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Pulitzer Center Update December 19, 2017

This Week: Botched Land Grab Along the Border

Media:
Juan Cavazos of Brownsville, Texas at the electronic gate in the border fence that runs through his property. Image by Martin do Nascimento for The Texas Tribune. United States, 2017.
English

Donald Trump's promised border wall will involve taking land from hundreds of people. An earlier...

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Juan Cavazos, 74, at his home on Oklahoma Avenue in Brownsville. The retired teacher accepted $21,500 for the two acres the government seized, but later discovered that neighbors who hired lawyers got paid much more for their land. “We got screwed,” he said. Image by Martin do Nascimento. United States, 2017.
Juan Cavazos, 74, at his home on Oklahoma Avenue in Brownsville. The retired teacher accepted $21,500 for the two acres the government seized, but later discovered that neighbors who hired lawyers got paid much more for their land. “We got screwed,” he said. Image by Martin do Nascimento. United States, 2017.

The Taking: How the Federal Government Abused Its Power to Seize Property for a Border Fence

T. Christian Miller, Kiah Collier, Julián Aguilar

Years before President Trump vowed to build a wall along the border with Mexico, the U.S. government launched an aggressive seizure of private land to build an 18-foot-high fence. The Department of Homeland Security filed more than 360 eminent domain lawsuits involving thousands of acres. How did that go? An investigation by T. Christian Miller, Kiah Collier, and Julián Aguilar for ProPublica and The Texas Tribune shows "a botched land grab that serves as a warning for the future," including unfair real estate deals, secretly waived legal safeguards, and other government abuse of its "extraordinary power to take land from private citizens."​

Graphic courtesy NPR StoryLab. 2017.
Graphic courtesy NPR StoryLab. 2017.

Why Treaties with American Indians Matter

Josephine Holtzman, Isaac Kestenbaum, Allison Herrera

The United States has ratified more than 370 treaties with American Indian nations. In this video for NPR, Native Americans explain some of the history of these pacts—and their continued importance.

Marie-Yvette, photographed in Bangui on September 24, holds an undated picture of herself in her Séléka uniform. Image by Cassandra Vinograd. Central African Republic, 2017.
Marie-Yvette, photographed in Bangui on September 24, holds an undated picture of herself in her Séléka uniform. Image by Cassandra Vinograd. Central African Republic, 2017.

Female Killers in the "World's Most Forgotten Crisis"

Cassandra Vinograd

Many women of the Central African Republic didn't enter the war to perform chores imposed on them by men. As Cassandra Vinograd reports for Newsweek, these women—motivated by a diverse range of factors—fight to kill.

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Land Rights

Land Rights