The Brownsville Herald
May 3, 2014
by Ty Johnson
Among the thick brush on the American bank of the Rio Grande just south of the Santa Rosalia Cemetery, there is a concrete slab clearly visible from the dirt road frequented by U.S. Border Patrol vehicles.
A step toward it is a step toward Mexico.
From that slab, a well-worn path cuts through the tall grass leading to the water’s edge.
The path leads to a dam made of concrete blocks — there is an irrigation pump nearby — and provides an easy, dry crossing over the river and across the U.S. border, which is, in most places in Texas, the midpoint of the river.
The river is narrow and the water level is low, making an illegal crossing either way a short, dry skip from concrete block to concrete block.
“It’s an obvious place to cross,” says Pamela Taylor, whose house is a short walk to the east.
She’s lived at that house, which today stands between the border fence and the river, since 1946 and remembers a time when workers would cross the border freely, some pitching camp and sharing with her their tortillas. However, she said she’s never seen anything close to the types of illegal crossings she has witnessed recently.
“The situation now is so different,” she said. “They used to come in twos and threes. Now they come in 10s and 20s.”
Shortly after returning from an Easter holiday she learned she had “just missed it” from a neighbor.
“They just got 20 or 30 of them on your back patio,” she remembers him telling her of the apprehended immigrants arrested on her property.
Gone are the days of braceros and tortillas, she noted. Someone told her those arrested had also attempted to break into her home.
“It’s getting worse in this specific area, for some reason,” she said.
And it’s not just her who is noticing the influx.
RISING ACTIVITY
U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions in the Rio Grande Valley this fiscal year are up nearly two-thirds compared to last year, according to the agency’s RGV Sector spokesman Daniel Tirado.
Tirado said Friday that agents in his sector had made in excess of 125,000 such arrests since October.
Those numbers have not gone unheeded, as U.S. Customs and Border Protection has worked over the past two months to shore up its personnel depth in the area, putting more boots on the ground in the region of the country with the most illegal crossings.
A personnel shift announced a little more than a month ago brought more than 100 Border Patrol agents from Arizona and California, and another 54 agents arrived in McAllen last week to help combat the growing number of people crossing illegally into United States in South Texas.
While Border Patrol sectors farther west have seen declines in the number of apprehensions, the Valley has seen such statistics skyrocket, likely due to an increase in the number of undocumented immigrants from Central and South America who cross in the Valley.
“The Rio Grande Valley is the shortest point of travel from South and Central Mexico to the United States,” Tirado said, volunteering that as one of many factors in the regional spike. “Most of the detainees are from South and Central America.”
As the bulk of illegal crossings has shifted eastward over the past two years, Border Patrol has begun concentrating its agents in the Valley, as well.
But if the higher number of agents leads to even higher levels of apprehensions — as it has appeared to so far — it could signal that immigrants are so intent on crossing in the Valley that they’ll attempt it despite the increased Border Patrol presence.
That new collective resolve may be what makes the situation seem so different for Taylor, but she also has tangible evidence that things have changed.
CLOSE ENCOUNTER
Taylor had been planting cacti along the dirt road that runs in front of her house when she heard it coming. She gave the path a wide berth and figured it was someone smuggling drugs.
She saw an SUV barreling down the road at a high rate of speed being chased by Border Patrol.
“I thought he was running dope,” she said.
It’s the third high-speed chase she’s seen in the past month.
Before that she had witnessed none in nearly seven decades.
“We had never had a high-speed chase,” she said.
Taylor is sure this new breed of activity is due to the increased number of immigrants trying to cross in the Valley.
“It’s unbelievable the amount of people that come across,” she said.
Taylor wants the fence gone and she wants more agents, but she said government representatives haven’t responded to her letters detailing what it’s like living in the no-man’s land the United States created by putting up the fence.
She continues to advocate for the end of the fence project, but she is clearly skeptical that anyone will listen.
“They have no idea what’s going on down here,” she said of the politicians in Washington.
http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/local/article_aa94c2d4-d339-11e3-a0b7-001a4bcf6878.html
Showing posts with label Brownsville. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brownsville. Show all posts
Saturday, May 3, 2014
Thursday, April 10, 2014
Local professor uses settlement for scholarships
Brownsville Herald
April 10, 2014
by Melissa Montoya
A battle waged against the federal government has paid off for Eloisa G. Tamez, a professor at the University of Texas at Brownsville.
One of Brownsville’s most vocal opponents to the border fence, Tamez took the federal government to task when it tried to condemn her land to build a swath of border fence there.
The federal government is expected to pay Tamez $56,000 for the land it took from her, according to court documents. Tamez said she will be establishing a scholarship for students at the university with a portion of her settlement.
The scholarship fund launches on May 3, her parent’s 80th wedding anniversary. Her parents are deceased, but Tamez said she wanted to honor them this way because, even though they left school at an early age, they were strong proponents of education.
“The reason this is important to me and for the community to know and everyone else to know, including the federal government, is that land was taken from me by the government — land that had been part of the outcome of how my mother and my father and grandparents before them carved a life for us because they were farmers,” Tamez said.
The scholarship fund ensures her parents will be remembered and makes a good situation out of a bad one. The scholarships are for graduate nursing students where Tamez teaches as an associate professor in the College of Nursing.
Tamez is one of a group of people who fought the seizure of their land for the fence. She said the government was reluctant to give information on why the border fence needed to be built.
“It was almost like we weren’t worth receiving an explanation,” Tamez said. “We are supposed to be quiet about it. I wanted to know why... That’s what education does for you; it helps you to verbalize.”
The land in dispute was .026 acres along the Rio Grande Valley. Tamez and her family have lived on the land since 1767 when a Spanish land grant gifted them the property. The litigation had been pending since 2008.
The protracted legal battle was worth it, Tamez said.
“I told them you can take my land, you can build a walk across it, but you’re not going to take my voice,” Tamez said.
Tamez is still uncertain how much money will go into the scholarship fund, but it needs to reach $20,000 in order for it to be ready for distribution. She said she hopes students will benefit from what was a bad situation.
“This converts something negative into a positive outcome for this community,” Tamez said.
http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/local/article_ce9ac5f0-c120-11e3-a221-001a4bcf6878.html
April 10, 2014
by Melissa Montoya
A battle waged against the federal government has paid off for Eloisa G. Tamez, a professor at the University of Texas at Brownsville.
One of Brownsville’s most vocal opponents to the border fence, Tamez took the federal government to task when it tried to condemn her land to build a swath of border fence there.
The federal government is expected to pay Tamez $56,000 for the land it took from her, according to court documents. Tamez said she will be establishing a scholarship for students at the university with a portion of her settlement.
The scholarship fund launches on May 3, her parent’s 80th wedding anniversary. Her parents are deceased, but Tamez said she wanted to honor them this way because, even though they left school at an early age, they were strong proponents of education.
“The reason this is important to me and for the community to know and everyone else to know, including the federal government, is that land was taken from me by the government — land that had been part of the outcome of how my mother and my father and grandparents before them carved a life for us because they were farmers,” Tamez said.
The scholarship fund ensures her parents will be remembered and makes a good situation out of a bad one. The scholarships are for graduate nursing students where Tamez teaches as an associate professor in the College of Nursing.
Tamez is one of a group of people who fought the seizure of their land for the fence. She said the government was reluctant to give information on why the border fence needed to be built.
“It was almost like we weren’t worth receiving an explanation,” Tamez said. “We are supposed to be quiet about it. I wanted to know why... That’s what education does for you; it helps you to verbalize.”
The land in dispute was .026 acres along the Rio Grande Valley. Tamez and her family have lived on the land since 1767 when a Spanish land grant gifted them the property. The litigation had been pending since 2008.
The protracted legal battle was worth it, Tamez said.
“I told them you can take my land, you can build a walk across it, but you’re not going to take my voice,” Tamez said.
Tamez is still uncertain how much money will go into the scholarship fund, but it needs to reach $20,000 in order for it to be ready for distribution. She said she hopes students will benefit from what was a bad situation.
“This converts something negative into a positive outcome for this community,” Tamez said.
http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/local/article_ce9ac5f0-c120-11e3-a221-001a4bcf6878.html
Friday, November 29, 2013
Bishop Flores: Border wall is a 'psychological scar' for South Texas
Rio Grande Guardian
November 28, 2013
by Steve Taylor
BROWNSVILLE, November 28 - The border wall has caused a psychological scar for the communities of South Texas, says Bishop Daniel Flores of the Catholic Diocese of Brownsville.
Flores said he can see the border wall from his office in Brownsville. He said the border wall is just a few blocks south of the basilica in San Juan, and when he gives mass in Escobares, he can walk about 150 feet from the church and he is at the border wall. “As a rule, the bishops in the United States did not think the fence was a good idea. Personally, myself and my family have roots on both sides of the border. Most families here have that. It is kind of a psychological scar across the heart of a very culturally rich place,” Flores said. Asked by a reporter to elaborate on why the border wall is a psychological scar, Flores said: “For 150, 200, years, the relationship here in the Valley and further up the river the relationship between Texas and Mexico has been a familial one. Things have changed somewhat radically over the last 25 years or so. But the fence in a certain way becomes a symbol that, that these are two worlds that cannot have any connection,” Flores said. “It has a symbolic value that I think is unpleasant to contemplate because a scar is a scar. It cuts through the middle and it separates. A fence separates whereas the river is respectful; it is a respectful, more fluid thing, respectful of two independent nations. Most people who live on the other side of the border are very happy to live in Mexico. They don’t particularly want to live in the United States; nice place to visit, I wouldn’t want to live there. “For whatever reason, people sometimes feel they have to come but it becomes a sort of sign of an inability to control and that is why it becomes kind of a psychological sort of wound, it does. It is there. Thanks be to God, we still have a lot of movement back and forth, all the bridges along the way. And families still have their relationships and things like that but it did not always exist there and we pray God one day it won’t have to exist there. That is the way I would put it.” Flores spoke about immigration and border security with reporters on Friday while unveiling a letter signed by 13 border bishops from northern Mexico, Texas and New Mexico who are concerned about the plight of families that have been separated due to flawed immigration policies. Click here to read both the English and Spanish versions of the letter from the border bishops. “This letter in particular is directed to the Church, that we should be particularly conscious of how to help families that are suffering, in many cases families that are facing separation because part of the family is documented and part of the family is not,” Flores said. “The Church has always had a responsibility to open itself up to the service of those who are suffering and the families are now suffering right now. So, parishes, social service organizations, things like that, all of our presence in the community should be particularly attentive to the needs of immigrant families.” Flores said the letter is also directed at the “political order,” those who are responsible for passing laws. He said they should not forget about immigration reform and not to let this moment pass. “I just think that this is something we all need to do: to make known that this is a human reality that needs to be addressed in an orderly way by those responsible for governing and that it would be a failure of governance if this were not addressed in a timely and just way.” The border bishops and Texas Catholic Conference have sent letters pushing for immigration reform in the past. Asked what difference the new letter might make, Flores said: “Yes, it is true, we have been saying this for a long time, the bishops of the United States have been saying it, the bishops of this region have been saying it; he bishops of the Americas have been saying it. We pray for it, we work for it but in a certain way we just do not tire of saying it because ultimately those responsible for governing have to take the responsibility to craft a reasonable, more just, system that is respectful of the needs of families. That’s what the Church will continue to talk about. We cannot sit back and complain about how it is that the family is falling apart in our society and yet tolerate a system of law that has as its goal the separation of families.” Asked if the Texas Catholic Conference has met with the Texas congressional delegation on the issue of immigration reform, Flores said: “The Texas Catholic Conference keeps in contact with our delegation. I meet with our own representatives, in the Valley you cross paths very easily and this is an issue I always try to raise with them. In general I think the congressional delegation along the border is attuned to this issue. Whenever you pass a law in the United States it requires a consensus of the whole country and there are parts of the country where there is more resistance to the possibility.” By way of example, Flores cited the Senate bill on immigration reform, which included much tougher border enforcement. “For the bishops this was very difficult because, frankly, to spend that much more money on a border that is already militarized in a certain way, in our view does not help the situation. Speaking as pastors, it is problematic. How much more can you militarize the border?”
http://www.riograndeguardian.com/borderlife_story.asp?story_no=25
November 28, 2013
by Steve Taylor
BROWNSVILLE, November 28 - The border wall has caused a psychological scar for the communities of South Texas, says Bishop Daniel Flores of the Catholic Diocese of Brownsville.
