Public Radio International - The World
August 12, 2013
It’s a clear, breezy morning on the scrubby hills overlooking the Tijuana River Valley south of San Diego.
Border Patrol jeeps cruise the dirt roads that run up and down the hills along the fence that marks the US-Mexico border. One drags a makeshift rake behind it to comb the road, so agents can later spot fresh footprints.
Mike McCoy, a 71-year-old veterinarian, has spent more than half his life working to protect the estuary formed where this river meets the Pacific Ocean.
He's heading down toward a place called Smuggler’s Gulch.
“This was probably the most difficult cut for them, and the most problematic cut for us,” McCoy said.
By “us” he means the activists and local land managers who fought against a massive earth-moving project that filled in the deep gulch and built a road across it in 2009.
“Before (the road) was going down these switchbacks,” he said. “And that took a long time."
Now, he says, Border Patrol agents just fly right through.
Starting in the 1990s, this place became ground zero in the battle to secure the border.
Back then, hundreds of illegal immigrants swarmed down the hills nightly from Tijuana. The Army Corps of Engineers built a 10-foot high fence, but it wasn’t much of a deterrent. So in 1996, Congress authorized a triple-layer fence to be built along 14 miles of the border.
McCoy and other environmentalists challenged the project based on federal environmental laws.
“The fence, to me, was a real threat to what might occur in the estuary,” he said.
Conservationists worried especially that filling in Smuggler’s Gulch would disrupt the flow of water and change the estuary’s ecology.
And they succeeded in slowing down construction for years.
Then came 9/11, and Congress ordered a massive expansion of the fence project–from 14 miles to 700 miles along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Environmentalists challenged much of that as well, and again slowed construction in many spots.
Paul Ganster, of the Institute for Regional Studies of the Californias at San Diego State University, says that put the Department of Homeland Security in a tough spot.
“It was ordered by Congress to build so many miles of fence by a certain amount of time and they weren’t able to proceed to do this,” he said.
So Congress responded by giving DHS the right to waive all laws that could slow construction of the fence.
“And that removed a major tool of environmentalists and others opposed to the construction,” he said. “And it really removed a lot of the requirements for an open process, for public hearings, things that citizens and communities and environmentalists fought for, really from the '70s.”
Since then, DHS has waived dozens of federal and state laws to build new sections of the fence, some of it across protected land and habitat for endangered and threatened animals.
McCoy says deer and jaguar and Sonoran pronghorn are just some of the species being affected as the fences chop up their breeding grounds.
In some places, fencing has also contributed to flooding, erosion and destruction of habitat.
To date, about 650 miles of the nearly 2000-mile U.S.-Mexico border are fenced off.
But legislators concerned with border security say that’s still not enough.
Florida Republican Marco Rubio spoke on the Senate floor earlier this year in support of the border security component of the senate’s immigration bill. The bill called for hundreds of miles of more fencing, and it would give Homeland Security even more power to waive laws to build it.
“We have a sovereign right to protect out border. And we have a crisis on the southern border of the United States,” Rubio said at the time.
A handful of Democrats fought the waiver, led by Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon.
Wyden told his colleagues, “Strengthening our immigration system should not come at the cost of throwing our environmental laws aside.”
And Wyden argued that the bill should at least include a sunset clause for the waiver.
But the environmental concerns didn’t get much traction. The bill passed the Senate by a wide margin.
Back in San Diego, Shawn Moran of the Border Patrol agents union says more fencing is a good thing. He says the San Diego fence has slowed illegal traffic here to a trickle. And adding hundreds of miles of new fencing probably would help by funneling illegal traffic into areas agents can control, he added.
“It’s not the answer to border security, but it is a primary tool that the border patrol has to slow down things,” he said.
Walking along the border, activist Mike McCoy admits that the environmental impact of all this fencing through the Tijuana River estuary hasn’t been “all bad.” Illegal crossers used to tromp through sensitive areas in the estuary. And he does understand the need for a secure border.
“I just think that we could’ve done better, biologically and ecologically, than what we did with this approach,” he said.
What really rankles McCoy is the supreme trump card held by one federal agency.
“It’s kind of my way or the highway type thing. And that’s not the way America worked to me. We all had a say in what went forward.”
The fate of the new environmental waiver, and the broader immigration bill that it’s part of, is uncertain. The House of Representatives has said it will write its own immigration reform bill, rather than take up the Senate’s bill.
But whatever happens in the Capitol, it’s likely that as the debate over immigration and border security gets louder, environmental concerns will remain barely a whisper.
http://www.pri.org/stories/science/environment/u-s-border-fence-skirts-environmental-review-14659.html
Showing posts with label Border Field State Park. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Border Field State Park. Show all posts
Monday, August 12, 2013
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
A Rusted Gate In The Border Fence Opens For The First Time
KPBS
April 29, 2013
By Adrian Florido
SAN DIEGO — In 2008, the U.S. Border Patrol in San Diego replaced a flimsy fence with a tall, thick one at Friendship Park, a spot where families separated by the border have long come to talk through the fence. They built a gate into it to allow for maintenance on both sides. But it had never been opened, so it rusted shut.
Jim Brown, an architect, negotiated to get Border Patrol to open the gate for the first time ever this Sunday, just for a few minutes. They agreed.
“I came out with some WD-40," he said. "It was kind of comical — a little tiny can from a convenience store, spraying it on the hinges. No, it would not budge. So Border Patrol came out with some torches and what not, and popped it open.”
It just so happened that Sunday, Luis Angulo had come to meet his 5-year-old daughter for the first time — through the fence. She was born in Mexico. He lives in San Diego.
“My sister, she’s a lawyer in Mexico and she told me 'hey, you can try to see your daughter from here,'" he said, as the little girl stuck her fingers through the fence's tight mesh.
Bronwyn Ingram, San Diego Mayor Bob Filner’s fiancée, was standing nearby. She was there to help swing the gate open, and she said stories like Angulo's show that the ties that bind border cities are stronger than the fence that separates them.
“When you come here and you spend time, and you see the families talking together, putting their fingers through the fence to touch each other, it’s really moving," she said.
As crowds gathered on both sides of the fence, Ingram and Filner moved toward the gate. Brown removed a large steel beam lock and swung the gate open. The faces of people on the other side, usually obscured by the fence’s tight mesh, suddenly became clear. Cheers erupted on both sides.
Mayor Filner called Luis Angulo toward the opening. He hesitated, but then his daughter walked through, looking up at him. He picked her up and gave her giant hug.
A few minutes later, two Border Patrol agents secured the gate again. Brown said the Border Patrol had installed a greasing mechanism to keep the gate from rusting shut again. He said he hopes that means opening the gate in a gesture of binational friendship will become a more common occurrence.
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2013/apr/29/rusted-gate-border-fence-opens-first-time/
April 29, 2013
By Adrian Florido
SAN DIEGO — In 2008, the U.S. Border Patrol in San Diego replaced a flimsy fence with a tall, thick one at Friendship Park, a spot where families separated by the border have long come to talk through the fence. They built a gate into it to allow for maintenance on both sides. But it had never been opened, so it rusted shut.
Jim Brown, an architect, negotiated to get Border Patrol to open the gate for the first time ever this Sunday, just for a few minutes. They agreed.
“I came out with some WD-40," he said. "It was kind of comical — a little tiny can from a convenience store, spraying it on the hinges. No, it would not budge. So Border Patrol came out with some torches and what not, and popped it open.”
It just so happened that Sunday, Luis Angulo had come to meet his 5-year-old daughter for the first time — through the fence. She was born in Mexico. He lives in San Diego.
“My sister, she’s a lawyer in Mexico and she told me 'hey, you can try to see your daughter from here,'" he said, as the little girl stuck her fingers through the fence's tight mesh.
Bronwyn Ingram, San Diego Mayor Bob Filner’s fiancée, was standing nearby. She was there to help swing the gate open, and she said stories like Angulo's show that the ties that bind border cities are stronger than the fence that separates them.
“When you come here and you spend time, and you see the families talking together, putting their fingers through the fence to touch each other, it’s really moving," she said.
As crowds gathered on both sides of the fence, Ingram and Filner moved toward the gate. Brown removed a large steel beam lock and swung the gate open. The faces of people on the other side, usually obscured by the fence’s tight mesh, suddenly became clear. Cheers erupted on both sides.
Mayor Filner called Luis Angulo toward the opening. He hesitated, but then his daughter walked through, looking up at him. He picked her up and gave her giant hug.
A few minutes later, two Border Patrol agents secured the gate again. Brown said the Border Patrol had installed a greasing mechanism to keep the gate from rusting shut again. He said he hopes that means opening the gate in a gesture of binational friendship will become a more common occurrence.
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2013/apr/29/rusted-gate-border-fence-opens-first-time/
Saturday, October 6, 2012
Border Patrol promises consistent access to Friendship Park
San Diego Untion Tribune
October 6, 2012
by Jordan England-Nelson
October 6, 2012
by Jordan England-Nelson
IMPERIAL BEACH — The Border Patrol on Saturday made a new commitment to providing consistent access to Friendship Park, a concrete plaza split by the U.S.-Mexico border fence where friends and families on either side have gathered for generations.
Friends of Friendship Park, a coalition that has pushed for greater access and more regular hours of operation at the site, praised the new arrangement.
Access had been intermittent since 2009, when ground was broken for a secondary fence extending from Smuggler’s Gulch to the sea, said the Rev. John Fanestil, a Methodist pastor and a spokesman for the coalition. He said Border Patrol agents were not consistently on call to let visitors inside, leading to an “atmosphere of uncertainty” which meant that “for all intents and purposes, the park was not accessible in any meaningful way.”
Border Patrol spokesman Jerry Conlin said the park was never officially closed, but that “enforcement takes priority” and agents were not always available to let people in. Rotating staff will now be available Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Some groups have objected to Friendship Park because they see it as a way for undocumented immigrants to visit their families without having to return to Mexico. Others object to what the park has come to represent.
Peter Nunez, chairman of the Center for Immigration Studies, a research organization that calls for less immigration, said he has nothing against families coming together at the site. But he criticized the way immigrant advocates have exploited the park.
“The fence symbolizes in their minds the absurdity of immigration law,” Nunez said. “But the park was never meant to symbolize anything about immigration. It’s about friendship between two neighboring countries.”
Friendship Park came about after First Lady Pat Nixon’s 1971 inauguration of Border Field State Park, where she told crowds on either side of the barbed-wire demarcation line: “I hate to see a fence anywhere.”
Fanestil has been visiting Friendship Park for years to administer Sunday Communion. He used to pass wafers through chinks in the fence and into the mouths of congregants on the other side, resulting in a distinct display of transnational transubstantiation.
Steel mesh was added to the primary fence earlier this year to prevent people from passing objects from one side to the other.
Fanestil, who plans on resuming border sacraments today, said he is looking for ways to continue his two-nations-under-God take on the holy rites. He is reaching out to a Mexican minister interested in simultaneously performing the service on the Mexican side of the fence. They even want to use the same loaf of bread, splitting it beforehand and taking one half to each side.
“Newcomers say it [the mesh] reminds them of visiting someone in jail,” Fanestil said. “But you can still strike up a conversation and make friends. That’s why the park is named that way.”
Saturday, January 28, 2012
New Border Fences Cut Off Access To Border Monuments
Fronteras
January 28, 2012
By Adrian Florido
SAN DIEGO — Before there was a fence, all that marked the border between Mexico and the United States were stone and steel monuments, 276 of them dotting the southwestern landscape. They were installed by Mexican and American surveyors starting in 1850, after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War and the two countries agreed to define their shared border.
But as the U.S. Border Patrol has reinforced the boundary with a new fence, many of these bi-national monuments have been left entirely on the Mexican side of the barriers.
On the scenic stretch of coast where San Diego meets Tijuana, Mexico, the Border Patrol is making the border fence taller and thicker - impenetrable, it hopes, to drug smugglers and illegal crossers.
But peering through the new vertical bars and double mesh on a recent day, you could still make out a marble, pyramid-shaped monument on the other side.
It marks the precise point where Mexico and the U.S. meet, and visitors on opposite sides of the border were once able to approach the monument from both sides and talk through the fence.
But late last year, the Border Patrol moved its fence three feet to the north, fencing the monument out
This has been happening at monument sites across the Southwest. It began when border fencing started going up in the early 1990s and has continued since 2006, when Congress approved the construction of 700 miles of new fence.
In 2008, the Border Patrol signed an accord with the agency responsible for maintaining the monuments - the International Boundary and Water Commission – agreeing not to disturb the monuments during fence construction.
So, in many places along the border, like San Diego, the Border Patrol built the fence a few feet north of the actual international boundary.
“The fence itself is constructed inside the United States,” said Jerry Conlin, a Border Patrol spokesman. The agreement between the two agencies, he said: “is that any type of construction around a monument would be set back three feet.”
Sally Spener is a spokeswoman for the boundary and water commission, which reviews the Border Patrol’s plans to ensure the fence is not inadvertently built on Mexican territory. She said commission officials had been willing to work with the Border Patrol to maintain access to the monument in San Diego.
She would not say whether the agency responded, but in any case, bi-national access was eliminated.
Now San Diego activists are hoping to convince the Border Patrol to change its fence design to restore access to the monument from both sides.
“A border monument needs to be on the border, not just on one side or the other. It’s a shared marker between two nations,” said Jim Brown, a local architect and activist. “To have the fence jog around and have it be almost ownership by Mexico doesn’t make any emotional sense, it makes no physical sense, it makes no common sense.”
Brown is a member of the Friends of Friendship Park, a group of activists that takes its name after the area where loved ones used to chat through the border fence until access was blocked.
Brown said he’s come up with a relatively simple design change that would make the monument accessible from both sides again.
Conlin said the Border Patrol was willing to listen, but stressed that border security was the agency’s mandate and priority.
David Taylor, an art professor at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, has been photographing all 276 monuments since he realized the new fencing was going to make many of them inaccessible from the U.S.
He believes the monuments, once a symbol of bi-national cooperation, have become casualties of the push for greater border enforcement.
“It’s one of those very unfortunate situations where this thing that’s part of our shared heritage with Mexico isn’t easily accessible.”
On the other side, visitors have expressed their thoughts too.
