Here is a telling example of how little the Feds give a hoot for the sanctity of private property that does not belong to the oil companies or to hedge fund managers--the land grab underway so the useless border fence can be built. This could become interesting. ...

...if you think watching a poor little old lady rolled over by the leviathan state interesting. Anyone really willing to bet on the outcome?

MySA.com: Mexico: "One of the holdouts is 72-year-old Eloisa Garcia Tamez who owns three acres of property in El Calaboz, Texas, a community about 12 miles west of Brownsville, a city at the southernmost tip of Texas. Tamez said her property was part of a Spanish land grant and her grandfather was Lipan Apache, a tribe not officially recognized by the federal government but known to have existed in South Texas and Mexico.

"I'm waiting for whatever they've got coming and I'm not going to sign. I'm not," said Tamez, the director of the master of science and nursing program at the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College.

Tamez is part of a group of other opponents of the border fence who say the Department of Homeland Security is violating the rights of indigenous landowners, descendants of Native Americans and other people who claim ancestral rights to the land or whose families were awarded property through Spanish land grants.

Peter Schey, executive director of The Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, warned Chertoff in a letter Monday that Tamez will take court action under domestic and international laws to protect her land rights.

Officials are considering building the fence north of a levee that crosses the property, which she fears would make much of her land inaccessible. She was told she could get access to the land south of the fencing through a gate that would be manned and be located 3 miles from her property.

"Here we are, American citizens, and have to go through a checkpoint to go through our own property," Tamez said. "If they come in and do all that they are going to, they'll leave me with nothing. Even though it may be small, I stand to lose more."

Oh wait, you know the federal gloves are coming off when they start to raise the spectre of the drug war, the catch-all excuse to do any damn thing they want done. It is quite an effective tool the feds can use to batter down the sanctity of private property. But don't ask me, as these Texas landowners who the Feds moved on under the jurisdictional umbrella of the "drug war".

But Russ Knocke, spokesman for Chertoff, called Schey's statement shocking. He said the department is not required to do anything new under changes to the fence law. The department has held more than 30 community meetings.

"I can't imagine anyone who would make such a statement would want to find themselves saying that to a family that has been plagued by illegal narcotics that found their way across the border," Knocke said.