No Border Wall

Newt Promises New Walls

2012-01-30T21:10:00.003-06:00

By Scott Nicol

Newt Gingrich surged ahead of the pack in the South Carolina primary, soundly defeating his Republican rivals as the “anybody-but-Romney” contingent of the party appeared, for the moment, to have settled on him.

Hoping to show that he is serious about border enforcement, and to attract the voting bloc that abandoned Perry when they found out that he favored allowing undocumented students to pay in-state tuition, last fall Newt followed Michelle Bachmann’s lead and signed a pledge to line the southern border with double-layered border walls by 2013.

The pledge was written by Americans for Securing the Border, whose national chairman is the former chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party, Van D. Hipp Jr. Mr. Hipp’s push for enforcement of immigration laws is ironic, considering his own legal status. He is a convicted felon, who in 1997 pled guilty to accepting illegal campaign contributions. The Herald-Journal of Spartanburg, South Carolina, reported that, “In return for the guilty plea, the government dismissed a 14-count fraud and money laundering indictment stemming from operation of a phone sex business.”

Having lost his job with the Republican Party, Van D. Hipp is now a lobbyist and consultant for defense contractors who want to get work from the Department of Homeland Security. If Newt is elected and follows through on his promise it could mean a lot more business for Hipp’s clients.

To date, close to $3 billion has been spent on border walls. A mile of wall averages $ 7.5 million to build, though some cost much more. Levee-walls in Hidalgo County, Texas, cost $12 million a mile, with the Hidalgo County Drainage District ponying up $44 million, roughly a third of the cost. Walls through the rugged Otay Mountain Wilderness area cost $16 million per mile, and right now in San Diego $4.3 million is being spent to replace a section that runs for just 300 feet across the beach before plunging into the ocean.

650 miles, or around 1/3 of the southern border, already has either single-layered pedestrian walls or vehicle barriers. Adding another layer to the existing walls, replacing vehicle barriers with pedestrian walls, and building 1,300 miles of new wall would cost tens, and possibly hundreds, of billions more, at a time when Congress is trying to cut trillions from existing programs.

President Bush’s Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, oversaw the construction of most of the walls that now line the southern border. From that vantage he also saw the huge amounts of money that went into them. It is no surprise then that shortly after he left the Department of Homeland Security he founded the Chertoff Group, which helps big defense companies land Department of Homeland Security contracts. Many other top officials have quit DHS to join the Chertoff Group and cash in on their Homeland Security connections.

When the “underwear bomber” attempted to blow up a passenger plane a few months after he left DHS, former Secretary Chertoff granted dozens of interviews in which he gave advice on how the U.S. could prevent similar assaults. Again and again he said that full body scanners were the best solution. The Transportation Safety Administration, which falls under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security, subsequently required that airports install body scanners. Chertoff failed to mention in the first round of interviews that the company that made the body scanners was a client of the Chertoff Group. It is safe to assume that they were pleased with the return on their investment.

Hipp apparently hopes to emulate Chertoff and get his slice of the Homeland Security pie. Anything he can do to make that pie fatter, such as convincing the next president to commit to building more border walls, improves his odds of getting a piece. The hundreds of private landowners, and mile after mile of wildlife refuges, that the new walls would harm are of no more concern to Hipp than the 400 landowners whose property has already been taken or the damage walls have already inflicted on the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge were to Chertoff. In their eyes condemnations and habitat destruction are just the cost of doing business.
Of course those are costs paid by someone else; Chertoff and Hipp only reap the profits.

For Gingrich, signing Hipp’s border wall pledge is just good politics. On the one hand, it helps him look tough on immigration and border security. And following the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, allowing corporations masquerading as people to spend unlimited sums on elections, cozying up to contractors who have made millions off of border security, and might like to see more contracts come their way, could prove to be quite lucrative.

Border walls are all about money and politics, not immigration or drug control. Kiewit does not have to refund the millions it was paid to build walls, even though those walls only take a couple of minutes to climb. Boeing gets to keep the huge sums that it received to build virtual fences that never worked. Like the phone sex business in the nineties, Homeland Security contracts are a sure-fire way for the unscrupulous to rake in big money, and Newt has pledged that if he is elected president the cash will keep on coming.

Frontier Injustice: Not Even the Pacific Ocean is Safe from Our Pernicious Effort to Wall Off the Border

2012-01-02T10:17:00.004-06:00

by Char Miller

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has a nasty habit of rubbing salt into wounds, fresh and old.

Just ask anyone who lives along the Rio Grande Valley, makes their home in the Sonoran Desert covering large sections of northwest Mexico and southwest Arizona, or inhabits the dense sprawl of those entwined cities, San Diego and Tijuana. Since 2006, wherever DHS has pounded down its infamous Border Wall, it has chopped up habitats human and natural, severing longstanding cultural links and environmental connections between the U.S. and Mexico. It is a haunting reminder that the post-9/11 hunt for national security has generated its own insecurities.

The most recent (and stinging) example of this painful paradox came in late November. That's when DHS began construction of the latest segment of the wall, dubbed the Surf Fence Project. This 18-foot-high barrier, hung on six-inch rust-proof steel piping, is being pile-driven out 300 feet into the Pacific Ocean. The goal is fortify Imperial Beach, making it impregnable redoubt, the first line of defense for San Diego.

"There is a clear operational need for this development," Michael Hance, field operation supervisor with the U.S. Border Patrol, told the BBC. "The southern side of the border is densely populated and in the past many people found an easy way into the US through these beaches. We need physical infrastructure as well as border agents in the area."

As for the urgency to thrust this wall so deep into the pounding surf, local border patrol agents point to the capture in November of several undocumented migrants attempting to swim around the current fencing.

At a cost of $4.3 million, this new wall will be a very expensive form of deterrent. But Assistant Chief Patrol Agent Bruce Parks assured the LA Times that the exorbitant price tag (amounting to $143,333.33 per foot!) is worth every penny, for this stretch of beach "still has the potential to be very dangerous, as beautiful as it is."

I'd like to think that Parks is just being silly: do we really spend this much money building a wall because of the potential that this stretch of seaside can be a dangerous gateway into the U.S.? But he's not being flippant. After five years of listening to the Border Patrol and its parent department, DHS, say similar things every time they have announced the launch of yet another segment to the 670-mile border wall, it is clear that there is a pattern to their patter.

If, as DHS asserts, the land and sea are so threatening; if the people who would cross these stretches of our sovereign territory are judged to be so unsafe, then we must militarize the first while demonizing the second. Every mile of steel pole and three-ply fencing, every searchlight, movement sensor, high-flying drone, and armed guard is a reflection of this American war on nature and the Other. A terrorism that may be as malevolent as the threat this thick bulwark is supposed to repel.

This deliberate violence against land and people is underscored in the title of a new and insightful collection of essays on the geopolitics of the borderlands: Wounded Border/Frontera-Herida. The injuries that its ten chapters probe cover a wide range: the deeply flawed law enforcement and judicial systems on both sides of the border; the inequities and humiliations that migrants face in U.S. labor markets desperate for low-wage, expendable workers (pressure that women disproportionately bear); the environmental despoliation that comes from a globalized economy that created maquiladoras in Mexico, industries whose toxic effluent damages ground and surface waters, pollutes the air, and poisons adjacent neighborhoods. The border is a fraught landscape.

No shock, this contested physical space is also a social construct. As co-editor Justin Akers Chacón argues: "Since its inception as a boundary imposed by war of expansion, the U.S.-Mexico border has functioned in a dualistic manner. It has served both as a gateway to economic opportunity and as a barrier that creates and maintains unequal power relationships." Out of this duality, he writes, flows "the identities of both people in relationship to each other," becoming a "signifier of status that sustains each population in its own form of isolation." Although the proponents of globalization like to argue that this force is flattening the distinctions between counties and cultures, the U.S. border wall stands in stark refutation, a vertical and visible barrier. Bluntly divisive.

Emblematic of the rending of the social fabric that this enforced divide can produce is Friendship Park. Its name once conveyed its binational significance: First Lady Pat Nixon was on site at its ceremonial opening in 1971, there celebrating the site that memorialized the two nation's close relationship. "There should be no more fences," she declared.

That amity turned into animosity when, as a result of the 2006 Secure Fence Act that the George W. Bush administration promulgated, DHS built a series of fences that turned the park into a penitentiary. "New rules for public access to the gathering place leave families feeling like they have entered a maximum security prison on visiting day," writes Jill Holslin at her blog At the Edges. Any who would like to enter the park today must "wait outside the border wall 150 feet away from Friendship Park, seek permission to enter a locked gate, then be escorted by a border patrol agent in a 'security zone,' a five-foot tall pedestrian barrier that confines the space of the concrete circle of Friendship Park." Detention, surveillance, enforcement: these are the markers of a "containment society."

More egregious still is the latest effort to cordon off the United States, our arrogant ambition to split the Pacific Ocean in two.

Char Miller is the Director and W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis at Pomona College, and editor of the just-published "Cities and Nature in the American West." This article originally appeared on KCET, and is reproduced with the author's permission.

A Wall in a River is a Dam

2011-10-24T21:16:00.005-05:00

by Scott Nicol

In this week’s Republican debate Bachmann, Cain, and Romney each fought to prove that if elected President they would build longer, taller, and more deadly walls than their opponents. In the run up to the event, Representative Bahmann vowed that the length of her wall “will be every mile, it will be every yard, it will be every foot, it will be every inch of that border.” Not to be outdone, Herman Cain said, “It’s going to be 20 feet high. It’s going to have barbed wire on the top. It’s going to be electrified. And there’s going to be a sign on the other side saying, ‘It will kill you — Warning.’”

In an effort to please politicians by erecting mile after mile of border wall, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) continues to push for new walls in the floodplain between the Rio Grande and the Texas towns of Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos. To convince the International Boundary Water Commission (IBWC) to go along, CBP has tried to paper over the risk of increased flooding with more than a million dollars worth of reports and flood models. Walls in the floodplain are likely to either deflect water into Mexican cities or bottle it up in U.S. ones, and so far IBWC has rejected CBP’s claims to the contrary.

Last June CBP paid Baker Engineering for yet another flood model, which was used over the summer to pressure IBWC to reverse its position. The Sierra Club recently received a copy as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request.

The new flood model makes it clear that no changes in the border walls themselves are being considered. The walls’ locations are the same as those mapped out in a Baker report from 2009. They are still designed to split flood waters, diverting a portion of the flow into these three communities. The only difference is that the newer model uses a different computer program, allowing for more detail.

In 2009 CBP did not know what type of border wall they would like to build, so Baker’s model imagined a solid slab. Now CBP says that they plan to use a bollard design, similar to the walls built to the north of the levees in Cameron county. But in Cameron county the levees would keep flood waters away from the border wall, whereas the new walls would be in the floodplain, where there are no levees, and would be inundated if the Rio Grande were swollen by a major flood.

For this report, Baker assumed that debris in the bollards would block no more than 10% - 25% of the water. That led to the conclusion that walls would have minimal impacts. But the assumption that between 75% and 90% of the water in a major flood would pass harmlessly through the wall seems to be based on wishful thinking at best, or a desire to rig the model’s results at worst.

Flooding rivers pick up large amounts of debris, from trash to trees, and carry it along until they encounter an obstruction. Bollards spaced a few inches apart may allow crystal clear water to pass through, but in a flood debris will pile up. As the debris accumulates it blocks more and more water, and the border wall acts more and more like a dam.

This should not be news to CBP. The border walls that they have already built in Arizona, and which they promised would have no impact on flooding, have caused tremendous flood damage.

On July 12, 2008, seasonal monsoon rains swept through northern Mexico and southern Arizona. In the sister cities of Nogales, Sonora and Nogales, Arizona the border wall acted as a dam. In addition to the wall built above ground it was later revealed that DHS had constructed a wall in a storm drain that passes beneath both cities without informing local officials or the International Boundary Water Commission. Water in the storm drain backed up and burst through the roof, adding to the flooding in the streets. Two people drowned, and millions of dollars of damage was sustained by Mexican businesses and residents.

The same storm caused flooding in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. CBP had stated categorically that border walls crossing washes in the monument, using a design similar to that proposed for the new South Texas sections, would be water permeable and therefore would not impact flooding. Grate openings 6 inches high and 24 inches wide that were built into the base of the wall were supposed to allow water to pass through, but they quickly became clogged with debris. The wall then acted as a dam, with water piling up behind it 2 to 7 feet deep. Backed up flood waters then traveled along the wall in search of an outlet, which was found at the Lukeville, Arizona port of entry, causing millions of dollars in damage to private and federal property.

Following this event, Baker Engineering was paid to run the length of the border wall from El Paso to San Diego and produce a report on the problems posed by the many walls that cross stream beds and washes. They documented “debris build-up which sometimes reached a height of 6 feet.” Their report concluded that, “fencing obstructs drainage flow every time a wash is crossed. With additional debris build-up, the International Boundary Water Commission’s (IBWC’s) criteria for rise in water surface elevations (set at 6” in rural areas and 3” in urban areas) can quickly be exceeded.”

Flood gates were installed, at a cost of over $24 million, in an attempt to prevent a repeat of the 2008 flooding. These gates are massive, and to work require Border Patrol agents to predict a flood, drive into a wash ahead of the water, throw a cable over a bar at the top of the wall, hook it to the top of the gate, and use their Jeep’s winch to pull the gate up. Then the agents need to get out of the wash and get to high ground. If they are not quick enough, they could be swept away or slammed into the wall by raging flood waters. If they manage to get out of the way they may be forced to wait on high ground between flooded washes until the waters recede.

Last August one of the sections of Arizona border wall that CBP had retrofitted with flood gates was knocked over and washed away by the force of flood waters after just over two inches of rain fell. Debris build-up had again turned the wall into a dam, just as it had in 2008. In this case, instead of following the wall to the nearest port of entry, the debris piled higher and higher the water poured over the top like a waterfall. The falling water tore away the wall’s foundation at the same time as the weight and pressure of the water pushed against the wall with increasing force. A forty-foot wide section of border wall fell.

Border Patrol spokesman Lloyd Easterling blamed the wall’s failure on human error, apparently because agents had not gone into washes ahead of the flash flood to open flood gates.

But the problem does not lie with patrol agents who cannot predict the weather, or don’t want to drive into a riverbed during a flood. The problem is higher up CBP’s command structure, with administrators who are so fixated on building walls, and thereby pleasing their superiors, that they overlook a basic fact:

A wall in a river is a dam.

It is time for Customs and Border Protection to face up to the fact that when they build walls in flood-prone areas, they may be able to ignore the impacts on paper, but not in the real world. The walls that they are pushing in Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos will have a disastrous impact on the very homeland that they are supposed to protect. Customs and Border Protection needs to ignore political pressure and give up on these last sections of border wall, before they do any more damage.

The June 2011 flood model for walls in Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos can be downloaded here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/68844504/June-2011-CBP-Hydrology-Report-for-Border-Wall-Sections-O-1-O-2-O-3

Assault on Public Lands and Environmental Laws up for a House Vote

2011-10-04T00:02:00.005-05:00

By Scott Nicol

How does waiving the Endangered Species Act in Hawaii help secure the U.S. – Mexico border?

Simple. It doesn’t.

But that obvious fact is irrelevant to Representative Rob Bishop of Utah, author of the National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act (HR 1505). Bishop claims that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) cannot enforce immigration laws without violating the rest of our nation’s laws, so his bill waives 36 federal laws within 100 miles of the U.S. – Mexico border, the U.S. – Canada border, and all U.S. coastlines, for anything that DHS may want to do.

Most of the laws that HR 1505 tosses aside, including the Endangered Species Act, Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and Safe Drinking Water Act, protect the environment, but it also waives laws like the Farmland Policy Protection Act and the American Indian Religious Freedom Act.

This bill is an expansion of the Real ID Act, which gave the Secretary of Homeland Security the authority to waive local, state, and federal laws to build walls along the southern border.

The existing Real ID Act waivers, which HR 1505 expands, have caused tremendous environmental damage. To build border walls 530,000 cubic yards of rock was blasted from mountainsides in the Otay Mountain Wilderness Area; walls have caused serious flooding in the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument; and walls fragment the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, which was established for the preservation of endangered ocelots. Without the waiver, these walls would be illegal.

Bishop’s bill would also give DHS the run of all federally owned lands, in all 50 states, with absolutely no restrictions. Has a lack of access to the Everglades, or Hawaii’s Volcanoes National Park, or the lawn around the Statue of Liberty, prevented DHS from securing the southern border?

Not according to the Border Patrol.

The irony is that the Border Patrol, which operates under DHS’ umbrella, has not asked for the power to overrule land managers or ignore environmental laws. Last spring the Government Accountability Office found that, “Most agents reported that land management laws have had no effect on Border Patrol’s overall measure of border security.”

When Rep. Bishop introduced a similar bill last year Brandon Judd of the National Border Patrol Council said, “I would definitely look and see if there are some restrictions that are too restrictive. But to get rid of all restrictions, you would destroy the land.”

Representative Bishop has a long history of attacking protected lands and environmental regulations. He is currently pushing for a repeal of the Antiquities Act and a ban on new National Monuments. HR 1505 is just more of the same.

This Wednesday the National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act will be up for a vote in the House Natural Resources Committee, which Rep. Bishop, in a bit of Orwellian irony, chairs. Packed with Tea Party darlings like Bishop, the bill is almost certain to pass and be sent on to the full House of Representatives.

This is the week to contact your representatives and tell them that HR 1505 is not about protecting our nation. It is an assault on federal lands and environmental laws using border security as a convenient cover, nothing more.

For more information, visit www.sierraclub.org/borderlands.

CBP Willing to Risk Flooding to Erect New Walls in Roma, Rio Grande City and Los Ebanos

2011-09-16T15:22:00.006-05:00

By Scott Nicol

It was just over a year ago that the rising waters of the Rio Grande prompted the mandatory evacuation of Los Ebanos, Texas. Residents rushed to grab what they could before floodwaters cut off the town.

Before the flood, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) was pressuring the U.S. half of the International Boundary Water Commission (USIBWC) to approve the construction of border walls through Los Ebanos, as well as Rio Grande City and Roma, that could have worsened the flooding. CBP had even gone so far as to request that the US half of the International Boundary Water Commission act “unilaterally” and approve walls in the floodplain despite the objections of the Mexican half.

The plans for border walls drafted after the passage of the Secure Fence Act showed South Texas on the receiving end of 69 miles of border wall in 21 disconnected sections. The westernmost three sections, designated O-1, O-2, and O-3, were to be through the communities of Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos.

In 2008 the US International Boundary Water Commission made it clear that any walls built along the Rio Grande must comply with US-Mexico treaties. The Real ID Act allowed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Customs and Border Protection’s parent agency, to waive all federal, state, and local laws, but not treaties. Walls built in the flood plain adjacent to the Rio Grande might deflect flood waters towards Mexico, causing flood damage to Mexican communities. Deflection might also cause the river to settle into a new channel farther to the south, which would effectively change the location of the US-Mexico boundary. Either of these would be a treaty violation.

In Cameron County and most of Hidalgo our treaty obligations meant that border walls could not be built between the existing flood control levees and the river, so walls were constructed on, in, or north of the levees. Those walls are, for the most part, finished. But unlike the downriver sections, Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos do not have USIBWC flood control levees. The border walls in these three communities would therefore be in the flood plain.

Because of the wall’s likely flood impacts USIBWC rejected these three sections of border wall.

A few days after the 2008 elections CBP informed Representative Cuellar, whose district encompasses these communities, that these border wall sections were “on hold.” At the time Cuellar said, “This is a big victory.” He went on to tell the Associated Press, “We're hoping that this will allow us to work with the next president to find ... alternative methods for security."

Representative Cuellar’s constituents also hoped that that would be the last they would hear of plans to wall off their towns from the river, but in a May, 2010 report on the Secure Border Initiative (which includes both solid and “virtual” border walls) the Government Accountability Office stated, “CBP plans to construct an additional 14 miles of pedestrian fencing in the Rio Grande Valley sector.” These 14 miles are the combined Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos sections.

Documents uncovered by the Sierra Club through a Freedom of Information Act request over the last year demonstrate that, in fact, the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection continued to push for the construction of these walls, and were willing to disregard our treaty obligations and likely problems with flooding to do so.

A Customs and Border Protection “Fence Status Brief” dated April 27, 2009 reveals that to build the previously rejected walls CBP had decided upon a new plan. They would not change the design or location of the walls, or, better yet, give up on them entirely. Instead it says, “the new strategy involves developing a new floodplain model” and that, unlike the old model approved by USIBWC that “predicted noteworthy floodplain impacts from the fence,” “this model will demonstrate the impacts of the proposed fence will be minimal.”

The verb tense - "this model will demonstrate" - is important. It appears that CBP determined the outcome in advance, rather than commissioning an honest, unbiased model that would accurately describe the effects of structures built in the floodplain.

The “new flood plain model”, prepared by Baker Engineering, was completed in December 2009. Presented to CBP eight months after their fence status brief forecast its findings, its conclusion fit the earlier prediction precisely. The “noteworthy floodplain impacts” of building border walls in a floodplain that were predicted just a year earlier disappeared; instead, Baker now claimed that walls would have a “minimal effect on the Rio Grande floodplain.”

Baker decided this without even knowing what type of border wall design would be used. In 2008, CBP proposed a number of designs that were touted as either allowing floodwaters to pass through without being dammed up, or able to be removed before rising water reached them. USIBWC rejected all of these unrealistic schemes. In their 2009 report Baker modeled the border wall as an 18’ high, impermeable wall, with the specific design, whether concrete or steel, posts or mesh or slabs, to be determined later. Since CBP apparently told Baker what the outcome of their modeling would be before they began, it seems that such details were unimportant.

One striking conclusion of Baker’s “new flood plain model” was that in the communities of Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos, border walls would “split” the flooding river. It states that for each wall segment, “Downstream of the flow split location, the flow continues in a north branch and a south branch on either side of the fence. The flow combines downstream of the point where the fence ends.”

This splitting is intentional. In the case of Rio Grande City, the wall was modeled with a 500 foot-wide opening in the middle specifically intended to split flood waters and send a portion of them north. Diverting water to the north of the border wall, into property on the US side of the river, means that less is deflected into Mexico. In this way CBP hopes to avoid flooding Mexican communities, and possibly pushing the Rio Grande into a new channel. Walls built in a floodplain will either deflect or divert floodwater, and the only real question is who is going to be on the receiving end.

Each of these wall sections begins upstream of a town and ends downstream of it. They begin close to the river, then the river and wall get farther apart before coming back together. So flood water that might not have reached properties where the proposed wall is farthest from the river will, with a wall in place, have “split” floodwaters channeled directly to them.

This is particularly striking for the Los Ebanos section. The community of Los Ebanos is nestled at the top of a deep bend in the river. The proposed wall would begin next to the Rio Grande at the top of this bend. While the river turns and heads due south, away from homes and the local school, the wall heads due east, directly towards them. That means that water that might have otherwise followed the river and flowed away from Los Ebanos will be split off by the wall, and be diverted into it. On the other side of town, instead of allowing the split flood waters to pour back into the Rio Grande, the wall makes a ninety degree turn, from east to north. Water that had been split off from the flooded river would therefore be bottled up in Los Ebanos.

A Customs and Border Protection Fence Status Brief dated January 20, 2010, written following the presentation of the “new flood plain model” to the Army Corps of Engineers and USIBWC, says that, “[acting USIBWC Commissioner] Ruth agreed no additional modeling is required and to ‘informally’ discuss the fence segments with the new Mexican IBWC Commissioner to determine if he will support.” The brief goes on to state that, “If it appears Mexico will continue to oppose fencing, CBP/DHS and IBWC/DOS [Department of State] to discuss potential unilateral decision to proceed with construction.”

A “unilateral decision” regarding the Rio Grande floodplain, taken by the US half of the International Boundary Water Commission in the face of opposition by the Mexican half, would be a serious treaty violation. The United States would essentially be challenging Mexico to try to stop us from building illegal walls.

On January 21, 2010, acting USIBWC Commissioner Ruth stepped aside, and Edward Drusina became the new commissioner. On his first day in office Commissioner Drusina wrote a letter to David Aguilar, the acting Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection. He stated that, after examining the model that CBP had commissioned, “the USIBWC is not in a position to approve construction of the O-1, O-2 and O-3 fence projects.”

Rather than accept the fact that walls built in the Rio Grande floodplain will have unacceptable impacts, CBP repeatedly pressed the USIBWC to reverse its decision. On February 2, 2010, Aguilar responded to Drusina, “we respectfully request that the USIBWC and Department of State reconsider your position and approve a unilateral decision to allow us to proceed with the design and construction of the O-1, O-2 and O-3 fence segments.”

On July 20, just one week after the flooding Rio Grande forced the mandatory evacuation of Los Ebanos, CBP presented a briefing to the State Department on these three border wall sections. During the briefing CBP claimed that they had already spent “+$1M in “design analysis” costs”, and said that, “we need IBWC and Department of State’s support for an unilateral decision to proceed with the fence construction.”

USIBWC stood firm, and on September 17, 2010, Comissioner Drusina again denied CBP permission to build new walls in the Rio Grande flood plain. CBP continued to push back, and a month later the new CBP Commissioner, Alan Bersin, wrote to USIBWC, asking that they reconsider and complaining about “Mexico’s recent opposition to border fencing regardless of hydraulic modeling results.”

Bersin’s October 2010 letter to USIBWC is the most recent document uncovered by the Sierra Club’s Freedom of Information Act request. The Club was told that to obtain newer documents another request would have to be filed. One has, but it may take months for us to begin receiving more documents.

We have learned through a recent conversation with representatives of the USIBWC and State Department that following the October 2010 letter Commissioners Bersin and Drusina held at least two meetings to discuss the Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos walls. As a result of those meetings Baker Engineering was commissioned to develop yet another flood model. That model was completed last spring, and was reviewed by the Army Corps. of Engineers and USIBWC over the summer. It has not been released to the public.

While we hope that USIBWC continues to act in the best interests of the residents of these three communities and live up to its treaty obligations in the face of pressure from Customs and Border Protection, we have no guarantees. The discussions between these two agencies are being held behind closed doors, with landowners and community leaders kept out of the room. It may be months before we are able to see a copy of the latest flood model, and the only announcement that new border walls have been approved may be the arrival of construction crews.

US Representative Henry Cuellar, who represents Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos in Washington, should ensure that his constituents are kept informed and given a seat at the table when walls that could channel flood waters into their homes and property are discussed. As the ranking member of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security, he has the power to demand that CBP hold open public hearings in each of these communities. Customs and Border Protection owes residents the decency of a face to face explanation, before they build new border walls that could put people’s lives and properties at risk.

