re: Allow me to introduce to our LEFTies a 100 year old Truth.... The Roosevelt Easement

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Paralleling roughly 700 miles of the 1,954-mile U.S.-Mexico border, a 60-foot-wide swath of land has for more than a century been a kind of Maginot Line for U.S. border security.

Climbing out of the Pacific Ocean, the Roosevelt Reservation runs eastward along the border until the Rio Grande marks the international boundary. Controlled by the federal government, the easement buffers the U.S.-Mexico border as it cuts through high-desert peaks, cactus-choked valleys and sand dunes.

Today, green-and-white Border Patrol trucks often can be seen traversing the dirt strip, on the lookout for smugglers and other border crossers. The easement, established in 1907 by President Theodore Roosevelt to thwart smugglers who wanted to avoid duties on goods, gives the federal government access to the border, which has left much of California, Arizona and New Mexico with fencing of one kind or another.

East of the Roosevelt Reservation, building a wall poses a logistical challenge because ownership becomes murky. Although the federal government is the nation’s single largest property owner along the southwest border, most of the land belongs to state governments or private owners.

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