Border Residents Feeling Kicked in the Hunt Over That Danged Fence

Bet you didn’t know Ray Hunt owned a bunch of land down in South Texas — like, oh, 6,000 acres known as the Sharyland Plantation development, where Hunt’s touting “gentle gulf breezes … swaying palm fronds … the delicate scent of hibiscus and bougainvillea flowers.” It’s a massive multi-use development: residential properties selling for about a million bucks, a 55-acre retail and restaurant complex, golf courses, a business park, the whole shebang. There’s even an electric company that, says a Texas Observer Web exclusive, is “run by Hunt’s son Hunter, which delivers electricity to plantation residents and Mexican factories.”

But that ain’t the point of the Observer‘s piece. Nope. The story’s all about how folks along the Texas-Mexico border are having to surrender their land to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for that border fence — except, of course, rich and powerful dudes like Dallas’ own Ray Hunt, who gave SMU $35 mil so his BFF George Dubya could build his library and think tank on the Hilltop. Turns out, that fence will pretty much dead-end on Hunt’s land. And that is making the locals faced with condemnation lawsuits pretty, pretty unhappy. –Robert Wilonsky