Congressional Push Continues to Gut Environmental Protections Along U.S. Borders

2011-09-14T15:45:00.004-05:00

The Center for Biological Diversity has issued the following press release. No Border Wall is in complete agreement, and urges rational members of Congress to reject McCain's amendment to the DHS appropriations bill, along with similar measures in the House, most notably HR 1505.

TUCSON, Ariz.— Under the guise of border security, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) offered an amendment to the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill today that would grant border-enforcement agencies free rein on federal lands within 300 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border. After criticism from colleagues in his own party that the 300-mile limit went far beyond the scope of border-enforcement activities, McCain scaled it back to 100 miles, and the amendment was added to the bill.

“Politicians are playing games with important border-security legislation at the expense of laws that protect clean air, water and endangered species,” said Randy Serraglio, a conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This amendment is unnecessary, unwanted and threatens significant harm to the wildlife, natural landscapes and people of the border region.”

The McCain amendment introduced today, similar to a bill proposed earlier this year by McCain and Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), does not specifically name any laws, but its guarantee of unfettered access for border-enforcement agencies on federal lands effectively neutralizes protections afforded by the Endangered Species Act, Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. Existing law permits essential border-security activities even in designated wilderness areas, and an existing memorandum of understanding between Homeland Security and the Department of the Interior provides for cooperation between land managers and border agencies.

“Despite repeated statements and congressional testimony from border-security agencies that they neither want nor need the authority granted in this amendment, radical anti-environment forces in Congress continue to push this hoax on the American people,” said Serraglio. “The losers in this game will be jaguars, ocelots, Sonoran pronghorn and residents of border communities that will no longer benefit from fundamental protections that allow them to live and thrive in a healthy environment.”

The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office concluded in a recent report that access to federal lands has not been limited in 22 of 26 sectors along the border, and that the only problems that have occurred in other sectors have been “minor delays.” Meanwhile, between 8,000 and 20,000 miles of wildcat roads have been blazed through a wilderness area in southern Arizona’s Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, a majority of which, in recent years, has been caused by enforcement activities, according to a July report by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“This amendment pretends to address a problem that does not exist,” said Serraglio. “Clearly, access to federal lands for border-security personnel is not a significant issue in achieving operational control of the border. At best, the McCain amendment is a case of political grandstanding.”

“The false premise inherent in this proposal is that border security and a healthy environment are somehow mutually exclusive,” said Serraglio. “The truth is just the opposite. It has been shown time and again that collaboration between land managers and security agencies enhances both border security and protection of the diverse and vibrant landscapes of the borderlands.”

http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2011/border-security-09-14-2011.html

New Study: Border Hysteria Imperils Wildlife

2011-08-29T15:25:00.005-05:00

by Dan Millis

In a Congress plagued by immigration hysteria, none is more gravely afflicted than South Carolina’s Republican Senator Jim DeMint. Twice in two weeks he added border pork to Senate bills, both times calling for 300-plus miles of walls to be imposed between the U.S. and Mexico. These are the fourth and fifth times in less than two years that he has made such attempts.

Delirious and angry lawmakers like DeMint seem oblivious to the 650 miles of barriers and walls that already occupy the Southwest’s borderlands, exacting high costs on taxpayers and public lands. Another side effect these lawmakers suffer is an acute indifference to the impacts caused by their border madness.

A new study in the Diversity and Distributions journal identifies 49 species put most at risk by border walls and areas of intensive human land use along the U.S.-Mexico border. The study only considers amphibian, reptile, and non-volant (don't fly) mammal species, and identifies California, the Sky Islands, the Gulf Coast as the three regions most heavily impacted.

One unique aspect of this study is that it doesn’t just look at current impacts wrought by existing border walls and areas with a heavy human footprint. Potential future impacts from border wall expansions such as those proposed by DeMint are also taken into consideration, and the results are sobering:

This graph from the study shows a horizontal base line representing our 2,000 mile border with Mexico. The three faint vertical lines in the left half of the graph represent the state borders between California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. The fatter horizontal line sitting atop the baseline shows where the taller “pedestrian” (10-25 feet tall) border walls are located along the border.

Then there is the vertical ‘species’ scale, which includes only species from the sample set that have already been listed as threatened, either binationally or by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. The dashed line represents how many of these already-threatened species are put in grave danger by existing “pedestrian” border walls in each geographic location along the border. You’ll notice that there are few such species, which may be expected when working with such a small sample set of species to begin with.

However, the solid line is much less benign, with the number of vulnerable species spiking most dramatically here in Arizona (to the right [East] of first faint vertical line [CA-AZ border]). This line represents the number of already threatened species that would be pushed to the brink if proposals like DeMint’s were passed and border walls came to occupy even more precious habitat.

A key finding of the study states, "The REAL ID Act should be amended to reinstate environmental regulation of border security efforts." The REAL ID waiver of more than 30 vital federal protection laws along the border allowed walls to be built in violation of the Wilderness Act, the Endangered Species Act, and more.

Dan Millis is a Sierra Club Borderlands campaign organizer. To learn more about the Sierra Club's Borderlands Campaign visit http://sierraclub.org/borderlands/

Our Worst Fears about the Border Wall Come True

2011-08-15T20:59:00.003-05:00

By Stefanie Herweck

More human beings would die alone in remote deserts. Endangered species would be pushed to the brink. These were the fears that led humanitarians, environmentalists, and border residents to object to the walls along the U.S.-Mexico border called for by the Secure Fence Act of 2006. With 650 miles built, this summer has brought news that these fears are tragically coming true.

The journey taken by migrant men, women and children who set out across the U.S.-Mexico border has always been risky. But border walls have rerouted migrants away from the safety of urban areas and forced them to walk for greater distances over treacherous mountains and through searing deserts. All too easily they can become fatigued, dehydrated, and unable to go on. In too many cases, they die alone in remote areas.

This month an Arizona Daily Star analysis found that migrants today are almost three times more likely to die on their journey than people who crossed in 2006, the year before the walls began to go up. In fact, the rate of death—the number of deaths per 100,000 Border Patrol apprehensions—continues to increase even as fewer people are making the trek across the border.

Before the walls, in 2006, there were just 46 known deaths per 100,000 Border Patrol apprehensions. By 2010 the number had jumped to 118 known deaths per 100,000 apprehensions, and so far 2011 already has a death rate of 129 per 100,000.
These human beings are also dying deeper in the desert and much further from roads than ever before. Because of the remoteness of the areas in which they die, many of the bodies discovered are just skeletal remains. Such are the real and tragic consequences of border walls.

The same walls that are pushing crossers deeper into deadly terrain slice though nature preserves that were established to protect endangered species. The Otay Mountain Wilderness Area, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, and Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge have seen critical wildlife habitat divided by walls. Environmentalists have argued that vulnerable species like the ocelot, whose U.S. population is less than 100 individuals in South Texas, would be walled off and trapped in small fragments of habitat. Without sufficient food, water, and potential mates, the population would dwindle.

Now scientists are beginning to uncover just how extensive the wall’s impacts are likely to be on endangered species. A recent article published in the journal Diversity and Distributions found that border walls impact 23 endangered species border-wide. Some species in California are blocked from as much as 75 percent of their ranges, a circumstance that makes the isolated populations extremely vulnerable to disease or natural disasters. The study also found that in South Texas border walls impact between 60 percent and 70 percent of the habitat set aside for endangered ocelots in the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge.

In 2008 the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recognized that the border wall had damaged wildlife refuges along the border, and Congress appropriated $50 million to mitigate the effects of the wall border-wide. Money was promised to the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge to purchase land to replace the ocelot habitat that the border walls fragmented. But after DHS withheld the money for years, Congress took back the funds. DHS has no further plans to fix any of the environmental damage that its border walls have caused.

As predicted, the border wall has exacerbated the ongoing humanitarian crisis of migrant deaths and has devastated the environment. Nevertheless, some in Congress are calling for more walls and looking to strip border communities of their environmental protections under the pretense of border security.

Dan Millis has witnessed first-hand the human tragedy and environmental devastation unfolding daily along the U.S.-Mexico border. Shortly after finding the lifeless body of a young girl along a migrant trail in Arizona, Dan was convicted of littering for leaving bottles of clean water along trails in the same area. He now works for the Sierra Club in Tucson fighting on behalf of the people and places victimized by border walls and enforcement-only politics.

Dan will visit Texas' Rio Grande Valley to share his experiences, and discuss the impacts of flawed U.S. border policy and how you can make a difference on Monday evening, August 22nd at 7:00 pm at Galeria 409 in Brownsville and on Tuesday August 23rd at 7:00 pm at St. John the Baptist Parish Hall in San Juan. For more information and directions, visit valleygreenspace.wordpress.com.

As border residents we need to educate ourselves about the terrible consequences of border walls and enforcement-only policies all along the border, and then inform our elected leaders.

Stefanie Herweck is chair of the Lower Rio Grande Valley Sierra Club.

New Amendments Threaten Protected Lands

2011-07-29T22:29:00.007-05:00

US representative Gosar has introduced two amendments (no. 20 and 55) to the Department of the Interior's annual appropriations bill that would do tremendous damage to our nation's protected federal lands. Representative Gosar’s (R-AZ) amendment No. 20 is an extreme attack on public lands even more overreaching than recent controversial legislation (H.R. 1505). Under this amendment the U.S. Border Patrol would be exempted from any regulation that would “impede or obstruct” patrol activities on every acre of federal land throughout the United States, putting national treasures at risk and throwing away a century of laws designed to protect our natural resources.

What federal lands would be put at risk?
• All of them. This amendment decimates environmental and other protections on every single acre of federally owned lands, from areas in the southwest already at risk from Border Patrol Activities, like the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge in Arizona, to places far from the border, including the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone National Park, and the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.
• This amendment is NOT restricted to areas near the southwest border or even to areas near all borders, as past legislation has proposed.

What laws would be overturned?
• All of them. This amendment is even more overreaching in its impact on federal lands than the controversial H.R. 1505 because it is not restricted to a long list of environmental regulations, but prevents the enforcement of any regulation, even those put in place for safety and other reasons.
• Other regulations that could be completely ignored are those that support economic development, allowing Border Patrol to interfere with grazing, mining, and drilling for oil and gas on public lands.

What Border Patrol activities would be exempted from any oversight?
• All of them. The amendment does not clearly define what “impede or obstruct” means or who would decide whether a law or regulation meets this standard and could therefore be ignored.
• The amendment is even more overreaching than past bills on the Border Patrol because it does not limit exempted activities to “operational control” – or activities specifically intended to prevent illegal entry into the country. Instead it exempts all “patrol activities” which, without definition, could mean any activity undertaken by the Border Patrol.
• This will create conflict between agencies that have begun to work very effectively together to resolve issues surrounding Border Patrol activities.

Is the amendment even needed by the Border Patrol?

• No. The amendment would override multiagency coordination that has been occurring on Federal lands since a 2006 Memorandum of Agreement between the Departments of Homeland Security, Interior, and Agriculture that has led to increased cooperation and leveraged resources.
• 22 out of 26 Border Patrol stations on the southern border with Mexico report that the border security of their area of operation has not been affected by land management laws beyond some minor delays. Instead, factors like rugged terrain—and not access delays or restrictions—have the highest impact on operational control.
• Exemptions already exist that allow Border Patrol Officers in pursuit to continue onto any federal land regardless of regulations or laws. Other exemptions have also been established administratively to ensure the Border Patrol has the access necessary to secure the border.

In addition, Rep. Gosar has also introduced amendment No. 55, another extreme attack on federal lands. Similar to amendment No. 20, this amendment would exempt the Border Patrol from any environmental review, from protecting clean air and water, from honoring and respecting the history and culture of native people, from preserving biodiversity, and more.

Who isn’t hurt by this amendment?
Representative Gosar’s friends in industries like oil and gas drilling, grazing, mining, and logging are taken off the hook in this updated version of amendment No. 20. Amendment No. 20 exempts the Border Patrol from “any regulation” meaning that rules allowing for development and resources extraction could also be trampled by any Border Patrol activities. Amendment No. 55, however, spares these special interests and instead focuses its attack on the environment, biodiversity, and native people.

What environmental and cultural laws would be overturned?
A similar list of laws to that found in H.R. 1505 is included in the amendment. These laws represent a century of bipartisan efforts to protect the environment, intelligently manage public lands, and demonstrate respect for historical and cultural sites.

The exempted laws include:

The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (42 U.S.C. 4321 et seq.)
The Endangered Species Act of 1973 (16 U.S.C. 1531 et seq.)
The Clean Water Act (33 U.S.C. 1251 et seq.)
The National Historic Preservation Act (16 U.S.C. 470 et seq.).
The Migratory Bird Treaty Act (16 U.S.C. 703 et seq.)
The Clean Air Act (42 U.S.C. 7401 et seq.).
The Archeological Resources Protection Act of 1979 (16 U.S.C. 18 470aa et seq.).
The Safe Drinking Water Act (42 U.S.C. 300f et seq.).
The Noise Control Act of 1972 (42 U.S.C. 4901 et seq.).
The Solid Waste Disposal Act (42 U.S.C. 6901 et seq.).
The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (42 U.S.C. 9601 et seq.)
The Archaeological and Historic Preservation Act' and the Archaeological Recovery Act (16 U.S.C. 469 et seq.).
The Antiquities Act (16 U.S.C. 431 et seq.).
The Historic Sites, Buildings, and Antiquities Act (16 U.S.C. 461 et seq.)
The Farmland Protection Policy Act (7 U.S.C. 4201 et seq.).
The Coastal Zone Management Act of 1972 (16 U.S.C. 1451 et seq.).
The Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (43 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.).
The Wilderness Act (16 U.S.C. 1131 et seq.).
The Bald Eagle Protection Act of 1940 (16 U.S.C. 668 et seq.).
The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (25 U.S.C. 3001 et seq.).
The American Indian Religious Freedom Act (42 U.S.C. 1996 et seq.).
The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (42 U.S.C. 2000bb et seq.).
The Federal Grant and Cooperative Agreement Act of 1977 (31 U.S.C. 6303 et seq.)

What Species would be impacted?
The bill waives compliance with all provisions of the ESA on federal lands. Species throughout the nation that would be impacted include

In the Southwest
• Mexican spotted owl
• Desert tortoise
• Jaguar
• Ocelot
• Sonoran pronghorn
• Chiricahua leopard frog

Elsewhere in the country
• Florida Panther
• Canada lynx
• Polar bear
• Hawaii akepa (honeycreeper)
• Leatherback sea turtle
• West Indian manatee

How much do border walls cost? Just the facts:

2011-07-07T12:16:00.003-05:00

There is a wide cost range for the construction of pedestrian border walls, resulting from factors which include labor (some sections were built by members of the National Guard, while others were built by private contractors); topography; remote vs. urban locations; land purchases and condemnations; materials (wall sections built in the 1990’s used scrap metal, obtained from the military for free, while more recent sections have required the purchase of concrete, steel, etc.); and the design that is being utilized.

In October 2008 the Houston Chronicle reported that “The Army Corps of Engineers estimated that the amount spent for pedestrian fencing has jumped 88 percent since February to $7.5 million per mile. The costs for vehicle barriers have increased 40 percent to $2.8 million per mile, according to the GAO.”
“As border fence lags, costs, controversy rise” by Stewart Powell, Houston Chronicle, October 10, 2008
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6052544.html

In January, 2009, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that costs for sections built up to that point ranged from $400,000 to $15.1 million. They also noted that these cost estimates were not independently verified and, “An Independent Auditor's Report on DHS's Fiscal Year 2008 Financial Statements found that CBP did not have adequate policies and procedures in place to properly account for steel purchases and construction of the U.S. border fence in an accurate and timely manner. As a result, for several months throughout the year, CBP’s financial statements did not accurately reflect the construction activity.”
Secure Border Initiative Fence Construction Costs, United States Government Accountability Office, January 29, 2009
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d09244r.pdf

The GAO’s January 2009 report only included border wall sections that had been completed, not those which were under construction or in various stages of planning.

Sections that were later constructed included the 3.6 miles of pedestrian border wall built through the Otay Mountain Wilderness Area, at a cost of $57.7 million, averaging just over $16 million per mile.
“$57.7-million fence added to an already grueling illegal immigration route” by Richard Marosi, Los Angeles Times, February 15, 2010
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/15/local/la-me-fence15-2010feb15

Also unfinished at the time were the border wall and earthen berm blocking Smuggler’s Gulch, near San Diego, which cost $59 million for 3.5 miles, averaging $16.8 million per mile.
“A Barren Promise at the Border” by Rob Davis, Voice of San Diego, October 22, 2009http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/environment/article_13330282-1245-5e49-bd68-5a10237c9f44.html

According to the GAO it will cost an estimated $75 million per year to maintain border walls. As of mid-May 2009, the fence had been breached more than 3,300 times, with costs to repair each breach averaging $1,300.
Secure Border Initiative: Technology Deployment Delays Persist and the Impact of Border Fencing Has Not Been Assessed, Government Accountability Office, September 2009
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d09896.pdf

In 2011 the GAO stated that “CBP estimated that the border fencing had a life cycle of 20 years and over these years, a total estimated cost of about $6.5 billion to deploy, operate, and maintain the fencing and other infrastructure. According to CBP, during fiscal year 2010, there were 4,037 documented and repaired breaches of the fencing and CBP spent at least $7.2 million to repair the breaches, or an average of about $1,800 per breach.”
BORDER SECURITY: DHS Progress and Challenges in Securing the U.S. Southwest and Northern Borders, United States Government Accountability Office, March 30, 2011
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11508t.pdf

In the spring and summer of 2011, CBP replaced 2.77 miles of existing “landing mat” fence in Nogales, which had suffered numerous breaches, with “bollard” fencing, at a cost of $11.6 million.
“Barrier Rebuilt” by Margaret Regan, Tucson Weekly, June 23, 2011
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/barrier-rebuilt/Content?oid=3028495

In 2010 the GAO reported that “Since fiscal year 2006, DHS has received about $4.4 billion in appropriations for SBI, including about $2.5 billion for physical fencing and related infrastructure, about $1.5 billion for virtual fencing (e.g., surveillance systems) and related infrastructure (e.g., towers), and about $300 million for program management.”
SECURE BORDER INITIATIVE: DHS Needs to Strengthen Management and Oversight of Its Prime Contractor, United States Government Accountability Office, October, 2010
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d116.pdf

Border Skirmish: Republicans Are Using Immigrants to Bash Our Wilderness

2011-06-09T10:18:00.002-05:00

by Char Miller

It would be nice if Congress held executive-branch agencies accountable for their actions. Or insisted that they follow federal law. Or fulfill their fiduciary responsibilities to one another.

But the Republican-controlled House of Representatives is making a mockery of these basic rules of order and good government.

You won't be surprised that the latest bit of GOP chicanery involves its twin obsessions: the U.S-Mexico Border and national environmental regulations. Their hyperventilating defense of the former, as I've noted before, comes with blustery assaults on the latter.

Since November, Utah representative Rob Bishop, chair of the House subcommittee on public lands, along with his gal pal, Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), and a host of fellow travelers, have mounted an incessant campaign to allow the U. S. Border Patrol to ignore key provisions of the Wilderness Act, the Endangered Species Act, and other vital environmental laws.

Arguing that such legislation impedes the Border Patrol's capacity to defend the nation against undocumented migrants, they have filed amendments and riders to pending legislation, called public hearings to lambaste officials of the Department of Interior, and penned fulminating op-eds to rouse the party's extremist base.

Their most recent gambit came late last week in the form of an amendment to the Department of Homeland Security's appropriation. Rep. Lummis proposed, and a lock-step Republican vote secured, a rule prohibiting DHS from transferring funds to the Department of the Interior.

These moneys would have been used to mitigate the oft-intense environmental damage resulting from the construction of the infamous border wall across federal wildlife refuges, wildlands, and preserves, in such places as the Rio Grande Valley; Arizona's Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument; and the Otay Wilderness near San Diego. And from the spinning wheels of its high-speed patrols that can tear up wildlife habitat or damage sensitive ecosystems.

Such mitigation, required by law, is also sanctioned through longstanding practice among localities, states, and the federal government. It is also a matter of committed environmental stewardship.

Neither the precedent nor the principle matters to contemporary Republicans. In a "Dear Colleague" letter that Bishop, Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA), chair of the Natural Resources Committee, and Rep. Peter King (R-NY), chair of the Committee on Homeland Security sent out in support of Lummis' amendment, they thrilled at its anti-environmentalism: "the amendment would strike language in the bill that allows these funds to be used by the Interior Department to purchase even more land. Additional federal land acquisition only exacerbates the problem by limiting access to even more land and further bloating the federal estate--at a time when the government cannot even afford to provide the basic care and maintenance needed for existing national parks and other lands."

(Query: why can't the government afford to take care of its treasured public lands? Answer: drastic Republican budget cuts!)

Lummis heaps just as much scorn on the legal obligations and moral responsibilities the government has for protecting our public lands: "Every day our nation's border patrol fights to protect our country against increasingly sophisticated criminal networks that produce and smuggle illegal drugs, and people, into America," she fumed. "Unfortunately, DOI policies have tied the hands of Border Patrol agents, who need access to federal lands to carry out their constitutional responsibility to secure the border."

Her allegation is bogus. The very same Government Accountability Office report that Lummis and Bishop routinely cite as evidence that environmental regulations have handcuffed the Border Patrol, in fact reached the opposite conclusion. In mid-April, for instance, the GAO found that "22 of the 26 patrol agents-in-charge reported that the overall security status of their jurisdiction had not been affected by land management laws. Instead, factors such as the remoteness and ruggedness of the terrain have had the greatest effect on their ability to achieve operational control in these areas."

The report also revealed that the four patrol agents-in-charge who had "reported that delays and restrictions had affected their ability to achieve or maintain operational control," admitted they "either had not requested resources for increased or timelier access or their requests had been denied by senior Border Patrol officials because of higher priority needs of the agency."

Moreover, the GAO investigation demonstrated that relevant agencies out in the field and inside the Beltway have developed close working relations. To argue otherwise, as Lummis and Bishop reflexively do, is to perpetuate a fraud.

Ah, but why let the facts get in your way when you can wrap yourself in the flag as protective cover? Trumpets Lummis: "our nation's security should be our top priority." Wilderness be damned.

Such a blinkered public policy, in point of fact, will lead us into damnation. That's the potent message embedded in Aldo Leopold's private correspondence and his brilliant conservation classic, Sand County Almanac (1948).

Arguing that wilderness is an irreplaceable part of our "cultural inheritance," and that even then was in precious, dwindling supply--it is a "resource that can shrink but cannot grow"--Leopold urged his fellow citizens to defend these beleaguered lands against those with a narrowly conceived notion of homeland securityhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif. "If we lose our wilderness, we have nothing left...worth fighting for."

Note, please, that Leopold was a Republican.

Char Miller is the Director and W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis at Pomona College, and editor of the just-published "Cities and Nature in the American West."

Reprinted with the author's permission, this essay was originally posted at KCET:

http://www.kcet.org/updaily/socal_focus/commentary/border-skirmish-republicans-are-using-immigrants-to-bash-our-wilderness-34146.html

Congressional Nightmares Fuel a New Assault on our Borderlands

2011-05-20T12:27:00.006-05:00

By Scott Nicol

In his recent speech in El Paso President Obama pointed to the buildup of border security personnel and infrastructure, and declining crime rates in border communities, to justify a renewed effort to enact immigration reform. This will be a tough sell in the current Congress.

Just three weeks earlier the difficulty of his task was on display in Washington DC when Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) displayed photos of headless corpses while shouting at Ron Vitiello, Deputy Chief of the US Border Patrol, during a committee hearing. Vitiello had enraged Representative Chaffetz by calmly asserting that, “While there is still work to be done, every key measure shows we are making significant progress along the Southwest border.”

The horrific pictures were not taken within U.S. borders, and so were outside of the Border Patrol’s jurisdiction, despite Chaffetz’ cries that “This is the kind of thing that we’re sending our agents to deal with on a daily basis!”

Chaffetz’ anger boiled over because Deputy Chief Vitiello was not following the Congressman’s script. The facts, that border communities are safe and apprehensions are down, were not welcome.

The Congressional hearing was intended to paint a picture of the U.S. southern border as a war zone, awash in blood and the mutilated bodies of innocents. In this telling, the Border Patrol fights valiantly to achieve “operational control” and quell the violence, but it is hamstrung by environmental laws and federal land managers who care more about endangered species than human life.

It was meant to promote HR 1505, the misnamed “National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act.” Starting with the premise that the Border Patrol has been prevented from entering federal wildlife refuges, wilderness areas, and national monuments along the southern border, it gives the Border Patrol carte blanche on federal lands.

Like the photos of headless bodies, this provision is based on a false impression of our southern border. The Border Patrol and federal land management agencies signed a cooperative agreement in 2006 allowing access to protected lands that Vitiello said works well. Rugged terrain and remote locations are the real problems reported by agents in the field, not restrictions imposed by land managers.

The bill goes on to exempt the Border Patrol from obeying dozens of environmental laws.

Its precursor, the Real ID Act, was used in 2008 to waive 36 laws along the southern border to erect border walls. The Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, and National Environmental Policy Act were among those brushed aside to allow for construction that otherwise would have violated them. This resulted in severe environmental damage.

HR 1505 extends the 2008 waivers to cover all of the U.S. – Mexico border, the Canadian border, all maritime borders, and every square inch of terrain within 100 miles of them.

The waiver covers some of our nation’s most important protected areas, from Glacier National Park and the Boundary Waters to Redwood National Park and the Cape Cod National Seashore. Two-thirds of the population of the United States would also fall under the waiver.

Instead of thanking the Congressmen for freeing the Border Patrol from these legal burdens, Deputy Chief Vitiello undermined HR 1505’s premise. He confirmed the Government Accountability Office finding that “Most agents reported that land management laws have had no effect on Border Patrol’s overall measure of border security.”

The photos of headless bodies were displayed in an effort to discredit the Border Patrol’s testimony, and to burn a brutal image into viewers’ minds that would overwhelm the facts that Vitiello presented.

The angry tirades aimed at the Border Patrol made it clear that the “National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act” really has nothing to do with national security. It does not help the Border Patrol, and they did not ask for it. It is nothing more than an assault on our nation’s public lands and environmental laws.

Speaking within sight of the border, President Obama said that “despite a lot of breathless reports that have tagged places like El Paso as dangerous… El Paso and other cities and towns along this border are consistently among the safest in the nation.”

America cannot develop rational policies that protect border residents and ecosystems by picking and choosing facts any more than we can support the rule of law by cherry picking which laws to obey and waiving the rest. With members of congress choosing fear over facts, ungrounded nightmares instead of FBI statistics, the reform that the president spoke of remains a distant dream.

