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On Thursday, Texas Landowner to Explain that No National Emergency Exists in Her Backyard

Feb. 27, 2019

MEDIA ADVISORY

On Thursday, Texas Landowner to Explain that No National Emergency Exists in Her Backyard

Nayda Alvarez, Plaintiff in Lawsuit Challenging Emergency Declaration, Will Testify Before House Lawmakers 

WHAT: Testimony before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, on The National Emergencies Act of 1976. Nayda Alvarez, one of four Texas plaintiffs represented by Public Citizen in a lawsuit challenging a Feb. 15 national emergency declaration issued by President Donald Trump, will testify Thursday about the reality of living on the border in South Texas. Trump issued the declaration to claim funding for a border wall that Congress refused to fund.

Alvarez will be available to talk to press after the hearing.

Alvarez’s home in Starr County is located about 200 feet from the Rio Grande river and just feet from where the government would seek to build a wall. If the wall is constructed on her property, Alvarez would lose virtually her entire backyard and land that has been in her family for at least five generations.

Public Citizen’s suit was the first to be filed against Trump’s national emergency declaration. Public Citizen is representing the Frontera Audubon Society and three Texas landowners whose property will be lost in the construction of a border wall. As Alvarez wrote in a USA Today op-ed and will tell lawmakers, there is no invasion of immigrants in South Texas – in fact, she can’t remember ever seeing a migrant cross her property: “There is no need for a wall across my and my family’s property. No emergency exists here.”

Alvarez will be on a panel with three others.

WHEN: 12 p.m. EST, Thurs., Feb. 28

WHO: Nayda Alvarez, one of four Texas plaintiffs in a law suit filed on their behalf by Public Citizen

WHERE: 2141 Rayburn House Office Building
45 Independence Ave. SW, Washington, D.C.