An engraving on the monument warns vandals that defacing it is a crime punishable by Mexico or the United States. But someone recently used purple ink to cross out the words, United States
http://www.fronterasdesk.org/news/2012/jan/26/new-fences-block-access-us-mexico-border-monu/
January 28, 2012
By Adrian Florido
SAN DIEGO — Before there was a fence, all that marked the border between Mexico and the United States were stone and steel monuments, 276 of them dotting the southwestern landscape. They were installed by Mexican and American surveyors starting in 1850, after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War and the two countries agreed to define their shared border.
But as the U.S. Border Patrol has reinforced the boundary with a new fence, many of these bi-national monuments have been left entirely on the Mexican side of the barriers.
On the scenic stretch of coast where San Diego meets Tijuana, Mexico, the Border Patrol is making the border fence taller and thicker - impenetrable, it hopes, to drug smugglers and illegal crossers.
But peering through the new vertical bars and double mesh on a recent day, you could still make out a marble, pyramid-shaped monument on the other side.
It marks the precise point where Mexico and the U.S. meet, and visitors on opposite sides of the border were once able to approach the monument from both sides and talk through the fence.
But late last year, the Border Patrol moved its fence three feet to the north, fencing the monument out
This has been happening at monument sites across the Southwest. It began when border fencing started going up in the early 1990s and has continued since 2006, when Congress approved the construction of 700 miles of new fence.
In 2008, the Border Patrol signed an accord with the agency responsible for maintaining the monuments - the International Boundary and Water Commission – agreeing not to disturb the monuments during fence construction.
So, in many places along the border, like San Diego, the Border Patrol built the fence a few feet north of the actual international boundary.
“The fence itself is constructed inside the United States,” said Jerry Conlin, a Border Patrol spokesman. The agreement between the two agencies, he said: “is that any type of construction around a monument would be set back three feet.”
Sally Spener is a spokeswoman for the boundary and water commission, which reviews the Border Patrol’s plans to ensure the fence is not inadvertently built on Mexican territory. She said commission officials had been willing to work with the Border Patrol to maintain access to the monument in San Diego.
She would not say whether the agency responded, but in any case, bi-national access was eliminated.
Now San Diego activists are hoping to convince the Border Patrol to change its fence design to restore access to the monument from both sides.
“A border monument needs to be on the border, not just on one side or the other. It’s a shared marker between two nations,” said Jim Brown, a local architect and activist. “To have the fence jog around and have it be almost ownership by Mexico doesn’t make any emotional sense, it makes no physical sense, it makes no common sense.”
Brown is a member of the Friends of Friendship Park, a group of activists that takes its name after the area where loved ones used to chat through the border fence until access was blocked.
Brown said he’s come up with a relatively simple design change that would make the monument accessible from both sides again.
Conlin said the Border Patrol was willing to listen, but stressed that border security was the agency’s mandate and priority.
David Taylor, an art professor at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, has been photographing all 276 monuments since he realized the new fencing was going to make many of them inaccessible from the U.S.
He believes the monuments, once a symbol of bi-national cooperation, have become casualties of the push for greater border enforcement.
“It’s one of those very unfortunate situations where this thing that’s part of our shared heritage with Mexico isn’t easily accessible.”
On the other side, visitors have expressed their thoughts too.
An engraving on the monument warns vandals that defacing it is a crime punishable by Mexico or the United States. But someone recently used purple ink to cross out the words, United States
http://www.fronterasdesk.org/news/2012/jan/26/new-fences-block-access-us-mexico-border-monu/
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Border fence blocks access to important historical site
San Diego City Beat
December 21, 2011
by Kinsee Morlan
Before fences marked the U.S.-Mexico border, a series of small obelisks dotted the landscape and identified the line separating the two countries. Fifty-two monuments were erected between 1849 and 1857, and then, due to population growth in the border region and questions about where the international border actually was, more than 200 more monuments were built from 1891 to 1894, bringing the total to 258.
One of the original 52 monuments, Border Monument 258, still stands inside Border Field State Park, just a few hundred feet from the Pacific Ocean. It was the first monument built after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War and set the international boundary. Historian Charles W. Hughes is among those who believe that two time capsules are buried under Monument 258—one placed in 1840 when the temporary monument went up and one possibly placed in 1851 when the permanent structure was built.
Made of a block of polished marble, Monument 258 was a hotspot for tourists on their way to or back from Tijuana. Some visitors would even chip off a piece of the marble and take it with them as a souvenir.
“If you came to San Diego between the 1850s up into the early 1900s, it was one of the places to go,” said Hughes, who published an article on the history of the monument in Journal of San Diego History in 2007 and considers it to be one of the oldest and most important historical sites in San Diego. “It was like going out to Cabrillo National Monument.”
Hughes said the U.S. military used Border Field State Park as a training ground and tested drones, or unmanned aircraft, just before World War II, which dramatically decreased visitations to the park. Since then, the park has remained largely underused, except by people separated by immigration status who continue to use the park as a way to meet up with family members and friends on the other side of the border. In 1971, First Lady Pat Nixon dedicated the land surrounding Monument 258 as Friendship Park, a symbol of the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico and recognizing the binational use of the land.
Last week on CityBeat’s Canvassed blog, we reported that a replacement fence had gone up at Border Field State Park, completely blocking access to Border Monument 258 from the U.S. side by three feet. The new fence, which was sited by the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC), replaces the original border fence, which had bisected Monument 258, allowing access from both sides of the border.
Even in 2008, when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) erected a double fence at Friendship Park, activists with Friends of Friendship Park made sure access to the monument was maintained, even if limited by a gateway that was locked outside of set hours. Members of Friends of Friendship Park said they were shocked and disappointed when they saw the new location of the fence last week.
“Those in the U.S. have a right to access the monument without having to get in their car, cross the border and drive to Las Playas,” said Nathan Trotter of Friends of Friendship Park. “I think it’s a crime for the IBWC or Border Patrol to deprive us of an object of such historical interest.”
Bruce Coons, executive director of Save Our Heritage Organisation, agreed. “First of all, it’s American territory, and it belongs to us,” Coons said. “It’s really asinine to put the monument on the other side of the fence.”
IBWC spokesperson Sally Spener said the commission has yet to receive any complaints about the location of the replacement fence, but if it does, she said IBWC might be willing to relocate the fence.
“In regards to Monument 258, we are certainly willing to work with the community if they have specific concerns because of the unique nature and the unique role that Monument 258 has played in border history,” she said.
Coons and Trotter said they weren’t aware the fence was going to be relocated until construction began last week, so they’ve just begun lodging complaints with IBWC and elected officials.
“No notifications went out, so nobody in the community knew about this,” Trotter said. “So, I guess it’s good to hear [IBWC] might be willing to negotiate with us in moving the fence and allowing access to the monument again.”
James Brown, an architect and Friends of Friendship Park volunteer, said that IBWC isn’t allowed to build anything within three feet of the monument. He said even with that requirement, there’s a design solution.
“I wish I would have known earlier about the decision to relocate the fence,” Brown said. “The solution is simple—they just need to put the posts three feet away, and they can surround the monument with all the mesh they want.”
http://www.sdcitybeat.com/sandiego/article-9964-border-fence-blocks-access-to-important-historical-site.html
December 21, 2011
by Kinsee Morlan
Before fences marked the U.S.-Mexico border, a series of small obelisks dotted the landscape and identified the line separating the two countries. Fifty-two monuments were erected between 1849 and 1857, and then, due to population growth in the border region and questions about where the international border actually was, more than 200 more monuments were built from 1891 to 1894, bringing the total to 258.
One of the original 52 monuments, Border Monument 258, still stands inside Border Field State Park, just a few hundred feet from the Pacific Ocean. It was the first monument built after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War and set the international boundary. Historian Charles W. Hughes is among those who believe that two time capsules are buried under Monument 258—one placed in 1840 when the temporary monument went up and one possibly placed in 1851 when the permanent structure was built.
Made of a block of polished marble, Monument 258 was a hotspot for tourists on their way to or back from Tijuana. Some visitors would even chip off a piece of the marble and take it with them as a souvenir.
“If you came to San Diego between the 1850s up into the early 1900s, it was one of the places to go,” said Hughes, who published an article on the history of the monument in Journal of San Diego History in 2007 and considers it to be one of the oldest and most important historical sites in San Diego. “It was like going out to Cabrillo National Monument.”
Hughes said the U.S. military used Border Field State Park as a training ground and tested drones, or unmanned aircraft, just before World War II, which dramatically decreased visitations to the park. Since then, the park has remained largely underused, except by people separated by immigration status who continue to use the park as a way to meet up with family members and friends on the other side of the border. In 1971, First Lady Pat Nixon dedicated the land surrounding Monument 258 as Friendship Park, a symbol of the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico and recognizing the binational use of the land.
Last week on CityBeat’s Canvassed blog, we reported that a replacement fence had gone up at Border Field State Park, completely blocking access to Border Monument 258 from the U.S. side by three feet. The new fence, which was sited by the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC), replaces the original border fence, which had bisected Monument 258, allowing access from both sides of the border.
Even in 2008, when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) erected a double fence at Friendship Park, activists with Friends of Friendship Park made sure access to the monument was maintained, even if limited by a gateway that was locked outside of set hours. Members of Friends of Friendship Park said they were shocked and disappointed when they saw the new location of the fence last week.
“Those in the U.S. have a right to access the monument without having to get in their car, cross the border and drive to Las Playas,” said Nathan Trotter of Friends of Friendship Park. “I think it’s a crime for the IBWC or Border Patrol to deprive us of an object of such historical interest.”
Bruce Coons, executive director of Save Our Heritage Organisation, agreed. “First of all, it’s American territory, and it belongs to us,” Coons said. “It’s really asinine to put the monument on the other side of the fence.”
IBWC spokesperson Sally Spener said the commission has yet to receive any complaints about the location of the replacement fence, but if it does, she said IBWC might be willing to relocate the fence.
“In regards to Monument 258, we are certainly willing to work with the community if they have specific concerns because of the unique nature and the unique role that Monument 258 has played in border history,” she said.
Coons and Trotter said they weren’t aware the fence was going to be relocated until construction began last week, so they’ve just begun lodging complaints with IBWC and elected officials.
“No notifications went out, so nobody in the community knew about this,” Trotter said. “So, I guess it’s good to hear [IBWC] might be willing to negotiate with us in moving the fence and allowing access to the monument again.”
James Brown, an architect and Friends of Friendship Park volunteer, said that IBWC isn’t allowed to build anything within three feet of the monument. He said even with that requirement, there’s a design solution.
“I wish I would have known earlier about the decision to relocate the fence,” Brown said. “The solution is simple—they just need to put the posts three feet away, and they can surround the monument with all the mesh they want.”
http://www.sdcitybeat.com/sandiego/article-9964-border-fence-blocks-access-to-important-historical-site.html
Saturday, December 17, 2011
US-Mexico immigration: Even oceans have borders
BBC
December 16, 2011
By Valeria Perasso
The US government is erecting a fence in the ocean to divide California from Tijuana, Mexico. Immigration and environmental activists say it is a costly, dangerous endeavour that will do little to keep out unauthorised migrants.
On a sunny strip of beach south of San Diego, California, the US government is literally battling the tide of illegal immigration.
Border authorities are building a fence extending 300ft (91m) into the surf, in an effort to prevent would-be migrants from walking over the frontier from Mexico's Tijuana Beach to Imperial Beach, California, during low tide.
The US government's latest King Canute-like effort will make an existing fence longer, higher, tougher to scale and, officials say, more resilient to the tide.
'Operational need'
Border officials note that during November officers caught several undocumented migrants swimming in the Pacific Ocean or landing ashore in small fishing boats.
"There is a clear operational need for this development," says Michael Hance, field operation supervisor with the border patrol in the San Diego sector.
"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."
But critics say the $4.3m (£2.79m) extension is unnecessary, noting that heavy surveillance near San Diego has driven most of the migrant flow eastward into the Arizona desert. And environmental activists fear the heavy metal barrier sunk into the ocean will harm marine life.
Meeting place
That physical infrastructure has interrupted the sandy landscape of the Tijuana and San Diego beaches since the early 1990s, when the first fence was built to run 22km inland from the Pacific shore.
On the beach, the fence is made of iron bars sunk into the sand, and further inland, the bars are replaced by graffiti-marred corrugated iron sheets, bent and torn by the marine wind.
The sections extending into the surf remain under construction, and today a visitor sees a pier constructed to allow heavy kit to pound support piles into the sand.
On the southern side of the wall, the Playa de Tijuana teems on weekends with families from the poor neighbourhoods along the border.
The beach is also a meeting place for friends and loved ones on either side of the border. Here, people chat and hug through the fence.
The latest $4.3m renovation, just under way, will extend the fence further into the ocean and increase its height to about 18ft (5.4m) from about 13ft, allowing it to protrude above the surface no matter the tide.
The steel poles holding up the wall will be treated with an anti-corrosion coating. The poles will also be given a slick coating to make them harder to climb.
The wall is scheduled to be completed in March and is expected to last 30 years.
'Symbolic move'
For all the expense and effort the government is throwing into fencing off the ocean, statistics show arrests in the area are already at an all-time low.
Border patrol agents detained 68,000 undocumented immigrants in 2010 in the San Diego sector, down from 630,000 in 1986, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency statistics.
Local immigration activists put the decline down to a steady increase in manned patrols and surveillance over the last six years.
"We don't understand why they are spending so much money here: it is just a symbolic move to say that they are actually doing something to prevent undocumented immigration," says Pedro Rios of the San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium.
"The new surf fence is being built in what is probably the area where the rate of border crossings has gone down most dramatically."
Wildlife affected
Furthermore, environmental organisations say the metal barrier in the water is an invasion of the ocean that will most certainly take its toll on the local fauna.
"The wall could block the circulation of species, especially surface marine species," says Matt Clark, spokesman for Defenders of Wildlife.
Dan Millis, borderlands team coordinator at the Sierra Club, says sections of the wall erected in the Arizona desert have had "a major effect on the migration patterns of desert species".
Architect Teddy Cruz of the University of California at San Diego predicts the fence will increase sedimentation and flooding in the Tijuana estuary.
"There are natural canyons in the region that cross the border without following political conventions," Mr Cruz says. "The effect will be worse for those http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifthat live in settlements on the Mexican side of the border, the waste from these settlements flows towards the estuary blocking water circulation."
The Border Patrol argues the surf fence's environmental impact will be minimal.
"Our experts have done environmental assessments and they did not find any evidence that the habitat will be damaged," says Mr Hance.