Here is part one of the April 15 hearing on HR 1505

Here is part two. Rep. Chaffetz brandishes the photos of corpses around a half-hour into this clip.

Congressional Proposals Aim to Eviscerate Environmental Laws Along U.S. Borders, Coasts

2011-05-05T11:15:00.002-05:00

Press Release from:

Randy Serraglio, Center for Biological Diversity
Scott Nicol, Sierra Club Borderlands Team
Jenny Neeley, Sky Island Alliance
Matt Clark, Defenders of Wildlife
Mike Quigley, The Wilderness Society
Nathan Newcomer, New Mexico Wilderness Alliance
Matt Skroch, Arizona Wilderness Coalition

Under Guise of Border Security, Bills Would Eliminate Measures
Protecting Air, Water, Endangered Species

TUCSON, Ariz.— Two bills pending in Congress would eliminate environmental laws along U.S. borderlands — including those that protect endangered species and safeguard clean air and water — under the guise of improving border security. The “National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act” (H.R. 1505), introduced by Utah Rep. Rob Bishop, would permanently exempt border-enforcement activities from 31 environmental and cultural resource laws within 100 miles of all U.S. borders and coasts.

The “Border Security Enforcement Act of 2011” (S. 803), introduced by Arizona Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl, would effectively give the Department of Homeland Security veto power over environmental protections on public lands within 150 miles of the southwestern border. Land managers in the border region would be prevented from acting to protect the resources they manage if their actions were perceived to conflict with Department of Homeland Security activities.

“These bedrock environmental laws were put in place for a reason: to protect the air we breathe, the water we drink and the natural resources and wildlife we value,” said Randy Serraglio, a conservation advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity. “It makes no sense to turn our back on these laws to satisfy the narrow agenda of a few politicians looking to score points with their most extreme constituents.”

The authority included in these bills has not been requested. In fact, it has been deemed unnecessary by border-enforcement agencies. During an April 15 congressional hearing on border security, U.S. Border Patrol Deputy Chief Ronald Vitiello testified that his agency “enjoys a close working relationship” with public lands agencies that “allows it to fulfill its border enforcement responsibilities.” Vitiello said his agency “is fully committed to continuing our cooperative relationships with the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture.”

“These bills have been introduced solely to satisfy the radical whims of a small minority of anti-environment extremists in Congress,” said Jenny Neeley, conservation policy director for Sky Island Alliance. “These proposals threaten the entire Sky Islands region we work to protect by establishing a dangerous legal precedent of permanently erasing environmental and cultural resource protections across huge swaths of the United States.”

Barrier and road construction, off-road driving, stadium lighting and other border-enforcement activities already threaten parks, refuges and other protected areas as well as many species in the border region, including endangered jaguars and ocelots in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

“Too much damage has been done to our borderlands already,” said Scott Nicol, Sierra Club Borderlands Team co-chair. “From massive blasting and erosion in California wilderness areas to devastating floods in Arizona and fragmented habitat for endangered species in Texas, the implementation of border enforcement with callous disregard for our nation’s environmental laws has caused one disaster after another.”

“Protections for endangered wildlife, water and clean air are not standing in the way of border security,” said Matt Clark with Defenders of Wildlife in Tucson. “All Congress has to do is look at the facts: Apprehensions of immigrants illegally crossing the border have fallen by two-thirds over the past decade. Border Patrol and land-management agencies have been effectively working together, and it’s clear that it takes teamwork to secure the border and protect the environment.”

“These efforts to discard the rule of law rest on the false premise that we can have border security or we can have functioning borderlands ecosystems, but not both. That's wrong. We can — and we should — have both,” said Mike Quigley, Arizona representative of The Wilderness Society.

“Protected areas such as wilderness and national parks along our borders provide us with essential environmental services, premier recreation opportunities and important habitat for our wildlife heritage,” said Matt Skroch, executive director of the Arizona Wilderness Coalition. “These shortsighted efforts to waive laws are penny wise and pound foolish. Border enforcement and natural resource management are not and should not be mutually exclusive.”

http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2011/border-05-04-2011.html

Border Walls versus Environmental Justice

2011-02-03T18:41:00.004-06:00

By Scott Nicol

In 1994 President Clinton issued Executive Order 12898 to address the issue of Environmental Justice. It instructs federal agencies to identify and address actions that might have “disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects… on minority populations and low-income populations.” EO 12898 remains in effect today, but in building border walls the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has chosen to ignore it.

Since the passage of the Secure Fence Act around 650 miles of border wall have been built, slicing though towns, farms, and natural areas. Southern border states have rates of poverty that are significantly higher than the national average. In 2009 Arizona had the second highest poverty rate in the nation, New Mexico had the third highest, and Texas came in seventh. Within these states communities along the border tend to be the poorest. The 2007 list of 10 counties with the lowest median incomes in the nation included the Texas border counties of El Paso, Hidalgo, and Cameron, all three of which now have border walls.

Rather than act to minimize the border wall’s impacts on these communities, DHS used the Real ID Act to waive 36 federal laws. The Safe Drinking Water Act, Farmland Protection Policy Act, Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, and other laws that protect the rest of the nation no longer protect border communities. Equal protection under the law does not apply to those who live along the border.

This has led to a host of negative impacts on border communities. The economic impacts of land condemnation and damage to family farms have hit economically disadvantaged communities. Walls have cause severe flooding in Lukeville, Arizona, and across the border in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico, where two people drowned. In Texas wetlands have been destroyed, and construction has caused serious erosion, further degrading the Rio Grande, which is the source of drinking and irrigation water for border residents.

In documents released before wall construction began, DHS stated that each of the Texas communities living in the path of the wall, “meets these two criteria [high percentages of minority and low-income residents] as a potential environmental justice population.” DHS went on to claim, however, that “the Secretary’s waiver means that CBP no longer has any specific obligation under Executive Order (EO) 12898.” While the first statement is backed by census data, the claim that DHS is not bound by the executive order is false, because the executive order was not listed among the 36 laws that DHS waived. But the assertion has meant that little effort has gone into lessening the impacts of border walls on border communities, or including them in decision-making.

South Texas Communities

To build border walls the federal government filed condemnation lawsuits against more than 400 Texas landowners, in communities that are 85 – 90% Hispanic and have rates of poverty that are more than twice the state average.

In Hidalgo and Cameron counties, where border walls were built along existing levees, homes, businesses, farms, and privately-owned nature preserves have been cut in two, or even walled off entirely, trapped between the border wall and the Rio Grande.

DHS has only to paid for the exact footprint of the border wall (typically, a 60-foot wide strip) as it passes through a parcel of land. The agency has completely discounted the hardships that the border wall will bring to landowners, such as the devaluation of contiguous property, access to farm land and homes, and impacts on livelihood.

In south Texas there are 21 separate border walls, totaling 70 linear miles, with wide gaps between sections. Border residents noticed that walls tended to be built through the lands of low-income families, but stopped abruptly at the property line of landowners such as the Hunt family, who, coincidentally, donated millions for the construction of the Bush Presidential Library.

Researchers from the University of Texas who examined this determined, “Our comparison of the areas planned to be fenced along the border with those areas where ‘gaps’ in the fence are planned suggests disproportionate impact on individuals with lower income and education, Hispanic ethnicity and non-U.S. citizenship status.”

Tohono O’odham Nation

The Tohono O’odham nation in Southern Arizona is split by 75 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border, with 1,500 out of 20,000 tribal members living south of the line. As in many Native American nations poverty is widespread. According to the 2000 census the average income on the reservation was $8,137, compared to a national average of $26,940. Life expectancy was eight years less than the national average.

Speaking before a U.S. House of Representatives hearing on the border wall, O’odham Chairman Ned Norris Jr. said, “We are older than the international boundary with Mexico and had no role in creating the border. But our land is now cut in half, with O’odham communities, sacred sites, salt pilgrimage routes, and families divided.”

Chairman Norris went on to state that, with the waiving of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, “… fragments of human remains were observed in the tire tracks of heavy construction equipment. Barriers and the border road now cross the site.”

“Imagine a bulldozer parking in your family graveyard, turning up bones. This is our reality.”

Chairman Norris concluded, “We know from our own experience living on the border that security can be improved while respecting the rights of tribes and border communities, while fulfilling our duty to the environment and to our ancestors, and without granting any person the power to ignore the law.”

Climbing the Border Wall

2011-01-18T21:48:00.006-06:00

A recent video clip showing two young women scaling the border wall in under 20 seconds has gone viral. The video was shot by a crew working on the film The Other side of Immigration, in what appears to be the Arizona desert. FOX and other media outlets have done stories on it, and as of today it has been watched 456,602 times on Youtube.

Here is the clip:

Most of the responses have been a mix of surprise and amusement that a federal project that has soaked up over $3 billion, and has involved more than 400 condemnation suits against landowners and the waiving of 36 federal laws would be so easy to overcome.

It should not surprise anyone.

Climbing the San Diego "triple fence." Photo by Laura Garcia.

Bush administration Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said in 2007, "I think the fence has come to assume a certain kind of symbolic significance which should not obscure the fact that it is a much more complicated problem than putting up a fence which someone can climb over with a ladder or tunnel under with a shovel."

Clip from the documentary The Wall.

Climbing the border wall in the Otay Mountain Wilderness Area while Border Patrol agents look on. Photo by Italia Milan.

Border Patrol spokesperson Mike Scioli said, "The border fence is a speed bump in the desert."

But that is likely giving it too much credit. In this clip former President Bush is giving an interview in front of the border wall, discussing the efficacy of his border security measures. Just over his shoulder a group of immigrants jump the wall:

Before the border walls that President Bush touted were built, Del Rio, Texas, Border Patrol Chief Randy Hill predicted, "We're going to see steel barriers erected on the borders where U.S. and Mexican cities adjoin. These will slow down illegal crossers by minutes." He made no claim that they would stop anyone.

Photo from a Time Magazine article titled "The Great Wall of America."

The border wall has been a farce since its inception. Forget the "danged fence." It is time to admit that the emperor has no clothes, and address immigration reform and substance abuse in a rational manner.

The New Congress Will Try to Build More Border Walls

2011-01-02T08:47:00.010-06:00

By Scott Nicol

I generally refrain from making New Year’s predictions, but following the mid-term elections one thing has been crystal clear: barring divine intervention or a grass-roots outcry loud enough to drown out the Tea Party, the new Congress will pass legislation requiring hundreds of miles of new border walls.

In the final days of the Congressional “lame duck” session Democrats struggled to line up votes in the Senate to pass the DREAM Act, which would have provided a path to citizenship for those who had been brought into the United States as minors, and who completed two years of college or military service. Hoping to bring Republicans on board, slots were left open for two Republican amendments, should the bill make it to the Senate floor.

Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC).

Republican Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina took one of those slots for an amendment that would change the Secure Fence Act to require 700 miles of “pedestrian” border walls; vehicle barriers built along the border could no longer be applied to the mile count. Currently, 302 miles of vehicle barriers are included in the Department of Homeland Security’s official total of 646 miles of border wall. DeMint’s amendment would require Customs and Border Protection to build 356 miles of new “pedestrian” wall. With “pedestrian” walls averaging $7.5 million per mile, this could cost taxpayers $2,670,000,000. And with California, Arizona, and New Mexico largely walled off, most of those miles would come to Texas.

Passage of the DREAM Act should have been fairly easy, as many Republican Senators had supported it in the past. Ten years ago Republican Senator Orin Hatch actually co-wrote the DREAM Act. Before he voted against his own creation this year, his spokesperson simply said, “Times have changed.”

The need for immigration reform has not changed. What has changed is the political landscape, particularly in the Republican Party. Where once Karl Rove cautioned against alienating Hispanic voters, the hard tack to the right brought on by the Tea Party has convinced Republicans that support of immigration reform could cost them their next election. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who had planned to coauthor Comprehensive Immigration Reform with Democratic Senator Charles Schumer in early 2010, said at the end of the same year, "There's no way I can go to the people in South Carolina and say, 'Let's pass the Dream Act,' when we've done nothing on the border and there's a raging war in Mexico."

When Senator Graham says “we’ve done nothing on the border” he knows full well that the opposite is true. The Government Accountability Office presented a report to Congress in November of 2010 that stated,

“Border Patrol agents staffed along the U.S. borders have increased from 11,264 in 2005 to 20,161 as of June 2010, with 2,139 agents staffed on the northern border and 17,089 agents staffed on the southwest border. In regard to infrastructure, CBP’s SBI office reported that as of April 2010, it had completed 646 of the 652 miles of border fencing—including pedestrian fencing and permanent vehicle barriers—that it committed to deploy along the southwest border.”

Bollard border wall in California. Photo by Jay Johnson Castro.

The myth that borders can be made airtight through the construction of hundreds of miles of border wall or the doubling of Border Patrol agents should have been laid to rest by the fact that after these things were done the cries from politicians that the borders are broken are louder than ever.

Republicans voted in lock-step to prevent the DREAM Act from reaching the floor of the Senate. Even Senator DeMint, who planned to attach his amendment to it, voted against even debating the bill.

DeMint’s proposed amendment to the DREAM Act is identical to the one that he successfully attached to the Department of Homeland Security’s appropriation bill in 2009. Texas Senators Cornyn and Hutchison voted in favor of the 2009 amendment, as they have for every border wall bill that has come before them. But because there was not a matching amendment in the House version of the bill Representative Ciro Rodriguez (D-TX) was able to remove it in the House -Senate conference committee.

Once the new Congress is sworn in the House of Representatives will no longer act as a brake on Senator DeMint’s desire to build more border walls. Ciro Rodriguez lost his reelection bid, and, thanks in part to the success of Tea Party candidates, Republicans will control the House. In addition to new members like Ben Quayle (R-AZ) who put militarizing the border front and center in their campaigns, the next Congress will see some of the border wall’s biggest backers chairing key House committees.

Signing ceremony for the Secure Fence Act of 2006

Peter King (R-NY) will be the new chair of the House Homeland Security Committee. He wrote the Secure Fence Act, which mandated the hundreds of miles of wall that now slice through border communities, farms, and wildlife refuges. In the White House photo of the Secure Fence Act signing ceremony he can be seen looking over President Bush’s shoulder, smiling from ear to ear. Last week he told the New York Post that, “The Obama Administration continues to display an obvious lack of urgency when it comes to operational control of the border.” He went on to list border walls as an important tool for gaining control.

The House Judiciary Committee, which oversees immigration laws and legislation, will be chaired by Texas Republican Lamar Smith. Lamar Smith was a vocal backer of the Secure Fence Act. He also co-sponsored a 2008 “English-only” bill, and supported an amendment forbidding the US government from telling the Mexican government about the activities of Minuteman border vigilantes. This past October he wrote an op-ed for FOX News, saying that, “If we want to prevent another terrorist attack, we must prevent terrorists from getting to the U.S. in the first place. That means finishing the border fence and giving Border Patrol all the necessary resources to keep our borders safe.” Apparently Rep. Smith missed the 9/11 Commission’s finding that none of the September 11 terrorists entered the U.S. by crossing a land border.

Iowa Republican Steve King is expected to lead the Judiciary Committee’s Immigration Subcommittee. In 2006 Rep. King assembled a model of the border wall during Congressional debate on the Secure Fence Act and suggested running electric current through it, saying, “we do this with livestock all the time.” Last month King said that as Immigration Subcommittee Chair he planned to conduct a formal review of the Obama Administration’s spending on border enforcement and push for construction of new border walls. He told the New York Times, “Build it until they stop going around the end – that would be my standard.”

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) builds his wall on the House floor

Rep. Smith and the two Kings, along with Senator DeMint, are so enamored with the idea of a border wall that they have not bothered to look at whether the wall actually prevents immigrants, smugglers, or terrorists from entering the United States. Even Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which Congress tasked with building walls, cannot say whether or not they do anything. The November Government Accountability Office report found that, “As of May 2010, CBP had not assessed the effect of fencing on border security.”

But that will not stop Senator DeMint from reintroducing his amendment next year. The Senate passed it in 2009, and although Democrats will still control the chamber it will be more conservative now than it was then. Senator DeMint was an early and ardent backer of Tea Party candidates, and they will be anxious to return the favor by supporting his bill. And with Republicans in charge of the House of Representatives, Ciro Rodriguez gone, and the key committees in the hands of Representatives who have long histories of supporting border walls, the DeMint amendment is all but assured of passage there as well.

Once it passes the House and Senate, it will be up to President Obama to decide whether or not more walls are built. Will he veto an entire bill (perhaps the Department of Homeland Security’s appropriation) to stop border walls? That would mean a head-on fight with Republicans over an issue that he has so far chosen to avoid. As Governor of Arizona, Janet Napolitano famously said, “You show me a 50-foot wall, and I'll show you a 51-foot ladder." But as President Obama’s Secretary of Homeland Security, she failed to bring border wall construction to a halt.

The decision will come down to politics. If Democrats in the House and Senate oppose the DeMint amendment and vote against it, President Obama might oppose it as well. If it passes with Democratic support and votes, he will sign it.

So in looking ahead do we succumb to fatalism, and accept that eventually walls will stretch unbroken from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico, cutting off South Texas from the river that slakes its thirst, waters its crops, and anchors its wildlife refuges? Or do we work to change the political dynamic that pushes for more and more and more border walls?

When Senator DeMint reintroduces his border wall amendment in 2011 most of the politicians who will vote for or against it represent districts that are hundreds of miles away from the border. Their votes will be based on opinion polls and political expediency, not an understanding of border security or concern for border communities. Senators Hatch and Graham voted against the DREAM Act not because they believed that it was a bad bill, but because they believed that supporting it would be bad politics. When the political winds changed, their votes changed.

The Tea Party was successful in changing the political landscape not just because they had the backing of FOX News and Koch Industries. They were also very loud. They made so much noise that their ideas, no matter how far off the deep end, became impossible to ignore. They shaped the political debate, and then they turned out to vote.

If we want to prevent the construction of more border walls we need to be just as loud, and make it clear that politicians who support more walls will be less likely to return to Washington after the next election. In the end, a politician’s vote on border walls is about job security, not border security.

Walling Off Our Southern Deserts

2010-12-07T18:02:00.007-06:00

by Scott Nicol

Over 660 miles of border wall have been built along the U.S.-Mexico border, slicing through the deserts of California and Arizona on its route from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. The wall’s path takes it through some of our nation’s most fragile and biologically diverse protected lands. Border wall construction has involved dynamiting mountains and damming rivers, the disruption of migration corridors and the destruction of endangered species habitat.

Border wall on the beach between San Diego and Tijuana.

In 2004 the California Coastal Commission determined that border walls south of San Diego would have a devastating impact on the Tijuana Estuary, in violation of the Coastal Zone Management Act. Environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, sued to stop the Border Patrol’s plan to plug several canyons in order to create a level path for the border wall. The court found that the Border Patrol was in violation of federal environmental laws, and construction ground to a halt.

Rather than insist that Border Patrol obey our nation’s environmental laws, Congress passed the Real ID Act. Section 102 of the act was intended to overrule the objections of the California Coastal Commission and the Sierra Club by allowing the Secretary of Homeland Security to waive any law that border wall construction might otherwise violate. No one else, including the President, is granted this power. Former Homeland Secretary Chertoff used the Real ID Act five times, to set aside 36 federal laws and, “all federal, state, or other laws, regulations and legal requirements of, deriving from, or related to the subject of” those laws. The waivers encompass the broad subjects of water, air, wildlife, and the environment, leaving few, if any, environmental laws in place.

Border wall through the Otay Mountain Wilderness Area.

A few miles east of the border wall’s start in the Pacific Ocean, the Otay Mountain Wilderness Area protects the last surviving stands of Tecate cypress, an ice age tree that survives by absorbing coastal moisture from the air. This tree in turn is the host plant for the rare Thorne’s hairstreak butterfly. When the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reviewed the plan to build border walls through the Otay Mountain Wilderness Area, they expressed concern that filling in canyons and waterways that feed the Tijuana River would violate the Clean Water Act. The Department of the Interior (DOI) warned that 6 endangered species would also be harmed by the wall.

San Diego Sector Border Patrol spokesman Richard Kite said of the Wilderness Area, "At the mountain range, you simply don't need a fence. It's such harsh terrain it's difficult to walk, let alone drive. There's no reason to disrupt the land when the land itself is a physical barrier."

By 2008, this logic no longer held sway at DHS and, ignoring the concerns of the EPA and DOI, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) decided to “disrupt the land” of the Otay Mountain Wilderness Area with a border wall and a patrol road. The rugged terrain necessitated the blasting of 530,000 cubic yards of rock and extensive grading and leveling. Border wall construction caused tremendous erosion, and involved cutting down more than 100 Tecate cypress trees.

Because dynamiting mountains is clearly incompatible with a wilderness designation, Secretary Chertoff used the Real ID Act to waive the Otay Mountain Wilderness Act. He also swept aside the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act. The Otay Mountain Wilderness Area now suffers from a barren scar and erosion that will bleed sediment into the Tijuana River for years to come.

Border wall through the Otay Mountain Wilderness Area.

Further east, Arizona’s San Pedro River is one of the last undammed, free-flowing rivers in the American Southwest. It anchors one of the most biologically diverse areas in the United States, at the convergence of four major ecosystems: the Sierra Madre and Rocky Mountains, and the Sonoran and Chihuahan Deserts. The San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area was designated by the National Audubon Society as its first Globally Important Bird Area, and by the United Nations World Heritage Program as a World Heritage Natural Area.

When the DHS announced that it would put a wall across the San Pedro, the Sierra Club and Defenders of Wildlife sued. A federal court agreed that the federal government’s failure to fully assess the environmental impacts of the border wall violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and ordered a temporary halt to construction. Rather than comply with NEPA, former DHS Secretary Chertoff used the Real ID Act to waive it. Border walls built in the San Pedro watershed are now causing erosion and damming that will permanently alter the riparian habitat.

The border wall’s impact on the flow of water in desert ecosystems was made clear in 2008, when the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument received seasonal monsoon rains that resulted in the flooding of a number of washes that were blocked by the border wall. Grates built into the base of the wall to allow for the passage of water quickly choked with debris and sediment. The wall then acted as a dam, with water up to seven feet deep piling up behind it. Floodwaters then travelled laterally along the wall until they found an outlet at the Sonoyta port of entry, causing millions of dollars of damage to private businesses and government buildings there.

The border walls and patrol roads that slice through hundreds of miles of public and protected lands also fragment the habitats of a number of endangered species, including the Sonoran pronghorn, cactus ferruginous pygmy owl, and desert tortoise. Cut off from their usual range, populations may not have access to mates in other groups, a necessity for a genetically diverse, healthy population. Border walls also separate animals from food and water sources, leaving them especially vulnerable in times of drought. With the endangered species act waived, these threats to species’ survival have been largely ignored.

A mountain lion runs alongside the border wall.

The lands of the Tohono O'odham, whose name means “the desert people,” were once vast, extending from what is now Central Arizona down into Sonora, Mexico, and from the Gulf of California east to the San Pedro River. The international border splits their land, and the erection of the border wall has restricted their ability to visit family and sacred sites and to collect traditional foods and other materials.

Border wall construction has also unearthed Tohono O’odham graves. When the Secretary of Homeland Security waived Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act, the regulations that ensured respect for the Tohono O’odham’s ancestral remains and culture no longer applied to border wall construction.

Speaking before a U.S. House of Representatives hearing on the border wall, Tohono O’odham Chairman Ned Norris Jr. said, “… fragments of human remains were observed in the tire tracks of heavy construction equipment. Imagine a bulldozer parking in your family graveyard, turning up bones. This is our reality.”

DHS claims that border walls are actually good for the environment because border crossers leave litter, make foot paths, and, in the states that do not have a river for a border, drive off road vehicles through sensitive habitat. This assertion is based on a pair of false premises. The first is that border walls stop crossers. They do not. The Congressional Research Service found that border walls have “no discernible impact” on the number of undocumented immigrants who enter the United States each year. Instead, walls redirect many of those who seek to enter on foot, “funneling” them into more remote areas. This often means that their environmental impacts are concentrated in fragile desert ecosystems, rather than closer to walled off border towns. “Funneling” has contributed to the deaths of more than 5,600 crossers in the harsh Arizona desert.

The second false premise is that border walls and patrol roads are less damaging to ecosystems than border crossers. The border wall’s destructive impact is made obvious by the Department of Homeland Security’s need to “waive in their entirety” our nation’s most important environmental laws. The only reason for DHS to waive laws is that border walls violate them. Litter and migrant trails can be a problem for wildlife, but the blasting, bulldozing, habitat fragmentation, and large-scale erosion caused by border walls and roads are worse by magnitudes of scale.

Ignoring the useless and destructive nature of border walls, political hopefuls from Alaska to Kansas, Utah to Rhode Island, called for more walls in the run up to the mid-term elections. This is not just empty rhetoric that can be ignored. A number of amendments requiring the erection of hundreds of miles of new wall were introduced in the last Congress, and one, authored by Jim DeMint of South Carolina, passed in the Senate before being stripped in a House/Senate conference committee.

Representative Ciro Rodriguez, whose district already has border walls, blocked DeMint’s amendment. Rep. Rodriguez lost his reelection bid, and the U.S. House lurched to the right. Key committees that oversee immigration and homeland security will soon be chaired by Representatives who have long advocated further militarizing the border. DeMint and others will likely redouble their efforts to build more border walls, and their legislation will stand a much better chance of making it onto the President’s desk.

Instead of building more border walls, Congress should focus on mitigating the damage that has already been inflicted. It is also critically important that Congress repeal the Real ID Act’s waiver provision. The Real ID Act is not only a threat to border ecosystems should Congress require more walls, it also establishes the precedent that bedrock environmental laws such as the Endangered Species Act and Clean Water Act can be swept aside when obeying them would be inconvenient. For these reasons the Sierra Club and other environmental organizations oppose further border wall construction, and call upon Congress to repeal of section 102 of the Real ID Act.

This originally appeared in the Desert Report, a quarterly publication of the Sierra Club's California / Nevada Desert Committee: http://www.desertreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/DR_Winter2010.pdf

Homeland Security may Squander $40 million on Environmental Lip Service

2010-11-19T16:25:00.008-06:00

By Dan Millis

In 2010 Congress allocated $40 million to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for the purpose of "minimizing adverse environmental and other negative impacts" of border wall construction. Environmental mitigation and monitoring work is best done by agencies such as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, part of the Department of the Interior (DOI). In fact, the allocation language made it very clear that congress "expects CBP to use these funds to work in coordination with the Department of Interior and other government agencies with responsibilities for environmental policy on the border."

However, it is feared that DHS could instead decide to keep the money, and use it to fund ill-advised and half-hearted attempts to address some of the environmental havoc wreaked by their walls, roads, and infrastructure.

