E. Germany's Wall a model for sealing border: US politician

AFP
October 18, 2010

LOS ANGELES — The United States could learn from East Germany's effectiveness in sealing its border with the Wall during the Cold War, a local politician seeking election to the US Senate has said.

Republican candidate Joe Miller, a Senate candidate in Alaska for November 2 mid-term elections, made the comments when discussing immigration at a town hall meeting reported by the Anchorage Daily News.

Miller said that, when he was serving in the US military, he spent time at the Fulda Gap near Frankfurt, a key point on the frontline between the then East and West Germanies.

"That was .. when the Wall was still up between East and West Germany, he said in an audio clip on the Alaska newspaper's website.

"East Germany was very, very able to reduce the flow," Miller said, adding: "Obviously there were other things that were involved, but we have the capacity as a great nation to obviously secure our border.

"If East Germany could do it, we could do it," Miller said, adding: "Frankly my perspective is, you've got to build a fence."

Miller's spokesman did not immediately return requests for a comment on the remarks, which come barely two weeks before mid-term elections across the United States next month.

Immigration is a potent issue in the United States, still struggling to recover from the global economic crisis. While some fret about foreigners potentially taking scarce US jobs, most Americans have a hard time opposing immigration energetically when most are descended from immigrants.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jviNSFN0UrOsbPKfnXBPiNYaW27w?docId=CNG.5ad543ce839fb7c75ade44a2db5fb0eb.cc1

Departments of the Interior, Homeland Security Announce $6.8 Million in Conservation Projects

Department of the Interior Press Release
October 13, 2010

Washington, DC – The U.S. Department of the Interior and U.S. Customs and Border Protection have completed the first InterAgency Agreement under the 2009 Memorandum of Agreement to fund environmental mitigation projects that will benefit several species of fish and wildlife affected by border security projects in the Southwest. Signed September 28, the agreement will fund $6.8 million in projects and represents the first of a series of efforts designed to mitigate impacts from the construction of fencing and other security measures along the U.S. Border with Mexico.

“CBP is committed to protecting our country’s natural resources and wildlife while performing our security mission,” said CBP Deputy Commissioner, David Aguilar. “CBP is responsible for sound environmental stewardship and energy conservation as an integral part of their mission activities.”

“The projects we are announcing today are, in effect, part of a down payment on mitigating the impact on wildlife and its habitat from the on-going effort to secure our southern border,” Assistant Secretary Rhea Suh said. “In the future, we will continue to work with U.S. Customs and Border Protection to fund new projects that ensure threatened and endangered species and other wildlife along the border are conserved and the fragile ecosystems they depend upon are protected.”

The initial mitigation projects include funding to restore habitat for lesser long-nosed bats in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Arizona; re-establish the Aplomado falcon in New Mexico; install a fish barrier at San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge, Arizona to preclude competition with invasive species; study movement of bighorn sheep in California; survey and monitor jaguars and their habitat in Arizona.

Customs and Border Protection is funding these projects under a 2009 Memorandum of Agreement between CBP and the Department of the Interior for mitigation of unavoidable impacts to natural and cultural resources due to construction of border security infrastructure. Under this agreement, CBP will fund DOI up to $50 million over the next few years for mitigation needs.

Over the past three years, CBP has constructed about 670 miles of fence along the southwest border as an integral part of the nation’s strategy to improve border security. CBP has committed to responsible environmental stewardship throughout the life-cycle of the tactical infrastructure, from construction through operations and maintenance.


The First Mitigation Projects:
a. Sasabe Biological Opinion Arizona
$2,119,000

b. Organ Pipe Cactus NM Biological Opinion Arizona
$980,000

c. San Bernardino Valley Mitigation Arizona
$657,480

d. Rio Yaqui Fish Studies Arizona
$441,250

e. Peninsular Bighorn Sheep Study California
$230,000

f. Coronado NM Agave Restoration Arizona
$274,873

g. Northern Aplomado Falcon Reintroduction and Habitat Restoration New Mexico $499,700

h. Border-wide Bat Conservation Arizona
$925,000


http://www.doi.gov/news/pressreleases/Departments-of-the-Interior-and-Homeland-Security-Announce-6-point-8-Million-in-Conservation-Projects.cfm

No Border Wall group launches Web site

Rio Grande Guardian
October 11, 2010


McALLEN, Oct. 11 - The No Border Wall coalition has launched its own Web site, to go alongside the blogs it has been running these past few years.


With a lot of information and citation links to documents and newspaper articles embedded throughout, the group hopes the new site will become a point of entry into the issue for reporters, researchers, policy makers, and the general public.


The Web site address is www.No-Border-Wall.com .