Flores said he can see the border wall from his office in Brownsville. He said the border wall is just a few blocks south of the basilica in San Juan, and when he gives mass in Escobares, he can walk about 150 feet from the church and he is at the border wall. “As a rule, the bishops in the United States did not think the fence was a good idea. Personally, myself and my family have roots on both sides of the border. Most families here have that. It is kind of a psychological scar across the heart of a very culturally rich place,” Flores said. Asked by a reporter to elaborate on why the border wall is a psychological scar, Flores said: “For 150, 200, years, the relationship here in the Valley and further up the river the relationship between Texas and Mexico has been a familial one. Things have changed somewhat radically over the last 25 years or so. But the fence in a certain way becomes a symbol that, that these are two worlds that cannot have any connection,” Flores said. “It has a symbolic value that I think is unpleasant to contemplate because a scar is a scar. It cuts through the middle and it separates. A fence separates whereas the river is respectful; it is a respectful, more fluid thing, respectful of two independent nations. Most people who live on the other side of the border are very happy to live in Mexico. They don’t particularly want to live in the United States; nice place to visit, I wouldn’t want to live there. “For whatever reason, people sometimes feel they have to come but it becomes a sort of sign of an inability to control and that is why it becomes kind of a psychological sort of wound, it does. It is there. Thanks be to God, we still have a lot of movement back and forth, all the bridges along the way. And families still have their relationships and things like that but it did not always exist there and we pray God one day it won’t have to exist there. That is the way I would put it.” Flores spoke about immigration and border security with reporters on Friday while unveiling a letter signed by 13 border bishops from northern Mexico, Texas and New Mexico who are concerned about the plight of families that have been separated due to flawed immigration policies. Click here to read both the English and Spanish versions of the letter from the border bishops. “This letter in particular is directed to the Church, that we should be particularly conscious of how to help families that are suffering, in many cases families that are facing separation because part of the family is documented and part of the family is not,” Flores said. “The Church has always had a responsibility to open itself up to the service of those who are suffering and the families are now suffering right now. So, parishes, social service organizations, things like that, all of our presence in the community should be particularly attentive to the needs of immigrant families.” Flores said the letter is also directed at the “political order,” those who are responsible for passing laws. He said they should not forget about immigration reform and not to let this moment pass. “I just think that this is something we all need to do: to make known that this is a human reality that needs to be addressed in an orderly way by those responsible for governing and that it would be a failure of governance if this were not addressed in a timely and just way.” The border bishops and Texas Catholic Conference have sent letters pushing for immigration reform in the past. Asked what difference the new letter might make, Flores said: “Yes, it is true, we have been saying this for a long time, the bishops of the United States have been saying it, the bishops of this region have been saying it; he bishops of the Americas have been saying it. We pray for it, we work for it but in a certain way we just do not tire of saying it because ultimately those responsible for governing have to take the responsibility to craft a reasonable, more just, system that is respectful of the needs of families. That’s what the Church will continue to talk about. We cannot sit back and complain about how it is that the family is falling apart in our society and yet tolerate a system of law that has as its goal the separation of families.” Asked if the Texas Catholic Conference has met with the Texas congressional delegation on the issue of immigration reform, Flores said: “The Texas Catholic Conference keeps in contact with our delegation. I meet with our own representatives, in the Valley you cross paths very easily and this is an issue I always try to raise with them. In general I think the congressional delegation along the border is attuned to this issue. Whenever you pass a law in the United States it requires a consensus of the whole country and there are parts of the country where there is more resistance to the possibility.” By way of example, Flores cited the Senate bill on immigration reform, which included much tougher border enforcement. “For the bishops this was very difficult because, frankly, to spend that much more money on a border that is already militarized in a certain way, in our view does not help the situation. Speaking as pastors, it is problematic. How much more can you militarize the border?”
http://www.riograndeguardian.com/borderlife_story.asp?story_no=25
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
Ownership questions arise in 21 border fence cases
Brownsville Herald
September 30, 2013
by Mark Reagan
Five years after the U.S. government seized land along the U.S.-Mexico border between Los Indios and Brownsville for the border fence, it still isn’t sure who all the landowners were and who needs to be compensated.
Last Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen had 21 border fence condemnation cases on his docket after the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of Texas, requested a status conference hearing to try to sift through some confusion in the cases.
The land involved in the cases is within Section 0-14 of the border fence, immediately to the east of the Los Indios Port of Entry, court documents show.
“The United States requests this status conference with the Court for the purpose of presenting its proposal to 1) identify the actual owners of the condemned tracts and the yet to be filed tracts in 0-14; 2) consolidate the tracts so that the entirety of the condemned land in question is in one case; and 3) sever the tracts from the consolidated case based on ownership boundaries in order to resolve title issues, just compensation and close the 0-14 cases on the Court’s docket,” court documents indicate.
Hanen ordered the USAO to draft a proposed order and have landowners and attorneys review it before presenting it to the court, according to docket text.
An attorney for one of the parties named in three of the suits agreed to speak to The Brownsville Herald about the hearing.
Lance Alan Kirby, who represents Robert B. Duncan in three of the cases, said the USAO used the status conference to explain to Hanen why the cases, most of which originated in 2008, were taking so long to resolve.
“His (USAO attorney E. Paxton Warner) explanation was that originally they were going to put the fence in a different place, but the berm wouldn’t support concrete so instead they had to use irrigation district property, which they purchased from the district but it turns out they didn’t own the property,” Kirby said of the irrigation district. “It was owned by landowners adjacent to it.”
Kirby said the Cameron County Irrigation District only had an easement, which was recently discovered and resulted in a title mess that the USAO is trying to clear up so it can proceed with condemnation actions and just compensation.
A spokeswoman with the USAO confirmed what Kirby told The Brownsville Herald.
“The judge’s take is he is ready to see this move and the landowners need to be paid for the condemnation since it’s been five years since the government has taken the property,” Kirby said. “The fence is there.”
He said that basically the USAO has to figure out who owns what and how much to compensate the landowners.
“They filed all these condemnation cases in 2008 because Paxton said they had a mandate to complete the border wall by 2008, and so they used appraisal district records to file condemnation actions instead of having the actual title work,” Kirby said. “Now they are getting title work and some people alleged to be owners are not owners and some of them, you know, there are new people still being added to the suit that they didn’t know about. So really what they have is a title mess that they are trying to clear up.”
The docket text also indicates that the court “has given the parties in the land condemnation cases, where the City of Brownsville is named, two weeks to write a letter if they intend to seek his (Hanen) recusal.”
The Brownsville Herald reached out to the city attorney’s office to request comment and was directed to file a public information request via the city secretary, Estela Von Hatten.
In an email responding to The Herald’s request for comment, Von Hatten replied: “In response to your public information request received on Sept. 24, 2013, the City has filed no motions to recuse the Honorable United States District Court Judge. Consequently, there is no document that would be responsive to your request.”
The Herald did not request documents so it’s not clear whether the city will seek to recuse Hanen.
As for the USAO’s pending proposed order on the 21 cases, Kirby said he wasn’t sure when it will be filed.
“They didn’t state when they are expected to get it,” he said of the proposed order. “So that’s something we’re curious as to when they are going to get it.”
http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/local/article_c024de7a-28af-11e3-bd3a-0019bb30f31a.html
September 30, 2013
by Mark Reagan
Five years after the U.S. government seized land along the U.S.-Mexico border between Los Indios and Brownsville for the border fence, it still isn’t sure who all the landowners were and who needs to be compensated.
Last Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen had 21 border fence condemnation cases on his docket after the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of Texas, requested a status conference hearing to try to sift through some confusion in the cases.
The land involved in the cases is within Section 0-14 of the border fence, immediately to the east of the Los Indios Port of Entry, court documents show.
“The United States requests this status conference with the Court for the purpose of presenting its proposal to 1) identify the actual owners of the condemned tracts and the yet to be filed tracts in 0-14; 2) consolidate the tracts so that the entirety of the condemned land in question is in one case; and 3) sever the tracts from the consolidated case based on ownership boundaries in order to resolve title issues, just compensation and close the 0-14 cases on the Court’s docket,” court documents indicate.
Hanen ordered the USAO to draft a proposed order and have landowners and attorneys review it before presenting it to the court, according to docket text.
An attorney for one of the parties named in three of the suits agreed to speak to The Brownsville Herald about the hearing.
Lance Alan Kirby, who represents Robert B. Duncan in three of the cases, said the USAO used the status conference to explain to Hanen why the cases, most of which originated in 2008, were taking so long to resolve.
“His (USAO attorney E. Paxton Warner) explanation was that originally they were going to put the fence in a different place, but the berm wouldn’t support concrete so instead they had to use irrigation district property, which they purchased from the district but it turns out they didn’t own the property,” Kirby said of the irrigation district. “It was owned by landowners adjacent to it.”
Kirby said the Cameron County Irrigation District only had an easement, which was recently discovered and resulted in a title mess that the USAO is trying to clear up so it can proceed with condemnation actions and just compensation.
A spokeswoman with the USAO confirmed what Kirby told The Brownsville Herald.
“The judge’s take is he is ready to see this move and the landowners need to be paid for the condemnation since it’s been five years since the government has taken the property,” Kirby said. “The fence is there.”
He said that basically the USAO has to figure out who owns what and how much to compensate the landowners.
“They filed all these condemnation cases in 2008 because Paxton said they had a mandate to complete the border wall by 2008, and so they used appraisal district records to file condemnation actions instead of having the actual title work,” Kirby said. “Now they are getting title work and some people alleged to be owners are not owners and some of them, you know, there are new people still being added to the suit that they didn’t know about. So really what they have is a title mess that they are trying to clear up.”
The docket text also indicates that the court “has given the parties in the land condemnation cases, where the City of Brownsville is named, two weeks to write a letter if they intend to seek his (Hanen) recusal.”
The Brownsville Herald reached out to the city attorney’s office to request comment and was directed to file a public information request via the city secretary, Estela Von Hatten.
In an email responding to The Herald’s request for comment, Von Hatten replied: “In response to your public information request received on Sept. 24, 2013, the City has filed no motions to recuse the Honorable United States District Court Judge. Consequently, there is no document that would be responsive to your request.”
The Herald did not request documents so it’s not clear whether the city will seek to recuse Hanen.
As for the USAO’s pending proposed order on the 21 cases, Kirby said he wasn’t sure when it will be filed.
“They didn’t state when they are expected to get it,” he said of the proposed order. “So that’s something we’re curious as to when they are going to get it.”
http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/local/article_c024de7a-28af-11e3-bd3a-0019bb30f31a.html
Monday, October 15, 2012
Landowners say they were shortchanged in deals to make way for US-Mexico border fence
Associated Press / Washington Post
October 15, 2012
by Ramit Plushnick-Masti and Christopher Sherman
BROWNSVILLE, Texas — When the federal government began seizing private land along the U.S.-Mexico border to build a towering fence, Teofilo Flores was offered $1,650 for a slice of his backyard.
At first, it seemed like a square deal. But then the cotton grower learned that his neighbor had received 40 times more for a similar piece of land. And another nearby farmer pocketed $1 million in exchange for his cooperation.
Since 2008, hundreds of landowners on the border have sought fair prices for property that was condemned to make way for the fence. But many of them received initial offers that were far below market value. And dozens accepted those amounts without seeking any legal help, only to discover neighbors had won far larger settlements after hiring attorneys.
“You get angry. But that’s the way of life, I guess,” Flores said of the bigger payouts won by other landowners. “You know, people that got more money can afford to do more things.”
The disparities raise questions about the Justice Department’s treatment of hundreds of landowners from Texas to California who couldn’t afford lawyers and must now live with a massive steel barrier running through their farms, ranches and yards.
The wide variation in price “underscores how unfair these original offers were,” said attorney Corinna Spencer-Scheurich, who represented poor and middle-class landowners when the seizures began.
The federal government “is using its power, its clout, to try to take land from people at a price that is unfair. I think that is clear based on the settlements,” she said.
Federal attorneys say the initial offers represented only a starting amount that would permit the seizures to begin and could be adjusted later.
In 2006, Congress ordered construction of 670 miles of heavy metal fence to help curb illegal immigration. The project required landowners on the border to give up property that ranged from the size of a driveway to much larger farms and commercial lots.
The Constitution requires the government to provide compensation whenever it takes property for a public project using a process known as eminent domain.
About 400 landowners have been affected. Most are in Texas, because that state has more private property along the border than do New Mexico, Arizona or California, where much of the border land is already in federal hands.
An Associated Press analysis of nearly 300 Texas land cases found that most of the settlement money went to a small group of owners, all of whom had attorneys. The legal help appeared to pay off: Of nearly $15 million that has been paid out, 85 percent has been awarded to just a third of the property holders.
There are other reasons for the larger settlements beyond the advantage of legal representation. Many of the best-compensated landowners oversee large citrus groves or other commercial operations on land that is inherently more valuable.
They also stand to lose more from the rows of 18-foot rust-colored steel posts that now divide their land. Farmers, for instance, have complained that the fence slows down their work because large agricultural machines now have to drive around the bulky barriers.
Most of the fence construction was completed two years ago, but the government is still negotiating for land surrounding the project.
One recent case involved 8 acres at the entrance to a sable palm grove managed by The Nature Conservancy. The government initially offered $114,000, but in August the matter was settled for nearly $1 million.
Most of the fence construction was completed two years ago, but the government is still negotiating for land surrounding the project.