Take Arizona's San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area, a U.N. World Heritage Natural Area known for its huge diversity of migratory bird species. Ostensibly to address flooding issues that arise from walls recently built across washes and riverbeds, DHS has been busily constructing and installing "flood gates" such as the one seen below.

The idea is that someone at DHS will predict a storm event in advance, and send a crew of Border Patrol agents or DHS workers out to the dozens of flood gates that have been installed immediately east of the San Pedro, have them toss their winch cables from their jeeps over the pulley at the top, hook on to the eyelet, and winch up these gates so that the water and debris can pass through. Maybe you can give the planners the benefit of a doubt on these small gates. But...

Local rancher Bill Odle shows off DHS's "flood gates" and debris piles

What about these huge gates?!?! They are massive. Locals report that Border Patrol vehicles attempting to open them instead end up winching their own front ends off the ground! Once open, the holes are large enough to drive a pick-up truck through them, which begs the question, why build the wall in the first place?! Of course, predicting the weather in the Southwest is a crapshoot at best, and once the storms begin, access to many areas is often cut off by flash flooding. Debris piled high against the gates indicate to us that these things haven't been opened during recent stroms, which locals say have been relatively mild. It's an example of a half-hatched scheme launched by an agency whose expertise is in security, not environmental planning. The funds sunk in this scheme would have been put to much better use by the experts within the DOI.

Notre Dame students frolic atop a DHS jungle gym

The "flood gates" are one example of mitigation gone wrong. Another is the "cat hole" project in Texas. Concern over the blockage of wildlife migration corridors prompted DHS to retrofit a section of border wall near the Lower Rio Grande National Wildlife Refuge with a series of doggy doors, each about the size of an 8.5 by 11 inch sheet of notebook paper. For more info on the "cat holes," download our flier:

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/369702/cathole.pdf

Mitigation and monitoring needs to be done by the professionals at DOI, which is why DHS needs to give them the funds which have already been appropriated.

Dan Millis is an organizer for the Sierra Club's Borderlands campaign. To read more about the border wall's environmental impacts, and to view the Club's 20-minute documentary Wild vs. Wall, go to http://sierraclub.org/borderlands/

Following flooding in Nogales and the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument the Border Patrol commissioned a report on the walls that cross washes and rivers from El Paso to San Diego. It found that the poorly designed walls were not only damming them, but in many instances their foundations were being undermined. The report is available here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/41500057/Customs-and-Border-Protection-report-on-border-walls-crossing-washes-and-streams

No Border Wall Announces a New Website

2010-10-10T17:14:00.002-05:00

We are pleased to announce that the new No Border Wall website is up and running at

www.No-Border-Wall.com

This site is designed to be a comprehensive guide to the U.S.-Mexico border wall--its history, its ineffectiveness, types of wall designs, and the problems it has caused. There is also a geographical breakdown that details the damage walls have caused in specific regions. With loads of information and citation links to documents and newspaper articles embedded throughout, it is our hope that this site will become a point of entry into the issue for reporters, researchers, policy makers, and the general public.

The updated website comes at a particularly important time, with candidates for office as far from the border as Rhode Island running on border militarization. This often includes calls for more border walls, even double-layered walls from coast to coast, despite the tremendous financial, social, and environmental cost that this would inflict upon the United States. National policies of this magnitude must be based on facts, rather than misleading sound bites. That is why we have made every effort to ensure the accuracy of the information that is presented on the website.

Destroying the Borderlands to Secure the Border

2010-08-05T21:13:00.008-05:00

By Scott Nicol

In the 1990’s politicians trying to explain away all of America’s ills, without blaming American voters or accepting their own fair share of blame, turned their attention towards the southern border. The ebb and flow of migrants across the border, which had been occurring since the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo established it at its present location, was recast as an invasion. The invaders (who were, conveniently, ineligible to vote) were blamed for rising crime and failing schools, unemployment and overstretched social services. Clearly, the invasion must be stopped before the nation was overwhelmed.

Time to call in the troops and wall off the border.

The first 14 miles of border wall, extending from the Pacific Ocean inland, were built of rusting steel helicopter landing mats left over from the Vietnam War crudely welded together. A second layer, 15-feet tall and made of steel mesh, was later added north of the first wall. In the no-man’s-land between these two walls was a graded road for Border Patrol vehicles, with towers for surveillance cameras and stadium lights.

The landing mat border wall entering the ocean between San Diego and Tijuana.

In 2004 the California Coastal Commission and environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, sued to stop the Border Patrol’s plan to plug several canyons in order to create a level path for the border wall. The court found that the Border Patrol was in violation of federal environmental laws and that such a fill project would have a devastating impact on the Tijuana Estuary. The judge ordered that construction be halted.

In order to override the court’s decision, a provision was inserted into the Real ID Act of 2005 giving the unprecedented power to the US Attorney General (later transferred to the Secretary of Homeland Security) to waive all federal, state, and local laws, environmental and otherwise, to build border walls. Former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff used the Real ID Act to brush aside the laws that had stopped the border wall, and resumed construction. In waiving those laws he was admitting that border wall construction would violate them.

A few hundred feet from the border wall’s starting point in the Pacific, the Tijuana River Estuary spills into the sea. It is the largest of Southern California’s remaining salt marshes, where over 90% of wetland habitat has been lost to development. The combined Tijuana River Slough National Wildlife Refuge, Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve and Border Field State Park protect sand dunes and beaches, vernal pools, tidal channels, mudflats and coastal sage scrub. During the wet winter season, water drains into the marsh from the Tijuana River and surrounding creeks and canyons, infusing the marsh with fresh water and creating a delicate balance on which its many highly sensitive habitats depend. The site is a key stopover point on the Pacific Flyway, and provides over 370 species of migratory and native birds, including six endangered species, with essential breeding, feeding and nesting grounds.

Smuggler's Gulch filled in to make way for the border wall.

Following the passage of the Real ID Act the canyon known as Smuggler’s Gulch, south of San Diego, was filled in with over 2 million cubic yards of earth that had been ripped from adjacent mountaintops. A border wall was then perched on top. With no regulations in place and no oversight by other agencies, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) put little effort into erosion control, and the still bare slopes of the earthen dam threaten to wash tremendous amounts of dirt into the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve, which is only 600 feet away. In addition to smothering vegetation, burying the estuary in sediment may raise its surface level enough to disrupt the twice-daily inundation of sea water upon which its fragile ecosystem depends.

A few miles up the Tijuana River, the Otay Mountain region is home to the last surviving stands of Tecate cypress, an ice age tree that survives by absorbing coastal moisture from the air. This tree in turn is the host plant for the rare Thorne’s hairstreak butterfly. In an attempt to protect these and other rare and endangered species that inhabit this unique ecosystem, 18,500 acres of the Otay Mountain region were designated a National Wilderness Area.

Border wall in the Otay Mountain Wilderness Area, California

When the Environmental Protection Agency reviewed the plan to build this section of border wall, they expressed concern that plans to fill in canyons and waterways that feed into the Tijuana River would violate the Clean Water Act. The Department of the Interior warned that 6 endangered species would also be harmed by the wall.

San Diego Sector Border Patrol spokesman Richard Kite said in 2006, "At the mountain range, you simply don't need a fence. It's such harsh terrain it's difficult to walk, let alone drive. There's no reason to disrupt the land when the land itself is a physical barrier."

Ignoring his observation, DHS decided to “disrupt the land” of the Otay Mountain Wilderness Area with a border wall and an access road. The rugged terrain of the Wilderness Area necessitated the blasting and removal of 530,000 cubic yards of rock and extensive grading and leveling. The Otay Mountain Wilderness Area is so steep that the goal of blasting was to achieve an elevation grade of 15%, even though the Secure Fence Act states that if the elevation grade of an area exceeds 10% walls do not need to be constructed there. Border wall construction caused tremendous erosion, and involved cutting down more than 100 Tecate cypress trees.

Because this is clearly incompatible with a wilderness designation, the goal of which was to limit human activity and protect fragile ecosystems, the Otay Mountain Wilderness Act was among the 36 laws that former Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff suspended using the Real ID Act. He also swept aside the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act, rather than listen to the concerns of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior. With the wilderness no longer protected by law, DHS blasted through it and built the border wall. The Otay Mountain Wilderness Area now suffers from a barren scar and erosion that will bleed sediment into the Tijuana River for years to come.

Unchecked by environmental protections, the walls that began in California’s borderlands now extend over 600 miles, inflicting tremendous damage upon many sensitive ecosystems. In Arizona the border walls that cross washes and streams in the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument have caused severe erosion and flooding. Border walls built in New Mexico’s Playas Valley block the movement of one of the last wild herds of bison, whose range straddles the U.S. – Mexico border. In Texas the walls that slice through the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge have fragmented habitat that is critical for the survival of endangered ocelots.

Border wall in the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge in Texas.

Environmental organizations, including the Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife, and many others, have attempted to protect fragile border ecosystems from DHS’ lawless actions. They have challenged the constitutionality for the Real ID Act’s waiver provision in court, and have worked to educate Congress and the public about the wall’s environmental impacts. The Sierra Club has also produced a short documentary, Wild vs. Wall, that gives an overview of the border wall’s environmental impacts from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico.

Even the Department of Homeland Security admits that border walls have negative impacts on border ecosystems, though they consistently underestimate the extent of the damage. In Environmental Stewardship Plans prepared ahead of construction, DHS identified the purchase of equivalent replacement lands as the most practical way to make up for the many thousands of acres of land that walls would tear through. Setting aside the question of where one would find replacement land comparable to a mountainous wilderness area, Congress allocated some of the necessary funds in 2008 and 2009. The Department of Homeland Security has yet to provide the Department of the Interior with those funds, and not a single acre of replacement land has been bought.

The Department of Homeland Security’s dismissive attitude towards environmental laws and border ecosystems is a direct reflection of that of some politicians, who whip up hysteria about “broken borders” and are openly hostile towards environmental protections. Chief among them has been Utah Representative Rob Bishop, who has repeatedly called the idea that DHS should pay to fix some small portion of the damage that it has done “extortion”, and has worked to keep mitigation funds from reaching the Department of the Interior.

Bishop recently said, "If wilderness designation gets in the way of a secure southern border, I want the designation changed. If it means you lose a couple of acres of wilderness, I don't think God will blame us at the judgment bar for doing that."

In 1968 an unnamed Army major justified the bombing of the Vietnamese provincial capital of Ben Tre by stating coldly, “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.” The same Orwellian logic seems to animate Representative Bishop, and some of his colleagues, when they look at the U.S.-Mexico border. Blinded by the myth that the border is a war zone, they ignore inconvenient facts like the low crime rates in the border cities of San Diego, El Paso, and Brownsville, and call for a scorched earth campaign to stop the imagined invasion. They fail to see the hypocrisy in setting aside all of our nation’s laws to stop those whom they call “illegals”. They are destroying the borderlands to “secure” the border.

The Sierra Club documentary Wild vs. Wall can be viewed at sierraclub.org/borderlands .

Be Careful What You Wish For

2010-07-20T22:40:00.003-05:00

by Char Miller

Jan Brewer, the Governor of Arizona, says the funniest things. Especially about immigrants. Ok, I’ll admit that SB 1070, the state’s vicious anti-immigrant legislation, is nothing to laugh about. But when Brewer went on local television in early July she cracked me up.

Why? Because she told astonished viewers that Arizona police have begun to stumble on bodies buried in the desert that have been beheaded. Beheaded by those nasty immigrants she has been warning us about. Really, she said that.

Of course there is no truth to this preposterous allegation. Nor is there any basis for her claims that the “terrible border security crisis…has gotten worse.” Quite the reverse: the U. S. Borderlands are among the safest places in the United States, and getting more so. Then there is Brewer’s remarkable assertion that the majority of immigrants crossing into Arizona are drug dealers, mules or addicts. Investigations by journalists, Border Patrol officials, and county medical examiners have produced not a shred of evidence to support this and other of her bizarre rants.

Just as baseless is Senator John McCain’s frenzied claims that the state he represents is the “No. 2 kidnapping capital in the world.” Arizona has experienced nothing like the wave of kidnappings that mar social life in Africa, Asia and Central America; indeed, its figures are dropping, which suggests that the once-principled presidential candidate has gone off the deep end.

In this he has good company in the wacky State Senator Sylvia Allen. She has been blustering of late that "in the last few years 80 percent of our law enforcement that have been killed or wounded have been by an illegal." Arizona police departments have been quick to denounce her false charges.

All these lies have a purpose: the GOP in Arizona and across the nation has been flogging anti-immigrant horror stories to terrorize voters. The party wants to whip up its political base and drive independent voters into its ranks. Its fearmongering tactics and eagerness to incite racial prejudice, aided and abetted by right-wing talk radio and television, are also designed to cut into President Obama’s popular support and the Democratic Party’s congressional majority. This summer’s GOP craziness is all about the November 2010 elections.

Yet in so operating Republicans are proving to be certifiably crazy. They swear they want to include Latinos in their “Big Tent” coalition; they recognize--or at least the savviest of them do--that being inclusive is the only way that the GOP can remain a national party; it cannot otherwise survive in our twenty-first nation of immigrants. Perhaps it does not wish to: how else explain its sanctioning of repeated and vicious assaults on Hispanics, the very voters with whom they claim such great affinity?

The political impact of GOP anger and hostility is captured in the latest LatinoMetrics poll. It shows that the economy is no longer Latinos key worry--immigration is. And this change in focus came about in just six months, the exact period of time when Arizona politicians and others began to lambast immigrants. Latinos have taken notice. As one commentator told the Los Angeles Times: “Latinos are feeling less optimistic and more under siege.” Embattled, they are ready to fight back. They “have taken offense to the way immigrants have been demonized by politicians and political interest groups,” said Brent Wilkes, LULAC Executive Director, “and are prepared to vote accordingly.”

Come November, a crazed Jan Brewer may be just what the Democrats needed to maintain power. How funny is that?

Char Miller is W. M. Keck Professor and Director of the Environmental Analysis Program at Pomona College, Claremont CA. He is author of Deep in the Heart of San Antonio: Land and Life in South Texas and a columnist for the Rio Grande Guardian, where this essay originally appeared.

Trading on Fear in an Election Year: Using the Spillover Myth to Build Border Walls and Score Votes

2010-06-03T09:09:00.005-05:00

By Scott Nicol

On May 25, President Obama announced that he would deploy up to 1,200 National Guard troops to the US-Mexico border. This followed a White House meeting with Congressional Republicans aimed at attracting support for, or at least blunting opposition to, comprehensive immigration reform legislation. With mid-term elections on the horizon, conservative members of Congress have turned their attention to the border. Or, more precisely, to walling it off. In May two bills and one amendment aimed at building more border walls were introduced. One failed, but the other two are still pending.

On Cinco de Mayo Senator Jim DeMint announced that he would reintroduce his “Finish the Fence” amendment. It would change the Secure Fence Act to say that, “Fencing that does not effectively restrain pedestrian traffic (such as vehicle barriers and virtual fencing) may not be used to meet the 700-mile fence requirement.” As of April 2010, DHS reports that it has completed 347 miles of “pedestrian fence”, meant to stop people on foot, and 299 miles of “vehicle barriers.” If DeMint’s amendment makes it into law an additional 353 miles of “pedestrian fence” will be built along the border.

"Pedestrian fence" south of San Diego, California. Photo courtesy Jay Johnson Castro.

When DeMint proposed this amendment last July, the Senate voted 54 to 44 to include it in the Department of Homeland Security’s annual appropriations bill. The House version of the bill did not contain a matching provision, and Representative Ciro Rodriguez, who, unlike DeMint, represents a district encompassing part of the border, was able to remove it during the House/Senate conference committee.

This time around DeMint attempted to attach his amendment to Financial Reform legislation. Seeing that this had nothing to do with financial reform (in fact, at roughly $7.5 million per mile DeMint’s new walls would cost taxpayers $2,647,500,000) DeMint’s amendment was not adopted. Following this failure DeMint tried to attach it to a bill funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That attempt also fell short (though just barely), but he will almost certainly try again between now and the November elections.

Even more extreme than DeMint’s amendment is Representative Todd Tiahrt’s Secure the Border Act, which requires continuous double-layered border walls along the entire 2,000 mile long border, from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. Tiahrt made no attempt to explain how the monumental expense of his legislation would benefit his Kansas constituents, who already have Oklahoma and Texas acting as buffers between them and Mexico.

Instead, Tiahrt proudly proclaimed that the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and NumbersUSA support his bill. FAIR has earned a place on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of hate groups. They received $1.2 million from the Pioneer Fund, an organization founded to promote eugenics and foster policies of “racial betterment.” NumbersUSA has also been denounced by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its ties to nativist and racist organizations. FAIR president Dan Stein and NumbersUSA president Roy Beck both formerly edited the white nationalist publication The Social Contract. One would expect Congressman Tiahrt to avoid their endorsements, not embrace them.

Border Wall construction in El Paso, Texas. Customs and Border Protection photo.

When he announced his bill Tiahrt neglected to mention that before his election to the House of Representatives he was employed by Boeing, where he worked on a number of government contracts. His old boss has not forgotten him; in 2009-2010 Boeing was Tiahrt’s biggest campaign contributor. Boeing is in turn one of the largest recipients of contracts for the Secure Border Initiative (SBI), which includes both solid border walls and virtual fences. To date, Boeing has received 13 task orders for SBI, totaling $1.2 billion.

Representative Tiahrt is currently running for the U.S. Senate. Senate races are expensive, and a successful candidate needs publicity to energize voters. Boeing has consistently provided him with campaign cash, and NumbersUSA and FAIR make regular appearances on FOX news, where they defend anti-immigrant legislation and promote favorite legislators such as Tiahrt.

Not to be left out, Senators John McCain and Jon Kyl rolled out a “10-Point Border Security Plan”, along with accompanying legislation. Their bill would “construct double- and triple-layer fencing” throughout Arizona. McCain also released a campaign commercial in which he and Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu walk alongside the border wall and discuss McCain’s border scheme.

“The plan is perfect,” Sheriff Babeu intones.

“Then complete the danged fence,” McCain responds, with the domain CompleteTheDangedFence.com on the screen below him.

Those who try to visit the website are redirected to JohnMcCain.com, where they can purchase McCain t-shirts or donate to his reelection campaign.

McCain is in a tough primary fight with JD Hayworth, who has been attacking McCain for his prior willingness to support immigration reform. Before Hayworth threatened to unseat him, McCain told Vanity Fair, "I think the fence is least effective. But I'll build the g--damned fence if they want it." The possibility of losing the election has caused the Senator to embrace the border wall that he once dismissed.

Sheriff Babeu seems like an odd choice to accompany McCain alongside the Nogales border wall. Babeu’s jurisdiction is 115 miles north of Nogales, and does not include any of the border that McCain advocates walling off. Why not consult an actual border sheriff about his border security plan?

Because those who work on the border might give an honest answer, instead of reading McCain’s cue cards. If he were to ask Nogales Assistant Police Chief Roy Bermudez, for example, the response might mirror Bermudez’ statement earlier this month, when he said, "We have not, thank God, witnessed any spillover violence from Mexico.”

Clarence Dupnik, Sheriff of neighboring Pima County, which also includes a long stretch of the US-Mexico border, said at that time, "This is a media-created event. I hear politicians on TV saying the border has gotten worse. Well, the fact of the matter is that the border has never been more secure."

In fact, according to FBI statistics, crime rates in Arizona border towns, including Nogales, have remained flat for the past decade. There has been no increase in violence as a result of “spillover” from Mexico. There was also no decrease in crime following the erection of border walls and the hiring of thousands of Border Patrol agents. FBI statistics show that the same is true for U.S. cities all along the border, from San Diego to El Paso to Brownsville.

Contrast what the FBI says with statements by DeMint, who said, “Drug trafficking, human trafficking, gang activity and other crimes are raging in American cities near the border.” Or McCain, who opens his campaign spot by listing, “Drug and human smuggling, home invasions, murder…” as justifications for sending in the National Guard and building more “danged fence.”

Politicians and law enforcement seem to be looking at two completely different borders.

In fact, they are looking at completely different numbers. The numbers that DeMint, Tiahrt, and McCain are interested in are votes, not FBI crime statistics. Facts about the border do not matter; voters’ beliefs, no matter how divorced from reality, do. As Senator McCain indicated during his earlier, pre-campaign Vanity Fair interview, building walls and sending troops to the border are political gestures meant to get votes, not solutions to any real problem.

Just as in McCain’s commercial, for politicians the border wall is simply a prop, a stage set upon which they can project an illusion of strength and security for an audience of voters who will never see the actual border. They are looking at voters who live far from the border, who can be told that “spillover” violence poses an existential threat to the United States, and only they (certainly not their election opponents!) can protect the nation. Those of us who live on the actual border, and live with the land condemnations, the suspension of laws, and the environmental damage that accompany actual border walls, see it very differently.

Walling off Texas' Last Sabal Palm Forest

2010-04-26T20:24:00.008-05:00

By Scott Nicol

On April 19, Kiewit construction crews began clearing ground for yet another section of border wall just east of Brownsville, Texas on land that was, until the prior week, part of the Nature Conservancy’s Lennox Foundation Southmost Preserve. The 18-foot tall steel wall will cut off 95% of the 1,034 acre preserve. As with the more than 400 other landowners whose property the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has condemned, the Nature Conservancy was only offered compensation for the exact footprint of the wall – a strip 60 feet wide and 6,000 feet long – not the land that will be behind the wall. In DHS’ limited view, $114,000 is “just compensation” for walling off lands purchased in 1999 for $2.6 million.

Kiewit construction sign in front of the South Texas border wall

Before the order granting the federal government possession of their land, the Nature Conservancy had attempted to use the courts to force DHS to provide compensation and guarantee access to its property. The Department of Homeland Security has stated that the new border wall will have gates, but they have refused to explain under what circumstances they will be opened to permit access to areas behind the wall. With no way of knowing if staff or eco-tourists will be allowed into the Southmost Preserve, it is hard to see how they can continue to operate. Faced with a similar situation, the neighboring Sabal Palms Audubon Sanctuary simply took down its sign and ceased operations.

The Southmost Preserve contains one of the last of the sabal palm forests that once enveloped the mouth of the river. Before it was called the Rio Grande in the United States and the Rio Bravo in Mexico, the river was known as the Rio de las Palmas to Spanish explorers and conquistadors, who used the palm forest at its mouth as a landmark as they sailed along the Gulf Coast. Then dense groves of sabal palms followed the river up to 80 miles inland, but today the last stands are confined to one tract of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, the former Sabal Palms Audubon Sanctuary, and the Nature Conservancy’s Southmost Preserve. All three are now behind the border wall.

Border wall under construction in front of Sabal Palms Audubon Sanctuary

Federally listed endangered species, including the ocelot and jaguarundi, depend upon riparian habitat along the Rio Grande for their continued survival. Naturally solitary animals, they require large territories in which to hunt, find mates, and disperse after they are weaned. But South Texas has lost roughly 95% of its historic vegetative cover to urban development and agriculture.

Habitat fragmentation, in which disconnected “islands” of habitat are separated by large areas cleared of vegetation, split by roads, or divided by other impediments to movement, poses a tremendous threat to these species’ long-term survival. Ocelot and jaguarundi trapped within too-small habitat “islands” may not have sufficient prey or access to water, and often show evidence of inbreeding. Today, the Rio Grande Valley is home to the less than 80 ocelots and 40 jaguarundi that are still believed to survive in the United States.

The Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge was established to address the threat to the survival of ocelot, jaguarundi, and other wildlife posed by habitat fragmentation. Over the years 113 individual tracts of land, totaling 88,044 acres, have been acquired, with a goal of using the ribbon of riparian habitat along the Rio Grande as a wildlife corridor to link them. Though not operated by US Fish and Wildlife, the Southmost Preserve and Sabal Palms Audubon Sanctuary are critical parts of the corridor. Bound together by the river, it was hoped that they would provide sufficient resources and allow for the necessary mobility to prevent the extirpation of these endangered cats.

Mile after mile of border wall now slice through the LRGV National Wildlife Refuge; along the northern border of the Sabal Palms Audubon Sanctuary; and soon will tear through the Nature Conservancy’s Southmost Preserve, fragmenting habitat that was painstakingly pieced together over the course of many years. The walls that break apart the wildlife corridor may prove to be the final nail in the coffin for ocelots and jaguarundi.

Sabal Palms Audubon Sanctuary closed

Though the border walls called for by the Secure Fence Act are nearly finished, the threat of Congressionally mandated damage to the borderlands continues. With mid-term elections looming, many politicians hope to exploit fears of “spillover violence” and a Mexican “reconquista” in their bids to stay in office. Calling for the erection of more walls and the deployment of troops may not be sound border policy, but it is a sure-fire way to land an interview on Fox news, which is tantamount to a free campaign ad. The border environment is then either used as a scapegoat or ignored.

Claiming that federal land managers are “hiding behind the law” and preventing the Border Patrol from doing their job, recently Representative Rob Bishop introduced legislation that would prevent the Department of Interior from “impeding” Homeland Security’s attempts to fulfill the Secure Fence Act’s mandate. Rep. Bishop, whose Utah district lies 800 miles north of the U.S. – Mexico border, failed to ask the Border Patrol if the Department of the Interior’s stewardship of public lands was in fact interfering with their operations. Brandon Judd, vice president of Local 2544 of the National Border Patrol Council, spoke out against Rep. Bishop’s bill, stating that without environmental regulations, “you would destroy the land.”

Last week the Senate held hearings on border security and the failure of Boeing’s multi-million dollar “virtual fence.” The Senators did not discuss the environmental impacts of the border wall, or address the underlying economic factors driving immigration, or even consider whether or not it made sense to continue “enforcement only” immigration policies. Instead Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, suggested that, "The best answer to this continuing crisis and continued flow of illegal immigrants into the U.S. is to go back to the old-style fences, double- and triple-tiered, and layered."

"Triple fence" border wall design in San Diego, California

So while we may want to believe that border wall construction, and the accompanying destruction of border ecosystems, is finally coming to an end, the truth is that so long as politicians believe that militarizing the border plays well in their home districts they will continue to draft legislation calling for more border walls. To voters in Utah and Connecticut sabal palm forests along the Rio Grande are no more real than the forests in Avatar. When the palm forests are gone most won’t notice their passing.

This is why it is so important for those of us who can see the damage that is being inflicted upon the borderlands, and who will mourn the loss of sabal palms, ocelots, and the rest of our unique environment, to make certain that when these decisions are made far from the border our voices are heard. We cannot allow ecosystems that predate the founding of the United States and Mexico to be destroyed just to score points in an off-year election. As John Muir said, “God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools.”

