Cycling the Rio Grande as Trump’s Wall Looms

The sun is low over Nuevo Laredo as David Patricio and three friends start unloading gravel and mountain bikes for their evening ride along the Rio Grande, but the weather is still in the 90s and the humidity stifling.

In the early 2000s, the City of Laredo began buying up land to create a series of parks along the river. Those parks are now threatened by President Donald Trump’s planned border wall. But as it turns out, the same Border Patrol that wants to wall off Laredo from the Rio Grande has provided access to the undeveloped river vega, or floodplain. The agency paid for a caliche road that runs for several miles along the river through Laredo, connecting pieces of public land.

Ironically, this man-made scar that environmentalists say is detrimental to the unique Rio Grande ecosystem has created a way for Laredoans like Patricio to access the city’s undera...