La Lomita Chapel

In October 2018, the United States Border Patrol filed a federal lawsuit to seize the land surrounding the chapel and begin surveying for a border fence. The pastor, Roy Snipes, and his bishop, Daniel E. Flores, oppose the project, and the Brownsville diocese has tried to put a stop to it in court.[2] In December 2018, the Georgetown University Law Center's Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection (ICAP) filed a brief in support of the diocese.[14] The construction as planned would cut off access to the church, which would be on the Mexican side of the fence.[15] Moreover, according to Flores, the entire border wall project is "contrary to Catholic principles of the universality of human relations."[14]

Locals held several demonstrations in support of La Lomita. On Palm Sunday, April 14, 2019, over a thousand parishioners held a procession from Our Lady of Guadalupe Church to the chapel. After the procession, Pastor Roy Snipes was nominated for an award by Catholic Extension, a national fundraising organization that supports poor mission dioceses across the country.[16] After Snipes opposed the wall, he became the target of a right-wing smear campaign. The "We Build the Wall" group (a privately funded effort, led by Steve Bannon, Brian Kolfage, and Kris Kobach) to build a portion of Trump's border wall) vilified both Snipes and the National Butterfly Center (another border site in south Texas that opposed wall construction on its land).[17]

At a hearing in McAllen, Texas, on February 6, 2019, U.S. District Judge Randy Crane said that the diocese must allow surveyors onto the grounds. If the government didn't reconsider its plan to seize the land, the diocese planned to assert its rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a federal law that prohibits the government from placing a "substantial burden" on the practice of religion.[18] According to Mary McCord, a Georgetown University ICAP attorney representing the diocese, "a physical barrier that cuts off access to the chapel, and not only to Father Roy and his parish but those who seek to worship there, is clearly a substantial burden on the exercise of religious freedom."[19]

In February 2019, Congress amended an existing appropriations bill, adding language that specifically prohibits new funding from being used to build border barriers at La Lomita and several other properties, including the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, the Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park, the National Butterfly Center, and the area "within or east of" the Vista del Mar Ranch tract of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge.[20][21] Soon afterwards, however, Trump declared a National Emergency Concerning the Southern Border of the United States, and the White House Counsel claimed that the restrictions contained within the annual appropriations law did not apply, leaving the status of La Lomita and the other sites still in question.[4] On May 24, 2019, a federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration's plan to divert funds not explicitly appropriated by Congress.[22] However, on June 3, 2019, another federal judge denied a request by the U.S. House of Representatives to temporarily block spending on the wall.[23]

Although the budget deal ultimately protected the chapel from wall construction,[3] in May 2020, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security notified U.S. Representative Henry Cuellar (Democrat of Texas), the vice-chairman of the United States House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, that DHS intended to deploy the Linear Ground Detection System, a "virtual wall" technology, in the Rio Grande Valley, although the department would still need to permission of the chapel to deploy any infrastructure on the property.[24]