One recent case involved 8 acres at the entrance to a sable palm grove managed by The Nature Conservancy. The government initially offered $114,000, but in August the matter was settled for nearly $1 million.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/landowners-say-they-were-shortchanged-in-deals-to-make-way-for-us-mexico-border-fence/2012/10/15/84de16fe-16a1-11e2-a346-f24efc680b8d_story.html
October 15, 2012
by Ramit Plushnick-Masti and Christopher Sherman
BROWNSVILLE, Texas — When the federal government began seizing private land along the U.S.-Mexico border to build a towering fence, Teofilo Flores was offered $1,650 for a slice of his backyard.
At first, it seemed like a square deal. But then the cotton grower learned that his neighbor had received 40 times more for a similar piece of land. And another nearby farmer pocketed $1 million in exchange for his cooperation.
Since 2008, hundreds of landowners on the border have sought fair prices for property that was condemned to make way for the fence. But many of them received initial offers that were far below market value. And dozens accepted those amounts without seeking any legal help, only to discover neighbors had won far larger settlements after hiring attorneys.
“You get angry. But that’s the way of life, I guess,” Flores said of the bigger payouts won by other landowners. “You know, people that got more money can afford to do more things.”
The disparities raise questions about the Justice Department’s treatment of hundreds of landowners from Texas to California who couldn’t afford lawyers and must now live with a massive steel barrier running through their farms, ranches and yards.
The wide variation in price “underscores how unfair these original offers were,” said attorney Corinna Spencer-Scheurich, who represented poor and middle-class landowners when the seizures began.
The federal government “is using its power, its clout, to try to take land from people at a price that is unfair. I think that is clear based on the settlements,” she said.
Federal attorneys say the initial offers represented only a starting amount that would permit the seizures to begin and could be adjusted later.
In 2006, Congress ordered construction of 670 miles of heavy metal fence to help curb illegal immigration. The project required landowners on the border to give up property that ranged from the size of a driveway to much larger farms and commercial lots.
The Constitution requires the government to provide compensation whenever it takes property for a public project using a process known as eminent domain.
About 400 landowners have been affected. Most are in Texas, because that state has more private property along the border than do New Mexico, Arizona or California, where much of the border land is already in federal hands.
An Associated Press analysis of nearly 300 Texas land cases found that most of the settlement money went to a small group of owners, all of whom had attorneys. The legal help appeared to pay off: Of nearly $15 million that has been paid out, 85 percent has been awarded to just a third of the property holders.
There are other reasons for the larger settlements beyond the advantage of legal representation. Many of the best-compensated landowners oversee large citrus groves or other commercial operations on land that is inherently more valuable.
They also stand to lose more from the rows of 18-foot rust-colored steel posts that now divide their land. Farmers, for instance, have complained that the fence slows down their work because large agricultural machines now have to drive around the bulky barriers.
Most of the fence construction was completed two years ago, but the government is still negotiating for land surrounding the project.
One recent case involved 8 acres at the entrance to a sable palm grove managed by The Nature Conservancy. The government initially offered $114,000, but in August the matter was settled for nearly $1 million.
Most of the fence construction was completed two years ago, but the government is still negotiating for land surrounding the project.
One recent case involved 8 acres at the entrance to a sable palm grove managed by The Nature Conservancy. The government initially offered $114,000, but in August the matter was settled for nearly $1 million.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/landowners-say-they-were-shortchanged-in-deals-to-make-way-for-us-mexico-border-fence/2012/10/15/84de16fe-16a1-11e2-a346-f24efc680b8d_story.html
Monday, October 8, 2012
‘Angels’ search for migrants’ bodies
The Brownsville Herald
October 7, 2012
by Ildefonso Ortiz
FALFURRIAS — Miles and miles of brush filled with hidden dangers, dehydration and high temperatures line the road awaiting many undocumented immigrants who try to circumvent U.S. Border Patrol checkpoints in Falfurrias and Sarita.
The trek has led many of those migrants to graves that line the municipal cemetery in Falfurrias.Small metal plaques that read “unknown male remains” or “unknown female remains” mark the end of the journey for many immigrants and leave their families back home with questions about their fate.
“The bodies here are just the ones that have been found and most of the time they are found only by accident,” said Rafael Hernandez, the director of Angeles Del Desierto, a nonprofit that searches inhospitable areas looking for stranded migrants — and their bodies.
While the group is based in California, the repeated calls that it receives about migrants traveling through the Rio Grande Valley prompted Hernandez to make the drive east in an effort to establish the networks needed to have his group search the areas around the checkpoint.
“I have gotten about 200 reports of missing migrants that were traveling through this area,” he said. “Unlike California or Arizona, most of this land is private property so we have to make contacts with the ranch owners so they will let us search through their property.”
Angeles Del Desierto attempts bringing closure to families, said Hernandez, who arrived with a list of missing migrants he hopes to find or rescue.
In 2012, Border Patrol has rescued about 300 immigrants and recovered more than 150 bodies in the Rio Grande Valley sector to date, said agency spokesman Enrique Mendiola.
“On top of the extreme weather, you have the dangers presented by the wildlife out there: coyotes, wild pings and rattlesnakes are just some of them,” Mendiola said, adding that immigrants also suffer from dehydration. “They are not able to carry enough water with them and if they do find water it is from a contaminated source.”
During his trip to the Valley, Hernandez trekked through one of the ranches searching for migrants and trying to survey the area to determine the dangers that migrants face. The biggest obstacles Hernandez faced were the “no trespassing” signs posted at many ranches.
With a backpack filled with emergency supplies and a cell phone, Hernandez walked for several miles searching for bodies or migrants in need of help. A cell phone is the best survival tool because migrants can dial 911 if they need help and authorities can pinpoint their location for rescue effort, he said.
“Sadly enough we were not able to find any migrants,” Hernandez said.
“We were, however, able to identify the body of a 12-year-old boy we had been looking for.”
Elmer Calinga Ceballos traveled from El Salvador to the U.S to seek a better life and reunite with his family; however, his journey ended on a table at the Elizondo Mortuary in Mission, where officials hadn’t been able to identify him.
Hernandez helped provide preliminary identification, which prompted the Salvadoran consulate to get involved and make arrangements to have the body sent home for burial.
When bodies turn up, the local sheriff’s office becomes involved.
Investigators at the Brooks County Sheriff’s Office have noted a sharp increase in the number of bodies discovered, said Chief Deputy Urbino “Benny” Martinez.
In 2010, deputies found 22 bodies. That figure had nearly tripled by 2011, when they found 64 bodies. But those numbers pale in comparison to the 95 bodies found so far this year.
Deputies find bodies at all stages of decomposition, including corpses that have been reduced to skeletal remains.
“This is a very sad case because these individuals are placed in the trust of unscrupulous individuals who will not hesitate to leave them to their fate,” Martinez said.
An additional danger is the predatory nature of the coyotes — guides — who sometimes sexually assault the women they’ve been paid to smuggle north, Martinez said, adding that his department is investigating five such cases.
“What makes it difficult to investigate is that many times all we have to go on is a nickname or a tattoo,” Martinez said. “The victim doesn’t know who that individual really is.”
Smugglers sometimes force illegal immigrants to carry drugs, leaving them exposed to federal prosecution.
“For the most part, they are hardworking people,” Martinez said. “The best choice would be for governments to have some way to fix this immigration problem so these individuals can travel in a humane fashion.”
http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/local/article_b9ad0ca4-10f3-11e2-a700-0019bb30f31a.html
October 7, 2012
by Ildefonso Ortiz
FALFURRIAS — Miles and miles of brush filled with hidden dangers, dehydration and high temperatures line the road awaiting many undocumented immigrants who try to circumvent U.S. Border Patrol checkpoints in Falfurrias and Sarita.
The trek has led many of those migrants to graves that line the municipal cemetery in Falfurrias.Small metal plaques that read “unknown male remains” or “unknown female remains” mark the end of the journey for many immigrants and leave their families back home with questions about their fate.
“The bodies here are just the ones that have been found and most of the time they are found only by accident,” said Rafael Hernandez, the director of Angeles Del Desierto, a nonprofit that searches inhospitable areas looking for stranded migrants — and their bodies.
While the group is based in California, the repeated calls that it receives about migrants traveling through the Rio Grande Valley prompted Hernandez to make the drive east in an effort to establish the networks needed to have his group search the areas around the checkpoint.
“I have gotten about 200 reports of missing migrants that were traveling through this area,” he said. “Unlike California or Arizona, most of this land is private property so we have to make contacts with the ranch owners so they will let us search through their property.”
Angeles Del Desierto attempts bringing closure to families, said Hernandez, who arrived with a list of missing migrants he hopes to find or rescue.
In 2012, Border Patrol has rescued about 300 immigrants and recovered more than 150 bodies in the Rio Grande Valley sector to date, said agency spokesman Enrique Mendiola.
“On top of the extreme weather, you have the dangers presented by the wildlife out there: coyotes, wild pings and rattlesnakes are just some of them,” Mendiola said, adding that immigrants also suffer from dehydration. “They are not able to carry enough water with them and if they do find water it is from a contaminated source.”
During his trip to the Valley, Hernandez trekked through one of the ranches searching for migrants and trying to survey the area to determine the dangers that migrants face. The biggest obstacles Hernandez faced were the “no trespassing” signs posted at many ranches.
With a backpack filled with emergency supplies and a cell phone, Hernandez walked for several miles searching for bodies or migrants in need of help. A cell phone is the best survival tool because migrants can dial 911 if they need help and authorities can pinpoint their location for rescue effort, he said.
“Sadly enough we were not able to find any migrants,” Hernandez said.
“We were, however, able to identify the body of a 12-year-old boy we had been looking for.”
Elmer Calinga Ceballos traveled from El Salvador to the U.S to seek a better life and reunite with his family; however, his journey ended on a table at the Elizondo Mortuary in Mission, where officials hadn’t been able to identify him.
Hernandez helped provide preliminary identification, which prompted the Salvadoran consulate to get involved and make arrangements to have the body sent home for burial.
When bodies turn up, the local sheriff’s office becomes involved.
Investigators at the Brooks County Sheriff’s Office have noted a sharp increase in the number of bodies discovered, said Chief Deputy Urbino “Benny” Martinez.
In 2010, deputies found 22 bodies. That figure had nearly tripled by 2011, when they found 64 bodies. But those numbers pale in comparison to the 95 bodies found so far this year.
Deputies find bodies at all stages of decomposition, including corpses that have been reduced to skeletal remains.
“This is a very sad case because these individuals are placed in the trust of unscrupulous individuals who will not hesitate to leave them to their fate,” Martinez said.
An additional danger is the predatory nature of the coyotes — guides — who sometimes sexually assault the women they’ve been paid to smuggle north, Martinez said, adding that his department is investigating five such cases.
“What makes it difficult to investigate is that many times all we have to go on is a nickname or a tattoo,” Martinez said. “The victim doesn’t know who that individual really is.”
Smugglers sometimes force illegal immigrants to carry drugs, leaving them exposed to federal prosecution.
“For the most part, they are hardworking people,” Martinez said. “The best choice would be for governments to have some way to fix this immigration problem so these individuals can travel in a humane fashion.”
http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/local/article_b9ad0ca4-10f3-11e2-a700-0019bb30f31a.html
Monday, June 4, 2012
Brownsville to recoup fence land, continue project
Brownsville Herald
June 3, 2012
by Emma Perez-Trevino
The city of Brownsville and attorneys for private trusts told U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen Wednesday that their negotiations are progressing regarding land that the federal government condemned to make way for placement of a temporary border fence.
The United States took possession of 15.919 acres of land from the city in 2009, but an agreement that the parties reached contains provisions that the land would revert to the city upon construction of a new levee. The fence would then be moved to the new levee.
The fence was built on what is known as the East Loop levee between the Gateway International Bridge and the B&M International Bridge.
When the city constructs a new levee, the property would revert to the city to allow it to complete the East Loop, which would carry heavy truck traffic from the international bridges to the Port of Brownsville. City officials said at the time that the land also is vital to the contemplated development of the historic downtown area.
Under the agreement reached with the government, the city would be responsible for designing and constructing the replacement levee and barriers, and the temporary fencing would be removed by the government if funding were available.
After the agreement was reached, however, it was learned that the Browne trusts have an interest in some of the property. Their attorney Daniel L. Rentfro Jr. advised Hanen that they are not contesting the agreement between the city and the government. Rentfro said that they have been negotiating with the city and Cameron County and are resolving issues of just compensation.
The government’s attorney Daniel David Hu told Hanen that this is “obviously the city’s business.”
The parties will keep the court informed as they continue to work toward reversion of the property to the city.
http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/articles/land-140991-fence-city.html
June 3, 2012
by Emma Perez-Trevino
The city of Brownsville and attorneys for private trusts told U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen Wednesday that their negotiations are progressing regarding land that the federal government condemned to make way for placement of a temporary border fence.
The United States took possession of 15.919 acres of land from the city in 2009, but an agreement that the parties reached contains provisions that the land would revert to the city upon construction of a new levee. The fence would then be moved to the new levee.
The fence was built on what is known as the East Loop levee between the Gateway International Bridge and the B&M International Bridge.
When the city constructs a new levee, the property would revert to the city to allow it to complete the East Loop, which would carry heavy truck traffic from the international bridges to the Port of Brownsville. City officials said at the time that the land also is vital to the contemplated development of the historic downtown area.
