The federal government last week revealed it intended to use eminent domain to wrest a 1.3-mile stretch of New Mexico borderland from the Catholic diocese for a border barrier, but church officials in federal court filings Friday argued that doing so would violate their religious freedom.
The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol first announced last summer that it intended to build a border wall along the southern skirt of Mount Cristo Rey in Sunland Park, which the Roman Catholic Diocese of Las Cruces owns. Officials told Source NM at the time that site “was a major human smuggling infiltration site for the cartels.”
On Thursday, lawyers for the United States Department of Justice’s Land Acquisition Section escalated their efforts, filing a notice in federal court seeking to seize the roughly 14 acres that comprise the church’s property along the New Mexico-Mexico border. According to the filings, the land would be used to build roads, fences and other structures to “help secure” the border.
In separate filings, the government said it would offer the diocese $180,000 for the property, which government lawyers said was the fair market value of the land.
But on Friday, the diocese, through its lawyers at the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy & Protection at Georgetown University Law Center, urged a judge to hold off on a deposit and land title transfer, because the diocese believes such a land seizure violates its First Amendment rights to freedom of religion.
The diocese’s lawyers argued that Mount Cristo Rey is a “holy site” and noted that roughly 40,000 people annually climb Mount Cristo Rey, which has a 29-foot-tall statue of Jesus Christ at its peak, for a religious pilgrimage.
As the federal government has pressured the church over the last year regarding the property, “The Diocese has consistently conveyed that condemnation of the property would substantially burden the free exercise of religion by the Diocese and the faithful who seek to commune with God on Mount Cristo Rey,” the diocese’s lawyers wrote in their filing Friday.
Seth Wayne, the Georgetown University lawyer who authored the filing, told Source NM on Tuesday via email that the diocese will use “all available legal tools to assert its rights and stop this unjust taking.”
“The Government’s attempt to use expedited procedures to condemn Diocesan land to build a border wall is an affront to religious liberty,” he said.
In addition to the diocese’s concern about its religious rights, advocates have raised concerns building a wall in that area will degrade the natural environment and also result in increased immigrant deaths.
U.S. District Court Judge Kenneth Gonzales is presiding over the case, according to court filings.
Source New Mexico reporter Danielle Prokop contributed to this report.