Border Walls are Ineffective Speed Bumps in the Desert

2010-02-23T22:41:00.006-06:00

By Scott Nicol

All of the imagined benefits of the border wall flow from the assumption that if walls are built they will stop undocumented traffic from coming across. Politicians claim that building 700 miles of wall along our 1,933 mile long southern border, while ignoring the 3,987 mile long northern border and 12,479 miles of coastline will somehow allow the Department of Homeland Security to achieve the Secure Fence Act’s goal, to “achieve and maintain operational control over the entire international land and maritime borders of the United States.”

Crossers climbing the “triple fence” near San Diego, California. Photo by Laura Garcia.

In fact, the Border Patrol’s own statistics show that the border walls have not brought about a decrease in illegal entries. The border patrol uses the number of border crossers apprehended in a given sector to gauge the overall number of attempted crossings. Apprehensions dropped dramatically between 2005, the year before the Secure Fence Act was passed, and 2007, the year after. But the decrease did not occur in areas where border walls had been built. On the contrary, the greatest reductions in apprehensions, which according to the Border Patrol would indicate a successful strategy for stopping undocumented immigration, were seen in sectors that did not have walls. Texas’ Rio Grande Valley sector saw a 45.3% decrease in apprehensions, bringing them to a 15 year low. The Del Rio, Texas, sector saw a 66.5% decrease. Neither sector had an inch of border wall before 2008. In sectors such as Tucson, which saw walls built shortly after passage of the Secure Fence Act, the reduction in apprehensions began before any wall posts were erected. The areas that saw an increase in crossings were California’s San Diego and El Centro sectors, both of which have had border walls for over a decade. At the same time that the unwalled border witnessed dramatic decreases in crossings, heavily fortified San Diego saw a 20.1% increase.

Even before the passage of the Secure Fence Act, it was clear that border walls did not reduce the number of people entering the United States. The Congressional Research Service found that the number of border crossers apprehended nationally in 1992 was the same as the number apprehended in 2004, after walls in San Diego had been erected. They concluded that migrant traffic had simply shifted to more remote areas in Arizona and that “increased enforcement in San Diego sector has had little impact on overall apprehensions.” Migrants were not stopped by border walls; they simply went around them.

Other researchers have studied the effectiveness of the border wall and border enforcement by analyzing how successful migrants are at getting through it. The Migrant Policy Institute found that 97% of undocumented immigrants eventually succeed in entering the United States, a number that has been unchanged since the first border walls went up in 1995. Wayne Cornelius, Director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California-San Diego told the House Judiciary Committee that according to his research,

Tightened border enforcement since 1993 has not stopped nor even discouraged unauthorized migrants from entering the United States. Even if apprehended, the vast majority (92-97%) keep trying until they succeed. Neither the higher probability of being apprehended by the Border Patrol, nor the sharply increased danger of clandestine entry through deserts and mountainous terrain, has discouraged potential migrants from leaving home.

Assertions by pundits and politicians that walls will allow the U.S. to “secure” its southern border are patently false. Spokespersons for the Border Patrol tend to describe it much more modestly. Del Rio, Texas, Border Patrol Chief Randy Hill said, “We're going to see steel barriers erected on the borders where U.S. and Mexican cities adjoin. These will slow down illegal crossers by minutes.” Not stop crossers, or allow the Border Patrol to “achieve and maintain operational control” of the border, but slow them down by “minutes.” As Border Patrol spokesperson Mike Scioli said, “The border fence is a speed bump in the desert.”

Even Bush administration Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said in 2007, “I think the fence has come to assume a certain kind of symbolic significance which should not obscure the fact that it is a much more complicated problem than putting up a fence which someone can climb over with a ladder or tunnel under with a shovel.”

Mile upon mile of border wall have been built, with no apparent thought given to efficacy, because the Secure Fence Act only mandated a mile count. There is no requirement that border walls have any measurable impact on immigration or smuggling, and in 2009 the Government Accountability Office found that the Department of Homeland Security had made no effort to determine whether or not walls were having any effect. Even the Border Patrol has questioned whether walls are being built in some locations for political, rather than operational, reasons. In a 2007 email obtained by the Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) through a Freedom of Information Act request, the Assistant Chief Patrol Agent for the Yuma sector asks, “will we be getting fence where we don’t need it in our sector for the sake of putting up the required mileage?” The miles of unnecessary border wall that he referred to have since been built through the Imperial Sand Dunes of Southern California.

Border Wall in the Imperial Sand Dunes. Border Patrol photo.

Despite its “symbolic significance” and its possibly arbitrary placement, the border wall comes with a real price tag. In 2007 the Congressional Research Service estimated that the border wall could cost as much as $49 billion to build and maintain. Since then the costs of construction have risen dramatically. The Army Corps of Engineers reported that the cost of building “pedestrian fences” has increased from an average of $3.5 million per mile to $7.5 million per mile. The cost of building vehicle barriers on the border is now $2.8 million per mile. Some sections of border wall are particularly expensive: the walls that have been inserted into the levees in south Texas averaged $12 million per mile; in California, a 3.5 mile section that involved filling in canyons cost taxpayers $57 million. In 2008, the Department of Homeland Security asked Congress to allocate an additional $400 million for border wall construction, because the $2.7 billion already spent was not enough to finish out the year.

Why would members of Congress vote to spend billions of taxpayer dollars on border walls that do not work?

Simply put, for members of Congress who do not live beside the border, and do not count on the votes of those who do, the border wall is an abstraction. The reality that the border wall has little or no impact on border crossings is irrelevant. The reality that more than 400 property owners have had their property condemned is irrelevant. The reality that federally designated wilderness areas and wildlife refuges have been severely impacted is irrelevant. The politicians who voted for border walls were voting for a symbol, something that could be used to give voters a false sense of security during election cycles, and nothing more.

The Border Wall's Ongoing Environmental Toll

2010-01-25T23:33:00.006-06:00

By Scott Nicol

In 1996 the United States Congress called for the construction of “triple layered fencing” along the U.S.-Mexico border, beginning in the Pacific Ocean and extending 14 miles into California. This was to consist of parallel 10 to 15 foot high steel walls, with 50 feet of land in between graded and cleared of all vegetation, and the entire expanse lit by stadium floodlights. The Border Patrol also proposed filling in canyons and scalping mountains to give the new walls and road a level path. The California Coastal Commission determined in 2004 that these initial border walls would violate the Coastal Zone Management Act. Of particular concern was the damage that walls would do to the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve, the largest of the remaining California salt marshes, which harbors many endangered plant and animal species. The Sierra Club, Audubon Society, and other environmental groups also challenged the border wall in court. Construction came to a halt.

Congress responded by passing the Real ID Act of 2005, which gave the Secretary of Homeland Security the power to waive all laws that might slow construction of border walls, and also curtailed normal judicial review. President Bush’s Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, used this unprecedented power to “waive in their entirety” the Coastal Zone Management Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and the National Historic Preservation Act in order to resume border wall construction. The challenges brought by the California Coastal Commission and environmental organizations were thrown out when the laws that they were based upon were waived.

When Congress passed the Secure Fence Act in 2006, the power to waive laws granted by the Real ID Act carried over to all of the walls that the new law mandated. The Secure Fence Act called for over 700 hundred miles of new border wall extending from California into Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, stopping just short of the Gulf of Mexico. Its path takes it through some of our nation’s most fragile and biologically diverse protected lands. Over the years former Homeland Secretary Chertoff issued 5 separate waivers under Real ID, setting aside 36 federal laws and, “all federal, state, or other laws, regulations and legal requirements of, deriving from, or related to the subject of” those named laws. The waivers encompass the broad subjects of water, air, wildlife, and the environment, leaving few, if any, federal, state, or other environmental laws in place. In addition to brushing aside environmental protections, laws relating to farmland, archaeological and historic sites, religious freedoms, and Native American graves were also suspended.

Construction of the massive earthen berm to fill in Smuggler’s Gulch. Border Patrol photo.

With no need to obey environmental laws, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) filled in the canyon known as Smuggler’s Gulch, south of San Diego, with over 2 million cubic yards of earth that had been ripped from adjacent mountaintops, and planted the border wall on top of the berm. With no regulations in place and no oversight by other agencies, DHS put little effort into erosion control, and the still bare slopes of the earthen dam threaten to wash tremendous amounts of dirt into the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve, which is only 600 feet away. Burying the estuary in sediment may raise its surface level enough to disrupt the twice-daily inundation of sea water upon which its fragile ecosystem depends.

To the east of Smuggler’s Gulch, in the rugged Otay Mountain Wilderness Area, DHS has blasted mountainsides in order to create access roads and level ground upon which to build the border wall. Before construction began the Environmental Protection Agency raised concerns that the dumping of tons of rubble, and the erosion that would follow, would clog the Tijuana River and violate the Clean Water Act. The Otay Mountain Wilderness Area was established in part to preserve some of the last stands of rare tecate cypress trees, the host plant for the even rarer Thorne’s hairstreak butterfly, which are found nowhere else in the United States. But with the Real ID Act’s waiver authority in hand, DHS has ignored the EPA’s concerns and our nation’s environmental laws, including the Otay Mountain Wilderness Act and the Clean Water Act. Border wall construction caused tremendous erosion, as predicted, and also involved cutting down more than 100 tecate cypress trees.

In July of 2008 the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument received seasonal monsoon rains which resulted in the flooding of a number of washes that are bisected by the border wall. Storms of this type normally occur every 3 – 5 years in this part of the Sonoran desert. The Army Corps of Engineers had previously stated that the border walls built across washes would "not impede the natural flow of water.” In stark contrast to these claims, the National Park Service determined that the grates built into the base of the wall to allow for the passage of water were quickly choked with debris and sediment. The border wall then acted as a dam, with floodwaters up to seven feet deep piling up behind it. The floodwaters then followed the wall in search of an outlet, which they found at the Sonoyta port of entry, causing millions of dollars of damage to private businesses and government buildings.

Flood debris backed up by the border wall in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. National Park Service photo.

The U.S.-Mexico border consists of hundreds of miles of public and protected lands, which is habitat for scores of species. The border wall and patrol road slicing through these areas fragments the habitats of the animals that live here. Cut off from their usual range, populations may not have access to mates in other groups, a necessity for a genetically diverse, healthy population. Border walls also block animals from food and water sources, which leaves them especially vulnerable in times of drought. As the border wall funnels migrants into rugged, remote terrain and Border Patrol vehicles pursue them, they damage fragile ecosystems and disturb sensitive wildlife, like the bighorn sheep and the desert tortoise, both of which are endangered.

Endangered jaguars, which were almost entirely extirpated in the United States, have been photographed and even captured in Southern Arizona and New Mexico in recent years. In 1997, the jaguar was placed on the endangered species list in hopes of reviving U.S. populations. While their former range extends into all four southern border states, the individual animals which have been seen in Arizona likely came into the U.S. from Mexico, where larger populations live. With routes from Mexico almost completely sealed off by the border wall, establishing a healthy breeding population of jaguar in the U.S. may no longer be possible.

South Texas is home to ocelots and jaguarundi, both of which are listed under the Endangered Species Act. Agricultural and urban development have stripped these animals of 95% of their original habitat. Because so few of each species are left in the U.S., they need access to mates in Mexico to avoid inbreeding. The Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge was created to provide them with sufficient habitat to survive, as well as offer a potential route to Mexico. Over the past 20 years, more than 90 million tax dollars and thousands of volunteer hours were spent piecing together and revegetating tracts of land along the Rio Grande in order to create this wildlife corridor. The border walls in South Texas now divide some of these refuge tracts, and cut others off from the Rio Grande and from Mexico. With the Endangered Species Act waived, the Department of Homeland Security has largely ignored the way that border walls fragment the ocelot and jaguarundi’s remaining habitat and seriously diminish hope for their recovery, or even survival.

Levee-border wall through the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge in Texas. Photo by Scott Nicol.

Before former Secretary Chertoff’s last Real ID Act waivers in April 2008, DHS prepared draft environmental impact statements and draft environmental assessments for the various sections of border wall, as mandated by the National Environmental Policy Act. In reviewing the draft environmental impact statement for the Rio Grande Valley, the Environmental Protection Agency found it to be “insufficient,” and recommended that DHS start the process over. The EPA reached the same conclusion, and made the same recommendation, when it reviewed the draft environmental impact statements and draft environmental assessments that DHS prepared for each the other border wall sections.

Following the waivers, which allowed DHS to disregard the National Environmental Policy Act, the agency abruptly ended the environmental assessment and environmental impact statement processes. Instead, they created a brand new category, the “environmental stewardship plan,” which was not governed by any federal legislation. These new reports recycle the bulk of the prior, “insufficient” reports, in many cases word-for-word, but have no established criteria or requirement for review from the EPA or the public. While they do include recommendations to minimize the wall’s environmental impact, most of which appeared in the earlier “insufficient” reports, there is no requirement that these be adhered to. In the instance of Smuggler’s Gulch, for example, revegetation and erosion control measures called for in DHS’ own report were not implemented.

One of DHS’ most absurd claims for the border wall is that it will actually be good for the environment because border crossers leave litter, make foot paths, and, in the states that do not have a river for a border, drive off road vehicles through sensitive habitat. This ignores the difference in scale between a dirt path that winds through the brush and an area 150 feet wide cleared of all vegetation, and 10 – 15 foot tall steel and concrete walls. The border wall’s destructive impact is made obvious by the Department of Homeland Security’s need to “waive in their entirety” our nation’s most important environmental laws. The only reason for DHS to waive laws is the knowledge that the border wall violates them. Litter can be a problem for wildlife, but the blasting, bulldozing, fragmentation, and large-scale erosion caused by border wall and Border Patrol road construction are much worse. Animals can sidestep discarded water bottles, but when their habitat is cleared of vegetation, flooded, or silted up, and blocked by an impermeable wall, they cannot survive.

Environmental Groups Support Provisions of Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill

2009-12-15T17:05:00.004-06:00

The Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife, and the Center for Biological Diversity have issued the following press release in support of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America's Security and Prosperity Act of 2009, introduced by Representative Luis Gutierrez. The bill contains key provisions intended to ensure that the Department of Homeland Security obeys all of our nation's laws when building infrastructure on the border.

Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill Gets it Right at the Border
Bill Would Help Protect Wildlife from Damage of Border Walls

Washington, D.C, - A new immigration bill introduced today includes important provisions that will help protect wildlife, communities, and natural resources from damage wrought by border walls between the U.S. and Mexico.

The Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America's Security and Prosperity Act of 2009, introduced by Representative Luis Gutierrez, includes critical components of the Border Security and Responsibility Act of 2009 (HR 2076), introduced by Rep. Raul Grijalva in April 2009.

To date, at least 633 miles of border walls and barriers have been constructed along the U.S. – Mexico border, and the construction has proceeded quickly and almost entirely without proper consultation or compliance laws.Three dozen environmental, archaeological, religious freedom, historic preservation, cultural, and other laws were waived by former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff for border wall construction.

The legislation would replace the border wall’s one-size-fits-all approach to border security with a strategy based on comprehensive analyses of the effectiveness and costs of various security measures. To address negative impacts from existing border infrastructure, the legislation would establish comprehensive monitoring and mitigation programs. The bill would also ensure full compliance with landmark laws like the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Endangered Species Act that were enacted to promote public health and protect our country’s wildlife and natural heritage.

“ Rep. Gutierrez and Rep. Grijalva deserve praise for recognizing the need for a responsible border security policy that minimizes harm to our precious borderlands, wildlife, and border communities,” said Sierra Club representative Michael Degnan.

“Much of this country’s rarest and most spectacular wildlife--including jaguar, ocelot, Sonoran pronghorn, and many other species--depend upon the borderlands for survival. This bill would restore crucial protections to such wildlife and help mitigate the widespread damage that has already been done to important habitat and migration corridors,” said Randy Serraglio, conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity.

"Laws that protect our wildlife, our water, our air, and our right to a healthful environment should never have been circumvented by the Bush administration," said Bob Irvin, Senior Vice President for Conservation Programs at Defenders of Wildlife. "This bill will restore the rule of law along America's border."

As we celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall, border walls are built in Brownsville, Texas

2009-11-09T12:29:00.030-06:00

While the world celebrates the fall of the Berlin Wall, the United States is continuing construction on its own border wall in the southern tip of Texas. The following photos show the progress of the construction and how the people of Brownsville, Texas are having to learn to live with a wall in their midst.

Construction has been completed through many residential neighborhoods. This one is off Milpa Verde Street in East Brownsville.

A child plays in the shadow of the border wall behind her house.

Looking North into the neighborhood from behind the wall.

A border patrol surveillance tower and the border wall visible at the end of a Brownsville cul-de-sac.

Construction on the wall is quickly approaching Hope Park, a city park that was established on the banks of the Rio Grande in part to commemorate the strong ties between the U.S. and Mexico.

Inside Hope Park. The marker on the left is where the wall will be built. On the right is a state historical marker for the Chisolm Trail.

East of Brownsville is the Sabal Palms Audubon Sanctuary, home of the largest surviving stand of native Sabal Palms. With the border wall's impending construction, the sanctuary has been closed to the public since last spring. The gate on the left blocks the entrance to the sanctuary, and the sign has been taken down.

The border wall reaching the edge of the Nature Conservancy Southmost Preserve. Construction here is delayed while Nature Conservancy fights DHS in court.

Homeowners living across the street from the border wall draw explicit parallels between the border wall and the Berlin wall.

Border War Rhetoric Has Real Consequences for the Borderlands

2009-09-27T21:56:00.003-05:00

By Stefanie Herweck

This week Texas Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst addressed an assembly of border residents and community leaders in Harlingen, Texas, less than 15 miles from the Rio Grande, and proclaimed that there was a war going on along the border. His assessment of the border was extreme: “We have two wars everyone talks about going on, one is in Iraq and one is in Afghanistan. We’ve got a third going on and that’s the border.”

Dewhurst made this announcement in the keynote speech for State Senator Eddie Lucio’s State of the District Address. With Senator Lucio looking on, Dewhurst went on to make his case for war on the border, speaking in vague terms about “transnational gangs,” “drug lords killing Americans,” and “border violence,” but providing little in the way of concrete details. He urged that more law enforcement be deployed in order to “close down this border.”

Dewhurst’s comparison of the U.S.-Mexico border region to war-torn Iraq and Afghanistan is offensive and absurd. His characterization of a border at war is based on ignorant hysteria instead of reality. And his portrayal of the border region as the dangerous fount of criminal activity for the rest of the state and the country is categorically false.

When pressed in an interview after the speech to provide the details that would support his claims, Dewhurst said, “We’ve seen incidence of gangs, drive by shootings, in Wichita Falls, which is a long way from the border.” The Lieutenant Governor is right about one thing here: 600 miles between Wichita Falls and the Texas-Mexico border is a long way. But declaring war on the border in order to fight crime in Wichita Falls is ludicrous.

Especially because most Texas border cities are actually safer than Wichita Falls. Although Wichita Falls has 30,000 fewer people than the border city of McAllen, its crime rate in 2008 was higher than McAllen’s. According to FBI statistics, Wichita Falls had 557 incidences of violent crime in 2008, while McAllen only had 371. El Paso was ranked as the third safest large city in the United States in the same year. And all of these cities saw a decrease in violent crime from 2007 to 2008, as did the nation as a whole. Dewhurst’s perverse fantasy of a chaotic crime-ridden border simply does not match the relatively peaceful day-to-day border reality.

In his speech, Dewhurst also cited briefings he has received from the Department of Public Safety and other law enforcement. When asked to elaborate on these briefings after his speech, he cited no official reports or criminological studies, but said “Virtually every city I go into I talk to the DPS and I talk to the local police and they have all seen a pick up of gang activity that they feel is related to drug cartels in Mexico.” While the views of law enforcement officers around the state are valuable, it is irresponsible to make policy recommendations based on their “feelings” rather than hard facts.

Furthermore, Dewhurst has apparently failed to consult with law enforcement officials in the border region. When interviewed by NPR this spring, Brownsville Police Chief Carlos Garcia noted that there had only been 3 homicides in his city in 2008, and that none of them were related to drug cartels. In the same article McAllen Police Chief Victor Rodriguez provided some perceptive analysis that Dewhurst should heed: “The sky is not falling,” he said, refuting unfounded statements by pundits and politicians that cartel violence was spilling over at the border. "What's happening right now is we've got rhetoric that's driving the policy."

When it was pointed out after his speech that his talk of war might not be welcome at the border, Dewhurst quickly wrote it off as just a rhetorical strategy: “I use the word 'war' only in the sense to get people’s attention to understand that there’s a serious problem along our porous southern and northern border.”

Unfortunately, as Chief Rodriguez well understands, rhetoric drives policy. Dewhurst’s declaration of war on the border may be intended as nothing more than a metaphor, but it is likely to have real consequences for the residents of the Texas border.

In his own speech, Dewhurst called for more actual boots on the ground to deal with the war scenario that he later claimed was purely rhetorical. This same border war rhetoric is driving Governor Perry’s call for troops to patrol the border and military predator aircraft to fly up and down the Rio Grande. This month he stationed a specialized team of the Texas Rangers that will reportedly be patrolling the border region carrying automatic weapons, and wearing camouflage, helmets, and bullet-proof vests.

The governor’s action comes despite his own admission that crime along the border has been falling in recent years. And it has been deemed unnecessary by border law enforcement. Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño said, “We don't need the Texas Rangers to come to the border to quell any imaginary disturbance.”

Although sending the Texas Rangers or the National Guard to fight an imaginary war at the border might make for good sound bites in the rest of the state, it sends a shiver down the spine of border residents. Community and business leaders fear that their efforts to develop the border region will be undermined by the false perception of a dangerous, militarized border. Residents know that staging a war in their communities, parks, and farmlands only puts them more at risk.

Border war rhetoric like Dewhurst’s drives policy on the national stage as well. Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina introduced an amendment to the 2010 DHS Appropriations Bill calling for more than 300 miles of new border wall. If the amendment passes, hundreds of those miles could be built in Texas. These walls are being proposed despite the fact that the hundreds of miles of border walls already built have not stopped people from crossing the border. Wayne Cornelius, Director Emeritus of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California at San Diego, say that despite the walls at the border, between 92% and 98% of all those attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally eventually get through. This month, a report by the Government Accountability Office faulted the Department of Homeland Security for having no effective way to gauge the impacts that border walls are having on illegal entry.

But the myth of a border war trumps the reality that walls don’t work. In the press release about his amendment, DeMint says that more border walls are urgently needed because “our southern border has become a battleground.”

Too many walls already blight the Texas borderlands. Texas citizens have had their private property stripped away to make way for walls. Texas cities have seen their landscape forever marred by them. Texas natural areas, wildlife refuges and parks have been irreparably damaged by them. All of this destruction is rooted in the myth of the border war.

Dewhurst’s inflammatory war rhetoric may have been intended only to “get people’s attention,” but the consequences for his constituents along the border are very real. When our borderlands are decreed a war zone, politicians in Austin and Washington forget that it is a place that millions of people call home. They jump on the border war bandwagon, hoping to score political points and to burnish their law-and-order credentials. Like Lt. Gov. Dewhurst, they make the border a scapegoat for crime in the rest of the Texas and the United States. Like Gov. Perry and Sen. DeMint, they dream up absurd, and ultimately destructive, schemes to fight an imaginary war.

Border residents desperately need leaders who will reject the border war scenario, who will refuse to bear false witness against the borderlands and who will work tirelessly to represent the reality of border life at the state and national level. We need uncompromising leaders who will not be complicit in the border war myth, who will actively oppose the schemes based on this myth, and who will not sit silently by as the border region that they were elected to represent is mischaracterized, maligned and damaged.

Environmental Organizations Call Upon Congress to Strip Border Walls from the DHS Appropriations Bill

2009-09-20T16:10:00.005-05:00

The following letter, signed by 18 environmental organizations including the Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife, and Audubon, was sent to members of the House / Senate conference committee that will be debating the DHS appropriations bill. Currently, the Senate version of the bill contains an amendment requiring hundreds of miles of new border wall. The House version does not require more walls.

Dear Conferees,

On behalf of our millions of members and supporters across the entire country, the undersigned organizations are writing to ask that you remove Sen. DeMint’s amendment #1399 from the Homeland Security Appropriations Act and continue to support efforts to monitor and mitigate negative impacts of border wall construction.

Senate amendment #1399 is the latest attempt to extend the failed policy of building more border walls along our southwest border. In addition to negatively impacting the wildlife and natural resources of the borderlands, the provision would come at great expense to our nation’s border security programs and the American taxpayer. While tying the hands of border security experts by requiring an arbitrary number of miles of wall construction, this language would drain funding from other border security programs in order to cover the growing cost of border wall construction. Taxpayers have paid approximately $2.4 billion for border wall construction to date, and according to the Government Accountability Office, one mile of border wall now costs nearly $8 million.

Nearly one-third of the 1,950 mile U.S.-Mexico border lies within military, tribal, and public lands, including Wilderness areas, National Wildlife Refuges, National Forests, National Monuments, State Parks and hundreds of miles within the National Park system. Much of this country’s most spectacular and imperiled wildlife, including two of America’s most endangered big cats, jaguars and ocelot, bighorn sheep, Sonoran pronghorn, and bison, depend upon protected public lands along the border for intact habitat and survival.

Numerous studies have highlighted the damage that border infrastructure has caused to the borderlands’ ecology and wildlife. The National Park Service issued a report in August, 2008 confirming that the border wall along the Lukeville Port of Entry has exacerbated seasonal flooding and has caused accelerated scouring and erosion on the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. A recent study in Conservation Biology showed that the border wall fractures the habitat connectivity that wildlife like the pygmy owl and bighorn sheep need for survival. As climate change shifts habitats and alters migration routes, establishing wildlife corridors and protecting habitat connectivity becomes even more critical.

The damage that border walls have caused to the unique natural values of the borderlands has been exacerbated by the Secretary of Homeland Security’s authority to waive any applicable laws to expedite border wall construction. This unprecedented authority has prompted the waiving of 37 environmental, historic preservation, tribal protection and other federal laws along with related state and local laws across 563 miles of the border.

In order to help address the negative impacts of border walls that have already been constructed, the House Homeland Security Appropriations bill included $40 million for border monitoring and mitigation. We strongly support keeping this language in the final bill and believe that its inclusion would mark one more step towards repairing the damage done to communities and natural resources along the border.

Again, we support the House version of the Homeland Security Appropriations Act, and as you move to conference we specifically ask that you remove Senate amendment #1399 from the final bill and continue to advance border monitoring and mitigation efforts.