Under the agreement reached with the government, the city would be responsible for designing and constructing the replacement levee and barriers, and the temporary fencing would be removed by the government if funding were available.
After the agreement was reached, however, it was learned that the Browne trusts have an interest in some of the property. Their attorney Daniel L. Rentfro Jr. advised Hanen that they are not contesting the agreement between the city and the government. Rentfro said that they have been negotiating with the city and Cameron County and are resolving issues of just compensation.
The government’s attorney Daniel David Hu told Hanen that this is “obviously the city’s business.”
The parties will keep the court informed as they continue to work toward reversion of the property to the city.
http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/articles/land-140991-fence-city.html
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Texans on wrong side of border fence grow anxious
CBS News / Associated Press
February 11, 2012
by Christopher Sherman
(AP) BROWNSVILLE, Texas — Max Pons is already anticipating the anxiety he'll feel when the heavy steel gate shuts behind him, leaving his home isolated on a strip of land between America's border fence and the violence raging across the Rio Grande in Mexico.
For the past year, the manager of a sprawling preserve on the southern tip of Texas has been comforted by a gap in the rust-colored fence that gave him a quick escape route north in case of emergency. Now the U.S. government is installing the first gates to fill in this part of the fence along the Southwest border, and Pons admits he's pondering drastic scenarios.
"I think in my head I'm going to feel trapped," said Pons, who lives on the 1,000-acre property of sabal palms, oxbow lakes and citrus groves he manages for the Nature Conservancy's Southmost Preserve. "I need to have something that is much easier for me to have to ram to get through" if necessary.
Pons' concerns illustrate one of the complications in the government's 5-year-old effort to build a secure barrier along the border that would keep out illegal activity from Mexico without causing worse problems for the people living in the region.
In this lush area, the Rio Grande's wide floodplain precluded building the fence right on the border so it was set back more than a mile in places, running behind the levees. The result is a no-man's-land of hundreds of properties, and the people who work on them, on the wrong side of the divide.
The arrival of the gates will reveal whether the government's solution for this border fence problem will work. Can sliding panels in the fence controlled by passcodes allow isolated workers to cross when they need to while keeping intruders out?
Pons hopes the gates will open fast. "Because when is reinforcement going to show up?"
Some landowners also worry they'll become kidnapping targets for smugglers seeking passage through the 18-foot-tall metal fence.
Violence has surged in Tamaulipas, the Mexican state bordering this part of Texas, in the past two years. This week the State Department issued a new travel warning urging U.S. citizens again to avoid traveling there.
Residents in this rural area often see groups of illegal immigrants passing through or smugglers toting bundles. In October, the Border Patrol caught a high-ranking member of the Gulf cartel's Matamoros operations who had crossed about a half-hour upriver.
Gates will roll open on a metal track after a passcode is punched into a panel on or near the fence. Landowners would have permanent codes and could request temporary ones for visitors. Customs and Border Protection has begun testing its first two gates and plans to install 42 more in South Texas this year at a cost of $10 million.
For more than a year the tall steel bars and panels erected in segments on this stretch of the 1,954-mile U.S.-Mexico border created an effect that was more gap-toothed grin than impenetrable obstacle.
When the gates are closed, the Texans on the other side won't be completely isolated, agency officials say. Border Patrol agents will continue to work both sides of the fence and can assist property owners. Many of the areas also are monitored by cameras and sensors.
But farmers point out that there is a lot the agents can't stop. They point out dusty footprints scaling the columns and say illegal immigrants can climb the barrier in seconds flat.
"It's the biggest waste of taxpayer money," said Leonard Loop at his produce stand east of Brownsville, where his family farms and some relatives' homes are in an area between the fence and the river.
Loop's nephew Paul said he was not looking forward to the delay the gates will add to the countless trips he and his brother make between fields and the barn with their equipment. He also worried about becoming a target for smugglers eager to use the gates for large shipments. They are wide enough for farm equipment.
"Any drug dealer is going to know anyone on this side has a way out," Paul Loop said, while crews harvested cabbage in a nearby field.
Othal Brand Jr., chairman and general manager of the Hidalgo County Water Improvement District No. 3, said he welcomes the completion of the fence even though the district's headquarters is between the barrier and the river.
He said he's optimistic it will help deflect illegal crossings and other illegal activity as intended.
"It's like building a car and only putting three tires on it," he said. "Finish it. Get it done."
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501363_162-57375981/texans-on-wrong-side-of-border-fence-grow-anxious/
February 11, 2012
by Christopher Sherman
(AP) BROWNSVILLE, Texas — Max Pons is already anticipating the anxiety he'll feel when the heavy steel gate shuts behind him, leaving his home isolated on a strip of land between America's border fence and the violence raging across the Rio Grande in Mexico.
For the past year, the manager of a sprawling preserve on the southern tip of Texas has been comforted by a gap in the rust-colored fence that gave him a quick escape route north in case of emergency. Now the U.S. government is installing the first gates to fill in this part of the fence along the Southwest border, and Pons admits he's pondering drastic scenarios.
"I think in my head I'm going to feel trapped," said Pons, who lives on the 1,000-acre property of sabal palms, oxbow lakes and citrus groves he manages for the Nature Conservancy's Southmost Preserve. "I need to have something that is much easier for me to have to ram to get through" if necessary.
Pons' concerns illustrate one of the complications in the government's 5-year-old effort to build a secure barrier along the border that would keep out illegal activity from Mexico without causing worse problems for the people living in the region.
In this lush area, the Rio Grande's wide floodplain precluded building the fence right on the border so it was set back more than a mile in places, running behind the levees. The result is a no-man's-land of hundreds of properties, and the people who work on them, on the wrong side of the divide.
The arrival of the gates will reveal whether the government's solution for this border fence problem will work. Can sliding panels in the fence controlled by passcodes allow isolated workers to cross when they need to while keeping intruders out?
Pons hopes the gates will open fast. "Because when is reinforcement going to show up?"
Some landowners also worry they'll become kidnapping targets for smugglers seeking passage through the 18-foot-tall metal fence.
Violence has surged in Tamaulipas, the Mexican state bordering this part of Texas, in the past two years. This week the State Department issued a new travel warning urging U.S. citizens again to avoid traveling there.
Residents in this rural area often see groups of illegal immigrants passing through or smugglers toting bundles. In October, the Border Patrol caught a high-ranking member of the Gulf cartel's Matamoros operations who had crossed about a half-hour upriver.
Gates will roll open on a metal track after a passcode is punched into a panel on or near the fence. Landowners would have permanent codes and could request temporary ones for visitors. Customs and Border Protection has begun testing its first two gates and plans to install 42 more in South Texas this year at a cost of $10 million.
For more than a year the tall steel bars and panels erected in segments on this stretch of the 1,954-mile U.S.-Mexico border created an effect that was more gap-toothed grin than impenetrable obstacle.
When the gates are closed, the Texans on the other side won't be completely isolated, agency officials say. Border Patrol agents will continue to work both sides of the fence and can assist property owners. Many of the areas also are monitored by cameras and sensors.
But farmers point out that there is a lot the agents can't stop. They point out dusty footprints scaling the columns and say illegal immigrants can climb the barrier in seconds flat.
"It's the biggest waste of taxpayer money," said Leonard Loop at his produce stand east of Brownsville, where his family farms and some relatives' homes are in an area between the fence and the river.
Loop's nephew Paul said he was not looking forward to the delay the gates will add to the countless trips he and his brother make between fields and the barn with their equipment. He also worried about becoming a target for smugglers eager to use the gates for large shipments. They are wide enough for farm equipment.
"Any drug dealer is going to know anyone on this side has a way out," Paul Loop said, while crews harvested cabbage in a nearby field.
Othal Brand Jr., chairman and general manager of the Hidalgo County Water Improvement District No. 3, said he welcomes the completion of the fence even though the district's headquarters is between the barrier and the river.
He said he's optimistic it will help deflect illegal crossings and other illegal activity as intended.
"It's like building a car and only putting three tires on it," he said. "Finish it. Get it done."
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501363_162-57375981/texans-on-wrong-side-of-border-fence-grow-anxious/
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
The Texans who live on the ‘Mexican side’ of the border fence: ‘Technically, we’re in the United States’
Yahoo News
December 21, 2011
by Liz Goodwin
BROWNSVILLE, Texas—Pamela Taylor's living room has a Santa-hat-wearing stuffed dog atop a red doily on her coffee table, poinsettias near the couch, and, in the center of the room, an angel-topped Christmas tree with a few wrapped presents underneath.
Outside, the Christmas spirit is less visible, amid repeated warnings to KEEP OUT—though a "Merry Christmas!" sign hangs next to a warning to would-be trespassers that they're being filmed by a surveillance system. Written outside the front gate is the message: "Don't even think about parking here."
This will be Taylor's fourth Christmas living on what some Texans call the "Mexican side" of the U.S. border fence. Although she lives in Texas, her home is south of the 18-feet steel-and-concrete border wall erected by the American government. Taylor, who is 84, can see it from her front porch.
The wall was built to satisfy a law, passed in 2006 and 2008, that authorized 700 miles of fence on the southern border, 315 miles of it in Texas. President Bush said the fence would make the border safer and was "an important step toward immigration reform." Many of the 2012 Republican presidential candidates, with the exception of Texas Gov. Rick Perry, say they want to build a fence that spans the entire U.S. border. The Brownsville area shows just how complicated that project would be.
Because of a decades-old treaty with Mexico prohibiting building in the Rio Grande floodplain, the government built its border fence more than a mile north of the snaky river, trapping tens of thousands of acres of Texas--land in Cameron and Hidalgo counties--on the wrong side of the fence. The border wall is also riddled with miles-long gaps, seemingly placed at random. The U.S. Border Patrol says that illegal crossers are pushed to these gaps, where they are more easily apprehended.
Some Texans, like Taylor, live completely on the other side of the $6.2 million-a-mile wall. Others had their property split in half by the fence, after the government seized portions of their land. At least 200 people in Cameron County had some of their land seized for the fence.
'It's really done nothing for us'
Ten years ago, Taylor found a stranger sitting in her living room. "He had used my bathroom, he had shaved and cleaned himself off and he was watching the border patrol go by, sitting in that rocking chair," she said in an interview with Yahoo News. A few years later, she found 40 kilos of marijuana hidden in her bougainvilleas.
Taylor says she had to work hard to get her citizenship when she married an American soldier and moved to Texas from England after World War II. She doesn't think illegal immigrants should get a chance to become citizens. "If anything comes really easy, it's not appreciated," she said.
But the government's solution to the problem strikes her as ridiculous. "It's really done nothing for us because they're still coming across," Taylor says. Earlier this year, teenage illegal immigrants pounded on her front door in the middle of the night. She called the Border Patrol, which arrested them and a group of Hondurans they were trafficking, according to Taylor. She keeps a gun and a taser in her house, just in case.
'This is our property'
A few miles east of Taylor's house, Tim Loop's green two-story home, where he lives with his wife and two daughters, is also stuck behind the border wall. He agrees that the fence is not solving anything. Driving in his truck along the fence this week, he pointed out several places where scuffmarks suggested that people had recently climbed over. On one part of the fence not too far from his house, a torn shirt hung from the top of a pole.
Loop worries that the government will close the gaps in the fence. A complete wall wouldn't let him get to his house from the road, which is on the "American" side. The road also provides access to his farm, which grows sugar cane, grapefruit, corn, and other crops, for his eight employees.
Earlier this year, Homeland Security told landowners that it planned to close the gaps with 15-feet-wide gates that would have keypads on them. Each landowner would get a personal code to open the gate, and the government would be in charge of who else might be allowed to use each code.
"This is our property behind here," Loop said in an interview with Yahoo News. "We don't want somebody else to be the boss of our gate."
Taylor worries about a proposed highway whose path would require the government to move the fence closer to her house. "We will be more shut in than ever before," she said.
'We're in the United States'
Bob Lucio, the owner of a 165-acre golf course that lies entirely on the "Mexican" side of the fence, says the thought of Homeland Security using a secured gate to close the one entrance to the course keeps him up at night.
"If that happens, I don't think we can survive," he told Yahoo News during an interview in his office.
Lucio worked with Homeland Security to beautify the fence. Near the course, the wall is several feet shorter than elsewhere and is painted green. The wall is so subtle that some putters, many of them "winter Texans" from Canada and the Midwest, don't realize they're on the south side of the border wall, he says. A gate would change that.
"Technically, we're in the United States," Lucio said. But during a drug-cartel gun battle in June just across the Mexican border from his property, several Border Patrol agents lined up on the north side of the fence and didn't venture beyond it, he said. It gave him the impression that the Border Patrol was securing the fence line in times of trouble, instead of the actual border.
"The whole situation left me kind of numb," he said. "It's kind of like, 'You're on your own, buddy.'"
Rosalinda Huey, a spokeswoman for the Customs and Border Patrol, declined to comment on that episode but said agents patrol both sides of the fence.