Scott Nicol, a spokesman for the No Border Wall group, said the Web site is designed to be a comprehensive guide to the U.S.-Mexico border wall – its history, effectiveness or otherwise, and the types of wall designs being floated and built.


Nicol said it is vital that national policies of the magnitude of a border wall are 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 Web site,” he said.


The border wall issue was huge in the Rio Grande Valley a few years ago, when the Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Michael Chertoff was developing plans to build hundreds of miles of border fencing. The issue has since waned at least as far as news coverage is concerned.


The Guardian asked Nicol to detail why the Web site has been developed now and why it will be relevant in the weeks and months ahead. Here is his response:


“This is a critical time in the struggle to prevent hundreds of miles of additional border walls from being built. With mid-term elections less than a month away, politicians from all over the country are calling for the erection of more border walls. Some go so far as to demand that double-layered walls stretch continuously from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico.

“South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, who hopes that his backing of Tea Party candidates will give him a power base in the Senate, has twice this year introduced amendments that would require hundreds of miles of additional border wall, ignoring the fact that at an average cost of $7.5 million per mile his new walls would cost taxpayers $2,647,500,000.

“Even more extreme than DeMint is Kansas Representative Todd Tiahrt, who is running for the Senate. He has introduced legislation that requires continuous double-layered border walls along the entire 2,000 mile long border.

“From Rand Paul in Kentucky to Michael Gardiner in Rhode Island, conservative candidates are trying to outdo one another in their support for more and more border walls, in an effort to show voters that only they (certainly not their opponent!) can secure our nation's borders and keep us safe.


“Most of their claims regarding spillover violence and the effectiveness of border walls are at best urban myths, and at times outright lies.”

Nicol said the No Border Wall has launched its new Web site in an effort to present the facts.


“Any discussion of the future of the border, and those of us who live here, should be based in fact, not simply sound bites that appeal to the irrational fears and misconceptions of voters in Kansas or South Carolina or Kentucky.

“If, as many predict, there is a big shift in Congressional control, those who campaigned on border walls will feel obliged to follow through. As we saw with the Secure Fence Act (passed just weeks before the mid-term election) once legislation is passed it is extremely difficult to do anything about it. We need to work to educate people now.”

http://www.riograndeguardian.com/rggnews_story.asp?story_no=22

Smugglers of Drugs Burrow on Border

New York Times
October 2, 2010
by Marc Lacey

NOGALES, Ariz. — Drone aircraft patrol the United States-Mexico border from the skies. Fast boats look out for smugglers at sea. And tens of thousands of Border Patrol agents use trucks, horses, all-terrain vehicles and bicycles to stop unauthorized crossers on land.

But there is another route across the border, one in which smugglers slither north. As enforcement efforts have increased and border barriers have been built, tunneling has gained in popularity, with Nogales becoming the capital.

On Thursday, the Border Patrol was filling an underground tunnel that had been discovered right under the immigration checkpoint in Nogales. But even before the concrete was poured to make that tunnel inoperative, another subterranean passageway was discovered a block away.

The second tunnel, which had been used to bring bales of marijuana from Mexico, will be filled as well. There are patches, in fact, all across this city, where the authorities have tried to tap the tunnels that traffickers build off the extensive underground storm drain system that connects Nogales with another city by the same name across the fence in Mexico.

With profit margins so huge, drug traffickers pushing their wares across the border are an enterprising lot. No matter how much the United States government pours into the region to stop them, there always seem to be novel attempts to elude detection.

And the two Nogaleses are where drug trafficking has literally gone underground. Burrowing from one country to the other happens elsewhere along the border, particularly in the smuggling zone around Tijuana. But officials say most of the tunnels discovered along the entire stretch of the border are from the Mexican Nogales to the American one.

“We are in the lead in the tunnel business,” said Chief Jeffrey Kirkham of the Nogales Police Department.

It is the geography of the region that makes tunneling so common here, as the Mexican side sits at a slightly higher elevation and water flows north through generations-old underground channels. “Through the downtowns of both cities, the drainage flows through a tunnel and then at some point goes into an open channel on the U.S. side,” said Sally Spener, spokeswoman for the International Boundary and Water Commission, a binational body that oversees water issues between the United States and Mexico.

Over the last four years, at least 51 unauthorized tunnels, or more than one a month, have been found in the two border cities. Some are short, narrow passageways that require those navigating them to slither. Others are long, sophisticated underground thoroughfares strung with electric cables and ventilation hoses.

Last year, a resident tipped off the authorities to a tunnel that extended 48 feet into Mexico and 35 feet into the United States, making it one of the longest ever found in Nogales.

One high-end tunnel found in 2005 farther west in Calexico, Calif., originated in the master bedroom of a Mexican home and extended to a garage on the American side. It had a phone line and air conditioning, and the authorities estimated that dozens of truckloads of dirt had to be removed to build it.