Sincerely,

The Arizona Zoological Society
Center for Biological Diversity
Defenders of Wildlife
Earthjustice
Frontera Audubon
International League of Conservation Photographers
League of Conservation Voters
National Audubon Society
National Wildlife Federation
Natural Resources Defense Council
Rio Grande International Study Center
Sierra Club
Southwest Environmental Center
Valley Nature Center
Western Lands Project
The Wilderness Society
Wildlands CPR
Wildlands Network

Taxpayers for Common Sense Blasts the Border Wall

2009-09-18T19:43:00.002-05:00

Taxpayers for Common Sense has voiced their opposition to the border wall, tossing it into their Weekly Wastebasket. They describe themselves in this way,

"Taxpayers for Common Sense is an independent and non-partisan voice for taxpayers working to increase transparency and expose and eliminate wasteful and corrupt subsidies, earmarks, and corporate welfare."

Border Waste Reruns
Volume XIV No. 38: September 18, 2009

Jimmy Buffet could have testified at this week’s hearing about ongoing federal border protection initiatives. As you watched the same old song and dance about Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spending commence before lawmakers, you could almost hear him sing: “Wasting away again on the border wall. Searching for the lost section of fence. Some people say that Boeing’s to blame, but I know – it’s our own damn fault.”

With the benefit of updated numbers and dates, the House Homeland Security Committee learned that seven years and more than $4 billion in, DHS’s Secure Border Initiative (SBI) is (still) broken. SBI is comprised of a system of cameras and sensors known as SBINet and a steel “pedestrian” fence erected on more than 600 miles of the southwestern U.S. border.

Lawmakers heard an all too familiar tale of waste and woe. The average cost of pedestrian fencing has jumped from $3.5 to $6.5 million per mile, and costs for vehicle fencing have doubled. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) testified that the sensors used in the SBINet system still suffer from too many false detections and are vulnerable to bad weather despite the fact that the military has effectively used camera and sensor technology to track enemy movements for years at a much lower cost. But it didn’t stop there, the sad song continued:

· Full deployment of SBINet is now projected for 2016—seven years after the original contract with Boeing was scheduled to end;

· The pedestrian fence has been breached more than 3,000 times so far, with each repair costing at least $1,300;

· A long-overdue DHS study estimates the costs of maintaining the fence over a 20-year period at $6.5 billion— which is likely a low ball.

Sadly, even the new price tag may not tell the whole story. As our analysis of fence costs points out, maintenance estimates by the Congressional Budget Office and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers put that figure at $8 billion years ago, before the same labor and materials price hikes that have bumped up the cost of fence construction.

Problems with SBINet are due in large part to a contract that even a Boeing spokesman admitted was “awkward.” That’s a bit of an understatement: The delays and cost overruns have made the project a poster child for problems with “lead systems integrator” contracting strategy, where one company acts as a “system integrator” that tries to cobble together several different projects completed at different times and with different subcontractors. Incredibly, DHS just renewed Boeing’s contract for another year, despite a string of failures that has dogged the contract almost since its 2006 inception.

The fundamental question, of course, is whether the fence actually works. The unfortunate answers range between “no” and “not sure”. Because the SBINet technology still isn’t functional, border patrol agents are forced to work with outdated and ineffective technology, decreasing the border’s effectiveness. And the border patrol hasn’t yet created a way to quantitatively measure whether or not the pedestrian fence is actually keeping people out. The number of people caught trying to cross the border actually declined in several sectors before the fence went up, showing only that those numbers are influenced by factors other than the existence of a 14-foot steel wall.

Like too many expensive national security projects, Congressional commitments to the border fence were made in a fiscal vacuum. Yet Senators exacerbated irresponsible spending by inserting a requirement that would add another 300 miles of pedestrian fence at a cost of some $40 billion. Even though they’ve seen this one before, maybe lawmakers should review the hearing transcript: When asked whether the American taxpayer had benefitted from spending on SBI, the GAO analyst replied with an unequivocal “No.”

No Border Wall Calls on Congress to Strip the DeMint Border Wall Mandate from the DHS Appropriations Bill

2009-09-17T22:49:00.002-05:00

The No Border Wall Coalition sent the following letter to the members of the House / Senate conference committee that will be deciding on the final language of the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill. While the House version does not include more border walls, the Seante's version includes the DeMint amendment, calling for 700 miles of pedestrian walls. After the letter was sent a new report from the Government Accountability Office on the Secure Border Initiative, which includes border walls, was released. It found,

"A life cycle cost study has been completed which estimates deployment, operations, and future maintenance for the tactical infrastructure will total $6.5 billion. Despite the investment in tactical infrastructure, its impact on securing the border has not been measured because DHS has not assessed the impact of the tactical infrastructure on gains or losses in the level of effective control."

The life cycle cost estimate is on top of construction costs, and does not include the cost of the construction called for by the DeMint amendment.

Here is the text of our letter to the committee members, explaining our opposition to the construction of more border walls:

The No Border Wall Coalition urges you to remove the DeMint amendment (1399), which calls for hundreds of miles of new border wall, from the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill. Further border wall construction will do tremendous damage to private and municipal property, severely impact critical wildlife habitat, and cost our nation billions of dollars. But like the walls that have already been built, the new border walls will have no impact on immigration.

The DeMint amendment changes the Secure Fence Act to require 700 miles of “pedestrian” border walls; vehicle barriers built along the border could no longer be applied to the mile count. As of July, DHS has completed 331 miles of “pedestrian fencing” and 302 miles of vehicle barriers. If DeMint’s amendment is accepted by the House/Senate Conference Committee and is signed into law, the border wall will suddenly be 369 miles short of its new mandate.

To build border walls the federal government has initiated condemnation suits against more than 400 landowners, of which 255 are still unresolved. Landowners and local elected officials have been denied basic information, including how they will access properties and water intake pumps that are walled off. If the DeMint amendment is not removed, hundreds more farmers, ranchers, nature preserves, and municipalities will be hauled into federal court to have their lands taken from them.

Border walls currently slice through National Monuments, National Wildlife Refuges, and preserves owned by the Nature Conservancy and Audubon. Habitats that are critical for the survival of federally endangered ocelots and Sonoran pronghorn have been fragmented, cutting animals off from the resources that they need to survive. Blocked watersheds have led to flood damage in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, and ongoing blasting in the Otay Mountain Wilderness Area is filling the Tijuana River with boulders and debris. If more border walls are built, more border ecosystems will be degraded or destroyed.

To date, $3.1 billion has been spent on border wall construction. Last year the Army Corps of Engineers reported that the average cost of building walls had increased to $7.5 million per mile. Some sections of border wall are particularly expensive: walls in South Texas averaged $12 million per mile; in California, a 3.5 mile section that involved filling in canyons cost taxpayers $57 million.

If the DeMint amendment remains in the DHS appropriations bill, we will spend no less than (and quite possibly a lot more than) $2,767,500,000.00 to build 369 miles of new border walls.

Border walls have utterly failed to stop either immigrants or smugglers from entering the United States. The majority enter through ports of entry, so walls erected between the ports have no effect on them. And according to the Border Patrol, even those who find the wall directly in their path are only slowed down by around 5 minutes.

Professor Wayne Cornelius of the University of California at San Diego has spent more than a decade researching undocumented immigration. His work has revealed that, even with border walls,

“all but a tiny minority eventually get through – between 92 and 98 percent, depending on the community of origin. … [T]he eventual success rate is virtually the same for migrants whose most recent crossing occurred before 1995, when the border was largely unfortified, and those crossing in the most recent period. In other words, the border enforcement build-up seems to have made no appreciable difference in terms of migrants’ ability to enter the United States clandestinely.”

The Department of Homeland Security recognizes this fact. After DeMint’s amendment was adopted, DHS spokesman Matt Chandler told the Wall Street Journal that it is, “designed to prevent real progress on immigration enforcement and [is] a reflection of the old administration's strategy: all show, no substance."

Rather than spend billions more on walls that will do tremendous damage to border communities and ecosystems, and which the Department of Homeland Security says will not help them to do their job, the membership of the No Border Wall Coalition urges you to adopt the House version of the DHS appropriations bill. For many of us, the border is our home, and as walls have been erected our needs, concerns, and voices have been ignored. We ask that you listen to us now. Strip the DeMint amendment from the bill, and refrain from building more border walls.

LULAC Opposes DeMint Amendment in the Senate Version of the Homeland Security Appropriations Bill

2009-09-15T22:04:00.004-05:00

LULAC Press Release
September 15, 2009

Washington, DC – The League of United Latin American Citizens, the largest and oldest Hispanic civil rights organization in the country, conveys strong opposition to the DeMint amendment included in the Senate version of the Homeland Security Appropriations bill, H.R. 2892 which would require additional several hundred miles of pedestrian fencing along the southern border costing taxpayers approximately $3 billion.

“Our border security remains a national priority but with our budget constraints we face, I believe we need to go about appropriating our resources where they are most needed," said LULAC National President Rosa Rosales. "The Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano has indicated that there are more useful ways of using these resources such as in deploying new surveillance assets, sensors, and tactical infrastructure to the southern border.”

We strongly recommend that the Senate recede to the House on the DeMint amendment, eliminating it from the final bill. Should conferees have the funds available for such a proposal as was approved by the Senate, we recommend that the money be used to strengthen border security at the southern ports of entry, where the nation’s needs are most urgent. There is an investment of $720 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds to improve security at land ports of entry, including $260 million for new technology and equipment.

We look forward to working with the Senate and House to reconcile both appropriations bills.

The League of United Latin American Citizens advances the economic condition, educational attainment, political influence, housing, health and civil rights of Hispanic Americans through community-based programs operating at more than 700 LULAC councils nationwide.

Will Ciro Rodriguez Stop a New Round of Border Walls?

2009-08-23T22:16:00.009-05:00

By Scott Nicol

U.S. Representative Ciro Rodriguez, whose district stretches from San Antonio to the border communities of Eagle Pass, Del Rio, and Presidio, will play a key role in determining whether or not more border walls are built in Texas. After Congress returns from its August recess, Rodriguez will serve on the Conference Committee responsible for reconciling the House and Senate versions of the Department of Homeland Security’s 2010 Appropriations Bill. The Senate’s version contains an amendment requiring the construction of up to 369 miles of new border walls, while the House version makes no mention of walls.

Ignoring the destructive impacts on municipalities, private property, and wildlife refuges that Texas has already suffered, Senators Hutchison and Cornyn both voted for more border walls.

Based on his record, there is hope that, in contrast to Texas’ Senators, Representative Rodriguez will stand up for his constituents and work to strip the border wall amendment from the bill. But a recent action also gives reason for concern.

Standing up for Texas border communities would certainly be welcomed by those in Representative Rodriguez’ district who live along the Rio Grande. Eagle Pass was the first such municipality that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sued to condemn land for the border wall.

Eagle Pass Mayor Chad Foster has repeatedly criticized the border wall, calling upon DHS to, “halt construction on [this] expensive and useless one-size-fits-all solution to border security. Instead, the [DHS] secretary should be working toward genuine solutions, with input from local and state officials. Only then will we achieve real security along our nation's southern border."

Representative Rodriguez has made efforts to lessen the border wall’s impact and give the Secretary of Homeland Security the latitude to spare Eagle Pass and other border communities. He inserted an amendment into the 2008 supplemental appropriations bill which changed the Secure Fence Act to read,

“nothing in this paragraph shall require the Secretary of Homeland Security to install fencing, physical barriers, roads, lighting, cameras, and sensors in a particular location along an international border of the United States, if the Secretary determines that the use or placement of such resources is not the most appropriate means to achieve and maintain operational control over the international border at such location.''

Since the Congressional Research Service had already determined that border walls have “no discernible impact” on the number of undocumented immigrants and smugglers who cross the border each year, it should have been easy for then-Secretary Chertoff to decide that walls were not the most appropriate means to control the border. Unfortunately, neither he nor current DHS Secretary Napolitano has been willing to take the political heat and halt the construction of more “expensive and useless” walls.

Rep. Rodriguez also joined the rest of Texas’ border representatives in asking President Obama to “suspend construction of border fencing” until a cost-benefit analysis could be conducted and consultation with local stakeholders could be initiated. He also signed on to a letter calling on DHS to monitor the damage caused by the wall and establish a mitigation fund.

So clearly, Rodriguez can be counted on to remove the border wall building amendment from the DHS appropriations bill, right?

Maybe not. In July, Rep. Rodriguez co-sponsored the Secure America with Verification and Enforcement (SAVE) Act. One provision of the SAVE Act states,

“[T]he Secretary shall construct or purchase […] additional fencing (and aesthetic fencing in business districts) in urban areas of the border; and vehicle barriers, to support, not replace, manpower, in rural and remote areas of the border necessary to achieve operational control of the international borders of the United States.”

So despite his prior record of opposing the border wall, Representative Rodriguez is now co-sponsoring a bill that calls for more wall construction, which may cut through the communities he serves.

This earned Representative Rodriguez and the rest of the SAVE Act’s co-sponsors a congratulatory letter from Roy Beck, president of the anti-immigration group NumbersUSA, who said, “It is with highest enthusiasm and expectation that NumbersUSA endorses your re-introduction of the SAVE Act.”

NumbersUSA has been denounced by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its ties to nativist and racist organizations. Roy Beck himself was a longtime editor of the white nationalist publication The Social Contract, and NumbersUSA shares a Washington, DC office with the anti-immigrant group ProEnglish. One would expect that their enthusiastic endorsement would be as welcome as that of the Ku Klux Klan.

Representative Rodriguez’s support for the SAVE Act muddies his record as an advocate for the border communities in his district and begs the question: what will he do in Conference Committee? Will he work to strip border walls from the DHS bill, or allow them to tear through his constituents’ communities? Will he side with Chad Foster, or Roy Beck?

It is possible that Representative Rodriguez’ support for the walls in the SAVE Act is a response to the right wing’s howls that he and Senator Hutchison “gutted” the Secure Fence Act when they gave DHS the flexibility to decide whether or not to wall off a given refuge, community, or family farm. Senator Hutchison has been unable to stand up to the right’s criticism, and has given the border wall unwavering support ever since.

Ultimately, Representative Rodriguez was not elected to serve Roy Beck. Ciro Rodriguez is in Washington DC to represent the interests of Eagle Pass, Del Rio, Presidio, and other communities that are threatened with border wall construction. If he fails to act on their behalf by removing the border wall amendment from the DHS bill, more of his constituents will see border walls tear through their communities.

Building More Border Walls is Not Effective Immigration Reform

2009-07-26T15:03:00.004-05:00

By Scott Nicol

In 2006, both the House and Senate passed Comprehensive Immigration Reform bills. Each contained hundreds of miles of border wall, inserted as a bone to lure conservative support. The bills differed on a number of points, including the number of miles of wall to be built. When a conference committee convened to craft a final bill they were unable to work out their differences, and immigration reform died in committee. From its ashes Congress pulled the one thing that they could agree on: 700 miles of border wall.

The stated goal of the Secure Fence Act was to “achieve and maintain operational control over the entire international land and maritime borders of the United States.” Nearly 3 years later, most of the border walls that it mandated are complete. Time to dust off the “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED” banner and hang it on the border?

Apparently not. This month Senator Jim DeMint, whose home state of South Carolina is closer to Canada than Mexico, inserted an amendment into the Senate’s bill funding the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). It changes the Secure Fence Act to say that, “Fencing that does not effectively restrain pedestrian traffic (such as vehicle barriers and virtual fencing) may not be used to meet the 700-mile fence requirement.”

As of July 17, DHS claims to have completed 331 miles of “pedestrian fencing” and 302 miles of vehicle barriers. If DeMint’s amendment makes it through the House/Senate Conference Committee and is signed into law, the border wall will suddenly be 369 miles short of its new mandate. DHS will probably replace many of the 302 miles of vehicle barriers with “pedestrian fence,” inflicting tremendous environmental damage in the process. That leaves at least 67 miles of brand new border wall to be built in places that are currently unwalled. With California, Arizona, and New Mexico largely walled off, those new border walls will most likely be built in Texas.

So far, Congress has given the Department of Homeland Security $3.1 billion for border wall construction. The Army Corps of Engineers reported that between February and October of 2008 the cost of building walls increased by 88%, from an average of $3.5 million per mile to $7.5 million per mile. Some sections of border wall are particularly expensive: the levee-border wall combination in South Texas averaged $12 million per mile; in California, a 3.5 mile section that involved filling in canyons cost taxpayers $57 million.

If the Secure Fence Act succeeded in achieving “operational control” of the border, why should we spend no less than (and quite possibly a lot more than) $2,767,500,000.00 to build 369 miles of new border wall?

First and foremost, the border wall has failed to stop either immigrants or smugglers from entering the United States. The majority enter through ports of entry, rather than crossing the desert on foot or the Rio Grande on an inner tube, so walls erected between the ports have no effect on them. And according to the Border Patrol, even those who find the wall directly in their path are only slowed down by around 5 minutes. As Border Patrol spokesperson Mike Scioli said, “The border fence is a speed bump in the desert.”

Professor Wayne Cornelius, with the University of California at San Diego, has spent more than a decade interviewing immigrants before and after they cross the border. His research has revealed that, even with border walls,

“fewer than half of migrants who come to the border are apprehended, even once, by the Border Patrol. … [T]he apprehension rate found in these studies varied from 24% to 47%. And of those who are caught, all but a tiny minority eventually get through – between 92 and 98 percent, depending on the community of origin. If migrants do not succeed on the first try, they almost certainly will succeed on the second or third try.”

Professor Cornelius goes on to conclude,

“the eventual success rate is virtually the same for migrants whose most recent crossing occurred before 1995, when the border was largely unfortified, and those crossing in the most recent period. In other words, the border enforcement build-up seems to have made no appreciable difference in terms of migrants’ ability to enter the United States clandestinely.”

So why would Senators, ranging from alleged fiscal conservatives such as Texas Republican John Cornyn to New York Democrat Charles Schumer, vote to spend nearly $3 billion on more border walls when those already erected do not work?

Simply put, for those politicians who do not live beside the border, and do not count on the votes of those who do, the border wall is an abstraction. The reality that the border wall has little or no impact on border crossers is irrelevant. The reality that more than 300 property owners have had their property condemned is irrelevant. The reality that federally designated wilderness areas and wildlife refuges have been severely impacted is irrelevant. The Senators who voted for more border walls were voting for a symbol, nothing more.

Even the Department of Homeland Security recognizes this fact. After DeMint’s amendment was adopted, DHS spokesman Matt Chandler told the Wall Street Journal that it is, “designed to prevent real progress on immigration enforcement and [is] a reflection of the old administration's strategy: all show, no substance."

Senator Schumer, who will be introducing a Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill around Labor Day, wrote in an op-ed, “I voted to require the Department of Homeland Security to construct significant fortifications to the border fence” as proof that he is, “serious about securing the border.” He did not bother to defend the effectiveness of the border wall, because that was not the point. The wall that he voted for is simply a symbol, meant to show that immigration reform and border enforcement can go arm in arm.

Senator Schumer seems to think that by voting for more walls, and more than likely including border walls in his Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill, he can appease conservatives like Cornyn and gain their votes. If so, he is deluded. No matter how much of the borderlands the bill sacrifices for the sake of empty gestures, immigration reform will not woo conservatives. It is far more likely that Schumer will instead see a repeat of 2006, in which the only part of Comprehensive Immigration Reform that makes it to the President’s desk is hundreds of miles of border wall.

Our nation desperately needs immigration reform. But as Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said this past February, “you cannot build a fence from San Diego to Brownsville, Texas, and call that an immigration policy.”

It is a message that Congress sorely needs to hear.

City Commissioners Vote to Buy Brownsville a Border Wall

2009-06-21T21:28:00.007-05:00

By Scott Nicol

On June 2, the Brownsville City Commission finally capitulated to the Department of Homeland Security’s demand that they give away city property to build the border wall. They had attempted to do this twice before, first last July and again this past February. In both instances the commissioners backed down in the face of widespread opposition from Brownsville residents. This time, however, they stuck with DHS, ignoring the will of the people by voting to give away the city’s land and to commit to build a border wall through Brownsville at the city’s expense. No other city has done so much to help build the border wall.

When the City Commissioners considered this deal last February, they issued a press release praising it, saying that “The City of Brownsville is in the unique position to be the only border city between San Diego, California and the Gulf of Mexico to be offered the ability to remove the federally mandated border fence.” The Commissioners’ spin leaves out the fact that the initial border wall will only be removed after it is replaced with a border wall that will be far more permanent and imposing, and one for which Brownsville taxpayers will foot the entire multi-million dollar bill.

While the contract with DHS has been rewritten, the substance remains the same. The City of Brownsville will give up 15 acres of city property, which DHS valued at $123,100 when it initiated condemnation proceedings last September. The Department of Homeland Security will not pay a dime for the city’s land.

"Floating fence" border wall design in Cameron County, Texas

DHS will then build what they call a “floating fence” on the formerly city-owned property. While the City Commissioners may see the use of this border wall design as a victory, maps of the border wall released by DHS in July 2008 for their Environmental Stewardship Plan (ESP) clearly show “floating fence” on the city’s land. The ESP states, “Floating primary pedestrian fence consists of prefabricated floating fence panels placed on the levee. Floating fences are generally concrete barriers with pickets anchored on top.” This type of border wall has already been erected in parts of western Cameron County. So the floating fence is not a concession on the part of DHS, but what DHS had planned in the first place.

According to the contract, at some indefinite time in the future, the city will pay to build a levee-border wall in another unspecified location to replace the “floating fence.” It stipulates that the city must pay to buy the land for the new levee-border wall, and “construction shall be the responsibility of Brownsville, and shall not be performed by the United States or at any cost to the United States.” The bids for the levee-border walls in Hidalgo County ranged from $12 to $16 million per mile. Placing cost ahead of confidence in the quality of construction of our flood control levees, Hidalgo naturally went with the low bidder. Assuming that Brownsville does the same, the 2-4 miles of levee-border wall that will slice through the city will cost between $24 and $48 million, every dime of which must come from city coffers.

Levee-border wall under construction in Hidalgo County

Once Brownsville constructs the new levee-border wall, DHS will pay to take down the “floating fence.” Maybe. Homeland Security’s promise to pay to take down the first border wall is “subject to the availability of funding.” If they do not have the cash in hand, “then DHS shall provide Brownsville with appropriate access and authority to remove such sections and dispose of the removed material” at the city’s expense.

One new provision in the contract that the City Commission approved states that, “Brownsville shall, at its sole expense, preserve and maintain the Replacement Border Barrier.” So not only will Brownsville’s taxpayers have to pay to build a levee-border wall that none of them want, they must also pay to maintain it for decades to come.

Of course, it is unlikely that Brownsville will be able to come up with all of this money, so the “temporary” border wall will in fact be permanent.

But if they do, and private developers come through with millions more to build a riverwalk, we can look forward to long lines of tourists waiting to show their passports to go through the border wall to reach the trendy restaurants on the other side. What could be more appealing than fine dining in a no-man’s land that the Department of Homeland Security has walled off to keep “terrorists and terrorist weapons” from entering the rest of the United States?

Levee-border wall at the Old Hidalgo Pumphouse World Birding Center in Hidalgo County

Even if everything goes as the City Commission hopes, this deal defies all logic. It is as if someone took away your home, and rather than fight in court to either stop them or force them to pay you its market value of $123,100, you offered to buy them new land and build them a new house that would cost anywhere from $24 to $48 million, and you would then pay to maintain it. Accepting such a deal would certainly put you in a “unique position.”

Yet, this is the deal that Brownsville City Commissioners Anthony Troiani, Edward Camarillo, Ricardo Longoria, and Leo Garza voted to accept. Charlie Atkinson, who is a Border Patrol employee, abstained. Commissioner Carlos Cisneros and Mayor Pat Ahumada voted to reject it.

When public funds are used to build schools, hospitals, or other structures for the benefit of taxpayers, the politicians who approved the project can be counted on attend a ribbon-cutting ceremony and place a plaque telling future generations of their accomplishment. If the City of Brownsville manages to pull funds from schools, hospitals, or other projects to build the levee-border wall, I trust that the City Commissioners who voted for it will be on hand for the dedication ceremony. They can smile and wave and shake hands with the grateful residents of Brownsville, who will sleep better knowing that the border is no longer broken, that floods of terrorists no longer wash over Brownsville, and that it was their City Commission that brought about this shining moment. Engraved on a bronze plaque that will be bolted to the concrete slab of the border wall will be the names:

Anthony P. Troiani

Edward C. Camarillo

Ricardo Longoria

Leo Garza

Supreme Court Fails to Restore the Rule of Law to the Border

2009-06-16T00:46:00.001-05:00

The Supreme Court’s refusal to hear arguments that the waiving of all state, local, and federal laws to build the border wall is unconstitutional is a tremendous blow for border residents and the principle of the rule of law. We had hoped that the court would honor its obligation to examine the constitutionality of section 102 of the Real ID Act, which is an unprecedented power grab by the Executive branch, and which creates unequal legal protections for U.S. citizens that are solely dependant upon what part of the country one lives in. In this instance the Supreme Court shirked its duty, leaving the border without the benefit of the rule of law that is enjoyed by the rest of our nation.

Section 102 of the Real ID Act allows for the suspension of all laws to build the border wall, stating, “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall have the authority to waive all legal requirements such Secretary, in such Secretary’s sole discretion, determines necessary to ensure expeditious construction of the barriers and roads under this section.” No other United States citizen is granted this extreme power under any circumstance. Even the president does not have this power to waive our nation’s laws, no matter what crisis may arise.

When former Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff waived 36 federal laws in April 2008, he knew that in building border walls he would be violating those laws. Obeying the law is not voluntary, it is mandatory. In a nation of laws all laws must be respected, not just those that are convenient. Those laws were enacted to prevent the kind of damage that we see everywhere border walls have been built.

For plaintiffs such as the Frontera Audubon Society, the Friends of the Wildlife Corridor, and the Friends of Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge, the fate of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge is of particular concern. Consisting of individual tracts of native habitat linked by the Rio Grande, it creates a wildlife corridor, providing federally endangered species such as the ocelot and jaguarundi sufficient territory to find food, water, and mates. Migratory birds also rely on it to rest and refuel on their annual journeys, as well as for nesting. The border walls that have been built, and those that are still under construction, slice through many refuge tracts and cut off others from the river. The wall is fragmenting habitat, blocking migratory pathways, denying animals access to fresh water, and isolating breeding populations of endangered ocelot and jagurandi. Because the Endangered Species Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the National Wildlife Refuge System Administration Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act were among the 36 federal laws that the former Secretary swept aside, none of the usual legal protections for these supposedly protected lands remain.