"We do what we have to do. And this project, both in terms of design and investment, is appropriate for the safety requirements in the San Diego area."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16164451
December 16, 2011
By Valeria Perasso
The US government is erecting a fence in the ocean to divide California from Tijuana, Mexico. Immigration and environmental activists say it is a costly, dangerous endeavour that will do little to keep out unauthorised migrants.
On a sunny strip of beach south of San Diego, California, the US government is literally battling the tide of illegal immigration.
Border authorities are building a fence extending 300ft (91m) into the surf, in an effort to prevent would-be migrants from walking over the frontier from Mexico's Tijuana Beach to Imperial Beach, California, during low tide.
The US government's latest King Canute-like effort will make an existing fence longer, higher, tougher to scale and, officials say, more resilient to the tide.
'Operational need'
Border officials note that during November officers caught several undocumented migrants swimming in the Pacific Ocean or landing ashore in small fishing boats.
"There is a clear operational need for this development," says Michael Hance, field operation supervisor with the border patrol in the San Diego sector.
"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."
But critics say the $4.3m (£2.79m) extension is unnecessary, noting that heavy surveillance near San Diego has driven most of the migrant flow eastward into the Arizona desert. And environmental activists fear the heavy metal barrier sunk into the ocean will harm marine life.
Meeting place
That physical infrastructure has interrupted the sandy landscape of the Tijuana and San Diego beaches since the early 1990s, when the first fence was built to run 22km inland from the Pacific shore.
On the beach, the fence is made of iron bars sunk into the sand, and further inland, the bars are replaced by graffiti-marred corrugated iron sheets, bent and torn by the marine wind.
The sections extending into the surf remain under construction, and today a visitor sees a pier constructed to allow heavy kit to pound support piles into the sand.
On the southern side of the wall, the Playa de Tijuana teems on weekends with families from the poor neighbourhoods along the border.
The beach is also a meeting place for friends and loved ones on either side of the border. Here, people chat and hug through the fence.
The latest $4.3m renovation, just under way, will extend the fence further into the ocean and increase its height to about 18ft (5.4m) from about 13ft, allowing it to protrude above the surface no matter the tide.
The steel poles holding up the wall will be treated with an anti-corrosion coating. The poles will also be given a slick coating to make them harder to climb.
The wall is scheduled to be completed in March and is expected to last 30 years.
'Symbolic move'
For all the expense and effort the government is throwing into fencing off the ocean, statistics show arrests in the area are already at an all-time low.
Border patrol agents detained 68,000 undocumented immigrants in 2010 in the San Diego sector, down from 630,000 in 1986, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency statistics.
Local immigration activists put the decline down to a steady increase in manned patrols and surveillance over the last six years.
"We don't understand why they are spending so much money here: it is just a symbolic move to say that they are actually doing something to prevent undocumented immigration," says Pedro Rios of the San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium.
"The new surf fence is being built in what is probably the area where the rate of border crossings has gone down most dramatically."
Wildlife affected
Furthermore, environmental organisations say the metal barrier in the water is an invasion of the ocean that will most certainly take its toll on the local fauna.
"The wall could block the circulation of species, especially surface marine species," says Matt Clark, spokesman for Defenders of Wildlife.
Dan Millis, borderlands team coordinator at the Sierra Club, says sections of the wall erected in the Arizona desert have had "a major effect on the migration patterns of desert species".
Architect Teddy Cruz of the University of California at San Diego predicts the fence will increase sedimentation and flooding in the Tijuana estuary.
"There are natural canyons in the region that cross the border without following political conventions," Mr Cruz says. "The effect will be worse for those http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifthat live in settlements on the Mexican side of the border, the waste from these settlements flows towards the estuary blocking water circulation."
The Border Patrol argues the surf fence's environmental impact will be minimal.
"Our experts have done environmental assessments and they did not find any evidence that the habitat will be damaged," says Mr Hance.
"We do what we have to do. And this project, both in terms of design and investment, is appropriate for the safety requirements in the San Diego area."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16164451
Saturday, November 26, 2011
U.S. to extend border fence 300 feet into Pacific
Los Angeles Times
November 25, 2011
by Richard Marosi
Reporting from Imperial Beach— Pounding surf and corrosive sea air have stymied efforts for years to erect a sturdy fence at the westernmost edge of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Now, the U.S. Border Patrol is trying again, with a $4.3-million project that would extend a nearly quarter-mile barrier 300 feet into the Pacific Ocean and remake one of the more scenic spots on the border.
When completed early next year, a steel fence 18 feet tall will replace a teetering, gap-riddled barrier that did little to discourage people from crossing back and forth on a wide beach linking Tijuana and Imperial Beach.
The "Surf Fence Project" comes as the federal government winds down barrier-building projects that have fortified about 670 miles of the frontier in recent years. Fences have been built atop sand dunes and mountain slopes, through remote deserts and urban streetscapes.
Fortifying the border where it plunges into the Pacific, however, presents unique logistical challenges. Before construction even begins, a government contractor must build a long pier to hold a crane, which will pound the fence posts into the sand. On a recent day, people on the Tijuana side of the beach marveled at the temporary structure, which is under construction, mistakenly believing it would be used for fishing or for docking boats.
Though border fencing efforts have long drawn criticism, no significant opposition has emerged for the surf project, mainly because one kind of barrier or another has existed here since the early 1990s. A fence is necessary, border officials said, to block a gap that opens when the waters recede at low tide.
In the late 1980s and early '90s, hundreds of illegal immigrants would cross at a time and head toward the distant San Diego skyline. More recently, the beach became a popular spot for demonstrators protesting illegal immigration policies. Last year, a group of deported immigrants walked across the line in the sand at the border, in a symbolic protest march. Some of them threw rocks and bottles, said U.S. authorities.
"It still has the potential to be very dangerous, as beautiful as it is," said Assistant Chief Patrol Agent Bruce Parks.
Previous fences couldn't withstand the tidal battering. A barrier constructed of oil-drilling pipes in the early 1990s quickly corroded. Waves washed away some of the steel posts, and others broke off. In 2006, U.S. Marine divers tried to erect a fence made of train rails by maneuvering the rails in the water so they could be pounded in by a pile driver.
It was difficult and dangerous because the rails would swing around at the end of the crane boom as the divers tried to manually place them next to one another in the surf.
For the latest effort, U.S. authorities have turned to a private contractor, Granite Construction Co., which recently built fencing at the base of Otay Mountain east of San Diego. The material used this time will be sturdier: 6-inch steel piping, coated with rust-proof material. The work, Parks said, comes with a 30-year warranty.
Longtime beachgoers think the agency better keep the warranty paperwork. Netza Tapia, 40, said he remembers the days when he would slip through the corroded section of the fence to continue his family walks on the Imperial Beach side of the beach. Jonathan Parra and his friends used to breach the wave-battered gaps regularly to play soccer on Imperial Beach's relatively empty stretch of sand.
The sea, Parra said, doesn't recognize borders. "The strength of the ocean will eventually knock the fence down," Parra said.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-border-fence-20111124,0,6662761.story
November 25, 2011
by Richard Marosi
Reporting from Imperial Beach— Pounding surf and corrosive sea air have stymied efforts for years to erect a sturdy fence at the westernmost edge of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Now, the U.S. Border Patrol is trying again, with a $4.3-million project that would extend a nearly quarter-mile barrier 300 feet into the Pacific Ocean and remake one of the more scenic spots on the border.
When completed early next year, a steel fence 18 feet tall will replace a teetering, gap-riddled barrier that did little to discourage people from crossing back and forth on a wide beach linking Tijuana and Imperial Beach.
The "Surf Fence Project" comes as the federal government winds down barrier-building projects that have fortified about 670 miles of the frontier in recent years. Fences have been built atop sand dunes and mountain slopes, through remote deserts and urban streetscapes.
Fortifying the border where it plunges into the Pacific, however, presents unique logistical challenges. Before construction even begins, a government contractor must build a long pier to hold a crane, which will pound the fence posts into the sand. On a recent day, people on the Tijuana side of the beach marveled at the temporary structure, which is under construction, mistakenly believing it would be used for fishing or for docking boats.
Though border fencing efforts have long drawn criticism, no significant opposition has emerged for the surf project, mainly because one kind of barrier or another has existed here since the early 1990s. A fence is necessary, border officials said, to block a gap that opens when the waters recede at low tide.
In the late 1980s and early '90s, hundreds of illegal immigrants would cross at a time and head toward the distant San Diego skyline. More recently, the beach became a popular spot for demonstrators protesting illegal immigration policies. Last year, a group of deported immigrants walked across the line in the sand at the border, in a symbolic protest march. Some of them threw rocks and bottles, said U.S. authorities.
"It still has the potential to be very dangerous, as beautiful as it is," said Assistant Chief Patrol Agent Bruce Parks.
Previous fences couldn't withstand the tidal battering. A barrier constructed of oil-drilling pipes in the early 1990s quickly corroded. Waves washed away some of the steel posts, and others broke off. In 2006, U.S. Marine divers tried to erect a fence made of train rails by maneuvering the rails in the water so they could be pounded in by a pile driver.
It was difficult and dangerous because the rails would swing around at the end of the crane boom as the divers tried to manually place them next to one another in the surf.
For the latest effort, U.S. authorities have turned to a private contractor, Granite Construction Co., which recently built fencing at the base of Otay Mountain east of San Diego. The material used this time will be sturdier: 6-inch steel piping, coated with rust-proof material. The work, Parks said, comes with a 30-year warranty.
Longtime beachgoers think the agency better keep the warranty paperwork. Netza Tapia, 40, said he remembers the days when he would slip through the corroded section of the fence to continue his family walks on the Imperial Beach side of the beach. Jonathan Parra and his friends used to breach the wave-battered gaps regularly to play soccer on Imperial Beach's relatively empty stretch of sand.
The sea, Parra said, doesn't recognize borders. "The strength of the ocean will eventually knock the fence down," Parra said.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-border-fence-20111124,0,6662761.story
Thursday, October 6, 2011
2 illegal immigrants die in San Diego-area maritime accidents
One is found dead inside a smuggling boat washed ashore at Pacific Beach and the other dies in an attempt to swim around a border fence.
Los Angeles Times
October 6, 2011
by Richard Marosi
Reporting from San Diego -- An illegal immigrant was found dead inside a smuggling boat that came ashore at San Diego's Pacific Beach and another died in a failed attempt to swim around a border fence in separate maritime incidents since Tuesday, according to federal authorities.
Early Wednesday morning, U.S. Border Patrol agents inspecting a 16-foot panga boat near Law Street at Pacific Beach discovered a dead Mexican man and another unidentified person. Following footprints along the beach, the agents found 13 additional illegal immigrants hiding in a residential area.
Eleven of the immigrants were hospitalized and released. One man suffering from dehydration and hypothermia remained in the hospital, according to Border Patrol spokesman Scott Simon.
The group of nine men and six women were all Mexican nationals, he said. Authorities are investigating whether a smuggler also was aboard the boat. The immigrant's cause of death has yet to be determined.
The skiff appeared to be caught in turbulent waters during the trip from Baja California. Smuggling groups often depart from as far away as Ensenada on journeys in rickety boats that can take 12 hours or more.
In another recent incident, seven immigrants were rescued a mile off San Diego's Mission Beach after their boat broke down Sunday.
Smugglers show no signs of letting up on their maritime trafficking attempts. Border authorities arrested 633 illegal immigrants in 183 maritime incidents during the federal fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Illegal immigrants also continue trying on their own. On Tuesday night, a 43-year-old man died attempting to swim around a border fence that extends into the breakers at San Diego County's Border Field State Park.
He was not wearing a wet suit or flotation device, Simon said. Two other illegal immigrants who tried to swim around the border fence were arrested.
Over the last year, four people have died in maritime smuggling incidents, including two immigrants who died while their boat tried to land at Torrey Pines State Beach, north of San Diego.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-1006-smuggling-boat-20111006,0,7261822.story
Los Angeles Times
October 6, 2011
by Richard Marosi
Reporting from San Diego -- An illegal immigrant was found dead inside a smuggling boat that came ashore at San Diego's Pacific Beach and another died in a failed attempt to swim around a border fence in separate maritime incidents since Tuesday, according to federal authorities.
Early Wednesday morning, U.S. Border Patrol agents inspecting a 16-foot panga boat near Law Street at Pacific Beach discovered a dead Mexican man and another unidentified person. Following footprints along the beach, the agents found 13 additional illegal immigrants hiding in a residential area.
Eleven of the immigrants were hospitalized and released. One man suffering from dehydration and hypothermia remained in the hospital, according to Border Patrol spokesman Scott Simon.
The group of nine men and six women were all Mexican nationals, he said. Authorities are investigating whether a smuggler also was aboard the boat. The immigrant's cause of death has yet to be determined.
The skiff appeared to be caught in turbulent waters during the trip from Baja California. Smuggling groups often depart from as far away as Ensenada on journeys in rickety boats that can take 12 hours or more.
In another recent incident, seven immigrants were rescued a mile off San Diego's Mission Beach after their boat broke down Sunday.
Smugglers show no signs of letting up on their maritime trafficking attempts. Border authorities arrested 633 illegal immigrants in 183 maritime incidents during the federal fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Illegal immigrants also continue trying on their own. On Tuesday night, a 43-year-old man died attempting to swim around a border fence that extends into the breakers at San Diego County's Border Field State Park.
He was not wearing a wet suit or flotation device, Simon said. Two other illegal immigrants who tried to swim around the border fence were arrested.
Over the last year, four people have died in maritime smuggling incidents, including two immigrants who died while their boat tried to land at Torrey Pines State Beach, north of San Diego.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-1006-smuggling-boat-20111006,0,7261822.story
Monday, August 22, 2011
Friendship Park marks 40th anniversary
Sign on San Diego
August 20, 2011
by Debbi Baker
Dozens of people gathered on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border Saturday to celebrate the 40th anniversary of historic Friendship Park.
The small piece of land, part of Border Field State Park in the Tijuana River Valley adjacent to the Pacific Ocean, was dedicated Aug. 18, 1971, by then-first lady Pat Nixon.
It was long a place where families came together to meet, greet and touch each other through holes in the fence. That ended in 2009 when the Department of Homeland Security built a wrought-iron barrier and strictly limited access.
Enrique Morones, founder and president of the immigrant rights organization Border Angels — who wants to see the area returned to the way it used to be — addressed the crowd in English and in Spanish.