Although migrants heading north sometimes use tunnels, the passageways are more often considered the handiwork of drug smugglers. That means residents, especially on the Mexican side, sometimes look the other way when they observe surreptitious tunneling for fear of attracting the attention of criminals.

On the Arizona side, specially trained Border Patrol agents monitor the drains, entering the dark underworld that crisscrosses the border and looking for unauthorized offshoots dug by hand.

The air is cool down below. The only sound comes from the chirping of bats and the flow of water, a mixture of storm runoff and sewage. It seems a good place to hide.

“I’m one foot from the border,” Kevin Hecht, a Border Patrol agent standing in the dark in a stream of pungent water, said as he shined his flashlight around. “Down here, you look for signs of movement. You look for digging.”

Farther down the drain, David Jimarez, a Border Patrol spokesman, squatted in a tunnel and peered into a two-foot offshoot. “They crawl on their bellies,” he said. “They’re like a snake.”

How the tunnels are discovered varies. The one filled with concrete last week was found when the front tire of a bus sank into the pavement, revealing a weak spot that was caused by tunneling. There have been cases, officials say, of manholes popping up in the middle of roadways, with furtive eyes peering out. The owner of a Nogales warehouse last year discovered a tunnel in his border-front property.

Sometimes the diggers make too much noise. In June, a security guard at the DeConcini Port of Entry reported hearing strange sounds emanating from a storm drain that ran from the border fence north to Interstate 19. It turned out to be a tunnel just large enough to fit a smuggler.

“It’s a netherworld down there,” said Roy Bermudes, the assistant police chief in Nogales. “If you turn off your flashlight, you can’t see your hand in front of your face.”

Chief Bermudes used to enter the tunnels regularly when he led the police SWAT team that provided backup to city workers doing underground repair work. He recalls hearing a noise while underground and aiming his rifle in front of him, only to discover a Mexican military squad doing a similar patrol. After a brief standoff, the guns on both sides were lowered.

Eventually, as the danger grew, the city handed over patrol duties to the Border Patrol, which has installed underground cameras and motion detectors.

It is not just the flow of drugs that concerns the authorities here. The tunneling weakens roadways, sometimes causing them to buckle, and puts buildings at risk.

“There is a joke in Nogales that someday its entire downtown will collapse into a giant sinkhole due to the many drug tunnels in the city,” Hugh Holub, a former public works director in Nogales, wrote recently.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/us/03tunnels.html?_r=2&th&emc=th

Immigration expert talks border policies

The Stanford Daily
October 1, 2010
by Erin Inman

you build it, they will come. And in border enforcement, if you build it higher, they will still come.

That was part of the hard look Wayne Cornelius, director of the Center for Immigration Studies at UC-San Diego, took at the effectiveness of U.S. border enforcement in a talk at Stanford on Thursday.

Cornelius founded the Mexican Migration Field Research and Training Program, which studies immigration from three Mexican regions: Jalisco, Oaxaca and the Yucatan. Forty years of field research in Mexico and the U.S. provided him with first-hand accounts of legal and illegal immigration.

More than 4,800 surveys show illegal border crossing remains high although the U.S. has spent $17.1 billion on immigration enforcement this year alone, he said. Sixty percent of immigrants crossing the US-Mexico border succeed on their first try and 90 percent of those actually detained by border patrol still end up successful.

He added that border patrol has increased four-fold since 1992, adding 600 miles of fencing that costs up to $16 million per mile.

“It’s our own great wall,” Cornelius said, referring to a section in the Otay Mountains of San Diego County.

But rather than stopping illegal immigration flow, the fences have only diverted it, he said. Migrants can simply tunnel under, climb over fences or trek across deserts or the Rio Grande. In fact, smuggling migrants has increased drastically as prospective immigrants search for new and safer, though sometimes more expensive, ways to cross the border.

These detours have generated close to14,000 deaths, he said. “It’s a slow-motion death across the Southwest.”

Cornelius suggests a cheaper alternative to current U.S. border policy: a more generous guest work program, an increase in permanent legal immigrant admissions and an increase in the number of green cards the U.S. awards.

Cornelius’ statistics were compelling enough to astonish some members of the audience.

“I was really surprised to hear the incredible amount of spending that has gone into border enforcement with almost no results to show for it,” Omar Media ‘13 said. ”That’s $30 billion down the drain. This only reinforces the idea that the U.S. must adopt comprehensive immigration reform now. We can’t afford not to.”

http://www.stanforddaily.com/2010/10/01/immigration-expert-talks-border-policies/

Senators: DHS isn't improving management fast enough

Government Executive
September 30, 2010
by Katherine McIntire Peters

While Homeland Security Department officials have improved the way they buy technology and manage money and staff, DHS continues to confront major management problems and is unlikely to be removed from the Government Accountability Office's high-risk list anytime soon.