'I couldn't sell my house now'
The landowners on the other side of the fence in Brownsville know their property isn't as valuable as it once was. "Would you want to buy a house behind the border wall?" Loop asked dryly.
The government didn't offer to buy the land it walled off from the rest of Texas, or to compensate people for the subsequent devaluation. It offered only to pay for the strips of land that were seized for the fence's path.
Eloisa Tamez, a nursing professor at the University of Texas at Brownsville and an outspoken opponent of the fence, refused to sell the government a quarter of an acre of her three-acre plot. She was initially offered $100 for the patch of land, which was used for the fence that now bisects her property.
Tamez's family has lived on her land since the 1700s. The family traditionally held an Easter party near the river, which is now on the other side of the wall. The only way Tamez can access the other part of her land is through a gap 1,200 feet away, which she can reach only by trespassing on her neighbors' land.
The government's offer eventually went up to $13,000, but she still didn't accept. She refused to sign the papers and is locked in a court battle with the government over the quarter acre it took from her.
"I couldn't sell my house now," she says.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/texas-americans-live-wrong-side-border-fence-christmas-183312787.html
December 21, 2011
by Liz Goodwin
BROWNSVILLE, Texas—Pamela Taylor's living room has a Santa-hat-wearing stuffed dog atop a red doily on her coffee table, poinsettias near the couch, and, in the center of the room, an angel-topped Christmas tree with a few wrapped presents underneath.
Outside, the Christmas spirit is less visible, amid repeated warnings to KEEP OUT—though a "Merry Christmas!" sign hangs next to a warning to would-be trespassers that they're being filmed by a surveillance system. Written outside the front gate is the message: "Don't even think about parking here."
This will be Taylor's fourth Christmas living on what some Texans call the "Mexican side" of the U.S. border fence. Although she lives in Texas, her home is south of the 18-feet steel-and-concrete border wall erected by the American government. Taylor, who is 84, can see it from her front porch.
The wall was built to satisfy a law, passed in 2006 and 2008, that authorized 700 miles of fence on the southern border, 315 miles of it in Texas. President Bush said the fence would make the border safer and was "an important step toward immigration reform." Many of the 2012 Republican presidential candidates, with the exception of Texas Gov. Rick Perry, say they want to build a fence that spans the entire U.S. border. The Brownsville area shows just how complicated that project would be.
Because of a decades-old treaty with Mexico prohibiting building in the Rio Grande floodplain, the government built its border fence more than a mile north of the snaky river, trapping tens of thousands of acres of Texas--land in Cameron and Hidalgo counties--on the wrong side of the fence. The border wall is also riddled with miles-long gaps, seemingly placed at random. The U.S. Border Patrol says that illegal crossers are pushed to these gaps, where they are more easily apprehended.
Some Texans, like Taylor, live completely on the other side of the $6.2 million-a-mile wall. Others had their property split in half by the fence, after the government seized portions of their land. At least 200 people in Cameron County had some of their land seized for the fence.
'It's really done nothing for us'
Ten years ago, Taylor found a stranger sitting in her living room. "He had used my bathroom, he had shaved and cleaned himself off and he was watching the border patrol go by, sitting in that rocking chair," she said in an interview with Yahoo News. A few years later, she found 40 kilos of marijuana hidden in her bougainvilleas.
Taylor says she had to work hard to get her citizenship when she married an American soldier and moved to Texas from England after World War II. She doesn't think illegal immigrants should get a chance to become citizens. "If anything comes really easy, it's not appreciated," she said.
But the government's solution to the problem strikes her as ridiculous. "It's really done nothing for us because they're still coming across," Taylor says. Earlier this year, teenage illegal immigrants pounded on her front door in the middle of the night. She called the Border Patrol, which arrested them and a group of Hondurans they were trafficking, according to Taylor. She keeps a gun and a taser in her house, just in case.
'This is our property'
A few miles east of Taylor's house, Tim Loop's green two-story home, where he lives with his wife and two daughters, is also stuck behind the border wall. He agrees that the fence is not solving anything. Driving in his truck along the fence this week, he pointed out several places where scuffmarks suggested that people had recently climbed over. On one part of the fence not too far from his house, a torn shirt hung from the top of a pole.
Loop worries that the government will close the gaps in the fence. A complete wall wouldn't let him get to his house from the road, which is on the "American" side. The road also provides access to his farm, which grows sugar cane, grapefruit, corn, and other crops, for his eight employees.
Earlier this year, Homeland Security told landowners that it planned to close the gaps with 15-feet-wide gates that would have keypads on them. Each landowner would get a personal code to open the gate, and the government would be in charge of who else might be allowed to use each code.
"This is our property behind here," Loop said in an interview with Yahoo News. "We don't want somebody else to be the boss of our gate."
Taylor worries about a proposed highway whose path would require the government to move the fence closer to her house. "We will be more shut in than ever before," she said.
'We're in the United States'
Bob Lucio, the owner of a 165-acre golf course that lies entirely on the "Mexican" side of the fence, says the thought of Homeland Security using a secured gate to close the one entrance to the course keeps him up at night.
"If that happens, I don't think we can survive," he told Yahoo News during an interview in his office.
Lucio worked with Homeland Security to beautify the fence. Near the course, the wall is several feet shorter than elsewhere and is painted green. The wall is so subtle that some putters, many of them "winter Texans" from Canada and the Midwest, don't realize they're on the south side of the border wall, he says. A gate would change that.
"Technically, we're in the United States," Lucio said. But during a drug-cartel gun battle in June just across the Mexican border from his property, several Border Patrol agents lined up on the north side of the fence and didn't venture beyond it, he said. It gave him the impression that the Border Patrol was securing the fence line in times of trouble, instead of the actual border.
"The whole situation left me kind of numb," he said. "It's kind of like, 'You're on your own, buddy.'"
Rosalinda Huey, a spokeswoman for the Customs and Border Patrol, declined to comment on that episode but said agents patrol both sides of the fence.
'I couldn't sell my house now'
The landowners on the other side of the fence in Brownsville know their property isn't as valuable as it once was. "Would you want to buy a house behind the border wall?" Loop asked dryly.
The government didn't offer to buy the land it walled off from the rest of Texas, or to compensate people for the subsequent devaluation. It offered only to pay for the strips of land that were seized for the fence's path.
Eloisa Tamez, a nursing professor at the University of Texas at Brownsville and an outspoken opponent of the fence, refused to sell the government a quarter of an acre of her three-acre plot. She was initially offered $100 for the patch of land, which was used for the fence that now bisects her property.
Tamez's family has lived on her land since the 1700s. The family traditionally held an Easter party near the river, which is now on the other side of the wall. The only way Tamez can access the other part of her land is through a gap 1,200 feet away, which she can reach only by trespassing on her neighbors' land.
The government's offer eventually went up to $13,000, but she still didn't accept. She refused to sign the papers and is locked in a court battle with the government over the quarter acre it took from her.
"I couldn't sell my house now," she says.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/texas-americans-live-wrong-side-border-fence-christmas-183312787.html
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Border Fence Upends a Valley Farmer’s Life
Texas Monthly / New York Times
November 26, 2011
by Oscar Casares
BROWNSVILLE — One of the obvious advantages of living within a gated community is the sense of security. But what if you live on the wrong side of the gate?
Consider the plight of Tim Loop, 47, who lives on his family farm in Brownsville, at the southernmost point along the United States-Mexico border.
Not so long ago, the Loop farm was a pastoral vision, with its bountiful mesquite and cotton fields and orange groves. Today, imposing sections of 15- to-18-foot-high rust-colored steel bars, some less than 400 feet from Mr. Loop’s front porch, are more likely to catch the eye.
In 2009 the Department of Homeland Security informed Mr. Loop and other landowners along the northern bank of the Rio Grande that the new border fence, which in some areas stands more than a mile from the river, would be cutting through their properties. (A water treaty with Mexico that restricts building within the flood plain prevented the department from simply hugging the north bank.) The three-bedroom home where Mr. Loop lives with his wife and two children ended up on the south side of the fence, inside what essentially became a no-man’s land.
Many gaps remain along the fence line. But now, to seal off these openings, the Homeland Security Department plans to install motorized gates and keypads. Like a handful of other border dwellers in the same situation, Mr. Loop and his family will be required to use a secret code to reach their home — and to re-enter the rest of his country.
“I’ll have to ask permission from the government to live my life,” Mr. Loop said.
It’s an awkward situation that Mr. Loop’s forebears could never have imagined. His grandfather settled this tract of land in the early 1900s, part of the southern migration of farmers who followed the expanding railway and the promise of an Edenic life to the Rio Grande Valley. Since then, the family has grown cotton, soybeans, wheat, cabbage, corn, sorghum and sugar cane. They have endured the merciless heat, the yearly threat of hurricane season and the occasional hard freeze that can easily wipe out a citrus crop.
But although life along the Rio Grande has always demanded ingenuity and resilience, it is doubtful that Mr. Loop’s grandfather ever figured on an enormous steel fence slicing through his land.
In fact, most local residents in this remote, rural and poor corner of the country are accustomed to being virtually forgotten by Washington. That, however, has changed dramatically in the past 10 years. Today the area seems like a cauldron of the nation’s deepest anxieties, a place where concerns about illegal immigration, fears of terrorism and, more recently, nervousness about spillover violence from Mexico’s drug war have boiled into repeated calls for a more secure border.
Mr. Loop seems to consider this a mixed blessing. He credits the initial boots-on-the-ground strategy with a decrease in the number of illegal crossings, but this only makes him question the need for more sections of fence.
“The fence is not doing what it’s supposed to be doing,” he said.
There is no doubt that the new gates and the keypads, the first round of which is scheduled to be completed by spring, will complicate his life. Mr. Loop will be issued a personal pass code, but he will have to provide the Homeland Security Department with the names of everyone who has regular access to it.
According to the “Landowner Reference Guide,” a pamphlet distributed by the Border Patrol, the gates will stay open for a certain part of every day, though the Border Patrol will have discretion over this. Emergency personnel will have access through the gates (which are designed to unlock in the event of a power failure), but the possibility of being caught on the wrong side of the fence weighs heavily on families like the Loops.
There are other worries, too. Mr. Loop wonders if possessing a secret pass code could make him a target for anyone desperate to gain access to the other side. This is, after all, a familiar area to desperate travelers.
The gates and keypads will affect a handful of other properties in the area. Ultimately, that list may include the Lennox Foundation Southmost Preserve, a large tract belonging to the Nature Conservancy, which fought the border fence.
Maxwell Pons, an irascible preserve manager who, like Mr. Loop, lives in a house south of the border fence, has little faith that the government will handle the gate and keypad project any better than the fence.
“They tore down hundred-year-old trees to put up a fence,” Mr. Pons said. “You think they care about how using a keypad is going to affect us?”
Then there is the question of whether motorized gates controlled by secret pass codes will be able to secure a fence that was not all that secure to begin with.
Recently, Mr. Loop noticed what from a distance might have looked like dozens of ants scampering up the south side of the 18-foot-high steel bars. Getting closer, he realized that these were scuff marks — from shoes, boots, sneakers, bare feet; there was no telling for sure — and that whoever left the marks had made it to the top, and over, undeterred.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/us/border-fence-upends-a-rio-grande-valley-farmers-life.html
November 26, 2011
by Oscar Casares
BROWNSVILLE — One of the obvious advantages of living within a gated community is the sense of security. But what if you live on the wrong side of the gate?
Consider the plight of Tim Loop, 47, who lives on his family farm in Brownsville, at the southernmost point along the United States-Mexico border.
Not so long ago, the Loop farm was a pastoral vision, with its bountiful mesquite and cotton fields and orange groves. Today, imposing sections of 15- to-18-foot-high rust-colored steel bars, some less than 400 feet from Mr. Loop’s front porch, are more likely to catch the eye.
In 2009 the Department of Homeland Security informed Mr. Loop and other landowners along the northern bank of the Rio Grande that the new border fence, which in some areas stands more than a mile from the river, would be cutting through their properties. (A water treaty with Mexico that restricts building within the flood plain prevented the department from simply hugging the north bank.) The three-bedroom home where Mr. Loop lives with his wife and two children ended up on the south side of the fence, inside what essentially became a no-man’s land.
Many gaps remain along the fence line. But now, to seal off these openings, the Homeland Security Department plans to install motorized gates and keypads. Like a handful of other border dwellers in the same situation, Mr. Loop and his family will be required to use a secret code to reach their home — and to re-enter the rest of his country.
“I’ll have to ask permission from the government to live my life,” Mr. Loop said.
It’s an awkward situation that Mr. Loop’s forebears could never have imagined. His grandfather settled this tract of land in the early 1900s, part of the southern migration of farmers who followed the expanding railway and the promise of an Edenic life to the Rio Grande Valley. Since then, the family has grown cotton, soybeans, wheat, cabbage, corn, sorghum and sugar cane. They have endured the merciless heat, the yearly threat of hurricane season and the occasional hard freeze that can easily wipe out a citrus crop.
But although life along the Rio Grande has always demanded ingenuity and resilience, it is doubtful that Mr. Loop’s grandfather ever figured on an enormous steel fence slicing through his land.