He pointed to a large picture of Nixon affixed to the fence that was also adorned with sunflowers. The first lady is smiling and reaching over the border shaking hands with a man holding a small boy
“As you can see, when Pat Nixon was saying hello, there was no fence, there was no wall,” said Morones, who advocates for an open border. “And one thing she said was, ‘May there never be a wall between these two great countries.’ ”
Rep. Bob Filner, D-San Diego, who also addressed the assembly, gestured toward the deep blue ocean and said the beauty of the area was juxtaposed by the ugliness of the metal barrier.
“We have to get rid of this so we can touch each other, so we can see each other, so we can sing to each other, so we can dance with each other,” said Filner, a candidate for San Diego mayor.
“I want to quote another president in a different context, ‘Mr. President, tear down this wall,’” the congressman said to loud applause, echoing Ronald Reagan’s famous speech at the Berlin Wall.
History professor Christine Moore, who grew up in Imperial Beach, said she remembered when families would sit by the fence and have picnics.
“I’d like to see the park come back to life, Moore said.
The issue became particularly personal to her when one of her most promising students was deported four years ago. She said the girl came to the country with her family when she was 2 and that she considered herself an American.
Carlos Santos, another speaker at the event, immigrated legally to the country 10 years ago with his wife and oldest son.
He turned toward the people in Mexico who peered through the mesh of the fence and told the story of how he came to the park a few years ago and was able to hug his mother for the first time in years. He said that moment meant everything to him.
“Don’t give up hope,” he said. “Someday people will be able to do that again.”
The celebration included salsa dancing, remarks by Tijuana Councilwoman Maria Luisa Sanchez and other Mexican officials and a moment of silence to commemorate those who have died crossing the border.
A tree was planted in the same spot where Nixon had planted one 40 years ago that was now long gone.
Morones said he was working with the Border Patrol to make the area less restrictive and that the two groups had made some positive progress.
“We believe friendship has no border,” Morones said.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/aug/20/access-issue-key-as-friendship-park-marks-40th/
August 20, 2011
by Debbi Baker
Dozens of people gathered on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border Saturday to celebrate the 40th anniversary of historic Friendship Park.
The small piece of land, part of Border Field State Park in the Tijuana River Valley adjacent to the Pacific Ocean, was dedicated Aug. 18, 1971, by then-first lady Pat Nixon.
It was long a place where families came together to meet, greet and touch each other through holes in the fence. That ended in 2009 when the Department of Homeland Security built a wrought-iron barrier and strictly limited access.
Enrique Morones, founder and president of the immigrant rights organization Border Angels — who wants to see the area returned to the way it used to be — addressed the crowd in English and in Spanish.
He pointed to a large picture of Nixon affixed to the fence that was also adorned with sunflowers. The first lady is smiling and reaching over the border shaking hands with a man holding a small boy
“As you can see, when Pat Nixon was saying hello, there was no fence, there was no wall,” said Morones, who advocates for an open border. “And one thing she said was, ‘May there never be a wall between these two great countries.’ ”
Rep. Bob Filner, D-San Diego, who also addressed the assembly, gestured toward the deep blue ocean and said the beauty of the area was juxtaposed by the ugliness of the metal barrier.
“We have to get rid of this so we can touch each other, so we can see each other, so we can sing to each other, so we can dance with each other,” said Filner, a candidate for San Diego mayor.
“I want to quote another president in a different context, ‘Mr. President, tear down this wall,’” the congressman said to loud applause, echoing Ronald Reagan’s famous speech at the Berlin Wall.
History professor Christine Moore, who grew up in Imperial Beach, said she remembered when families would sit by the fence and have picnics.
“I’d like to see the park come back to life, Moore said.
The issue became particularly personal to her when one of her most promising students was deported four years ago. She said the girl came to the country with her family when she was 2 and that she considered herself an American.
Carlos Santos, another speaker at the event, immigrated legally to the country 10 years ago with his wife and oldest son.
He turned toward the people in Mexico who peered through the mesh of the fence and told the story of how he came to the park a few years ago and was able to hug his mother for the first time in years. He said that moment meant everything to him.
“Don’t give up hope,” he said. “Someday people will be able to do that again.”
The celebration included salsa dancing, remarks by Tijuana Councilwoman Maria Luisa Sanchez and other Mexican officials and a moment of silence to commemorate those who have died crossing the border.
A tree was planted in the same spot where Nixon had planted one 40 years ago that was now long gone.
Morones said he was working with the Border Patrol to make the area less restrictive and that the two groups had made some positive progress.
“We believe friendship has no border,” Morones said.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/aug/20/access-issue-key-as-friendship-park-marks-40th/
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Friendship Park At U.S.-Mexico Border Turns 40
KPBS
August 18, 2011
by Jill Replogle
SAN DIEGO — On August 18, 1971, then-first lady Pat Nixon reached her hand toward a barbed wire fence separating the U.S.-Mexico border and greeted residents on the other side.
The event happened during the inauguration of Friendship Park, which butts up against the border fence south of San Diego. But in recent years, the park has become a subject of controversy.
A triple-layer fence — built in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks —now runs through the park, making cross-border handshakes impossible.
Jamie Gates, one of the founders of the organization Friends of Friendship Park, said the fence has ruined the bi-national nature of the park.
“In the process of building the new fence, they really destroyed what has for decades and decades and decades been a place where families have gathered,” Gates said.
The group is working with U.S. border officials on a redesign that would allow for cross-border gatherings without compromising security. The plan features a 60-foot retractable gate, which could be opened and closed by the U.S. Border Patrol.
Friends of Friendship Park will celebrate the park’s 40th anniversary on Saturday. Activities will include a cross-border salsa lesson, a bi-national music jam session, and testimonies from families who have used the park as a meeting place.
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2011/aug/18/friendship-park-turns-forty/
August 18, 2011
by Jill Replogle
SAN DIEGO — On August 18, 1971, then-first lady Pat Nixon reached her hand toward a barbed wire fence separating the U.S.-Mexico border and greeted residents on the other side.
The event happened during the inauguration of Friendship Park, which butts up against the border fence south of San Diego. But in recent years, the park has become a subject of controversy.
A triple-layer fence — built in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks —now runs through the park, making cross-border handshakes impossible.
Jamie Gates, one of the founders of the organization Friends of Friendship Park, said the fence has ruined the bi-national nature of the park.
“In the process of building the new fence, they really destroyed what has for decades and decades and decades been a place where families have gathered,” Gates said.
The group is working with U.S. border officials on a redesign that would allow for cross-border gatherings without compromising security. The plan features a 60-foot retractable gate, which could be opened and closed by the U.S. Border Patrol.
Friends of Friendship Park will celebrate the park’s 40th anniversary on Saturday. Activities will include a cross-border salsa lesson, a bi-national music jam session, and testimonies from families who have used the park as a meeting place.
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2011/aug/18/friendship-park-turns-forty/
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Park redesign could relieve tensions at US-Mexico border
UPI
April 14, 2011
by Beth Elderkin
A possible redesign of Friendship Park, a small patch of land separated by two eight-foot high black metal fences on the national border between San Diego, Calif. and Tijuana, Mexico, has become the center of a heated international debate.
Dedicated in 1971 to bi-national unity between the United States and Mexico by former first lady Pat Nixon, the small section of protected Border Field State Park is officially referred to as Friendship Circle, but more commonly known as Friendship Park.The area has sparked tense cross-border conflicts between groups who wish to open the park for full bi-national access, and U.S. Border patrol, which prioritizes national security.
Over the past five years, increased security by the United States Border Patrol has restricted park access to U.S. residents and limited cross-cultural contact.
But after years of cross-cultural tension, a compromise on a redesign of the park appears to be within reach. In February, Border Patrol agreed to consider a design that would create more open spaces, but still serve security needs.
"(The redesign) doesn't make the park feel like you're walking into a prison," said Jill Holslin, a member of Friends of Friendship Park, one of the groups advocating more open space.
Friendship Park was once a frequently-visited spot by people living in the U.S. who wanted to communicate with friends and family in Mexico. People gathered on both sides of the fence to share picnics, sometimes even “sneaking tamales across the fence,” Holslin said.
A 1994 measure limited access to the border fence, but it wasn't until 2006 that Friendship Park was severely impacted. That's when Pres. George W. Bush approved the Secure Fence Act, which increased border security and initialized the construction of a secondary fence. That fence, completed in 2009, was built about 100 feet away from the original border fence, creating a buffer space that prohibits cross-border access from Friendship Park, which lies between the two fences.
“[Before], it was minimal problems or obstacles as far as border patrol or access to the area,” said Daniel Watman of Border Encuentro, which is fighting for increased park access. “When they started bringing in the secondary wall, that’s when it created quite an obstacle for us.”
Ever since the secondary fence was completed, access to the main park area is only allowed on the weekends between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., and only 25 to 30 people are allowed inside at a time, for a maximum of 30 minutes. Friendship Park is reachable through Border Field State Park by car, or via a 40-minute walk along Imperial Beach.
Physical contact is prohibited and border patrol officers have the option to restrain suspicious people within 100 feet of the fence. Border patrol agent Ronnie Harden said the primary reason is to prevent items from being passed through the slats and over the fence.
“It’s so easy for them to pass things that are contraband or things that can be used on either side, like illegal documents,” he said.
Park access advocacy groups, including Friends of Friendship Park, No Border Wall and Border Encuentro, are working for increased access to the park, particularly for people who want to communicate with family and friends on the other side of the border fence.
According to Border Patrol Public Affairs Office supervisor Steven Pitts, the park redesign, if approved, could begin construction as early as June, and would take approximately three to six months to complete.
The changes to Friendship Park could include an area around the boundary that could expand to up to 60 feet, depending on the size of the crowd at any given event, Watman said.
The idea of this is “to open up the entrance to this kind of no-man’s land between the two lands,” said Public Art and Architecture architect and Friendship Park designer James Brown.
U.S. visitors would be able to walk right up to the fence and interact with those on the other side. This would be made possible through a metal reinforced mesh fence. The mesh would be tight enough to make physical contact impossible, said Border Patrol Public Affairs Office representative Justin De La Torre.
Harden, who works the midnight to 8 a.m. shift, said the secondary fence and added border security is necessary to the safety of the U.S. national border; especially late at night when illegal border crossings are more likely to occur.
“People who cross at this time of night aren’t trying to see their families. They’re trying to get somewhere,” he said.
Holslin agrees that cross-border security is important in maintaining order along the border:
“We are not working against the Border Patrol," she said. "We want to work with them"
Holslin said increasing park access could actually help improve security along the border, since a higher number of visitors would prevent drug cartels from overtaking the area and increasing crime.
Watman said a redesigned Friendship Park is a way to not only maintain a safe environment, but do so in a way that symbolizes the bi-national friendship former first lady Nixon celebrated 40 years ago.
“I don’t feel like it’s enforcement versus friendship. I believe they both can be present,” he said. “They kind of both need to be present.”
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/1969/12/31/Park-redesign-could-relieve-tensions-at-US-Mexico-border/UPIU-9751301078945/
April 14, 2011
by Beth Elderkin
A possible redesign of Friendship Park, a small patch of land separated by two eight-foot high black metal fences on the national border between San Diego, Calif. and Tijuana, Mexico, has become the center of a heated international debate.
Dedicated in 1971 to bi-national unity between the United States and Mexico by former first lady Pat Nixon, the small section of protected Border Field State Park is officially referred to as Friendship Circle, but more commonly known as Friendship Park.The area has sparked tense cross-border conflicts between groups who wish to open the park for full bi-national access, and U.S. Border patrol, which prioritizes national security.
Over the past five years, increased security by the United States Border Patrol has restricted park access to U.S. residents and limited cross-cultural contact.
But after years of cross-cultural tension, a compromise on a redesign of the park appears to be within reach. In February, Border Patrol agreed to consider a design that would create more open spaces, but still serve security needs.
"(The redesign) doesn't make the park feel like you're walking into a prison," said Jill Holslin, a member of Friends of Friendship Park, one of the groups advocating more open space.
Friendship Park was once a frequently-visited spot by people living in the U.S. who wanted to communicate with friends and family in Mexico. People gathered on both sides of the fence to share picnics, sometimes even “sneaking tamales across the fence,” Holslin said.
A 1994 measure limited access to the border fence, but it wasn't until 2006 that Friendship Park was severely impacted. That's when Pres. George W. Bush approved the Secure Fence Act, which increased border security and initialized the construction of a secondary fence. That fence, completed in 2009, was built about 100 feet away from the original border fence, creating a buffer space that prohibits cross-border access from Friendship Park, which lies between the two fences.
“[Before], it was minimal problems or obstacles as far as border patrol or access to the area,” said Daniel Watman of Border Encuentro, which is fighting for increased park access. “When they started bringing in the secondary wall, that’s when it created quite an obstacle for us.”
Ever since the secondary fence was completed, access to the main park area is only allowed on the weekends between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., and only 25 to 30 people are allowed inside at a time, for a maximum of 30 minutes. Friendship Park is reachable through Border Field State Park by car, or via a 40-minute walk along Imperial Beach.
Physical contact is prohibited and border patrol officers have the option to restrain suspicious people within 100 feet of the fence. Border patrol agent Ronnie Harden said the primary reason is to prevent items from being passed through the slats and over the fence.
“It’s so easy for them to pass things that are contraband or things that can be used on either side, like illegal documents,” he said.
Park access advocacy groups, including Friends of Friendship Park, No Border Wall and Border Encuentro, are working for increased access to the park, particularly for people who want to communicate with family and friends on the other side of the border fence.
According to Border Patrol Public Affairs Office supervisor Steven Pitts, the park redesign, if approved, could begin construction as early as June, and would take approximately three to six months to complete.
The changes to Friendship Park could include an area around the boundary that could expand to up to 60 feet, depending on the size of the crowd at any given event, Watman said.
The idea of this is “to open up the entrance to this kind of no-man’s land between the two lands,” said Public Art and Architecture architect and Friendship Park designer James Brown.
U.S. visitors would be able to walk right up to the fence and interact with those on the other side. This would be made possible through a metal reinforced mesh fence. The mesh would be tight enough to make physical contact impossible, said Border Patrol Public Affairs Office representative Justin De La Torre.
Harden, who works the midnight to 8 a.m. shift, said the secondary fence and added border security is necessary to the safety of the U.S. national border; especially late at night when illegal border crossings are more likely to occur.
