr County, where state leaders plan to build a 1.5-mile stretch of border wall along the Rio Grande.
In West Texas, the state bought a 353,785-acre ranch that borders Big Bend National Park for an undisclosed price. Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham said in a statement there are a variety of leasing options for the land, including for hunting, agriculture, mineral and soil carbon sequestration, a process that stores carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in soil.
“With such a beautiful and expansive property, the GLO has the opportunity to generate many forms of revenue for the schoolchildren of Texas,” Buckingham said in a statement to The Texas Tribune.
In a press release published by The Land Report, Buckingham said the GLO was also blocking foreign adversaries from buying the Brewster Ranch, a collection of 28 ranches that had been parceled together by the owner over two decades.
Buckingham said in the statement to the Tribune that another party was interested in purchasing the land, but did not elaborate further.
“It is my position that no foreign adversary should own land in Texas,” she said. “I will do my part to ensure our national security remains strong and our enemies do not secure a foothold in our state.”
The state also bought a 1,400-acre Starr County ranch along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Buckingham accused the federal government of having “abdicated its job to secure our southern border,” which endangered Texans by “allowing hundreds of thousands of unvetted illegal migrants to stream across our porous border.”
She said she approved an easement within 24 hours of the acquisition to let the Texas Facilities Commission, which is overseeing the state’s border wall construction, to begin building a wall there through its contractor.
Gov. Greg Abbott announced the state’s plan to build a border wall three years ago. By July, the state had built about 34 miles of steel bollard wall — at a price tag of some $25 million per mile — but remains far from having a contiguous barrier along the 1,254 miles of border shared with Mexico.
“As Land Commissioner, tasked with overseeing 13 million acres of state land, I will not idly stand by and let this dereliction of duty affect the lives of hard-working Texans,” Buckingham said. “This is why I am stepping up and acquiring this 1,402-acre property in the heart of the border crisis.”