In fact, most local residents in this remote, rural and poor corner of the country are accustomed to being virtually forgotten by Washington. That, however, has changed dramatically in the past 10 years. Today the area seems like a cauldron of the nation’s deepest anxieties, a place where concerns about illegal immigration, fears of terrorism and, more recently, nervousness about spillover violence from Mexico’s drug war have boiled into repeated calls for a more secure border.
Mr. Loop seems to consider this a mixed blessing. He credits the initial boots-on-the-ground strategy with a decrease in the number of illegal crossings, but this only makes him question the need for more sections of fence.
“The fence is not doing what it’s supposed to be doing,” he said.
There is no doubt that the new gates and the keypads, the first round of which is scheduled to be completed by spring, will complicate his life. Mr. Loop will be issued a personal pass code, but he will have to provide the Homeland Security Department with the names of everyone who has regular access to it.
According to the “Landowner Reference Guide,” a pamphlet distributed by the Border Patrol, the gates will stay open for a certain part of every day, though the Border Patrol will have discretion over this. Emergency personnel will have access through the gates (which are designed to unlock in the event of a power failure), but the possibility of being caught on the wrong side of the fence weighs heavily on families like the Loops.
There are other worries, too. Mr. Loop wonders if possessing a secret pass code could make him a target for anyone desperate to gain access to the other side. This is, after all, a familiar area to desperate travelers.
The gates and keypads will affect a handful of other properties in the area. Ultimately, that list may include the Lennox Foundation Southmost Preserve, a large tract belonging to the Nature Conservancy, which fought the border fence.
Maxwell Pons, an irascible preserve manager who, like Mr. Loop, lives in a house south of the border fence, has little faith that the government will handle the gate and keypad project any better than the fence.
“They tore down hundred-year-old trees to put up a fence,” Mr. Pons said. “You think they care about how using a keypad is going to affect us?”
Then there is the question of whether motorized gates controlled by secret pass codes will be able to secure a fence that was not all that secure to begin with.
Recently, Mr. Loop noticed what from a distance might have looked like dozens of ants scampering up the south side of the 18-foot-high steel bars. Getting closer, he realized that these were scuff marks — from shoes, boots, sneakers, bare feet; there was no telling for sure — and that whoever left the marks had made it to the top, and over, undeterred.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/us/border-fence-upends-a-rio-grande-valley-farmers-life.html
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Texas border fence stars in presidential campaign
Fort Worth Star Telegram
October 17, 2011
by Dave Montgomery
PEÑITAS -- For more than a half-century, Leonardo and Anita Ramirez could look out the back of their small frame home at the sloping landscape leading down to the Rio Grande.
That changed about two years ago, when the federal government stretched a massive $6.2 million-a-mile barrier through the rural land where they have made their home since 1950.
Their backyard view now consists of aesthetically challenged square metal poles that reach at least 18 feet high and impair their once-easy access to the river.
The towering barrier that divides the Ramirezes' land near the small community of Peñitas, in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, is part of nearly 650 miles of fencing that Congress authorized in 2006 in response to a public outcry over illegal immigration and potential violence from Mexico.
Of that total, 112 miles are in Texas, stretching from Brownsville through the populous metropolitan region that includes Edinburg, McAllen and Mission.
Construction of the fencing followed contentious public debate that included lawsuits, environmental challenges and homeowner protests. Now, presidential politics is kindling a new showdown over the worthiness of border barriers.
U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., has pledged to push for construction of a fence along the entire length of the border. By contrast, Gov. Rick Perry has described a full-length fence as "idiocy," though he embraces limited fencing in strategic locations.
The issue is part of a larger dispute over illegal immigration that could resurface in tonight's Republican debate in Las Vegas. Perry has been put on the defensive by opponents who charge that he is soft on illegal immigration because of his support of a 2007 Texas law that permitted in-state tuition for the children of illegal immigrants.
He has responded to the criticism by pointing to the state's five-year, $400 million-plus law enforcement effort on the border, portraying himself as the toughest candidate in the race when it comes to border security.
GOP rivals
Bachmann is the first candidate to sign a pledge circulated by a newly formed group calling for completion of a double fence along the full length of the border before the end of 2013. The group, Americans for Securing the Border, is led by Van D. Hipp Jr., a former Republican Party chairman in South Carolina who served as deputy assistant Army secretary under President George H.W. Bush.
Hipp said his group has been up and running for only about three weeks but is generating strong support from voters demanding tough measures to support the border.
"It's one of the most important national security issues of our time," Hipp said. His organization is calling on all candidates for president as well as the House and Senate to sign the pledge.
Ryan Williams, press secretary for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, said Monday that the campaign has not seen the pledge but "would certainly be open to reviewing it." He said Romney, who is the front-runner for the Republican nomination, "supports a border fence" to crack down on illegal immigration.
Allison Castle, communications director in the Texas governor's office, said Perry "supports fencing in strategic areas such as those with high population density, but for the hundreds of miles of remote land in between, the most effective border security strategy is to increase the patrol presence on the ground, in the air, and in the water with personnel and advanced technology."
Perry has repeatedly opposed the concept of a full-length barrier. During a trade visit to Mexico City in 2007, according to The Associated Press, he said a border-length wall is "idiocy" and "absolutely would not work."
Leaky fencing
The 649 miles of fencing in four U.S. border states was authorized by the Secure Fence Act, which then-President George W. Bush signed into law in October 2006. The barriers, according to the Border Patrol, include 350 miles of fencing to stop pedestrians, constructed at a cost of $6.5 million per mile, and 299 miles of fencing to repel vehicles, which cost $1.8 million per mile.
The designs include wire mesh, chain link, metal posts and upright metal landing mats. The Hidalgo County segment that bisects Leonardo and Anita Ramirez's property includes metal poles atop concrete as part of a Rio Grande levee.
"We tried to stop it from being built," said Feliberto Ramirez of Houston, the Ramirez's 54-year-old son. "It's not doing the job."
Critics say the barriers constitute an elongated eyesore, particularly in populous areas, and come nowhere close to plugging the border.
Access roads that allow passage for U.S. residents are easily exploited by illegal intruders, many residents say. And then there's the now-timeworn joke that the wall has caused a boom in the Mexican ladder industry.
Cuban "Rusty" Monsees, who lives near Brownsville, says illegal crossers can "shinny up" the 18-foot poles on his property and often come up to his house at night. "They ask for food, they ask for use of the cellphone, they ask for a ride into town," he said.
Deterrent factor
But Border Patrol officials say the fence serves as a deterrent and has contributed substantially to a downturn in illegal crossings. As a result of a combination of measures, including fencing and an expanded Border Patrol presence, apprehensions in 2010 numbered 447,000, compared to 540,000 in 2009 and 1.6 million in 2000, said Border Patrol spokesman Bill Brooks.
He said the fence provides an impediment to illegal entries, giving Border Patrol officers more time to catch crossers. Agents also aggressively patrol along the fence looking for crossers.
"The fence does exactly what it was intended to do," Brooks said.
http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/10/17/3451733/border-fence-returns-to-political.html
October 17, 2011
by Dave Montgomery
PEÑITAS -- For more than a half-century, Leonardo and Anita Ramirez could look out the back of their small frame home at the sloping landscape leading down to the Rio Grande.
That changed about two years ago, when the federal government stretched a massive $6.2 million-a-mile barrier through the rural land where they have made their home since 1950.
Their backyard view now consists of aesthetically challenged square metal poles that reach at least 18 feet high and impair their once-easy access to the river.
The towering barrier that divides the Ramirezes' land near the small community of Peñitas, in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, is part of nearly 650 miles of fencing that Congress authorized in 2006 in response to a public outcry over illegal immigration and potential violence from Mexico.
Of that total, 112 miles are in Texas, stretching from Brownsville through the populous metropolitan region that includes Edinburg, McAllen and Mission.
Construction of the fencing followed contentious public debate that included lawsuits, environmental challenges and homeowner protests. Now, presidential politics is kindling a new showdown over the worthiness of border barriers.
U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., has pledged to push for construction of a fence along the entire length of the border. By contrast, Gov. Rick Perry has described a full-length fence as "idiocy," though he embraces limited fencing in strategic locations.
The issue is part of a larger dispute over illegal immigration that could resurface in tonight's Republican debate in Las Vegas. Perry has been put on the defensive by opponents who charge that he is soft on illegal immigration because of his support of a 2007 Texas law that permitted in-state tuition for the children of illegal immigrants.
He has responded to the criticism by pointing to the state's five-year, $400 million-plus law enforcement effort on the border, portraying himself as the toughest candidate in the race when it comes to border security.
GOP rivals
Bachmann is the first candidate to sign a pledge circulated by a newly formed group calling for completion of a double fence along the full length of the border before the end of 2013. The group, Americans for Securing the Border, is led by Van D. Hipp Jr., a former Republican Party chairman in South Carolina who served as deputy assistant Army secretary under President George H.W. Bush.
Hipp said his group has been up and running for only about three weeks but is generating strong support from voters demanding tough measures to support the border.
"It's one of the most important national security issues of our time," Hipp said. His organization is calling on all candidates for president as well as the House and Senate to sign the pledge.
Ryan Williams, press secretary for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, said Monday that the campaign has not seen the pledge but "would certainly be open to reviewing it." He said Romney, who is the front-runner for the Republican nomination, "supports a border fence" to crack down on illegal immigration.
Allison Castle, communications director in the Texas governor's office, said Perry "supports fencing in strategic areas such as those with high population density, but for the hundreds of miles of remote land in between, the most effective border security strategy is to increase the patrol presence on the ground, in the air, and in the water with personnel and advanced technology."
Perry has repeatedly opposed the concept of a full-length barrier. During a trade visit to Mexico City in 2007, according to The Associated Press, he said a border-length wall is "idiocy" and "absolutely would not work."
Leaky fencing
The 649 miles of fencing in four U.S. border states was authorized by the Secure Fence Act, which then-President George W. Bush signed into law in October 2006. The barriers, according to the Border Patrol, include 350 miles of fencing to stop pedestrians, constructed at a cost of $6.5 million per mile, and 299 miles of fencing to repel vehicles, which cost $1.8 million per mile.
The designs include wire mesh, chain link, metal posts and upright metal landing mats. The Hidalgo County segment that bisects Leonardo and Anita Ramirez's property includes metal poles atop concrete as part of a Rio Grande levee.
"We tried to stop it from being built," said Feliberto Ramirez of Houston, the Ramirez's 54-year-old son. "It's not doing the job."
Critics say the barriers constitute an elongated eyesore, particularly in populous areas, and come nowhere close to plugging the border.
Access roads that allow passage for U.S. residents are easily exploited by illegal intruders, many residents say. And then there's the now-timeworn joke that the wall has caused a boom in the Mexican ladder industry.
Cuban "Rusty" Monsees, who lives near Brownsville, says illegal crossers can "shinny up" the 18-foot poles on his property and often come up to his house at night. "They ask for food, they ask for use of the cellphone, they ask for a ride into town," he said.
Deterrent factor
But Border Patrol officials say the fence serves as a deterrent and has contributed substantially to a downturn in illegal crossings. As a result of a combination of measures, including fencing and an expanded Border Patrol presence, apprehensions in 2010 numbered 447,000, compared to 540,000 in 2009 and 1.6 million in 2000, said Border Patrol spokesman Bill Brooks.
He said the fence provides an impediment to illegal entries, giving Border Patrol officers more time to catch crossers. Agents also aggressively patrol along the fence looking for crossers.
"The fence does exactly what it was intended to do," Brooks said.
http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/10/17/3451733/border-fence-returns-to-political.html
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Lucio: I Plan to See Border Wall Torn Down in My Lifetime
Rio Grande Guardian
September 17, 2011
by Steve Taylor
BROWNSVILLE, Sept. 17 - State Sen. Eddie Lucio says if Rio Grande Valley residents keep up the pressure, they will succeed in tearing down the border wall.
“I was born and reared here and I have never seen anything like this monstrosity,” Lucio said, referring to the border wall. “In my lifetime I want to see the border wall come down, just like I saw the Berlin Wall come down. Even if I am 85 or 90 years old, I want to be there when the wall comes down.”
Lucio said he also wants to see, in his lifetime, the appropriate level of compensation paid to those whose homes and land have been disfigured by the border wall. “We give big corporations on Wall Street billions of dollars of tax relief. Why can’t we give the little people, people I consider great Americans and great Texans, some relief? We should not turn our backs on those in need,” he said.
Lucio, D-Brownsville, made his comments in an exclusive interview with the Guardian immediately following a town hall meeting he held to discuss to the impact the border wall has had on landowners who live between the wall and the Rio Grande.
Lucio said all the evidence suggests the border wall has not been an effective method in deterring undocumented immigration. He said it was only erected “to satisfy the appetite of immigrant-bashing politicians in other parts of America.”
A much better method of deterring undocumented immigration, Lucio said, would be to set up a four-state immigrant employment zone where Mexican residents could come in and work under a guest worker program. He said he is confident that if such a program were in operation, Mexican nationals would return to their homeland once their work is done.