“People who cross at this time of night aren’t trying to see their families. They’re trying to get somewhere,” he said.
Holslin agrees that cross-border security is important in maintaining order along the border:
“We are not working against the Border Patrol," she said. "We want to work with them"
Holslin said increasing park access could actually help improve security along the border, since a higher number of visitors would prevent drug cartels from overtaking the area and increasing crime.
Watman said a redesigned Friendship Park is a way to not only maintain a safe environment, but do so in a way that symbolizes the bi-national friendship former first lady Nixon celebrated 40 years ago.
“I don’t feel like it’s enforcement versus friendship. I believe they both can be present,” he said. “They kind of both need to be present.”
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/1969/12/31/Park-redesign-could-relieve-tensions-at-US-Mexico-border/UPIU-9751301078945/
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Finagling Access to Friendship Park
Voice of San Diego
February 27, 2011
by Adrian Florido
For 38 years, Friendship Park was a symbol of amity between Mexico and the United States, despite the fence that separated the two countries and suggested otherwise.
But in 2009, the park that straddled San Diego and Tijuana — where families and friends separated by the fence came to chat, kiss, or graze cheeks — was closed, the casualty of a second fence the U.S. government built to provide an added layer of border security.
Since then, advocates have been pushing to regain access, with only limited success.
But in the last two weeks, they have won their largest concessions yet from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which this summer will begin replacing the primary border fence, now rusted and deteriorating, with a brand new, taller one. The agency has agreed to revise its original designs for the project and allow visitors closer access to the fence over a wider area than originally planned.
Friendship Park, while hardly a park anymore, will be a little friendlier.
"It's impossible for this park, when it's finished, to be beautiful. It won't be," said Jim Brown, an architect who designed an alternative proposal to the Border Patrol's, and who, along with a group of advocates, presented it to agency officials. "But it's going to be a super important symbol amid all this militarization of the border."
The Border Patrol's proposal for access to Friendship Park called for not much more than the current setup. Since last year, the agency has allowed limited access to the border fence on Saturdays and Sundays, letting visitors go through a gate in the new outer fence and enter a corral-like area that gets them within a few feet of the primary fence to talk to people on the other side. But it does not allow them to be close enough to touch or kiss.
The agency has agreed to some of Brown's design proposals, which would allow visitors to walk right up to the fence across about a 100-foot area, depending on whether Border Patrol officials are concerned about a security threat.
To social activists, the reinforced border fence is a symbol of division, enmity, and loved ones torn apart by immigration status. For the Border Patrol and enforcement advocates, it represents security and the containment of illegal crossers and illicit contraband.
Those two perspectives are hard to reconcile, especially amid the constant politicking that surrounds border issues. And if anything, the tug and pull over access to Friendship Park has reaffirmed that notion.
The negotiations have been a give and take. More access in one place has meant more security in another.
The government's original plan for the new fence, for example, was to build it of thick metal pylons with gaps between them, enough space to stick a hand or an arm through. Visitors on the American side would have to stay behind a shoulder high fence a few feet away, so as to prevent them from passing contraband.
But that dashed advocates' hope that families and friends could come together to talk up close, to touch, as they'd always done before.
"We wanted people to be able to have more of a private conversation than the public one they would have if they had to talk across a wide gap," Brown said.
The Border Patrol agreed to allow it. But in exchange, it will build a different kind of fence — a tight mesh one with holes so small that items won't fit through. The agency also plans to install a canopy overhead that will prevent things from being tossed over.
"Our priorities are a little bit different," said Kelly Good, the Border Patrol agent who has negotiated the design with advocates. "Our first priority is security of that area, our second priority is the safety of our agents, our third priority is to make this a place where people want to go and visit. Our last priority is their first priority."
The government's plan would also only have allowed visitors to approach a section of the border fence roughly 50 feet wide. They would have been contained to that area by a fenced-in corral similar to the one that's there now.
Advocates wanted to make a wider stretch accessible, so families could spread out. So the agency agreed to do away with the corral.
But it still wanted the ability to restrict access, or grant it, depending on the so-called security threat level on any given day.
On days when threat levels are perceived to be low, visitors might be allowed to spread out across a 100-foot section of the fence. On riskier days, when agents want to keep a close eye on people, they might only allow access to 40 feet. Brown designed an adjustable barrier system similar to the knee-high ropes that keep visitors from getting too close to paintings at museums. Agents will be able to move the ropes depending on how wide a section of the fence they want to make available.
But some things could not be negotiated, like access to the obelisk monument that First Lady Pat Nixon dedicated as a symbol of friendship between the two countries in 1971, as a reassurance that despite the fence, good will remained. The monument currently straddles both sides of the fence, but the Border Patrol's redesign will leave it on the Mexican side.
That's because the new fence will not be built directly on the international line. When it replaces the existing one, it will move a few feet north. Visitors standing at the fence on the Mexican side will technically be on United States soil.
The Border Patrol wants to be able to perform maintenance on both sides of the fence. Currently, it can only maintain the American side, because to access the other, agents would have to step on Mexican soil. Moving the fence a few feet to the north will allow them to go through a gate and make needed repairs to the other side without technically entering Mexico.
"We're the only ones that will maintain it," Good said, because it is not Mexico's fence.
http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/survival/article_e947d334-42bb-11e0-b13b-001cc4c03286.html
February 27, 2011
by Adrian Florido
For 38 years, Friendship Park was a symbol of amity between Mexico and the United States, despite the fence that separated the two countries and suggested otherwise.
But in 2009, the park that straddled San Diego and Tijuana — where families and friends separated by the fence came to chat, kiss, or graze cheeks — was closed, the casualty of a second fence the U.S. government built to provide an added layer of border security.
Since then, advocates have been pushing to regain access, with only limited success.
But in the last two weeks, they have won their largest concessions yet from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which this summer will begin replacing the primary border fence, now rusted and deteriorating, with a brand new, taller one. The agency has agreed to revise its original designs for the project and allow visitors closer access to the fence over a wider area than originally planned.
Friendship Park, while hardly a park anymore, will be a little friendlier.
"It's impossible for this park, when it's finished, to be beautiful. It won't be," said Jim Brown, an architect who designed an alternative proposal to the Border Patrol's, and who, along with a group of advocates, presented it to agency officials. "But it's going to be a super important symbol amid all this militarization of the border."
The Border Patrol's proposal for access to Friendship Park called for not much more than the current setup. Since last year, the agency has allowed limited access to the border fence on Saturdays and Sundays, letting visitors go through a gate in the new outer fence and enter a corral-like area that gets them within a few feet of the primary fence to talk to people on the other side. But it does not allow them to be close enough to touch or kiss.
The agency has agreed to some of Brown's design proposals, which would allow visitors to walk right up to the fence across about a 100-foot area, depending on whether Border Patrol officials are concerned about a security threat.
To social activists, the reinforced border fence is a symbol of division, enmity, and loved ones torn apart by immigration status. For the Border Patrol and enforcement advocates, it represents security and the containment of illegal crossers and illicit contraband.
Those two perspectives are hard to reconcile, especially amid the constant politicking that surrounds border issues. And if anything, the tug and pull over access to Friendship Park has reaffirmed that notion.
The negotiations have been a give and take. More access in one place has meant more security in another.
The government's original plan for the new fence, for example, was to build it of thick metal pylons with gaps between them, enough space to stick a hand or an arm through. Visitors on the American side would have to stay behind a shoulder high fence a few feet away, so as to prevent them from passing contraband.
But that dashed advocates' hope that families and friends could come together to talk up close, to touch, as they'd always done before.
"We wanted people to be able to have more of a private conversation than the public one they would have if they had to talk across a wide gap," Brown said.
The Border Patrol agreed to allow it. But in exchange, it will build a different kind of fence — a tight mesh one with holes so small that items won't fit through. The agency also plans to install a canopy overhead that will prevent things from being tossed over.
"Our priorities are a little bit different," said Kelly Good, the Border Patrol agent who has negotiated the design with advocates. "Our first priority is security of that area, our second priority is the safety of our agents, our third priority is to make this a place where people want to go and visit. Our last priority is their first priority."
The government's plan would also only have allowed visitors to approach a section of the border fence roughly 50 feet wide. They would have been contained to that area by a fenced-in corral similar to the one that's there now.
Advocates wanted to make a wider stretch accessible, so families could spread out. So the agency agreed to do away with the corral.
But it still wanted the ability to restrict access, or grant it, depending on the so-called security threat level on any given day.
On days when threat levels are perceived to be low, visitors might be allowed to spread out across a 100-foot section of the fence. On riskier days, when agents want to keep a close eye on people, they might only allow access to 40 feet. Brown designed an adjustable barrier system similar to the knee-high ropes that keep visitors from getting too close to paintings at museums. Agents will be able to move the ropes depending on how wide a section of the fence they want to make available.
But some things could not be negotiated, like access to the obelisk monument that First Lady Pat Nixon dedicated as a symbol of friendship between the two countries in 1971, as a reassurance that despite the fence, good will remained. The monument currently straddles both sides of the fence, but the Border Patrol's redesign will leave it on the Mexican side.
That's because the new fence will not be built directly on the international line. When it replaces the existing one, it will move a few feet north. Visitors standing at the fence on the Mexican side will technically be on United States soil.
The Border Patrol wants to be able to perform maintenance on both sides of the fence. Currently, it can only maintain the American side, because to access the other, agents would have to step on Mexican soil. Moving the fence a few feet to the north will allow them to go through a gate and make needed repairs to the other side without technically entering Mexico.
"We're the only ones that will maintain it," Good said, because it is not Mexico's fence.
http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/survival/article_e947d334-42bb-11e0-b13b-001cc4c03286.html
Friday, February 11, 2011
Dueling plans for Friendship Park on display
Sign on San Diego
February 8, 2011
by Elizabeth Aguilera
February 8, 2011
by Elizabeth Aguilera
Friendship Park activists and the Border Patrol will unveil opposing design plans for the area around Friendship Circle on the border Wednesday.
Border Patrol plans include replacement of primary fencing and no changes in public access, while the Friends of Friendship Park's plan includes seating, landscaping and increased visiting hours for the public.
The Border Patrol is hosting the open house from 5:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesday at the Marina Vista Community Center, 1075 8th St. in Imperial Beach.
Public access to the park, on the border near the most southwestern edge of the county, has been limited since 2009 when the Department of Homeland Security completed secondary fencing in the area that locked Friendship Circle and much of the park between the primary and secondary fencing.
The Border Patrol’s proposed design, called Surf Fence Project, would replace 1,200 feet of fencing from Friendship Circle to the surf. It will be made of “shade structure,” a slat-like fencing with spaces in between the slats, said Steven Pitts, spokesman for the Border Patrol.
Pitts would not comment on the Friends' proposal. He said the Border Patrol is focused on operational goals and safety of both the public and agents. Before the installation of secondary fencing, he said, the area was known as a place where agents were accosted with rocks and smuggling was rampant.
Members of the public are only allowed in the park on weekends between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. for 30 minutes at a time. Only 25 people are allowed in at the same time. An additional barrier erected near the primary fencing keeps visitors from touching fingers or whispering updates to one another.
Since the changes were implemented, Friends of Friendship Park, a coalition of volunteers, have been pushing for increased access and a better design that would give the area between the fences a more park-like feel. The coalition’s design by San Diego architect James Brown, principal at Public Architecture and Planning, is meant to create a more inviting atmosphere.
Before the change in 2009, visitors could walk up to the fence, the monument and along the beachline. Guests to the park would visit with friends or family on the other side, touch fingers and chat through the fence. Some would tote beach chairs and set up picnics along the fence.
“That experience has virtually been eliminated,” said Jill Holslin, a leader of the Friends group. “You feel like you are entering into a prison on visiting day. It’s a highly militarized environment.”
Pitts said the Army Corp of Engineers is reviewing the Friends design and if it is approved it will go before Customs and Border Protection leadership for a final decision.
The design created by Brown allows public access up to primary mesh fencing at three points, the binational garden, the foundry monument and the beach area. The secondary fencing entries in the design would be flexible enough to be opened wide for regular park access and to be shut down for security reasons, according to the plans.
“You still have the fence, there is no negating that, but it takes away a little bit of that feeling of being in a holding cell,” Brown said. “We take the responsibility to create a park that fulfills current Border Patrol needs very seriously at the same time designing a park that allows enough flexibility that it can have a life in the future when there is not so much security around it.”
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/feb/08/dualing-plans-for-friendship-park-on-display-wedne/Tuesday, December 15, 2009
La Posada at border fence
San Diego Union-Tribune
December 14, 2009
by J Harry Jones
IMPERIAL BEACH — Faith groups from the United States and Mexico gathered yesterday afternoon at Border Field State Park in what was both a religious celebration and a political statement.
The 16th annual La Posada Sin Fronteras was a re-enactment of the biblical story of Mary and Joseph, who were forced to seek shelter after the birth of Christ and were eventually welcomed into a stranger’s home. Participants from both countries compared the biblical tale to the struggle migrants face trying to enter the United States.
One of the messages of the story, the idea of welcoming strangers — and immigrants — is under attack in our times, making the binational celebration even more significant, organizers said. Today, families on both sides of the border are separated by immigration policy and can no longer meet, even at the border fence, organizers said.
This was the first time the celebration was held since a second border fence was constructed earlier this year. The participants were not allowed to touch or exchange gifts with those who had gathered in Mexico for the celebration.
About 150 people, including many members of the media, gathered on the Mexico side of the fence, while on the U.S. side about half that number were present.
U.S. Border Patrol agents allowed 25 people at a time to go through the first fence to the Friendship Monument, which is situated to the north of the Tijuana bullfighting ring and a lighthouse. The remainder were forced to stay back behind the second fence, roughly 100 feet away.
“I want to remind you that while there are few people here, there are many watching and praying,” said Tijuana’s Roman Catholic Archbishop Rafael Romo Muñoz, speaking from Mexico. “Many are praying for friendship and solidarity between our two countries.”
Veterans of earlier celebrations remembered how people would share tacos, hold hands and exchange trinkets through the fence.
“This is a sad occasion on this beautiful winter day,” said Christian Ramirez of the American Friends Service Committee from the U.S. side. “We friends are not allowed to touch each other or exchange food and candy as in the past. This is ridiculous. This is the promise of change we heard a year ago?”
Along the outer fence, dozens of luminarias were set up and lighted at dusk. Each bag, containing a lighted candle, represented a migrant killed while trying to cross the border. Many of the dead were young, and most were identified only as “unknown male.”
