“Sorry, but in a post-Kelo United States, private property is not an obstacle for anything.”
Almost certainly landowners and various activist groups will attempt to stop the construction of the wall in federal court. If anything they’ll try to delay it until the 2020 elections when they will be attempting to put a Democrat in office who will stop the wall the same way Trump approved the Keystone pipeline.
The Kelo decision doesn’t really apply here. Kelo speaks to the government using its power of eminent domain to take land for private purposes, something the founding fathers clearly intended to prevent when they wrote the Constitution. Kelo was wrongly decided if one reads the letter of the Constitution as well as the opinions of those who wrote the Constitution.
The wall does not pertain to the seizing of private property to give the property to another private person or company. For the wall the government will be taking private property for public use. The Constitution’s only restriction on the taking of property for public purposes is the government must compensate the property owner for the property seized. To restrict the federal government’s use of imminent domain to take border property for the construction of a wall to protect the nation from invasion, the court would be creating new law.
It is possible a leftist federal district judge will stop the wall on environmental grounds. However, the Constitution has a number of significant roadblocks for courts to prevent the wall from being built. Congress and the president create and administer immigration law under the Constitution. The president is responsible for national security. The Constitution does not give court jurisdiction over national security, immigration or international trade. Any wayward federal judge who used environmental law, or a civil rights claim by foreigners, would almost certainly be overturned by a federal appeals court or the Supreme Court.
EMinent domain