“If we want to do something about illegal immigration we should create an immigrant employment zone and have guest workers come in. We would know who they are and where they live. At the moment people get in illegally and they spread out. They are in hiding,” Lucio said.
“I want to see the federal government pass legislation to allow the four Border States – Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California - to address this issue at the state level. We know better than the federal government how to set up this program. We need bricklayers, we need roofers; we need dishwashers, we need agricultural workers. Let us as Border States hire workers from Mexico to do the jobs our people are unwilling to do.”
Lucio said if the federal government allowed the Border States to create an immigrant employment zone for Mexican workers, the four states would be a lot cleaner. “These people are workers. They have an incredible work ethic. They would keep our state clean. All they want to do is make a little bit of money to maintain their families. They want to eat. They want to live. Who can blame them? It is all about if we are going to be humanitarians or not,” he said.
Lucio said the U.S. should also be doing more to help Mexico.
“The way you curb illegal immigration from Mexico is to create an economy there that is robust. The Mexican government needs to establish a national minimum wage. You get a $5 dollar minimum wage and these workers will not be coming here. They will stay in Mexico. Lift their economy and you keep these people in their homeland,” he said.
Lucio concluded his interview with the Guardian by casting doubt on the usefulness of a congressional hearing being staged at the University of Texas at Brownsville on Monday by U.S. Rep. Ted Poe, R-Humble. The hearing is slated to focus on border violence.
“My staff has been told only invited guests will be allowed to speak at this hearing and that the people of my community, the people who attended this town hall meeting, will not be allowed to testify. That is un-American,” Lucio said.
“Why bother to hold a hearing if you are not going to hear from the public? Why waste taxpayers’ money? Send us the money for public education or healthcare. Don’t spend all this money on a joyride. As far as I am concerned these members of Congress could have stayed back home and done a teleconference. I am extremely disappointed our residents will not get to speak.”
Poe is a big backer of the border wall. Last March he co-authored the Unlawful Border Entry Prevention Act, which would require construction of an additional 350 miles of border wall.
Despite not being allowed to testify at Poe’s hearing, Lucio said he will try to get all the comments made by those at his town hall meeting entered into the congressional record. “I am going to see if they make these comments part of the record or chuck them away,” Lucio said. He said he would also be sending the comments of those who attended the town hall meeting to President Obama.
Lucio’s town hall meeting was held at the Fort Brown Memorial Golf Course, adjacent to the Rio Grande.
Among those who spoke at the event were state Rep. René Oliveira, D-Brownsville, landowner Michelle Taylor Moncivaiz, whose home lies between the border wall and the Rio Grande, Equal Voice for America’s Families leader Mike Seifert, La Unión del Pueblo Entero Director Juanita Valdez Cox, Sierra Club Borderlands Team Co-Chair and No Border Wall Coalition Co-Founder Scott Nicol, UT-Brownsville professors Jeff Wilson and Jude Benavides, Hidalgo County Democratic Party activist Aaron Peña III, Texas Rangers Liaison Art Barrera, and Rick Perez, a member of the special investigations unit set up by Cameron County Sheriff Omar Lucio. The only person at the hearing to speak in favor of the border wall was Brownsville resident Dagberto Barrera.
http://www.riograndeguardian.com/rggnews_story.asp?story_no=26
September 17, 2011
by Steve Taylor
BROWNSVILLE, Sept. 17 - State Sen. Eddie Lucio says if Rio Grande Valley residents keep up the pressure, they will succeed in tearing down the border wall.
“I was born and reared here and I have never seen anything like this monstrosity,” Lucio said, referring to the border wall. “In my lifetime I want to see the border wall come down, just like I saw the Berlin Wall come down. Even if I am 85 or 90 years old, I want to be there when the wall comes down.”
Lucio said he also wants to see, in his lifetime, the appropriate level of compensation paid to those whose homes and land have been disfigured by the border wall. “We give big corporations on Wall Street billions of dollars of tax relief. Why can’t we give the little people, people I consider great Americans and great Texans, some relief? We should not turn our backs on those in need,” he said.
Lucio, D-Brownsville, made his comments in an exclusive interview with the Guardian immediately following a town hall meeting he held to discuss to the impact the border wall has had on landowners who live between the wall and the Rio Grande.
Lucio said all the evidence suggests the border wall has not been an effective method in deterring undocumented immigration. He said it was only erected “to satisfy the appetite of immigrant-bashing politicians in other parts of America.”
A much better method of deterring undocumented immigration, Lucio said, would be to set up a four-state immigrant employment zone where Mexican residents could come in and work under a guest worker program. He said he is confident that if such a program were in operation, Mexican nationals would return to their homeland once their work is done.
“If we want to do something about illegal immigration we should create an immigrant employment zone and have guest workers come in. We would know who they are and where they live. At the moment people get in illegally and they spread out. They are in hiding,” Lucio said.
“I want to see the federal government pass legislation to allow the four Border States – Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California - to address this issue at the state level. We know better than the federal government how to set up this program. We need bricklayers, we need roofers; we need dishwashers, we need agricultural workers. Let us as Border States hire workers from Mexico to do the jobs our people are unwilling to do.”
Lucio said if the federal government allowed the Border States to create an immigrant employment zone for Mexican workers, the four states would be a lot cleaner. “These people are workers. They have an incredible work ethic. They would keep our state clean. All they want to do is make a little bit of money to maintain their families. They want to eat. They want to live. Who can blame them? It is all about if we are going to be humanitarians or not,” he said.
Lucio said the U.S. should also be doing more to help Mexico.
“The way you curb illegal immigration from Mexico is to create an economy there that is robust. The Mexican government needs to establish a national minimum wage. You get a $5 dollar minimum wage and these workers will not be coming here. They will stay in Mexico. Lift their economy and you keep these people in their homeland,” he said.
Lucio concluded his interview with the Guardian by casting doubt on the usefulness of a congressional hearing being staged at the University of Texas at Brownsville on Monday by U.S. Rep. Ted Poe, R-Humble. The hearing is slated to focus on border violence.
“My staff has been told only invited guests will be allowed to speak at this hearing and that the people of my community, the people who attended this town hall meeting, will not be allowed to testify. That is un-American,” Lucio said.
“Why bother to hold a hearing if you are not going to hear from the public? Why waste taxpayers’ money? Send us the money for public education or healthcare. Don’t spend all this money on a joyride. As far as I am concerned these members of Congress could have stayed back home and done a teleconference. I am extremely disappointed our residents will not get to speak.”
Poe is a big backer of the border wall. Last March he co-authored the Unlawful Border Entry Prevention Act, which would require construction of an additional 350 miles of border wall.
Despite not being allowed to testify at Poe’s hearing, Lucio said he will try to get all the comments made by those at his town hall meeting entered into the congressional record. “I am going to see if they make these comments part of the record or chuck them away,” Lucio said. He said he would also be sending the comments of those who attended the town hall meeting to President Obama.
Lucio’s town hall meeting was held at the Fort Brown Memorial Golf Course, adjacent to the Rio Grande.
Among those who spoke at the event were state Rep. René Oliveira, D-Brownsville, landowner Michelle Taylor Moncivaiz, whose home lies between the border wall and the Rio Grande, Equal Voice for America’s Families leader Mike Seifert, La Unión del Pueblo Entero Director Juanita Valdez Cox, Sierra Club Borderlands Team Co-Chair and No Border Wall Coalition Co-Founder Scott Nicol, UT-Brownsville professors Jeff Wilson and Jude Benavides, Hidalgo County Democratic Party activist Aaron Peña III, Texas Rangers Liaison Art Barrera, and Rick Perez, a member of the special investigations unit set up by Cameron County Sheriff Omar Lucio. The only person at the hearing to speak in favor of the border wall was Brownsville resident Dagberto Barrera.
http://www.riograndeguardian.com/rggnews_story.asp?story_no=26
Impact of border wall discussed at meeting
Brownsville Herald / The Monitor
September 17, 2011
by Jacqueline Armendariz
BROWNSVILLE -- Drug trafficking from Mexico into Cameron County has increased, not decreased, since the border fence was built, a sheriff’s lieutenant said Saturday at a public meeting.
It was one of many points discussed at the “Border Wall Impact” meeting hosted by State Senator Eddie Lucio Jr. at the Fort Brown Memorial Golf Course. The event brought together legislators, city representatives, state and county law enforcement and private citizens to air concerns about the fence.
“Is the fence keeping drugs from coming in? No,” Lieutenant Rick Perez said responding to a question. “We have more drugs now than before.”
Perez is part of the special investigations unit of the Cameron County Sheriff’s Department.
A disconnect between U.S. border communities and the federal government, and the perceived ineffectiveness of the border fence, emerged as the major themes at Saturday’s gathering.
One property owner shared stories about finding drugs near her home and also being the victim of a home burglary.
Among people who spoke, some supported the fence while most did not.
“This is terrorism from the United States to other countries,” Yolanda Garza Birdwell said of the fence and its environmental impact. She described herself as a dual citizen of the U.S. and Mexico and a Laguna Vista resident for a year.
Dagoberto Berrera was at the opposite end of the spectrum. He said he supported the fence, and he spoke disparagingly of undocumented immigrants.
‘Better than nothing’
“The wall is better than nothing,” he said. “Sure, it costs a lot of money, but it also costs us by just letting everybody in here. We are a land of law and order. You’ve got to obey the laws.”
The audience, which included District 4 City Commissioner John Villarreal, numbered a little more than 20 people.
Lucio said he has been disappointed by the lack of information about the impact of the border fence, and said he hoped to use what he learned Saturday to be an advocate for the region in Austin.
“I truly hope that today’s meeting will be the first true step in understanding the real impacts of the border wall on our region with the information that you share, being armed with facts, figures and knowledge,” Lucio told those in attendance.
Lobbying for property owners
Lucio’s brother, Bob Lucio, is the manager of the border golf course that hosted the meeting and said his hope is to get more support for his group called the No Man’s Land Association.
With power in numbers, he said he wants to lobby to help for property owners or businesses like himself whose land has ended up between the Rio Grande River and the border fence.
At the meeting, several audience members brought up concerns about being able to communicate with law enforcement and the environmental impact of the fence, while others spoke to decreased property values and alleged that the federal government has abused its power of eminent domain.
Still others spoke to serious safety concerns, while another audience member raised concerns about the potential psychological effects the border wall has created for communities on both sides. There was also discussion of a University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College study that found the fence effects minorities disproportionately.
Fears for safety
Michelle Moncivaiz identified herself as a property owner living just a short distance from the border fence, but she said she feared for the safety of her family. She pleaded to the law enforcement representatives and legislators present for “more boots on the ground” to help.
“Washington doesn’t understand what this fence has created,” she said. “Where is our Homeland Security? ... Where is America helping us on the border?”
No one at the meeting disputed the assertion that more law enforcement officers are needed along the border. Perez said at the end of this year the Sheriff’s Department will lose 12 deputies who were temporarily staffed through a $2.2 million grant from the Department of Justice.
He read a statement on behalf of Cameron County Sheriff Omar Lucio saying that he never supported the fence. The sheriff was not present at the meeting.
“The sheriff suggests that instead of building the fence, take into consideration giving him the $10 million and you can hire 12 deputies for several years and they would do a better job than the fence,” Perez said. Still, the statement discussed a high-traffic drug smuggling area along Highway 4, where there is no fence.
Sharing information
Texas Ranger Staff Lieutenant Art Barrera said he is the liaison between local, state and federal law enforcement in Operation Border Star, and he reports information to Austin. He and Perez said the entities they work for have not conducted studies on the impact of the fence.
“It’s getting better,” Barrera said of sharing knowledge. “I’m not saying we’re there yet, but information sharing between federal, state and local is on the right track.”
Hearing Monday
A federal hearing on border security is scheduled for Monday. Lucio said state legislators were not invited and that testimony would not be taken from the public. He invited people to attend and submit written testimony with him.
“Only those that have been invited will be able to testify,” he said. “That’s not the practice we’re used to in Austin, and it bothers me.”
On Saturday, Lucio said he had just found out about the federal forum that day, but earlier in the week his spokesman told The Herald that the timing of Saturday’s meeting and Monday’s hearing was coincidental.
The “Secure our Texas Border Forum,” headed by House Representative Ted Poe, R-Humble, and other members of the House Committee on the Judiciary, was rescheduled at least once already this summer. The forum will be at the UTB-TSC Arts Center at 10 a.m. Prominent figures related to border security are scheduled to testify as witnesses.
Too expensive
Lucio said he introduced Senate Bill 1809 this past legislative session in an effort to secure an economic impact study of the border fence in this area. It failed in the House, he said.
He said the state comptroller told him such a study would likely be too expensive to undertake, but he hoped legislation for it could be pushed for in the future.
State Representative Rene Oliveira said the issue of security and immigration were two different things, though they are often connected when discussing the desirability of the border fence.
“I don’t want cartels in the Valley or Texas,” he said. “I don’t want those people to flourish in our country.”
But, he said, learning the impact of the border fence, and how to mitigate any negative effects, is now the necessary focus.