One of the organizers of the first Posada Without Borders in 1993 was Roberto Martinez, the migrant activist who died earlier this year. Ramirez said Martinez is “greatly missed” and was undoubtedly looking down on all yesterday afternoon.
Those on the U.S. side had to hike through mud and then on the beach for about two miles because the main road to the friendship monument was flooded. Few seemed to mind the inconvenience.
During the gathering, Christmas carols were sung in both English and Spanish. Although Americans were not allowed to give anything to the Mexicans, at one point bundles of candy came flying over the fence from the Mexico side.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2009/dec/14/la-posada-border-fence/
December 14, 2009
by J Harry Jones
IMPERIAL BEACH — Faith groups from the United States and Mexico gathered yesterday afternoon at Border Field State Park in what was both a religious celebration and a political statement.
The 16th annual La Posada Sin Fronteras was a re-enactment of the biblical story of Mary and Joseph, who were forced to seek shelter after the birth of Christ and were eventually welcomed into a stranger’s home. Participants from both countries compared the biblical tale to the struggle migrants face trying to enter the United States.
One of the messages of the story, the idea of welcoming strangers — and immigrants — is under attack in our times, making the binational celebration even more significant, organizers said. Today, families on both sides of the border are separated by immigration policy and can no longer meet, even at the border fence, organizers said.
This was the first time the celebration was held since a second border fence was constructed earlier this year. The participants were not allowed to touch or exchange gifts with those who had gathered in Mexico for the celebration.
About 150 people, including many members of the media, gathered on the Mexico side of the fence, while on the U.S. side about half that number were present.
U.S. Border Patrol agents allowed 25 people at a time to go through the first fence to the Friendship Monument, which is situated to the north of the Tijuana bullfighting ring and a lighthouse. The remainder were forced to stay back behind the second fence, roughly 100 feet away.
“I want to remind you that while there are few people here, there are many watching and praying,” said Tijuana’s Roman Catholic Archbishop Rafael Romo Muñoz, speaking from Mexico. “Many are praying for friendship and solidarity between our two countries.”
Veterans of earlier celebrations remembered how people would share tacos, hold hands and exchange trinkets through the fence.
“This is a sad occasion on this beautiful winter day,” said Christian Ramirez of the American Friends Service Committee from the U.S. side. “We friends are not allowed to touch each other or exchange food and candy as in the past. This is ridiculous. This is the promise of change we heard a year ago?”
Along the outer fence, dozens of luminarias were set up and lighted at dusk. Each bag, containing a lighted candle, represented a migrant killed while trying to cross the border. Many of the dead were young, and most were identified only as “unknown male.”
One of the organizers of the first Posada Without Borders in 1993 was Roberto Martinez, the migrant activist who died earlier this year. Ramirez said Martinez is “greatly missed” and was undoubtedly looking down on all yesterday afternoon.
Those on the U.S. side had to hike through mud and then on the beach for about two miles because the main road to the friendship monument was flooded. Few seemed to mind the inconvenience.
During the gathering, Christmas carols were sung in both English and Spanish. Although Americans were not allowed to give anything to the Mexicans, at one point bundles of candy came flying over the fence from the Mexico side.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2009/dec/14/la-posada-border-fence/
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Tijuana River Valley Residents Say Border Fence Contributing to Flooding
KPBS San Diego
December 7, 2009
by Amy Isackson
Tijuana River Valley residents say the new border fence is blocking drainage channels. They say rain is washing dirt from the new fence project into flood channels.
The Bush Administration waived all environmental laws to build the fence. Government officials promised to mitigate erosion. However, they didn't water the seeds they planted on the berm in Smuggler's Gulch until late this fall.
Dick Tynan, a rancher in the Tijuana River Valley, spoke with us while peering out his barn door towards the new border fence in Smuggler's Gulch.
Tynan said the bare dirt is creating a major problem.
"The government just dropped the ball on that," Tanyan said. "The water just takes the shortest path and its going to take out more silt as it goes. They've got a backhoe up there now working on it."
Tynan said the drainage channel that City of San Diego emergency crews have been digging is already half full.
He also said roads in the river valley have flooded. He's moved some of his horses to higher ground and is ready to move the rest.
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2009/dec/07/tijuana-river-valley-residents-say-border-fence-co/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
December 7, 2009
by Amy Isackson
Tijuana River Valley residents say the new border fence is blocking drainage channels. They say rain is washing dirt from the new fence project into flood channels.
The Bush Administration waived all environmental laws to build the fence. Government officials promised to mitigate erosion. However, they didn't water the seeds they planted on the berm in Smuggler's Gulch until late this fall.
Dick Tynan, a rancher in the Tijuana River Valley, spoke with us while peering out his barn door towards the new border fence in Smuggler's Gulch.
Tynan said the bare dirt is creating a major problem.
"The government just dropped the ball on that," Tanyan said. "The water just takes the shortest path and its going to take out more silt as it goes. They've got a backhoe up there now working on it."
Tynan said the drainage channel that City of San Diego emergency crews have been digging is already half full.
He also said roads in the river valley have flooded. He's moved some of his horses to higher ground and is ready to move the rest.
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2009/dec/07/tijuana-river-valley-residents-say-border-fence-co/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Feds: Plants There, Just Look Harder
Voice of San Diego
December 3, 2009
by Rob Davis
The barren, vegetation-free hillsides in Border Field State Park created by a new 3.5-mile section of the U.S.-Mexico border fence are neither barren nor vegetation-free, the federal government claims.
In a recent letter to U.S. Rep. Susan Davis, D-San Diego, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's chief says the denuded hills near the Tijuana Estuary have plants growing on them.
You just can't see them, he wrote.
Because the plants being grown on the new hillsides are native species, wrote Jayson Ahern, the agency's acting chief, "the existing re-vegetated areas are currently dormant and brown ... and, thus, difficult to see from afar."
That does not accurately reflect what I've seen in the park. When I visited in mid-October, I saw a few plants growing on a single hill. Other new hills were barren, save for rows of straw bales.
It was easy to see from afar that no plants were growing. It was even easier to see up close. I stood on the hills. Plants were not growing. Federal contractors working for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had sprayed a wet, pulpy seed mix -- called "hydroseed" -- on the ground, but never irrigated.
I called Clay Phillips, superintendent of Border Field State Park, to check whether plants had suddenly grown in the last month.
"Nothing magical has happened," he said. "There is a native plant seed mix (on the ground), but we've never seen any growth there."
Ahern, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection official, wrote in his letter that "moderate revegetation has actually occurred and is progressing well." He said the federal government purposely didn't water the seeds it spread on the hills so it could mimic normal climatic conditions -- dry summers, wet winters.
I asked Bruce Hanson, a restoration ecologist for Edaw, a local consulting firm, whether that was a good idea. He said it is. Unless a full-fledged irrigation system was installed, Hanson said it's better to wait for natural rainfall, which helps seeds germinate better. The salt content is lower in rain than in water sprayed from trucks, which the government is now using.
But using seeds alone is "window-dressing," Hanson said. The best way to restore degraded habitat is to use a mix of seeds and transplant already-established plants and cactus, he said.
"A lot of species" -- such as the Baja birdbush, a plant whose northern range extends only to the border -- "never come up from seed," he said. Instead, generic shrubs grow, such as purple needlegrass, which is found throughout the state.
"You end up with a different plant community than what should be there," Hanson said. "Hydroseed is not going to be representative of what was out there."
http://voiceofsandiego.org/environment/muck/article_f7c322e6-e070-11de-91d3-001cc4c03286.html
December 3, 2009
by Rob Davis
The barren, vegetation-free hillsides in Border Field State Park created by a new 3.5-mile section of the U.S.-Mexico border fence are neither barren nor vegetation-free, the federal government claims.
In a recent letter to U.S. Rep. Susan Davis, D-San Diego, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's chief says the denuded hills near the Tijuana Estuary have plants growing on them.
You just can't see them, he wrote.
Because the plants being grown on the new hillsides are native species, wrote Jayson Ahern, the agency's acting chief, "the existing re-vegetated areas are currently dormant and brown ... and, thus, difficult to see from afar."
That does not accurately reflect what I've seen in the park. When I visited in mid-October, I saw a few plants growing on a single hill. Other new hills were barren, save for rows of straw bales.
It was easy to see from afar that no plants were growing. It was even easier to see up close. I stood on the hills. Plants were not growing. Federal contractors working for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had sprayed a wet, pulpy seed mix -- called "hydroseed" -- on the ground, but never irrigated.
I called Clay Phillips, superintendent of Border Field State Park, to check whether plants had suddenly grown in the last month.
"Nothing magical has happened," he said. "There is a native plant seed mix (on the ground), but we've never seen any growth there."
Ahern, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection official, wrote in his letter that "moderate revegetation has actually occurred and is progressing well." He said the federal government purposely didn't water the seeds it spread on the hills so it could mimic normal climatic conditions -- dry summers, wet winters.
I asked Bruce Hanson, a restoration ecologist for Edaw, a local consulting firm, whether that was a good idea. He said it is. Unless a full-fledged irrigation system was installed, Hanson said it's better to wait for natural rainfall, which helps seeds germinate better. The salt content is lower in rain than in water sprayed from trucks, which the government is now using.
But using seeds alone is "window-dressing," Hanson said. The best way to restore degraded habitat is to use a mix of seeds and transplant already-established plants and cactus, he said.
"A lot of species" -- such as the Baja birdbush, a plant whose northern range extends only to the border -- "never come up from seed," he said. Instead, generic shrubs grow, such as purple needlegrass, which is found throughout the state.
"You end up with a different plant community than what should be there," Hanson said. "Hydroseed is not going to be representative of what was out there."
http://voiceofsandiego.org/environment/muck/article_f7c322e6-e070-11de-91d3-001cc4c03286.html
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
An openness to border fence: Divider boundless as visual forum for political expression
San Diego Union-Tribune
November 30, 2009
by Leslie Berestein
In Cold War-era Berlin, artists and others who decried the wall dividing the city into east and west used its concrete expanse as a broad canvas for political and personal expression, over the years turning its gray surface into multihued graffiti art.
And in Tijuana today, those who protest U.S. immigration policies have the border fence.
In the nearly two decades since fencing began to appear on the U.S.-Mexico border between San Diego and Tijuana, the fence has become its own political canvas of sorts, with stretches of it serving as a backdrop for installations that have included thousands of wooden crosses, painted coffins, paintings of skulls and of doors that go nowhere, save for the desert.
The paintings and installations, the most recent a collection of 5,100 wooden crosses hung from the fence at Playas de Tijuana last month, are memorials to those who have died in attempts to traverse the border illegally, most of them through rough terrain to the east.
The fence also has acted as a billboard for political candidates, as a structure on which to affix screened images for a city art exhibit a few years ago, as a place for taggers’ graffiti and for the quieter musings of would-be migrants who have scratched their names and where they came from onto the rusty metal.
Unlike on the Berlin Wall, where much of the art was spontaneous and anonymous, most of the protest art on the border fence has been planned and orchestrated by border activists and local artists. To the east in Nogales, Ariz., an artists’ collective has been responsible for many of the pieces there, including metal sculptures and murals affixed to the fence. Still, those who have studied the phenomenon of political boundaries and art say there are universal similarities in what prompts the expression.
“Borders tend not to be joyous places,” said Justinian Jampol, a historian and museum director in Los Angeles who has studied the Berlin Wall and the art it inspired. “Borders tend to be where people are separated. They tend to be points of contention. Artists are naturally drawn to spaces that have an aura around them, a tension, that is already endowed with meaning.”
For an event this month celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Jampol’s Wende Museum, which is dedicated to Cold War history and culture, set up an 80-foot “wall” across a major Los Angeles boulevard and invited artists and taggers to paint it. He said he was struck by how often the U.S.-Mexico border came up as a theme.
Other border barriers have prompted similar expression, said Guillermo Alonso Meneses, a cultural anthropologist with the Colegio de la Frontera Norte in Baja California. This includes the new West Bank barrier in Israel, which has been marked in protest. Even the fences separating the Spanish outposts of Melilla and Ceuta from the rest of Morocco have been used by African migrants as a place to leave messages, Meneses said.
With access restricted to much of the north side, the art on the border fence between Tijuana and San Diego is unique to the south side. Many of the installations along the aging metal barrier that abuts Tijuana — referred to by U.S. authorities as the primary fence — have been temporary, and some of the displays that remain are weathered. Driving west along the fence from the border crossing at Otay Mesa past the city’s airport, one sees what appears to be an interminable stretch of white crosses with the names of the dead written in black. On occasion, a cross will have dried flowers tucked around it.
The crosses were attached to the fence in the late 1990s, said Claudia Smith of the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, a longtime migrant-rights activist who began collaborating with local artists to protest Operation Gatekeeper, a mid-1990s federal initiative to beef up border security.
At the time, additional fencing and other measures pushed human smuggling traffic toward East County mountains and the Imperial Valley desert, and border-crossing fatalities rose. The idea, Smith said, was to draw attention to the deaths.
“At the beginning, we were issuing news releases, but we realized there was no other way of conveying the magnitude of this tragedy,” said Smith, who continues to be involved in planning the installations with artists. “By doing something visual, and also something that was very prominently displayed, people would have to go by them as they went about their daily lives.”
Installations have included roughly 1,000 pairs of shoes with toe tags attached hung from the fence and a series of painted coffins, the latter the work of Tijuana artist Alberto Caro that has since been removed. A series of paintings by San Diego artist Michael Schnorr and members of the Border Art Workshop depicted a large fleshy wound with the words “La frontera es Una llaga abierta” — Spanish for the “the border is an open wound.” Some of the paintings still survive across from the airport.
Artist Susan Yamagata painted a skull motif on giant papier mâche boots and shoes that were displayed along the airport stretch, one shoe emblazoned with the words “¿Cuantos mas?” — Spanish for “How many more?”
“I wanted to be able to do something,” said Yamagata, who has worked on fence art projects with Smith. “I am not a wealthy person, but I can give time and labor. I felt it was a worthy cause.”
Just west of the airport, before the main road turns south and the pavement along the fence ends, a red obelisk with crosses stands in a small traffic circle, the city-sanctioned work of Tijuana artist Roberto Rosique. A closer look at the fence reveals words scratched in the metal, including a man’s name next to the word “Morelos,” a state in central-southern Mexico.
