Texas offers thousands of acres to Trump for ‘deportation facilities’

Italian village offers $1 homes to Americans fleeing Trump

The state of Texas has offered thousands of acres of land to Donald Trump “to construct deportation facilities”.

Texas land commissioner Dawn Buckingham wrote in a letter to Trump that his “office is fully prepared to enter into an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or the US border patrol to allow a facility to be built for the processing, detention, and coordination of the largest deportation of violent criminals in the nation’s history.”

In October, Buckingham’s office, the Texas general land office (GLO), purchased 355,000 acres of land – equivalent to half the size of Rhode Island. Of this, 1,402 acres has been offered to the federal government.

The land sits on a ranch in Starr county in the Rio Grande Valley on the US-Mexico border. Terms of the purchase were not disclosed, but Buckingham writes in his letter that the land was purchased from a woman who previously refused to let state officials build a border wall on her property. Now, the state plans to build 1.5 miles of the border wall where they were once denied.

The rest of the 353, 598 acres, collectively known as “Brewster Ranch”, located near Big Bend national park, were purchased in October for roughly $245m from billionaire and tobacco tycoon Brad Kelley, the state’s largest private landowner. It was one of the most significant public purchases of land in the history of Texas.

Such an offer to Trump comes in wake of campaign where he promised immigration crackdowns. Trump confirmed on Monday that he plans to declare a national emergency and activate the US military to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.

This is as a small village on the Italian island of Sardinia, Ollolai, is extending an invitation to Americans unsettled by the outcome of the recent U.S. presidential election which saw Trump re-elected. The village, which has been battling decades of depopulation, is offering dilapidated homes for as little as one euro (approximately $1.05) to entice new residents.

The mayor of the town of Ollolai, Mayor Francesco Columbu, told CNN that a new website has been launched specifically to attract American expats.