In addition, Texas border communities depend upon the Rio Grande for irrigation and drinking water. But former Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff waived not only the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Clean Water Act, but also “all federal, state, or other laws, regulations and legal requirements of, deriving from, or related to the subject of” those, and 34 other, laws. So where the wall has been built, in El Paso and Eagle Pass and Hidalgo and Brownsville and other border communities that draw water from the Rio Grande, all laws “related to the subject of” water are no longer in effect. This absurd situation prompted the El Paso County Water Improvement District No. 1 and the Hudspeth County Conservation and Reclamation District No. 1 to take part in the challenge to the constitutionality of the Real ID Act’s waiver authority.

Equal protection under the law is meant to be a fundamental right shared by every American, but the Real ID Act makes the legal rights of citizens who live near the border conditional on the whims of an unelected Administration appointee. The Secretary of Homeland Security cannot waive the laws that protect citizens who live away from the border. Only border residents may have their legal protections waived.

When the Supreme Court decided not to hear these arguments without uttering so much as a word as to why, they shirked their duty as the final arbiters of the United States constitution and the principle of the rule of law that it enshrines. This precedent bodes ill for the rest of the nation, as any manufactured crisis may be used to enact a similar waiver. A “broken” northern border may be the pretext for a new bill waiving laws along the Canadian boundary, or an “energy crisis” may provide a convenient excuse to do away with laws that prevent drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The Supreme Court’s inaction will likely have repercussions beyond the destruction wrought by the border wall.

No More Deaths Volunteer Convicted of Littering for Leaving Water in the Desert

2009-06-04T12:17:00.009-05:00

The group No More Deaths has been working to save immigrants who are funneled into the Arizona desert by the border wall. In 2006, even before the Secure Fence Act led to the construction of hundreds of miles of Arizona border wall, the Government Accountability Office found that immigrant deaths had doubled as a result of the first walls built in California. A number of No More Deaths volunteers have been charged with littering for leaving water for border crossers. In the Arizona desert, where summer temperatures regularly top 110 degrees, it is virtually impossible to carry sufficient water. No More Deaths issued the following press release regarding the conviction of one of their members for leaving water in the desert for migrants:

Humanitarian Who Left "Life-Sustaining Water" for Migrants Convicted of “Littering”

Walt Staton, a volunteer with the Tucson-based humanitarian aid group No More Deaths, was convicted today of "knowingly littering garbage or other debris" after he left clean drinking water for undocumented migrants crossing the desert on the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge.

In response to this verdict, No More Deaths released the following statement:

“This is a sad day for human rights and for all of us in southern Arizona. By penalizing life-saving work, the United States is showing callous disregard for the lives of our neighbors to the south, whose only crime is to seek a better life. No More Deaths will continue to provide life-saving aid to those in need, and to do our part to clean up the desert. The era of border enforcement that uses death and human rights abuses as a deterrent must come to an end.”

After more than four hours of deliberation on Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning, the 12-member jury first stated to the court that they were not able to agree upon a verdict. Magistrate judge Jennifer Guerin then ordered the jury to go back and attempt again to reach a unanimous verdict. Staton's attorney, William Walker, objected to the order, stating that it was coercive to the jury. The jury reconvened and met for less than an hour before returning a guilty verdict.

On December 4, 2008, U.S. Fish and Wildlife officer James Casey cited Staton and three other humanitarians for littering after being contacted by Border Patrol agents who were following the volunteers. The US Attorney’s office later dropped the charges against the other three. Staton refused to accept guilt and pay the original $175 fine. He now faces the punishment of this criminal misdemeanor that could include up to one year of prison time and a large fine. Sentencing is set for August 11.

In Staton's court testimony, he said that he was compelled by his personal experiences of encountering severely dehydrated migrants in distress. He also explained how the organization uses a strategic system of maps and GPS equipment to place the water in strategic locations. "We try to be conscious as an organization to be the most effective in order to save lives," stated Staton during examination.

During closing arguments, defense lawyer Bill Walker held a full gallon jug of water in the air and declared: "When the government tells you this case isn't about water or this isn't about saving lives, they're wrong! This is valuable, life-sustaining water."

During jury selection nearly one third of the original 31 potential jurors were dismissed after stating they had strong emotions about providing humanitarian aid to migrants and would be unwilling to convict someone who was engaged in humanitarian aid. Public support was also evident during the two full days of the trial as the courtroom remained full with 40-50 humanitarian supporters from local groups such as The Samaritans, Humane Borders, American Friends Service Committee and the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tucson, among others.

Dan Millis, a fellow No More Deaths volunteer, received a similar ticket in February, 2008, for leaving water jugs on the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge. Millis was found guilty last September after a bench trial before magistrate judge Bernie Velasco in Tucson. Dan appealed the case to the US District Court, where the original ruling was upheld. It is currently under appeal at the 9th Circuit Court. Staton also plans to appeal his case to the 9th Circuit.

“The Buenos Aires leadership needs to realize that we’re on the same team here,” Millis said. Millis works full-time for the Sierra Club’s Borderlands Protection Campaign. “They need to issue more permits allowing humanitarian groups to provide water and pick up trash on the refuge,” he said.

Letters of support for Walt Staton, Dan Millis and No More Deaths can be sent to media@nomoredeaths. org; they will be posted on our web site.

* Background on No More Deaths:

According to Pima County medical examiner's data, approximately 20 bodies of deceased migrants have been recovered from Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge since 2002. Dehydration is a factor that leads to many of these deaths. More than 5,000 bodies have been recovered from the US/Mexico border as a result of the U.S. Border Patrol’s strategy of deterrence, beginning in 1994 with Operation Gatekeeper.

Since 2004 No More Deaths has provided life-saving aid to migrants in distress along the Arizona/Mexico border. Thousands of volunteers have participated in these efforts, which include providing water, food and medical assistance. No More Deaths is a ministry of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tucson and seeks to work with other religious groups, government, community partners, and individuals willing to work toward an end to the humanitarian crisis occurring in the Arizona desert.

No More Deaths is currently gearing up for its sixth summer of humanitarian action during the hottest, deadliest months of the year. We are accepting volunteer applications for the summer, and welcome any and all donations to support our work!

For an updated list of migrant deaths in Arizona, visit DerechosHumanosAZ. net.

Please take a moment to sign the following e-letter to participate in an international campaign declaring that "Humanitarian Aid Is Never A Crime!” This letter speaks to a case in which the Italian government is prosecuting two Germans for "smuggling" after they rescued a sinking raft in the Mediterranean Sea with 37 African refugees on board. Such prosecutions resonate with the efforts by the United States government, described above, to criminalize life-saving humanitarian work.

Will Congress Restore the Rule of Law or Build More Border Walls?

2009-05-24T22:14:00.005-05:00

By Scott Nicol

The walls that are tearing through border communities and wildlife refuges have nothing to do with national security, immigration policy, or drug control. The construction of border walls merely allows for political posturing during election cycles. Politicians and pundits decry our nation’s “broken borders,” and blame undocumented immigrants for all of our nation’s ills, from unemployment to failing schools to municipal budget shortfalls to crime. Scapegoats are convenient, especially when they cannot vote, and scapegoating distracts voters from politicians’ inability to solve any of these problems. And so, two weeks before the 2006 mid-term election, the Secure Fence Act was signed into law. Two an a half years later the walls that it mandated are nearing completion, and we as a nation must decide what happens next.

One path forward was proposed by Representative Raul Grijalva, whose southern Arizona district is now home to mile upon mile of border wall. Last month he introduced the Border Security and Responsibility Act (HR 2076). This legislation seeks to prevent future border security measures from repeating the worst abuses that have accompanied border wall construction.

While the Secure Fence Act established walls as the primary strategy for controlling the border, the Border Security and Responsibility Act would instead, “give first priority to the use of remote cameras, sensors, removal of non-native vegetation, incorporation of natural barriers, additional manpower, unmanned aerial vehicles, or other low impact border enforcement techniques.” Border walls, which have been shown to be largely ineffective, go to the back of the line.

HR 2076 would also require the Department of Homeland Security to develop a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis, comparing the full range of possible strategies for protecting the border. Along with looking at whether border walls actually stop anyone, DHS would have to factor in land acquisition costs, construction costs, maintenance costs over 25 years, impacts on wildlife, impacts on hydrology, and the costs of mitigating adverse impacts to Federal, state, local, and private lands and waters. The costs and benefits of border walls would then be compared to similar analyses of adding more Border Patrol agents, so-called “virtual” fences, natural barriers, removing non-native vegetation, and increasing cooperation with Mexican and Canadian authorities.

Sign on private property near Brownsville, Texas that will be cut off by the border wall.

Rather than shutting out border residents and other stakeholders, Rep. Grijalva’s bill would require the Secretary of Homeland Security to consult with other federal agencies, tribal governments, local officials, and private property owners to minimize the negative impacts of border security measures. Real consultation that allows for meaningful input from those who live and work along the border would be a tremendous change for the better.

Most importantly, it would strike the provision of the Real ID Act that gives the Secretary of Homeland Security the power to waive any law that he or she sees fit in order to build border walls. No longer would one unelected Administration appointee have the power to sweep aside laws passed by Congress and signed by presidents. The rule of law would be restored along our nation’s southern border.

And this restoration is critical. When former Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff waived 36 federal laws last year, he was not simply cutting red tape. He knew that in building border walls he would be violating those laws. Those laws were enacted to prevent the kind of damage that we see everywhere border walls have been built.

In California’s Otay Mountain Wilderness Area, mountainsides above the Tijuana River are currently being dynamited to build the border wall. When DHS proposed building walls in these rugged mountains the Environmental Protection Agency raised concerns that the dumping of tons of rubble, and the erosion that would follow, would clog the river and violate the Clean Water Act. Normally that would be a moot point, because it is illegal to drive a motorized vehicle in a Wilderness Area, much less plant dynamite. But with the Wilderness Act and the Clean Water Act waived, blasting is occurring today, and will continue through the summer.

Texas border communities rely on the Rio Grande for irrigation and drinking water. But Secretary Chertoff waived not only the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Clean Water Act, but also “all federal, state, or other laws, regulations and legal requirements of, deriving from, or related to the subject of” those, and 34 other, laws. So where the wall has been built, in El Paso and Eagle Pass and Hidalgo and Brownsville and other border communities that draw water from the Rio Grande, all laws “related to the subject of” water are no longer in effect. This absurd situation has prompted the El Paso County Water Improvement District No. 1 and the Hudspeth County Conservation and Reclamation District No. 1 to take part in a lawsuit challenging constitutionality of the Real ID Act’s waiver authority.

"Floating fence" border wall design on top of the flood control levee in Cameron County, Texas

The border wall has been tremendously destructive, both to American lands, American communities and the American tradition of rule of law. But with most of the Secure Fence Act’s 670 miles of border wall close to completion, some might ask why the provisions of the Border Security and Responsibility Act are needed.

The answer came on the same day that Representative Grijalva introduced HR 2076, when Rep. Duncan D. Hunter introduced the Border Sovereignty and Protection Act. Apparently, Hunter Junior inherited the bad politics of his father along with his name and Congressional seat. His father bragged in campaign ads that he had built the border wall, and that it was a stunning success. Ignoring the question of why more walls are needed if the first walls had already done the job, Hunter Junior’s bill requires, “two layers of reinforced fencing along not fewer than 350 miles of the southwest border” in addition to all that has already been built. It also provides a blank check to pay for construction.

"Triple-layer fence" border wall design near San Diego, California

Grijalva’s bill requiring consultation, a cost-benefit analysis, and the restoration of the rule of law currently has 20 cosponsors. Hunter’s bill, requiring another 350 miles of double-layered border wall and providing unlimited funds to pay for them, currently has 26 cosponsors.

When the first sections of border wall were built in southern California in the mid 1990s, the Congressional Research Service found that they had “no discernible impact” on the number of undocumented immigrants who entered the United States each year. Rather than realize that the wall was a failure, border wall proponents, most notably Duncan’s dad, decided that the wall was not long enough. Now that another 600+ miles of border wall have been built, and the Border Patrol routinely refers to them as “speed bumps,” the cry goes up for more walls. In the perverse logic of those who have tied their political careers to the border wall, if the wall is a failure, it is simply because it is too short.

If this logic is allowed to prevail, mile upon mile of new border wall will be built with no concern for the communities or ecosystems that lay in their path. That is why passage of Representative Grijalva’s Border Security and Responsibility Act is so critical. It restores a degree of sanity to border policy, forces the federal government to respect the legal rights of border residents, and gives us a seat at the table when decisions are made regarding our home.

The Border Wall vs. Property Rights: Texas’ Senators Support the Wrong Side

2009-05-01T20:30:00.004-05:00

by Scott Nicol

To build the border wall the federal government has brought condemnation lawsuits against more than 300 Texas landowners. Homeowners, farmers, nature preserves, and municipalities all face the imminent loss of their property for a patchwork of walls that have “no discernible impact” on the overall numbers of immigrants or smugglers who cross the border, according to the Congressional Research Service. The wall is a rhetorical point used by politicians who do not represent border communities to claim that they are working to protect the homeland. For them, the real impact of the border wall is irrelevant; all that matters is the perception among voters who will never actually see it. Members of congress who do represent Texas border residents should be fighting to defend our lands and our homes, literally the homeland that the border wall is supposed to secure. Instead, Texas’ Senators have worked to fund and build the wall that today stands in Hidalgo County and is tearing through Brownsville.

Land nearest the Rio Grande has always been prized because of the rich soil and the year-round availability of water. Many families along its banks still hold title to lands that were granted to their forefathers by the King of Spain as early as the 1740’s, decades before the United States and Mexico became sovereign nations, and more than a century before the Rio Grande became their shared border. For these owners, the land is a priceless piece of their family’s history.

Eloisa Tamez’ property has been in her family since the King of Spain issued the San Pedro Carracitos Land Grant in 1763. In 2007 DHS demanded access to her property for border wall surveys, then initiated condemnation proceedings. Dr. Tamez enlisted the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law and initiated a class-action lawsuit alleging that DHS has refused to negotiate with landowners before condemning their property, as the law requires. She also demanded that DHS reveal its criteria for citing the border wall, which in places runs for miles through poor and/or minority communities, then ends abruptly at the property line of wealthy property owners and resort communities. David Pagan of Customs and Border Protection responded, "We do not plan to suspend work on the construction of fence in order to hold a series of additional consultation meetings." On April 15, 2009 the court ruled against Dr. Tamez’, allowing the federal government to seize her land. Within a week the border wall had been built across her property.

Last February Eva Lambert awoke to the sound of heavy equipment erecting the border wall’s steel posts on her land. In her case, either through disregard for the law or incompetence, DHS finished construction of the wall before anyone had contacted her to negotiate a price or condemn her property. Denied her day in court as well as her property, Ms. Lambert is still waiting to find out what compensation will be offered. As she told the Brownsville Herald, "In the end, the government does what it wants."

In the low-lying river delta of South Texas, the treaty that established the Rio Grande as the border prohibits construction between the levee and the river. This is because a structure immediately adjacent to the river could deflect floodwaters and shift the river’s course, resulting in a change in the international boundary. So, to comply with the treaty, the border wall is being built into, on, or behind the flood-control levee that parallels the river rather than immediately adjacent to it. This levee is located up to two miles north of the river, leaving thousands of acres of U.S. territory, much of it privately owned, behind the border wall.

The Department of Homeland Security has offered only to pay for the exact footprint of the border wall (typically, a 60-foot wide strip) as it passes through a parcel of land. In their simplistic calculations, the agency has completely issues such as the devaluation of contiguous property, problems accessing land and homes behind the wall, impacts on livelihood, and the importance of cultural heritage. Despite the range and complexity of these issues, DHS has steadfastly refused to enter into meaningful negotiations with property owners.

The Nature Conservancy’s Southmost Preserve maintains one of the last remaining Sabal Palm forests along the banks of the Rio Grande. The border wall will bisect the preserve, cutting off more than 700 acres along with an equipment barn, office, and caretaker’s residence. The property was purchased in 1999 for $2.6 million, but DHS has only offered to pay $114,000 for the wall’s footprint, a strip of land 60 feet wide and 6,000 feet long. DHS has refused to explain how they will access the property that will be behind the wall. They claim that gates will be built, but they won’t say who will get keys or under what circumstances Conservancy staff will be able to access the property. Like Dr. Tamez, the Nature Conservancy is attempting to use the courts to save their land.

Other homes, businesses, and properties that are behind the levees will be walled off entirely, trapped between the wall and the Rio Grande. DHS has refused to grant any compensation whatsoever for properties left on the “Mexican” side of the wall. Indeed, because DHS is focused solely on the wall’s exact footprint, they have failed to even make contact with some of the landowners with property behind the wall.

The Sabal Palm Audubon Center preserves another 557 acres of Sabal Palm forest, which will also be behind the border wall. Because the wall will be built a few feet to the north of their property line, DHS has not offered Audubon any compensation whatsoever. Both Audubon and the Nature Conservancy have said that restricted access for their employees may force them to cut their operations. There is also the concern that uncertain access for emergency personnel may make it impossible to purchase the insurance that allows busloads of local school children to visit the center. With construction of the border wall imminent, Audubon announced that on May 15, 2009 they will close to the public for at least the next 6 months.

The Department of Homeland Security has repeatedly claimed that they have consulted with landowners and local officials regarding border wall construction. But when the Texas Border Coalition repeatedly invited DHS and Customs and Border Protection officials to “walk the line” and see the impacts that the border wall will have on specific communities, they responded that they would only do so if the owners of the property that they would be crossing were kept away. Apparently, their preferred method of consultation is a condemnation proceeding.

In the face of these assaults on property rights by the federal government, one would expect Texas’ conservative Senators to stand up for their constituents. Private property and small government are central tenets of both of their stated philosophies. In July of 2007 Senator Cornyn told reporters, "I assure you there will be local consultation. There will not be ... unilateral actions on the part of the Department of Homeland Security without local input."

Senator Hutchison did add an amendment to the 2008 Omnibus Appropriations Bill that gave the Secretary of Homeland Security the flexibility to decide where walls should be built, as well as to spare places where walls do not make sense. The Homeland Security Secretary was also required to, “consult with the Secretary of Interior, the Secretary of Agriculture, States, local governments, Indian tribes, and property owners in the United States to minimize the impact on the environment, culture, commerce, and quality of life for the communities and residents located near the sites at which such fencing is to be constructed.”

Following howls of outrage from right wing pundits and politicians that she had “gutted” the Secure Fence Act, Hutchison backed away from her amendment. She has yet to confront DHS on its refusal to consult with property owners, as epitomized by its demand that landowners be kept away from any DHS employees who walk the line through their property. So long as she is afraid to fight on behalf of Texas landowners, the amendment that she authored is just more empty words.

Senator Cornyn’s statements assuring that there will be local consultation have also proved to be empty. Like Senator Hutchison, he has made no concrete effort to stand up for border residents. Instead, Cornyn sponsored the “Emergency Border Security Funding Act of 2007” which called for 700 linear miles of border wall and 300 miles of vehicle barriers along the US – Mexico border, and provided $3 billion dollars to build it. Cornyn’s bill went nowhere, but even without it DHS has received $3.1 billion to build the border wall.

On April 2, 2009, the one year anniversary of former Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff’s border-wide waiver that swept aside 36 federal laws, both of Texas’ Senators voted to add a motion to the Omnibus Appropriations bill that read, “To provide for a point of order against any appropriations bill that fails [to] fully fund the construction of the Southwest border fence.” The vote fell along party lines and failed, but in voting once again in favor of the border wall Hutchison and Cornyn chose party loyalty over the interests of their constituents.

This should not come as a surprise. When Cornyn looks back at the last election, he will look to the north Dallas suburbs as important to his win, not 540 miles south of Dallas to Brownsville. When Hutchison thinks about her upcoming bid to unseat Governor Perry, she will be counting on votes in Sugarland, not El Paso. Though they claim to represent the entire state, so long as they see border communities as politically irrelevant they will not work on our behalf.

The fact that their neglect is not surprising does not make it acceptable. Our Senators, as well as our U.S. Representatives and our President, were put in office to work for all of us. They can not be allowed to play favorites. When they do we need to speak up.

Some border representatives are working to defend border communities. Representative Grijalva of Arizona has authored HR 2076, The Border Security and Responsibility Act. It would require that the Department of Homeland Security work with border communities and landowners in developing security measures, rather than treat them as the enemy. DHS would also have to obey all of our nation’s laws, instead of sweeping away those which are seen as an inconvenience. Cosponsoring this bill in the House, or introducing a companion in the Senate, would be a concrete demonstration of support for border residents.

With this bill pending and walls under construction, it is critical that our members of Congress hear from their constituents right now. Urge them to support the Border Security and Responsibility Act. Demand that they work to stop further walls from tearing through the borderlands. Though only around 50 miles of border wall remain to be built it is not too late to stop it. If you lived in a home, or owned a farm, or worked at a wildlife refuge that is in the path of one of those miles, you would see every last mile as important.

So long as we sit quietly by and watch the border wall go up, we are irrelevant in the eyes of Congress. If we do not make our voices heard, and make our elected officials listen, mile upon mile of wall will be built. And while we can rail against the politicians who sacrifice our home for political gain, if we are silent we own a portion of the blame.

Grijalva Introduces Legislation to Protect and Conserve Public Lands along Border

2009-04-23T21:13:00.002-05:00

US Representative Raul Grijalva has introduced legislation which would reverse some of the worst abuses of the Department of Homeland Security's implementation of the Secure Fence Act and the Real ID Act. Below is the press release issued by his office.

Washington, D.C. – Today, Congressman Raúl M. Grijalva introduced legislation that will help secure and conserve public and tribal lands along the international land borders of the United States.

The Border Security and Responsibility Act of 2009 will secure and conserve federal public lands along the international land borders of the U.S. and provide the highest protection possible while ensuring that all operations necessary to achieve border security are undertaken.

The legislation will also help mitigate damage to federal and tribal lands from illegal border activity and border enforcement efforts by increasing coordination and planning between the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), federal land management agencies and local, state and tribal governments.

The legislation will also correct existing policies and allow flexibility for a local approach to border security, instead of mandating an unrealistic and harmful wall.

“Current policy has driven crossing activity to remote isolated areas along the border which, in Southern Arizona, represent significant public and tribal lands,” said Grijalva. “Many of these lands have suffered extensive environmental degradation as a result of unauthorized activity and border security efforts. This bill is the first step in preserving our unique natural heritage while we protect our borders.”

The Border Security and Responsibility Act of 2009 will:

1. Require the Department of Homeland Security to consult with federal land managers and state, local, and tribal governments in creating a Border Protection Strategy that supports border security efforts while also protecting federal and tribal lands.

2. Provide for flexibility, rather than a “one size fits all” approach, to border security by allowing experts at DHS to decide upon best strategies for border security.

3. Allow land managers, local officials, and local communities to have a say in border security decisions, requiring full public notice and participation.

4. Ensure that laws intended to protect air, water, wildlife, culture, and health and safety are fully upheld.

Under the Bush Administration, the passage and implementation of the Secure Fence Act and REAL ID ignored environmental, health and safety laws that had been in place for decades. The Border Security and Responsibility Act amends the current law, which pursues a “one fence fits all” solution. The legislation ensures that local experts are part of the planning and evaluation of security measures that would be more effective and have a lower impact on the border environment.

“This multi-disciplinary approach is the correct path for addressing a growing crisis in a rapidly changing geopolitical reality,” stated Grijalva. “The Border Security and Responsibility Act will strengthen border security, protect the environment and uphold the health of the border community by allowing all agencies to work together cooperatively.”

Secretary Napolitano Must End DHS’ Abuse of Texas Border Communities

2009-04-05T12:32:00.004-05:00

By Stefanie Herweck

Over the past two years, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the organizations that it manages, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Border Patrol, have shown a deep-seated indifference to the welfare of those of us living on the Texas-Mexico border. These agencies have treated our elected leaders with disrespect, they have assumed an adversarial relationship with the public, and they have shown disdain for border communities, culture, and the environment. These actions have seriously undermined DHS’s credibility along the Texas border and have fostered a great deal of antagonism.

The border wall is the clearest example of this. The border wall project has been propelled by a blind determination to build as many miles of wall as possible regardless of cost, safety, effectiveness, and environmental damage. It has been shrouded in secrecy, and DHS has purposely obfuscated time and time again, as though border residents have no right to know what is happening in their communities and even on their own property.

Levee-border wall in Hidalgo County, Texas February 22, 2009

In June 2007, they started with a lie to the Texas Border Coalition. Texas border mayors and other community leaders were assembled to hear details about the border walls that would run through their cities. Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar told them that he could give them few details because even though he had attended the signing ceremony for the Secure Fence Act nine months earlier, the border wall plans were still sketched on “the backs of napkins.” At the exact same time in another location, the Border Patrol held a private meeting with landowners, during which detailed maps of the proposed route of the wall were displayed.

DHS lied again in order to comply with legislation that requires local consultation. When ask to submit proof of the “18 town hall meetings” that they claimed to have held, they listed random phone calls and lunch meetings with single individuals, but no actual town hall meetings.

Then, in the ultimate act of negligence, DHS decided that border residents should not be protected by the laws that govern the rest of the country, and Bush Administration Secretary Chertoff waived 36 federal laws in order to slam the border wall through the Texas borderlands regardless of its impact on public safety and the environment. The Safe Drinking Water Act, National Environmental Policy Act, and others that protect the rest of the nation no longer apply where the wall is being built.

Border wall "pickets" in front of the wall in El Calaboz, Texas March 14, 2009

Yet another DHS policy revealed this same disregard for public safety. Shortly before hurricane season last year, the news broke that in the event of a hurricane making landfall in the Rio Grande Valley, the Border Patrol intended to check documents of every Valley resident seeking to evacuate or seeking entrance into a shelter. According to Border Patrol’s plans, anyone without the proper documentation would be immediately arrested and placed in a detention facility.

Worried that this policy would cause a bottleneck at the checkpoints and the unjustified arrests of citizens fleeing in haste without documents, border leaders and residents decried the practice. Advocates for colonias complained that it unfairly risked the safety of the poor, elderly, and those with limited English who would be afraid to evacuate. Since many people would be unwilling to leave their undocumented family members, this policy could mean many thousands of people left in the path of a deadly storm.

In the face of criticism that DHS was willing to put so many human lives in jeopardy, and the perception that they might even be taking advantage of a natural disaster to make more arrests, Secretary Chertoff downplayed the policy and said that the Border Patrol would not impede evacuations. However, when Hurricane Dolly bore down on the Rio Grande Valley in July 2008, the Border Patrol continued to arrest undocumented immigrants who tried to pass through the checkpoints.

Although there has been a change in administration, the agency is still primarily staffed by the same officials that crafted and implemented DHS's stance during the last administration. Among them is the CBP employee who in February gave the Brownsville City Commissioners an arbitrary deadline to accept a border wall deal. The deadline was later repudiated by Secretary Napolitano, who had not been informed of it, after U.S. Representative Ortiz intervened on Brownsville’s behalf.