"Unfortunately, progress has been slower than many expected and than any of us would like to see," said Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee's panel on oversight of government management.

At a hearing Thursday he acknowledged improvements in leadership and management, but doubted they would be enough to warrant taking the department off GAO's list of agencies most at risk for waste, fraud and abuse.

"Many high-cost projects have been initiated with too little analysis, planning and follow-up, costing millions of taxpayer dollars and impacting the agency's mission," he said, singling out for specific criticism the Secure Border Initiative's electronic fence, known as SBInet. The program has experienced multiple setbacks, including cost overruns and schedule delays, and has failed to perform as expected.

In addition, Homeland Security has struggled to integrate the finance and accounting systems of its component agencies since it was formed in 2003.

Cathleen Berrick, GAO's managing director for homeland security and justice issues, said the management shortfalls have had a significant effect on missions. A number of major programs the department has tried to deploy, including SBInet and the U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology program known as US VISIT, have failed to meet performance and cost and schedule expectations.

"They were either delayed or never deployed to the field, so there's a direct correlation between how the department is managed and how successful [it is] in implementing the mission," Berrick said.

Deputy Secretary Jane Hall Lute said DHS has undertaken a number of significant actions to improve management across the department. Lute earlier this year initiated a strategic management approach focused on enhancing the people, structures and processes necessary to meet mission goals.

That initiative was centered on improving the acquisition process, financial management and personnel reform -- making sure the right people were in the right positions with a proper balance between civil servants and contract employees.

To that end, DHS has aligned account structures to better compare personnel costs and other factors across the department. "It's hard to talk about an integrated department if we don't count personnel or acquisition and investment or [operation and maintenance] costs in the same way," Lute said.

"In addition, we have reevaluated every single performance measure guiding the department. We've looked at all 180-odd performance measures, and we have recast them in ways that are plain language indicators of what the value proposition is in the department for money that's being allocated. We think this will be a much more sensible approach to performance metrics," Lute said.

Berrick said the new and revised performance measures have been a key improvement.

"I do think DHS is laying the groundwork [for improving management]. They do have good plans in place in many of these areas," Berrick said. The key will be implementing those plans, she added.

http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0910/093010kp1.htm

Near-record 236 bodies found at Mexico-Ariz. border in year

USA Today
September 24, 2010
by Dennis Wagner

PHOENIX — The second-highest number of bodies on record has been recovered along the Arizona-Sonora, Mexico, border the past 12 months.
According to Coalicio´n de Derechos Humanos (the Human Rights Coalition), which gathers data on border-crossing fatalities in Arizona, 236 bodies have been found in fiscal year 2010, which ends Sept. 30.

The record of 282 bodies was set in fiscal 2005.

"We've passed the number of remains recovered last year," said Kat Rodriguez, coordinator for the non-profit. "This has been a horrid summer."

The group gets data from medical examiners in Pima, Pinal, Cochise and Yuma counties in Arizona, as well as other sources, Rodriguez says. The tally is not comprehensive, because some counties don't track undocumented immigrant deaths. Rodriguez says there is no national registry keeping track of border fatalities.

According to the organization's website, which lists locations, dates and causes of death, most victims perished from exposure — heat, cold or thirst. Some suffered gunshot wounds. In many cases, Rodriguez said, remains were too damaged to determine cause of death.

Other immigrant-advocacy groups say fatalities appear to be increasing even as the number of illegal border crossers has declined the past five years. Using a formula based on the number of fatalities and arrests, Sarah Roberts, a nurse volunteer with No More Deaths, a non-profit organization that provides humanitarian aid to border crossers, describes the past year as the "most lethal" ever.

Roberts and Colleen Agle, a Border Patrol spokeswoman, cite several reasons for the grim statistics.

Roberts says tighter enforcement has pushed smugglers and undocumented immigrants to make longer treks deeper into the desert. She added that this summer was especially brutal. Extreme nighttime heat saps energy and depletes fluids, even from immigrants who hike after dark, she says.

Roberts and Agle say that increases in Border Patrol staffing have enabled agents to scour previously neglected desert areas and find skeletal remains of victims who may have died before this year.

Not among the remains so far is a missing 13-year-old, Nelson Omar Chilel Lopez, whose mother, Fermina Lopez Cash, refuses to believe her son died in the desert after crossing the U.S. border near Sonoita, Ariz., more than two months ago.

"I am afraid, yes," she says. "But I won't believe my son died that way. I can't."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-09-23-border23_ST_N.htm