Along the fence, a close observer will find musings that Alonso said range from insults against U.S. border authorities to “quasi-poetic, saying, ‘I dream of the United States,’ or ‘My love awaits me in Los Angeles.’ You have to go walking the fence to find them.”
By the time the main road rejoins the fence toward Playas de Tijuana, the work of taggers can be seen on the fence. The protest art becomes visible again in Playas, where the fence extends into the ocean.
Over the years, there have been a series of installations on the south side of the fence, including a large painting of a skeleton drinking the last drop of water from a water jug and a traditional Mexican altar for the dead. Three paintings of “doors” — the only open one leading into a depiction of the desert — from a few years ago are still in place, the work of Yamagata and San Diego artist Todd Stands.
Most prominent is another cross-themed work, this one a massive cluster. Yamagata and Schnorr collaborated on it with Smith and with the Coalición Pro Defensa del Migrante, a Tijuana-based migrant aid organization. Hung from the fence near the beach are 5,100 white crosses, symbolizing the estimated number of border-crossing deaths in the past 15 years, strung together and draped from the top.
The display took six months to put together, said Esmeralda Siu, director of the migrant coalition. Volunteers, including the residents of a Tijuana migrant shelter, did much of the work of constructing and stringing the crosses together. They were installed Oct. 30, in time for Mexico’s traditional Day of the Dead holiday Nov. 2.
Swaying gently in the breeze, the crosses had a powerful effect on Silvia Urieta, 41, in Tijuana visiting relatives for the week.
“Imagine, how many people,” said Urieta, who lives in Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo, on the coast of Guerrero state. “I took photos so that my paisanos could see it.”
The installation was a sobering sight for the family as they posed for photos, otherwise merrily, by the 1851 marble monument marking the border.
“Those who come from the south, they get the wrong idea,” said Urieta’s brother-in-law Adrian Pineda, 35, a native of Tijuana. “They think it’s easy. But here is how easy it is. For many, the dream they have ends in a cross.”
http://www3.signonsandiego.com/news/2009/nov/30/an-openness-to-border-fence/
November 30, 2009
by Leslie Berestein
In Cold War-era Berlin, artists and others who decried the wall dividing the city into east and west used its concrete expanse as a broad canvas for political and personal expression, over the years turning its gray surface into multihued graffiti art.
And in Tijuana today, those who protest U.S. immigration policies have the border fence.
In the nearly two decades since fencing began to appear on the U.S.-Mexico border between San Diego and Tijuana, the fence has become its own political canvas of sorts, with stretches of it serving as a backdrop for installations that have included thousands of wooden crosses, painted coffins, paintings of skulls and of doors that go nowhere, save for the desert.
The paintings and installations, the most recent a collection of 5,100 wooden crosses hung from the fence at Playas de Tijuana last month, are memorials to those who have died in attempts to traverse the border illegally, most of them through rough terrain to the east.
The fence also has acted as a billboard for political candidates, as a structure on which to affix screened images for a city art exhibit a few years ago, as a place for taggers’ graffiti and for the quieter musings of would-be migrants who have scratched their names and where they came from onto the rusty metal.
Unlike on the Berlin Wall, where much of the art was spontaneous and anonymous, most of the protest art on the border fence has been planned and orchestrated by border activists and local artists. To the east in Nogales, Ariz., an artists’ collective has been responsible for many of the pieces there, including metal sculptures and murals affixed to the fence. Still, those who have studied the phenomenon of political boundaries and art say there are universal similarities in what prompts the expression.
“Borders tend not to be joyous places,” said Justinian Jampol, a historian and museum director in Los Angeles who has studied the Berlin Wall and the art it inspired. “Borders tend to be where people are separated. They tend to be points of contention. Artists are naturally drawn to spaces that have an aura around them, a tension, that is already endowed with meaning.”
For an event this month celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Jampol’s Wende Museum, which is dedicated to Cold War history and culture, set up an 80-foot “wall” across a major Los Angeles boulevard and invited artists and taggers to paint it. He said he was struck by how often the U.S.-Mexico border came up as a theme.
Other border barriers have prompted similar expression, said Guillermo Alonso Meneses, a cultural anthropologist with the Colegio de la Frontera Norte in Baja California. This includes the new West Bank barrier in Israel, which has been marked in protest. Even the fences separating the Spanish outposts of Melilla and Ceuta from the rest of Morocco have been used by African migrants as a place to leave messages, Meneses said.
With access restricted to much of the north side, the art on the border fence between Tijuana and San Diego is unique to the south side. Many of the installations along the aging metal barrier that abuts Tijuana — referred to by U.S. authorities as the primary fence — have been temporary, and some of the displays that remain are weathered. Driving west along the fence from the border crossing at Otay Mesa past the city’s airport, one sees what appears to be an interminable stretch of white crosses with the names of the dead written in black. On occasion, a cross will have dried flowers tucked around it.
The crosses were attached to the fence in the late 1990s, said Claudia Smith of the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, a longtime migrant-rights activist who began collaborating with local artists to protest Operation Gatekeeper, a mid-1990s federal initiative to beef up border security.
At the time, additional fencing and other measures pushed human smuggling traffic toward East County mountains and the Imperial Valley desert, and border-crossing fatalities rose. The idea, Smith said, was to draw attention to the deaths.
“At the beginning, we were issuing news releases, but we realized there was no other way of conveying the magnitude of this tragedy,” said Smith, who continues to be involved in planning the installations with artists. “By doing something visual, and also something that was very prominently displayed, people would have to go by them as they went about their daily lives.”
Installations have included roughly 1,000 pairs of shoes with toe tags attached hung from the fence and a series of painted coffins, the latter the work of Tijuana artist Alberto Caro that has since been removed. A series of paintings by San Diego artist Michael Schnorr and members of the Border Art Workshop depicted a large fleshy wound with the words “La frontera es Una llaga abierta” — Spanish for the “the border is an open wound.” Some of the paintings still survive across from the airport.
Artist Susan Yamagata painted a skull motif on giant papier mâche boots and shoes that were displayed along the airport stretch, one shoe emblazoned with the words “¿Cuantos mas?” — Spanish for “How many more?”
“I wanted to be able to do something,” said Yamagata, who has worked on fence art projects with Smith. “I am not a wealthy person, but I can give time and labor. I felt it was a worthy cause.”
Just west of the airport, before the main road turns south and the pavement along the fence ends, a red obelisk with crosses stands in a small traffic circle, the city-sanctioned work of Tijuana artist Roberto Rosique. A closer look at the fence reveals words scratched in the metal, including a man’s name next to the word “Morelos,” a state in central-southern Mexico.
Along the fence, a close observer will find musings that Alonso said range from insults against U.S. border authorities to “quasi-poetic, saying, ‘I dream of the United States,’ or ‘My love awaits me in Los Angeles.’ You have to go walking the fence to find them.”
By the time the main road rejoins the fence toward Playas de Tijuana, the work of taggers can be seen on the fence. The protest art becomes visible again in Playas, where the fence extends into the ocean.
Over the years, there have been a series of installations on the south side of the fence, including a large painting of a skeleton drinking the last drop of water from a water jug and a traditional Mexican altar for the dead. Three paintings of “doors” — the only open one leading into a depiction of the desert — from a few years ago are still in place, the work of Yamagata and San Diego artist Todd Stands.
Most prominent is another cross-themed work, this one a massive cluster. Yamagata and Schnorr collaborated on it with Smith and with the Coalición Pro Defensa del Migrante, a Tijuana-based migrant aid organization. Hung from the fence near the beach are 5,100 white crosses, symbolizing the estimated number of border-crossing deaths in the past 15 years, strung together and draped from the top.
The display took six months to put together, said Esmeralda Siu, director of the migrant coalition. Volunteers, including the residents of a Tijuana migrant shelter, did much of the work of constructing and stringing the crosses together. They were installed Oct. 30, in time for Mexico’s traditional Day of the Dead holiday Nov. 2.
Swaying gently in the breeze, the crosses had a powerful effect on Silvia Urieta, 41, in Tijuana visiting relatives for the week.
“Imagine, how many people,” said Urieta, who lives in Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo, on the coast of Guerrero state. “I took photos so that my paisanos could see it.”
The installation was a sobering sight for the family as they posed for photos, otherwise merrily, by the 1851 marble monument marking the border.
“Those who come from the south, they get the wrong idea,” said Urieta’s brother-in-law Adrian Pineda, 35, a native of Tijuana. “They think it’s easy. But here is how easy it is. For many, the dream they have ends in a cross.”
http://www3.signonsandiego.com/news/2009/nov/30/an-openness-to-border-fence/
Thursday, November 19, 2009
U.S. cracks down on border meeting spot for Mexicans
Reuters
November 19, 2009
by Lizbeth Diaz
TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) - The United States has severely restricted access to a spot on the Mexican border where families and lovers divided by illegal immigration could unite briefly to hold hands or kiss through a fence.
In a move to stop undocumented migrants and the passing of narcotics through gaps in the U.S.-Mexico border fence between San Diego and Tijuana, the United States has fortified the area with a second fence to tighten security.
The Friendship Park on the Pacific Ocean became a place for cross-border weddings, church services, Christmas parties and even yoga classes when opened in 1971 by then U.S. first lady Pat Nixon.
Planned as a U.S. park with access for people on both sides of the frontier, picnic tables and swings were put out of Mexicans' reach in 1994 when the United States raised a mesh fence to stop drug traffickers and illegal immigrants.
But families could sit on either side of the fence to kiss through it, talk and touch one another even as U.S. border agents nearby patrolled to keep out job-hungry illegal immigrants, terrorists and smugglers.
The fence became a popular spot for separated lovers who would pass notes on Valentine's Day.
But the U.S. government's second, larger barrier has sensors, lighting, radars and cameras on the edge of the park. Officials built a patrol road through it and fenced off access to the old mesh fence that abutted onto Mexico.
Work finished on the park fencing earlier this month, sealing off access for Mexicans on the U.S. side unless they take part in highly regulated visits.
"It was an act of cruelty," said Katy Parkinson, a U.S. resident in Tijuana who runs a charity for immigrants. "Here, grandmothers met their grandchildren for the first time, they took photos, people could find each other again."
The Border Patrol says those on the U.S. side can access the old Mexican fence for four hours on Saturdays and Sundays once vetted by agents in groups of up to 25 people.
"People can still meet at designated times," said San Diego-based Border Patrol Agent Jose Morales.
"The second fence was needed because the first one was ... breached by smugglers and people passed drugs and fake IDs through it," he added.
BORDER WALL
Nixon opened the park in Imperial Beach, California, in August 1971 as part of her efforts to promote U.S.-Mexican relations and, as she shook hands with Mexicans that day, was reported as saying "I hate to see a fence anywhere."
The fence is part of the 661-mile double-layered wall along part of the United States' 2,000-mile border with Mexico, built by the U.S. government.
"We will find a way to see each other," said shop assistant Carmen, 29, whose husband lives illegally in Los Angeles and who used to meet regularly at the old park fence. "I can't cross into the United States, I've been deported three times."
Almost 12 million illegal immigrants, mostly Hispanic, live and work in the United States, including millions of Mexicans.
Since the Sept 11 attacks in the United States, political pressure for tighter border controls has grown sharply. Supporters of the border fence say Mexico's violent drug war that has killed more than 15,000 people since late 2006 makes it all the more necessary to keep criminals out.
But some border experts say the fence does not stop those trying to get into the United States and only makes it more dangerous. Some 5,600 people have died trying to cross into the United States from Mexico since the U.S. government increased border security in 1994, human rights groups say.
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE5AI53120091119?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=11621
November 19, 2009
by Lizbeth Diaz
TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) - The United States has severely restricted access to a spot on the Mexican border where families and lovers divided by illegal immigration could unite briefly to hold hands or kiss through a fence.
In a move to stop undocumented migrants and the passing of narcotics through gaps in the U.S.-Mexico border fence between San Diego and Tijuana, the United States has fortified the area with a second fence to tighten security.
The Friendship Park on the Pacific Ocean became a place for cross-border weddings, church services, Christmas parties and even yoga classes when opened in 1971 by then U.S. first lady Pat Nixon.
Planned as a U.S. park with access for people on both sides of the frontier, picnic tables and swings were put out of Mexicans' reach in 1994 when the United States raised a mesh fence to stop drug traffickers and illegal immigrants.
But families could sit on either side of the fence to kiss through it, talk and touch one another even as U.S. border agents nearby patrolled to keep out job-hungry illegal immigrants, terrorists and smugglers.
The fence became a popular spot for separated lovers who would pass notes on Valentine's Day.
But the U.S. government's second, larger barrier has sensors, lighting, radars and cameras on the edge of the park. Officials built a patrol road through it and fenced off access to the old mesh fence that abutted onto Mexico.
Work finished on the park fencing earlier this month, sealing off access for Mexicans on the U.S. side unless they take part in highly regulated visits.
"It was an act of cruelty," said Katy Parkinson, a U.S. resident in Tijuana who runs a charity for immigrants. "Here, grandmothers met their grandchildren for the first time, they took photos, people could find each other again."
The Border Patrol says those on the U.S. side can access the old Mexican fence for four hours on Saturdays and Sundays once vetted by agents in groups of up to 25 people.
"People can still meet at designated times," said San Diego-based Border Patrol Agent Jose Morales.
"The second fence was needed because the first one was ... breached by smugglers and people passed drugs and fake IDs through it," he added.
BORDER WALL
Nixon opened the park in Imperial Beach, California, in August 1971 as part of her efforts to promote U.S.-Mexican relations and, as she shook hands with Mexicans that day, was reported as saying "I hate to see a fence anywhere."
The fence is part of the 661-mile double-layered wall along part of the United States' 2,000-mile border with Mexico, built by the U.S. government.
"We will find a way to see each other," said shop assistant Carmen, 29, whose husband lives illegally in Los Angeles and who used to meet regularly at the old park fence. "I can't cross into the United States, I've been deported three times."
Almost 12 million illegal immigrants, mostly Hispanic, live and work in the United States, including millions of Mexicans.
Since the Sept 11 attacks in the United States, political pressure for tighter border controls has grown sharply. Supporters of the border fence say Mexico's violent drug war that has killed more than 15,000 people since late 2006 makes it all the more necessary to keep criminals out.
But some border experts say the fence does not stop those trying to get into the United States and only makes it more dangerous. Some 5,600 people have died trying to cross into the United States from Mexico since the U.S. government increased border security in 1994, human rights groups say.