Under the Obama administration, DHS has also maintained its indifference toward the landowners whose properties are being directly affected by the construction of the border wall. Having long refused to provide landowners and their elected officials with a detailed border wall plans, they sabotaged yet another opportunity to explain where and how the wall will be built when they refused to “walk the line” with the Texas Border Coalition in February. DHS said that they were willing to visit a very few of the properties where the border wall would be built with TBC, but the property owners must be kept away.

Border wall behind a home in Cameron County, Texas March 14, 2009

In perhaps the ultimate act of disrespect to landowners, as well as evidence of sheer incompetence and unprofessionalism, last week brought news that DHS usurped one Cameron County resident’s property for the border wall without a contract and without offering compensation. Eva Lambert woke up one morning to find the border wall being constructed across her backyard. It wasn’t until after the wall on her property was finished that she was visited by a DHS official.

Given this track record, it is no surprise that Texas border residents are suspicious of DHS’s latest scheme to eradicate Carrizo cane by aerially spraying an herbicide in Laredo. This proposed spraying project is certainly following the modus operandi of DHS under the Bush Administration. There was a mere one-day public comment period on the Environmental Assessment for the project last summer, and that assessment itself was not made available online until last month, 2 days after the Laredo City Council had granted Customs and Border Protection an easement to spray. CBP attempted to move up the timeline for spraying from June 2009, as stated in the Environmental Assessment, to immediately. And they did not bother to consult with the City of Nuevo Laredo across the border in Mexico, whose drinking water intake is immediately downstream from the spraying area. The rejection of meaningful public input, the headlong push to implement a controversial project as quickly as possible, and the apparent disregard for the health and safety of Texas and Mexico border residents are all hallmarks of DHS’s operations along the border.

This behavior reinforces the widespread notion in Texas border communities that the Department of Homeland Security is an agency motivated by politics and ideology rather than the facts on the ground and the welfare of citizens. Unless and until DHS, CBP and Border Patrol transform the way that they operate on the border, unless and until they show real sensitivity to border communities and real stewardship to border natural areas, their operations and projects will continue to be regarded with a high degree of suspicion and even hostility on the Texas border. This will certainly undermine their ability to fulfill their mission to protect the United States.

Secretary Napolitano must begin immediately to mend the broken relationship between DHS and border residents. This will require an attitude shift across the entire agency: DHS must recognize that for millions of people, the borderlands are the homeland. Instead of viewing the border as the frontline in a war zone, Secretary Napolitano needs to instill in her agency the understanding that the people who live on the border are entitled to the same rights and privileges, and due the same protections, as those who live in any other part of the United States. Proximity to the Rio Grande does not dissolve our constitutional guarantees to private property or equal protection under the law.

Secretary Napolitano will have little success in reversing the Department’s abusive practices until she replaces the ideologues that her predecessor hired. Even as she speaks to Congress and in the press about bringing change to DHS, holdovers from the last administration tell Congress and the press that there will be no change. So long as they are willing to go so far as to issue ultimatums on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security without bothering to inform its new leadership, any positive changes that she wishes to make will dissipate before they make it from Washington, D.C. to border communities.

Tremendous damage to the Texas borderlands has already been done by former Secretary Chertoff, but in a few places it is not too late to stop border wall construction and thereby signal that change is real and profound, rather than just a campaign slogan. Where the wall has not yet been built because condemnation lawsuits are still in court, DHS should drop its court case and enter into meaningful negotiations.

Finally, if Secretary Napolitano truly sees the defense of our nation’s laws as a fundamental part of her new job she should rescind former Secretary Chertoff’s Real ID Act waivers and restore the rule of law to the Texas border. It is absurd to claim that immigration rules supersede every other law that has been passed by Congress or the states. It is offensive to claim that living near the border strips U.S. citizens of legal protections that are enjoyed by the rest of the nation. Secretary Napolitano must defend all U.S. citizens and all U.S. laws, and repudiate Secretary Chertoff’s practice of picking and choosing which to prioritize and which to ignore.

The new Administration has a tremendous opportunity to reverse the Bush administration’s abuses, and to begin to repair the damage that was done. But they must act immediately. Right now, landowners are facing condemnation proceedings. Right now, construction crews from South Texas to San Diego are erecting border walls. Right now, laws that should protect border residents are suspended. We have yet to see the change that we have been promised, and that we so desperately need.

Sabal Palms Audubon Sanctuary Will Close to the Public Thanks in part to the Border Wall

2009-04-03T16:05:00.002-05:00

The Audubon Society issued the following press release today, announcing that thanks in part to the impending construction of the border wall they will be forced to curtail public access to the Sabal Palms Audubon Sanctuary. The Sanctuary is just downriver from Brownsville, Texas. The entire refuge lies between the Rio Grande and the flood control levee. DHS' current plan is to construct the border wall on the levee, completely cutting off the refuge. Because the wall is in front of the refuge, but does not touch it, Audubon has not been offered any compensation.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Audubon Texas will reduce hours of operation at the Sabal Palm Audubon Center and Sanctuary effective May 15, 2009. Combined impacts of the declining economy and continued uncertainty over the proposed border fence are forcing Audubon to curtail public programs and access at the center outside Brownsville, Texas, in order to continue its primary conservation mission there.

The sanctuary's original mission of preserving one of the nation's last oases of healthy sabal palm habitat had been augmented in recent years by nature education efforts that expanded its role to that of a community nature center. Regrettably, donors buffeted by the recession have significantly cut back support and there is uncertainty about the Homeland Security border fence that threatens to cut off the facility from the community, effectively decimating the sanctuary's operating budget.

"Funding must go first and foremost to maintaining the sanctuary and protecting the habitat, "said Audubon Texas Executive Director, Bob Benson. "Our first priority is to keep the habitat healthy for native wildlife and to ensure that its natural wonders remain intact for the inspiration, sustenance and education of future human generations.

"

The 557-acre property, owned by The National Audubon Society, is home to the last remaining largest stand of native sabal palms in the nation; and is among the most biologically diverse regions in the Lone Star state. Aside from being a birder's paradise, rare plants and animals are seen here in this unique sub-tropical habitat.

Audubon will focus its resources on protecting and managing the sanctuary through a new schedule that includes months with limited access to the public. The following schedule will be in effect until further notice:

May 15 – Oct. 15 CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC

Oct. 15 – Dec. 15 OPEN WEEKENDS ONLY (Saturday & Sunday)

Dec. 15 – May 15 OPEN Tues – Sunday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The sanctuary will still offer scheduled group tours for $10/person during the closed season; they can be arranged through the sanctuary manager. Individual admission during the open season will be $6.00 per person.

"It's unfortunate that we won't be able to maintain the current operation schedule," added Benson, "but Audubon will continue its vital work with the conservation community to protect the last vestiges of the sabal palm forest for future generations to enjoy. That's the mission that brought Audubon to the area, and it's a mission we will accomplish."

427 Sterzing Street #105-B w Austin, Texas 78704-1026
Contact: Bob Benson, Executive Director, 512-469-7891 or bbenson@audubon.org

Hidalgo County's Border Wall is Nothing to Brag About

2009-03-19T16:30:00.009-05:00

By Scott Nicol

Last March, Hidalgo County Judge JD Salinas cut a deal with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to build part of the border wall. Rather than build the wall to the north of the levee, DHS would insert it into the levees in Hidalgo County. It was estimated that this would raise the per-mile cost from $3 million to $5 million, so the county agreed to pay $44 million. When the bids came in, the low bids were $12 million per mile. As a result of Judge Salinas' capitulation Hidalgo County's border walls are nearly finished, while neighboring Starr County's wall construction has not begun, and Cameron County's is just beginning. They still have the chance to fight to halt construction, while for Hidalgo County the fight moves from stopping the wall entirely to preventing pro-wall zealots from filling in the spaces between levee-walls.

In his recent State of the County address, Judge JD Salinas made statements regarding the levee-border wall that were, to put it charitably, less than honest.

Judge Salinas said,

"The levee-barrier, which was the alternative reached by the Hidalgo County Drainage District and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, is now 95 percent complete. This solution has saved residents and businesses from purchasing $150 million per year in mandatory flood insurance. It has prevented private land from being taken by the federal government, and the flood control structure is more environmentally-sensitive than the proposed border fence."

As to his first point regarding the money saved by residents who will not need to purchase flood insurance, the levee-border wall did not replace all of the levee sections in Hidalgo County that were deemed inadequate. In a number of instances, portions of our levees that were not in need of repair were ripped apart to insert border walls. Other sections that are still in bad shape were not touched by the levee-border wall scheme. This is because the locations of levee-border walls had nothing to do with Hidalgo County’s flood control needs. They were decided upon by the Department of Homeland Security, without consulting locals, and without regard to the condition of the flood-control levees in any given area.

Luckily for Hidalgo County property owners, the economic stimulus package contains funds to rebuild our remaining decrepit levees. It is these repairs that will keep us from having to purchase flood insurance, not the border wall. If Judge Salinas had not capitulated to the demands of the Department of Homeland Security, those funds would also have been available to repair the levees in the places that are now border walls. Unfortunately for Hidalgo County residents, there is no money in the stimulus package to reimburse us for the $44 million that Judge Salinas spent to build the levee-border wall. Congress almost never appropriates money for projects that are already finished, so it is highly unlikely that Hidalgo County taxpayers will ever be reimbursed for the levee-border wall. Rather than save us millions, as he claims, the border walls that Salinas built have cost us millions of dollars.

As for the idea that the levee-border wall is better for the environment than Homeland Security’s original border wall designs, Judge Salinas knows full well that the opposite is true. Last March the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFW) wrote a letter to the Department of Homeland Security in response to the plan to build levee-border walls in Hidalgo County. It said,

“This combined project would eliminate wildlife passage by replacing CBP’s original “wildlife friendly” fence design with an impermeable 16 to 18 foot high wall built into a flood control levee. This new project design would effectively eliminate the wildlife passage component of the earlier design and would impair the ability of the wildlife corridor to fulfill its function. […] We would like to document that any proposed fence and/or levee segment that bisects lands within the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge cannot be found compatible with the purposes for which the Refuge was established.”

Today the levee-border walls in Hidalgo County hit 12 tracts of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, along with 3 tracts managed by Texas Parks and Wildlife, a World Birding Center, and property owned by the Nature Conservancy.

In contrast to Judge Salinas’ claims of environmental benefit, former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff knew that the levee-border wall would violate numerous environmental laws. Last April he used the Real ID Act to issue 2 waivers of federal laws, one of which was specifically for the Hidalgo County levee-border wall. It brushed aside 27 laws, including the Endangered Species Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act. If the wall was in any way “environmentally-sensitive”, as Judge Salinas says, Chertoff could have left these laws in effect.

A visit to the Old Hidalgo Pumphouse World Birding Center makes the negative environmental impact of the levee-border wall painfully clear. The path that once led from the birding center into the adjacent USFW refuge tract is blocked by a concrete wall topped with rusting steel pickets. Not only are wildlife such as bobcats, or even endangered ocelots, stopped from moving freely, but birders and eco-tourists are also unable to access the 600 acre wildlife refuge tract that contains the birds and wildlife that they come to see.

The Old Hidalgo Pumphouse World Birding Center opened in April of 2007, and was the result of a joint effort of the city of Hidalgo, Hidalgo County, Texas Parks and Wildlife, and US Fish and Wildlife. Like other World Birding Centers in the Rio Grande Valley, it is meant to both preserve natural habitat and bring eco-tourists. Eco-tourism brings $125 million per year to the area, and Hidalgo hoped to attract some of those dollars. But eco-tourists come to see nature, not towering concrete and rusting steel, so the millions that have been invested to develop the birding center have been lost.

Tourists are also unlikely to visit a place that they think is a war zone. In the past few weeks the national press has been filled with sensationalistic headlines about the possibility that Mexico will become a “failed state”, and that violent “spillover” will sweep through border communities. Such stories generally fail to mention that while Juarez is being racked by violence, FBI statistics show that El Paso, just across the Rio Grande, is the third safest large city in the United States. San Diego and Brownsville are likewise far safer than the nation’s capitol, Washington, DC. Instead of refuting this misperception, Governor Perry and Senator Cornyn have reinforced it with calls for the mobilization of troops on the border. When people in Middle America hear this, and see that Hidalgo County’s Judge collaborated with the Department of Homeland Security to build the border wall, it looks like further evidence that Mexico poses a military threat to South Texas. Who in their right mind would come here on vacation?

The headlines screaming about “spillover” violence are already being used to call for a further militarization of the border. When the first walls built in California failed to slow the influx of immigrants, the response from Congress was not to try something else. Instead, two weeks ahead of the 2006 midterm election, they passed the Secure Fence Act, which called for more walls. With members of Congress trying to look hawkish on Homeland Security, there are guaranteed to be calls to build even more border walls. In the Rio Grande Valley the border wall is in 21 separate sections, ranging from nine-tenths of a mile to 6 miles long. It will be much harder to fight off calls to fill in the gaps in South Texas’ border wall with Judge Salinas’ repeatedly praising the levee-border wall. If the walls that he has already helped to build are such a blessing, why would he oppose the erection of more walls?

While on the surface his State of the County address is the run-of-the-mill self-congratulation that we expect from a politician, in fact his words have real consequences. Following his capitulation to former Secretary Chertoff, Judge Salinas went from being an opponent of the wall to the Department of Homeland Security’s poster boy. In press releases and Congressional testimony they use him to show that they are working with local stakeholders, rather than ignoring local concerns, condemning private and municipal property, and irreparably damaging border communities, economies, and ecosystems. Judge Salinas’ words provide DHS with cover as they continue to strong arm our next-door neighbors in Cameron County, as well as our friends in California.

Of course it is naïve to expect a politician to own up to his mistakes, to admit to being suckered into a bad deal that has cost his constituents millions of dollars. It is unrealistic to expect a mea culpa from Judge Salinas. But if he truly cares about the residents of Hidalgo County, the people who elected him and who he claims to serve, JD Salinas needs to stop trying to rebrand his greatest failure as a shining success. The wall is not a “solution” for any of the problems that we face. The border wall is a symbol of hatred, a blight on our communities, and a scar upon the landscape.

The Border Patrol Halts Communion at Friendship Park as Border Wall Construction Looms

2009-02-26T06:45:00.007-06:00

By John Fanestil

On Saturday I was almost arrested for committing assault with a tortilla. Or was it my communion cup that Customs and Border Protection agents perceived to be a threat?

The setting was Friendship Park, a historic venue on the U.S.-Mexico border, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. For generations people from the two nations have met at this location to visit with friends and family through the border fence.

As part of its commitment to build 670 miles of double and triple barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border, the Department of Homeland Security is building a second wall across Friendship Park. On December 23, 2008, Customs and Border Protection declared the site a construction zone. On January 6, 2009 CBP released final design plans for the park and announced that these plans would eliminate permanently all public access to this unique site.

We, who are aficionados of the park, were stunned by the announcement. We knew DHS had decided to build a wall across the park, and we knew Customs and Border Protection agents had concerns about drug-smuggling and illegal border-crossings at the location. Still, we had assumed that the totality of law enforcement strategy for Friendship Park would not be predicated on the illegal conduct of a few. After all, drugs and criminal activity are problems in thousands of parks across the United States, and law enforcement agencies don’t respond by simply shutting them down.

We had assumed that some accommodation would be made for the vast majority of visitors to the park, who respect and honor the park’s intended purpose. Locals don’t call it “Friendship Park” for nothing, after all. Surely, we thought, there must be some room for friendship in the complex formula of U.S. border policy.

As the news of our government’s plans to close the park sunk in, we began to wonder when CBP would begin to enforce the ban on public access. The answer, it turns out, was this past Saturday, February 21. And I guess I have the ignominious distinction of being the first U.S. citizen to be forcibly prevented from approaching the border fence at Friendship Park.

For the past eight months I have gone to Friendship Park each Sunday afternoon and served communion to people on both sides of the border fence. I have done so out of solidarity with the many people who meet their loved ones there – and as a protest against DHS plans to decimate the park. People have been breaking bread at this location for a long, long time. It seemed to me only fitting that Friendship Park should host the sacrament of communion, too.

This past week, we moved our communion celebration to Saturday. The reason for this was something that any pastor can understand: we wanted to make the choir happy. A fabulous choir, composed of singers from both countries, wanted to perform at Friendship Park. Most of the singers have standing obligations on Sunday, so they asked for the event to be held on Saturday. We were quick to oblige.

As we approached the border on Saturday, we were met by a wall of CBP officers, who told us we could go no further than about 45 feet from the border fence. The choir set up shop and sang the Faure Requiem, the music blasting from a sound system set up by our friends in Tijuana. The choir performed admirably, despite having to compete with whistles, shouts and bullhorn blasts from a small group of anti-immigrant protestors who tried to hi-jack the gathering. Their inimitable combination of ignorance, hatred and incivility was no match for the choir, which included a stunning soprano solo – the Pie Jesu, “at the feet of Jesus” – sung from a distance in Tijuana.

After the requiem and a few prayers, I shared a brief message with the congregation. I recalled the gospel story in which Jesus goes to a mountaintop with his closest disciples. After Jesus is transfigured in dazzling light, Peter proposes that they erect tents atop the mountain and simply stay put. I drew the analogy to the love that so many of us feel for the United States, the land our forebears called “a shining city on a hill.” But can a city on a hill still truly shine if it has walls built around it? This is the great temptation of patriotism – the love of country is so quickly turned into hostility toward “the other.” The desire to protect our own wealth and privilege from the intrusion of foreigners is akin to Peter’s desire to stay up on the mountaintop with Jesus. As the Bible story makes clear, God has other things in mind for Jesus and those who find in him a kindred spirit. Jesus came down off the mountaintop and set out on his journey to Jerusalem, resisting at every step along the way all human efforts to build walls between God and God’s people.

Having concluded my brief sermon, I then offered communion to the 150 or so who had gathered in the United States. I then turned to the south, intending to serve the many people who were assembled in Tijuana for this same purpose.

My way was blocked by a Border Patrol agent, who was determined to make an impression. “You don’t want to do this,” he shouted at me, unsnapping several compartments on his uniform – to handcuffs, I presume, or perhaps mace.

I told him that all I wanted to do was serve communion, and another agent nearby shouted, “Go to Tijuana if you want to serve communion. You’re supposed to be a man of God. Then obey the law!”

I decided that this was not the time to conduct a teach-in on the historic Christian practice of civil disobedience, and instead tried to step forward. “I just want to serve communion,” I said.

The lead agent stepped in front of me, holding out his hand. “If you bump into me,” he shouted, “you’ll be charged with assaulting an officer.”

I’ve since learned from a lawyer that my actions did not come anywhere near the threshold for constituting assault, but in the moment I didn’t know that this was the case.

“So if I try to walk past you, and I bump into you, I’ll be charged with assault?” I asked.

“That’s right,” he said.

“OK,” I replied, “then I guess you’ll have to arrest me, because I’m going to serve communion.”

“OK, I will,” he said. “Turn around and put your hands behind your back.”

I did as I was told – this may have been a tactical mistake on my part – and the lead agent then instructed a colleague to remove me from the premises. “Take him out of the park,” he said, “but don’t arrest him.”

In retrospect I should have asked if I was being detained, but it seemed an almost silly question. After all I was being dragged away by a man in uniform, wearing a gun.

As we climbed the hillside that overlooks the beach at Friendship Park, the agent and I began to exchange pleasantries. “If it weren’t for all this mess, it really would be a beautiful day, wouldn’t it?” I said.

“Yeah,” he replied. “What did you have to go and do all that for?”

“I didn’t mean any disrespect to you or your colleagues,” I explained. “Our problem isn’t with you guys, we know you are just following orders. Our problem is with the policy, with the decision by your higher-ups to shut down the park.”

“The ones who ruin it,” the agent replied, “are the bad guys who pass all kinds of crap through the fence.”

“I understand that,” I said, “but this is exactly the problem with all our border policies. We’ve got to figure out a better way to distinguish between the bad guys and the good guys.”

The agent shrugged.

We sat atop the mesa, the agent and I, looking down on the beach. Later I learned that another of my friends, Dan Watman, was also removed from the beach by Border Patrol. After that the CBP agents put up a solid wall in front of our group and threatened them with assault charges if they stepped forward. The leaders of our group decided to stand down.

I am pleased with the way we all held up under such difficult circumstances on Saturday – but two days later I am left with a bad taste in my mouth. I find it unpalatable that I was not permitted to serve communion. There is a young homeless man, Adrian, who lives on the beach right there in Tijuana. He is there every Sunday and I saw him this last Saturday, too. Was he less worthy of communion that day than I was? What about Oscar, who was deported eight months ago and is separated from his wife and children, still living in the United States? He was there, too, just looking for a little human contact. Had I been allowed to offer him a piece of tortilla and a swig of juice, would that have compromised our national security, or our nation’s nobler principles?

Questions like these point to a larger one: What is to become of our nation’s southern border? Is this strip of land – over 1,850 miles long – to be turned over to the Department of Homeland Security and converted into nothing more than a “zone of enforcement,” straddled by walls?

I cannot abide it. I cannot abide it because I know the border can be an altogether different place than this. Like millions of others whose lives and relationships straddle the international boundary, I know the border can be a place where human beings meet, a place of friendship, a place of communion.

And that’s why I’ll be going back to Friendship Park next Sunday afternoon, to try once more to serve communion.

You are welcome to join me. The particulars are below my signature.

Adelante.

John Fanestil

DATE: Sunday, March 1, 2009

TIME: 2:30 meetup at entrance to Border Field State Park

PROGRAM: 30 minute hike to Friendship Park, communion

DIRECTIONS: Take Hwy 5 South, exit Dairy Mart Road, turn right (west) and follow the winding road to the entrance to the park.

INSTRUCTIONS: Bring documents verifying U.S. residence. Wear hiking boots.

In case you missed it, you can see the coverage in the Union-Tribune at this link. You can also keep up to date by joining the Friends of Friendship Park on Facebook. For Scott Bennett’s photos from the San Diego side, click here. For Alondra Almendra’s photos taken in Tijuana, click here.

MINISTER DETAINED WHILE ATTEMPTING TO SERVE COMMUNION AT U.S.-MEXICO BORDER WALL

2009-02-25T08:19:00.002-06:00

The following release was issued by the San Diego-based Foundation for Change. Every Sunday since last summer, John Fanestil, the Foundation's Executive Director, has been offering communion to people on both sides of the wall at Friendship Park. To learn more about the Foundation for Change, visit their website here.

SAN DIEGO, CA – On Saturday, February 21, United States Border Patrol (USBP) agents forcibly denied U.S. citizens access to Friendship Park, an historic plaza overlooking the Pacific Ocean on the U.S.-Mexico border. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has announced their intent to impose a permanent ban on all public access to the historic location.

At noon on Saturday a group of 150 park patrons – local church choir members, university students, human rights advocates and environmentalists – gathered at Friendship Park to hold a peaceful, ecumenical service and concert. They were joined by friends from Tijuana, including members of the Tijuana Opera, who were waiting to participate on the other side of the fence. Upon their arrival, Border Patrol agents with rubber-bullet guns and tear-gas canisters at the ready forcibly pushed the group back and threatened to arrest any who would approach the fence.

The group then performed the Faure Requiem Mass in harmony with the Mexican singers and musicians. Rev. John Fanestil – a United Methodist Pastor and Executive Director of the San Diego-based Foundation for Change – then celebrated communion with a crowd of over 150 on the U.S. side of the border. When he attempted to distribute the communion elements to the crowd in Tijuana, Fanestil’s movements were blocked by a Border Patrol agent and he was told that one more step forward would result in his being charged with assault. Fanestil, communion elements in hand, was then told to turn around and place his hands behind his back. He was then forcibly removed from the area and later released without charge.

Also detained at Saturday’s event was Daniel Watman, organizer of the community-based organization Border Meetup. For years Watman’s group has hosted social events at Friendship Park, ranging from yoga classes and salsa dancing lessons to beach clean-ups in coalition with environmental organizations from San Diego and Tijuana like San Diego Coastkeeper and Proyecto Fronterizo de Educación del Medio Ambiente. As part of Saturday’s program, Watman and other participants had intended to join with counterparts from Grupo Ecologista de Tijuana in restoring Friendship Park’s bi-national garden, which has been uprooted on the U.S.
side by Border Patrol.

"Saturday, we followed in the footsteps of thousands over the decades who have visited Friendship Park for its intended purpose, international friendship," said the Rev. Fanestil. "Now, U.S. citizens are being walled off from a part of their own country and the building of friendships with our Mexican neighbors is being criminalized."

Dedicated on August 18, 1971, by First Lady Pat Nixon, Friendship Park is an historic, binational plaza that encircles a marble monument marking the initial boundary point separating the U.S. and Mexico since 1848. The plaza is within California’s Border Field State Park and a part of a larger ecological habitat, the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve. After planting a tree to inaugurate the plaza in 1971, Mrs. Nixon ordered her security guards to cut the barbed wire separating her from a cheering crowd in Mexico and stated, "I hate to see a fence anywhere."

On December 23, 2008, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) declared Friendship Park a construction zone and announced a ban on all public access. On January 6, 2009 CBP released final design plans for the park and revealed their plans to prohibit permanently all public access to this unique site.

DHS plans for Friendship Park are part of a larger project which saw the Bush Administration waive dozens of environmental laws and regulations in order to facilitate the accelerated construction of double and triple barriers along the length of the 1850-mile U.S.-Mexico border. To date, over 600 miles of supplemental border wall have been completed, in some locations as far as two miles north of the first fence marking the international boundary. DHS officials have made known their desire to claim the lands along the border as a “zone of enforcement,” in effect creating a “no man’s land” that cuts across private property, public lands, national parks, sensitive wildlife refuges, sacred lands and historic cultural sites.

The San Diego-based coalition, “Friends of Friendship Park, includes over 30 community organizations dedicated to preserving the park. Local efforts have been supported by legislators ranging from Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi to San Diego City Council members. On February 4, members of Congress Susan Davis and Bob Filner, along with State Senators Christine Kehoe and Denise Ducheny, and State Assemblymembers Mary Salas and Lori Saldaña, sent a joint letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano asking her to halt to construction at the site pending further review.

The effort to save Friendship Park is a part of a larger movement being led by citizens and legislators from Brownsville, Texas, through New Mexico and Arizona to San Diego, California advocating a moratorium on border wall construction, pending further review. On February 10, eight members of Congress from border districts sent a letter to President Obama requesting a halt to construction on the border.

"In an era of advanced technologies, the border fence is an antiquated structure that has torn our communities apart and damaged our cross-border relationships,” the legislators wrote.