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE5AI53120091119?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=11621
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
A Barren Promise at the Border
Voice of San Diego
October 21, 2009
by Rob Davis
Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2009 Had anyone else built this hillside near the U.S.-Mexico border, it would look nothing like it does. The barren hill would be alive with native plants, the earth would be solidly rooted and not a threat to tumble down into the Tijuana Estuary, a lush, 2,500-acre salt marsh that starts 600 feet away.
But along the newly constructed border fence near the Pacific Ocean in Border Field State Park, inch-thick tan clumps of seeds and mulch still blanket the ground. They haven't been watered, so no plants have grown.
Were it anyone else's project, state regulators would've required irrigation to ensure that plants grew. But the federal government is responsible for the $59 million effort to complete and reinforce 3.5 miles of border fence separating San Diego and Tijuana. The Department of Homeland Security exempted itself from eight federal laws and any related state laws that would have regulated the project's environmental impacts.
Because the project is exempt from the federal Clean Water Act, state water regulators have no jurisdiction.Homeland Security officials sought the waiver power in 2005 to accelerate fence construction in San Diego and across the Southwest, saying that national security needs trumped environmental concerns. That power has accelerated construction from San Diego to Brownsville, as the agency has waived laws across 550 miles of the border. To date, 633 miles of fence have been built at a cost of $2.4 billion.
The department made the same promise each time it waived laws like the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act: Though we're now exempt from federal and state environmental regulation, we're still committed to the environment.
But as construction continues across the Southwest, the project's impacts in Border Field State Park and in another federal reserve further east raise questions about the sincerity of the government's commitment.Clay Phillips, the California State Parks superintendent who oversees Border Field and the estuary, said that promise hasn't been fulfilled there. Mitigation of the fence's environmental impacts has "failed miserably," Phillips said.
Phillips worries that winter rains will wash soil off the hills into the nearby estuary he oversees, which is home to several sensitive species and already filling with sediment swept in from Tijuana. Sediment raises the level of the ground, stopping the twice-daily tidal flushing that keeps the wetlands wet.
Army Corps of Engineers contractors completed the fence separating San Diego and Tijuana in July.
They filled in the notorious cross-border canyon known as Smuggler's Gulch, added a second layer of steel fencing and built a road for Border Patrol vehicles running parallel to the fence. The gulch, once a deep canyon, is now filled with an earthen berm more than 100 feet tall.
Though native plant seeds were sprayed across the berm and other newly created hillsides in Border Field State Park, Phillips said the federal government never irrigated them. Only a handful of plants grew. Other hills have none.
"They sprayed it (with seed) and hoped for the best," Phillips said. "It was a waste. A token gesture."
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman, Jenny Burke, said the project was built to Caltrans' erosion standards. The agency will "monitor the situation and is considering other actions as required."
John Robertus, executive officer of the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board, the local water pollution police, said the project doesn't have all the safeguards his agency would've required. He said if the board had jurisdiction, it would've required temporary irrigation to ensure plants grew. Robertus said he, too, is concerned about the project's potential impacts on the estuary.
Fence construction has left a mark on other areas in San Diego County greater than what would've been allowed without the waiver. Further east in the federally protected Otay Mountain Wilderness, a road built along a new four-mile section of fence also left barren hills, said Joyce Schlachter, a wildlife biologist with the federal Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the area.
"When we get any rain, it's going to be an erosion nightmare," Schlachter said. Seeds have been sprayed there, too, but not watered, she said. No plants have grown.
The impacts on Otay Mountain stretch beyond possible erosion. Phalanxes of dump trucks going to work on the fence have rumbled up and down a dirt road, spreading clouds of dust as far as 30 feet away, blanketing Tecate cypress, a rare tree found only on three peaks in San Diego County. (Its range extends into Mexico.) The tree, a bushy evergreen, provides food for the Thorne's hairstreak butterfly, a rare thumbnail-sized insect that feeds only on the cypress and that has been suffering from too-frequent fires on the mountain.
Construction crews cut down more than 100 cypress that survived a massive 2003 wildfire to widen an existing road for construction vehicles, Schlachter said.If laws hadn't been waived, the Bureau would have required construction crews to minimize their impact on the trees, she said.
Homeland Security officials consulted with the Bureau, Schlachter said, then didn't follow all of its advice."When it came right down to it, they did what they wanted to do," Schlachter said. "And they knew they couldn't be stopped. We did not have control over it."
Kathy Williams, a San Diego State biology professor studying the butterfly, said the dust poses "potentially a really serious problem" for the Thorne's hairstreak and the cypress.Williams has reared a small number of Thorne's caterpillars on both dusty and clean leaves in her laboratory.
Results from the on-going experiment so far indicate that more caterpillars survived on clean leaves, she said.Before construction began last year, Williams said the roadside habitat looked much healthier. She saw more butterflies last year than she did this year, though she noted that population sizes vary annually.
"Now it's obviously degraded habitat," she said, noting that rainfall may help clean the leaves. "The appearance of the quality of the site is strikingly different."
Burke, the Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman, said the agency consulted with U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials about the Otay project and routinely wets the road to keep dust down. She said Customs and Border Protection will monitor the dust and maintain the roads "to their construction standard," and could periodically apply "dust-control agents," which include sap.
Those efforts haven't always worked well. Sap was sprayed on trees beyond the road's edge, Schlachter said. Dust stuck on top of the sap, she said, making the trees' survival questionable. "They're creating more risk to the plants," she said. "That's an issue."
On at least one occasion, crews didn't water the road -- even though they had the necessary equipment on hand. One morning in June, a water truck escorted dump trucks to the work site but didn't spray any water. As the trucks wound through the wilderness past Tecate cypress, choking clouds of dust followed.
U.S. Rep. Susan Davis, D-San Diego, whose district includes Border Field State Park, said in a statement that she wants more done immediately to address the fence's environmental impacts."Many people, including myself, expressed strong concerns about the border fence and the implications of exempting the construction of the fence from environmental laws," Davis said.
"Unfortunately, those concerns are becoming a reality. I hope the Department of Homeland Security will continue to work with Congress and local officials in finding an immediate solution and work toward a permanent one."
A representative of an environmental group that opposed the fence because of concerns about erosion said its construction reinforced the reasons for his opposition. Jim Peugh, conservation chairman of the San Diego Audubon Society, said he hopes the fence serves as an example of why environmental laws should never be waived.
"The idea of building something without seeing how you're going to maintain it -- it's just going to fail," Peugh said. "That's an insane thing to do. And this project proves that beyond a doubt."
http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/articles/2009/10/22/environment/835borderfence102109.txt
October 21, 2009
by Rob Davis
Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2009 Had anyone else built this hillside near the U.S.-Mexico border, it would look nothing like it does. The barren hill would be alive with native plants, the earth would be solidly rooted and not a threat to tumble down into the Tijuana Estuary, a lush, 2,500-acre salt marsh that starts 600 feet away.
But along the newly constructed border fence near the Pacific Ocean in Border Field State Park, inch-thick tan clumps of seeds and mulch still blanket the ground. They haven't been watered, so no plants have grown.
Were it anyone else's project, state regulators would've required irrigation to ensure that plants grew. But the federal government is responsible for the $59 million effort to complete and reinforce 3.5 miles of border fence separating San Diego and Tijuana. The Department of Homeland Security exempted itself from eight federal laws and any related state laws that would have regulated the project's environmental impacts.
Because the project is exempt from the federal Clean Water Act, state water regulators have no jurisdiction.Homeland Security officials sought the waiver power in 2005 to accelerate fence construction in San Diego and across the Southwest, saying that national security needs trumped environmental concerns. That power has accelerated construction from San Diego to Brownsville, as the agency has waived laws across 550 miles of the border. To date, 633 miles of fence have been built at a cost of $2.4 billion.
The department made the same promise each time it waived laws like the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act: Though we're now exempt from federal and state environmental regulation, we're still committed to the environment.
But as construction continues across the Southwest, the project's impacts in Border Field State Park and in another federal reserve further east raise questions about the sincerity of the government's commitment.Clay Phillips, the California State Parks superintendent who oversees Border Field and the estuary, said that promise hasn't been fulfilled there. Mitigation of the fence's environmental impacts has "failed miserably," Phillips said.
Phillips worries that winter rains will wash soil off the hills into the nearby estuary he oversees, which is home to several sensitive species and already filling with sediment swept in from Tijuana. Sediment raises the level of the ground, stopping the twice-daily tidal flushing that keeps the wetlands wet.
Army Corps of Engineers contractors completed the fence separating San Diego and Tijuana in July.
They filled in the notorious cross-border canyon known as Smuggler's Gulch, added a second layer of steel fencing and built a road for Border Patrol vehicles running parallel to the fence. The gulch, once a deep canyon, is now filled with an earthen berm more than 100 feet tall.
Though native plant seeds were sprayed across the berm and other newly created hillsides in Border Field State Park, Phillips said the federal government never irrigated them. Only a handful of plants grew. Other hills have none.
"They sprayed it (with seed) and hoped for the best," Phillips said. "It was a waste. A token gesture."
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman, Jenny Burke, said the project was built to Caltrans' erosion standards. The agency will "monitor the situation and is considering other actions as required."
John Robertus, executive officer of the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board, the local water pollution police, said the project doesn't have all the safeguards his agency would've required. He said if the board had jurisdiction, it would've required temporary irrigation to ensure plants grew. Robertus said he, too, is concerned about the project's potential impacts on the estuary.
Fence construction has left a mark on other areas in San Diego County greater than what would've been allowed without the waiver. Further east in the federally protected Otay Mountain Wilderness, a road built along a new four-mile section of fence also left barren hills, said Joyce Schlachter, a wildlife biologist with the federal Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the area.
"When we get any rain, it's going to be an erosion nightmare," Schlachter said. Seeds have been sprayed there, too, but not watered, she said. No plants have grown.
The impacts on Otay Mountain stretch beyond possible erosion. Phalanxes of dump trucks going to work on the fence have rumbled up and down a dirt road, spreading clouds of dust as far as 30 feet away, blanketing Tecate cypress, a rare tree found only on three peaks in San Diego County. (Its range extends into Mexico.) The tree, a bushy evergreen, provides food for the Thorne's hairstreak butterfly, a rare thumbnail-sized insect that feeds only on the cypress and that has been suffering from too-frequent fires on the mountain.
Construction crews cut down more than 100 cypress that survived a massive 2003 wildfire to widen an existing road for construction vehicles, Schlachter said.If laws hadn't been waived, the Bureau would have required construction crews to minimize their impact on the trees, she said.
Homeland Security officials consulted with the Bureau, Schlachter said, then didn't follow all of its advice."When it came right down to it, they did what they wanted to do," Schlachter said. "And they knew they couldn't be stopped. We did not have control over it."
Kathy Williams, a San Diego State biology professor studying the butterfly, said the dust poses "potentially a really serious problem" for the Thorne's hairstreak and the cypress.Williams has reared a small number of Thorne's caterpillars on both dusty and clean leaves in her laboratory.
Results from the on-going experiment so far indicate that more caterpillars survived on clean leaves, she said.Before construction began last year, Williams said the roadside habitat looked much healthier. She saw more butterflies last year than she did this year, though she noted that population sizes vary annually.
"Now it's obviously degraded habitat," she said, noting that rainfall may help clean the leaves. "The appearance of the quality of the site is strikingly different."
Burke, the Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman, said the agency consulted with U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials about the Otay project and routinely wets the road to keep dust down. She said Customs and Border Protection will monitor the dust and maintain the roads "to their construction standard," and could periodically apply "dust-control agents," which include sap.
Those efforts haven't always worked well. Sap was sprayed on trees beyond the road's edge, Schlachter said. Dust stuck on top of the sap, she said, making the trees' survival questionable. "They're creating more risk to the plants," she said. "That's an issue."
On at least one occasion, crews didn't water the road -- even though they had the necessary equipment on hand. One morning in June, a water truck escorted dump trucks to the work site but didn't spray any water. As the trucks wound through the wilderness past Tecate cypress, choking clouds of dust followed.
U.S. Rep. Susan Davis, D-San Diego, whose district includes Border Field State Park, said in a statement that she wants more done immediately to address the fence's environmental impacts."Many people, including myself, expressed strong concerns about the border fence and the implications of exempting the construction of the fence from environmental laws," Davis said.
"Unfortunately, those concerns are becoming a reality. I hope the Department of Homeland Security will continue to work with Congress and local officials in finding an immediate solution and work toward a permanent one."
A representative of an environmental group that opposed the fence because of concerns about erosion said its construction reinforced the reasons for his opposition. Jim Peugh, conservation chairman of the San Diego Audubon Society, said he hopes the fence serves as an example of why environmental laws should never be waived.
"The idea of building something without seeing how you're going to maintain it -- it's just going to fail," Peugh said. "That's an insane thing to do. And this project proves that beyond a doubt."
http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/articles/2009/10/22/environment/835borderfence102109.txt
Friday, July 10, 2009
Ms. Napolitano: Tear Down The Walls
NBC San Diego
July 8, 2009
by R. Stickney
July 8, 2009
by R. Stickney
There’s no other place like it. It’s a place where officials have met; where religious groups can gather. If it’s lost, supporters say there will be no place on the U.S.-Mexico border where ordinary people can meet face-to-face without checkpoints or guard shacks.
In an open letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, the Friends of Friendship Park are hoping to restore public access to the park area along the border between San Diego and Tijuana.
The area served as a meeting place for decades until the Department of Homeland Security under Michael Chertoff built several barriers. The belief was that a simple fence separating the two countries was a threat to U.S. security.
Since then, the coalition of community groups has been fighting to have access to the area restored. On Tuesday, the group sent a letter signed by over 70 community-based organizations to Secretary Napolitano.
John Fanestil, a member of the leadership team of Friends of Friendship Park, said they're beginning to see some movement.
“It would be a real disaster if we reduce the border to a battle zone," Fanestil said. "There must be room for friendship on the U.S.-Mexico border.”
Enrique Morones, with the Border Angels said he is greatly encouraged by recent discussions between activists, community groups and government agencies. “We are a coalition made up of people from all walks of life,” he said Wednesday. “Friendship has no borders.”
The group has even gotten the support of California State Attorney General Jerry Brown who is interested in restoring public access to land owned by the state.
http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/Ms-Napolitano-Tear-Down-The-Walls.html
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