“The wall is here whether we like it or not,” he said. “I don’t think anybody is going to tear it down. The political will is clearly nonexistent for that.”
http://www.themonitor.com/news/border-54855-fence-cameron.html
September 17, 2011
by Jacqueline Armendariz
BROWNSVILLE -- Drug trafficking from Mexico into Cameron County has increased, not decreased, since the border fence was built, a sheriff’s lieutenant said Saturday at a public meeting.
It was one of many points discussed at the “Border Wall Impact” meeting hosted by State Senator Eddie Lucio Jr. at the Fort Brown Memorial Golf Course. The event brought together legislators, city representatives, state and county law enforcement and private citizens to air concerns about the fence.
“Is the fence keeping drugs from coming in? No,” Lieutenant Rick Perez said responding to a question. “We have more drugs now than before.”
Perez is part of the special investigations unit of the Cameron County Sheriff’s Department.
A disconnect between U.S. border communities and the federal government, and the perceived ineffectiveness of the border fence, emerged as the major themes at Saturday’s gathering.
One property owner shared stories about finding drugs near her home and also being the victim of a home burglary.
Among people who spoke, some supported the fence while most did not.
“This is terrorism from the United States to other countries,” Yolanda Garza Birdwell said of the fence and its environmental impact. She described herself as a dual citizen of the U.S. and Mexico and a Laguna Vista resident for a year.
Dagoberto Berrera was at the opposite end of the spectrum. He said he supported the fence, and he spoke disparagingly of undocumented immigrants.
‘Better than nothing’
“The wall is better than nothing,” he said. “Sure, it costs a lot of money, but it also costs us by just letting everybody in here. We are a land of law and order. You’ve got to obey the laws.”
The audience, which included District 4 City Commissioner John Villarreal, numbered a little more than 20 people.
Lucio said he has been disappointed by the lack of information about the impact of the border fence, and said he hoped to use what he learned Saturday to be an advocate for the region in Austin.
“I truly hope that today’s meeting will be the first true step in understanding the real impacts of the border wall on our region with the information that you share, being armed with facts, figures and knowledge,” Lucio told those in attendance.
Lobbying for property owners
Lucio’s brother, Bob Lucio, is the manager of the border golf course that hosted the meeting and said his hope is to get more support for his group called the No Man’s Land Association.
With power in numbers, he said he wants to lobby to help for property owners or businesses like himself whose land has ended up between the Rio Grande River and the border fence.
At the meeting, several audience members brought up concerns about being able to communicate with law enforcement and the environmental impact of the fence, while others spoke to decreased property values and alleged that the federal government has abused its power of eminent domain.
Still others spoke to serious safety concerns, while another audience member raised concerns about the potential psychological effects the border wall has created for communities on both sides. There was also discussion of a University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College study that found the fence effects minorities disproportionately.
Fears for safety
Michelle Moncivaiz identified herself as a property owner living just a short distance from the border fence, but she said she feared for the safety of her family. She pleaded to the law enforcement representatives and legislators present for “more boots on the ground” to help.
“Washington doesn’t understand what this fence has created,” she said. “Where is our Homeland Security? ... Where is America helping us on the border?”
No one at the meeting disputed the assertion that more law enforcement officers are needed along the border. Perez said at the end of this year the Sheriff’s Department will lose 12 deputies who were temporarily staffed through a $2.2 million grant from the Department of Justice.
He read a statement on behalf of Cameron County Sheriff Omar Lucio saying that he never supported the fence. The sheriff was not present at the meeting.
“The sheriff suggests that instead of building the fence, take into consideration giving him the $10 million and you can hire 12 deputies for several years and they would do a better job than the fence,” Perez said. Still, the statement discussed a high-traffic drug smuggling area along Highway 4, where there is no fence.
Sharing information
Texas Ranger Staff Lieutenant Art Barrera said he is the liaison between local, state and federal law enforcement in Operation Border Star, and he reports information to Austin. He and Perez said the entities they work for have not conducted studies on the impact of the fence.
“It’s getting better,” Barrera said of sharing knowledge. “I’m not saying we’re there yet, but information sharing between federal, state and local is on the right track.”
Hearing Monday
A federal hearing on border security is scheduled for Monday. Lucio said state legislators were not invited and that testimony would not be taken from the public. He invited people to attend and submit written testimony with him.
“Only those that have been invited will be able to testify,” he said. “That’s not the practice we’re used to in Austin, and it bothers me.”
On Saturday, Lucio said he had just found out about the federal forum that day, but earlier in the week his spokesman told The Herald that the timing of Saturday’s meeting and Monday’s hearing was coincidental.
The “Secure our Texas Border Forum,” headed by House Representative Ted Poe, R-Humble, and other members of the House Committee on the Judiciary, was rescheduled at least once already this summer. The forum will be at the UTB-TSC Arts Center at 10 a.m. Prominent figures related to border security are scheduled to testify as witnesses.
Too expensive
Lucio said he introduced Senate Bill 1809 this past legislative session in an effort to secure an economic impact study of the border fence in this area. It failed in the House, he said.
He said the state comptroller told him such a study would likely be too expensive to undertake, but he hoped legislation for it could be pushed for in the future.
State Representative Rene Oliveira said the issue of security and immigration were two different things, though they are often connected when discussing the desirability of the border fence.
“I don’t want cartels in the Valley or Texas,” he said. “I don’t want those people to flourish in our country.”
But, he said, learning the impact of the border fence, and how to mitigate any negative effects, is now the necessary focus.
“The wall is here whether we like it or not,” he said. “I don’t think anybody is going to tear it down. The political will is clearly nonexistent for that.”
http://www.themonitor.com/news/border-54855-fence-cameron.html
Friday, September 16, 2011
Public meeting will address border fence
Brownsville Herald
September 15, 2011
by Jacqueline Armandariz
State Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. is hosting a “Border Wall Impact” public meeting on Saturday, just two days before a federal committee hearing in Brownsville is set to address border security.
Saturday’s meeting will be at the Fort Brown Memorial Golf Course Clubhouse, 300 River Levee Road, from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
“In order for Texans to respond to federal policy, we need to have facts, figures and analysis,” Lucio said in a press release. “However, when it comes to the federal border wall, there exists very little centralized information. This public meeting represents an opportunity for Valley residents to unite and study the impact that the border wall is having on us.”
Immediately before that gathering, a group calling itself the No Man’s Land Association will hold its first meeting at the same place.
The local start-up group aims to discuss the effects of the border wall on property owners whose land is fenced off from other U.S. lands, and to lobby for a tax-free zone or enterprise zone to help them, according to organizer Bob Lucio. He is the state senator’s brother and runs the Fort Brown Memorial Golf Course Clubhouse.
Worry of spillover violence and the death of some Americans in circumstances related to the Mexican drug war have attracted attention to the U.S.-Mexico border. A national debate that connects border security and immigration policy has continuously brewed, while the miles of border wall for residents along the banks of the Rio Grande is a fact of life.
Through a spokesman, Lucio said the timing with the federal event on Monday is coincidental.
That hearing, the “Secure our Texas Border” forum, will be hosted by U.S. Rep. Ted Poe, R-Humble, and other members of the House Committee on the Judiciary. It begins at 10 a.m. at the UTB-TSC Arts Center. Prominent figures related to border security are scheduled to testify as witnesses.
At the Saturday event, there will be presentations from various law enforcement agencies, and the public is asked to provide input and discuss the impact of the fence on businesses, the environment, property values and border security.
While Sen. Lucio said there is little data on the effects of the border fence, in March two faculty members from the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College discussed their study that found the fence negatively affects minorities disproportionately.
Jude Benavides and Jeff Wilson conducted the study that found Cameron County had one-third of the proposed fence gaps, more than any other Texas county.
With the combination of the Secure Border Fence Act of 2006 and another 2008 appropriations bill, the federal government was set to construct about 700 miles of barrier, about 315 miles of which is in Texas. Much of it is on private land, the study said.
Wilson, an environmental science professor, said: “We do not want to speculate as to the intent of the government on where it was placed but the results are clear: The wall is in the backyard of those who would be least equipped to negotiate.”
The findings were published in the 2010 edition of the annual journal “The Southwestern Geographer.”
UTB-TSC itself filed a civil lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security when it was proposed that the fence run through university property. The two entities reached a compromise in August 2008.
Today, No Man’s Land Association organizer Bob Lucio said it’s no longer an issue of debating the construction of the fence. It’s here, and now it’s time to deal with the effects, he said.
“What I’m trying to do is create an association that will give us numbers,” he said. “I do not want to fight battles that we fought five years ago when they were putting up the fence. ... We’ve got to go forward. ... We need to start asking questions.”
He said the several years he’s been a business owner dealing with the border fence have been “horrendous” and he believes property values are affected by it. The perception of danger the border fence conveys has also cut the number of memberships bought at his golf course, he said.
He calls the U.S. land between the river and the border fence a “no-man’s land.”
He said he worked with his brother to schedule the Saturday meetings together and brought his concerns as a business owner to the state senator.
“We’re on the border by the sea. That’s our city’s slogan, right?” he said. “Well, I say we’re on the border fence by the sea.”
Lucio said being on the banks of the river could be an asset, but the fence has ended that.
“Our kids don’t even see the river anymore,” he said.
http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/articles/hosting-131258-lucio-address.html
September 15, 2011
by Jacqueline Armandariz
State Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. is hosting a “Border Wall Impact” public meeting on Saturday, just two days before a federal committee hearing in Brownsville is set to address border security.
Saturday’s meeting will be at the Fort Brown Memorial Golf Course Clubhouse, 300 River Levee Road, from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
“In order for Texans to respond to federal policy, we need to have facts, figures and analysis,” Lucio said in a press release. “However, when it comes to the federal border wall, there exists very little centralized information. This public meeting represents an opportunity for Valley residents to unite and study the impact that the border wall is having on us.”
Immediately before that gathering, a group calling itself the No Man’s Land Association will hold its first meeting at the same place.
The local start-up group aims to discuss the effects of the border wall on property owners whose land is fenced off from other U.S. lands, and to lobby for a tax-free zone or enterprise zone to help them, according to organizer Bob Lucio. He is the state senator’s brother and runs the Fort Brown Memorial Golf Course Clubhouse.
Worry of spillover violence and the death of some Americans in circumstances related to the Mexican drug war have attracted attention to the U.S.-Mexico border. A national debate that connects border security and immigration policy has continuously brewed, while the miles of border wall for residents along the banks of the Rio Grande is a fact of life.
Through a spokesman, Lucio said the timing with the federal event on Monday is coincidental.
That hearing, the “Secure our Texas Border” forum, will be hosted by U.S. Rep. Ted Poe, R-Humble, and other members of the House Committee on the Judiciary. It begins at 10 a.m. at the UTB-TSC Arts Center. Prominent figures related to border security are scheduled to testify as witnesses.
At the Saturday event, there will be presentations from various law enforcement agencies, and the public is asked to provide input and discuss the impact of the fence on businesses, the environment, property values and border security.
While Sen. Lucio said there is little data on the effects of the border fence, in March two faculty members from the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College discussed their study that found the fence negatively affects minorities disproportionately.
Jude Benavides and Jeff Wilson conducted the study that found Cameron County had one-third of the proposed fence gaps, more than any other Texas county.
With the combination of the Secure Border Fence Act of 2006 and another 2008 appropriations bill, the federal government was set to construct about 700 miles of barrier, about 315 miles of which is in Texas. Much of it is on private land, the study said.
Wilson, an environmental science professor, said: “We do not want to speculate as to the intent of the government on where it was placed but the results are clear: The wall is in the backyard of those who would be least equipped to negotiate.”
The findings were published in the 2010 edition of the annual journal “The Southwestern Geographer.”
UTB-TSC itself filed a civil lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security when it was proposed that the fence run through university property. The two entities reached a compromise in August 2008.
Today, No Man’s Land Association organizer Bob Lucio said it’s no longer an issue of debating the construction of the fence. It’s here, and now it’s time to deal with the effects, he said.
“What I’m trying to do is create an association that will give us numbers,” he said. “I do not want to fight battles that we fought five years ago when they were putting up the fence. ... We’ve got to go forward. ... We need to start asking questions.”
He said the several years he’s been a business owner dealing with the border fence have been “horrendous” and he believes property values are affected by it. The perception of danger the border fence conveys has also cut the number of memberships bought at his golf course, he said.
He calls the U.S. land between the river and the border fence a “no-man’s land.”
He said he worked with his brother to schedule the Saturday meetings together and brought his concerns as a business owner to the state senator.
“We’re on the border by the sea. That’s our city’s slogan, right?” he said. “Well, I say we’re on the border fence by the sea.”
Lucio said being on the banks of the river could be an asset, but the fence has ended that.
“Our kids don’t even see the river anymore,” he said.
http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/articles/hosting-131258-lucio-address.html
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Border wall impact public meeting set
Brownsville Herald
September 14, 2011
A public meeting on the impact of the border wall is set for Saturday, organized by State Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr.
The meeting will take place from 11 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. at the Fort Brown Memorial Golf Course Clubhouse, 300 River Levee Road in Brownsville.
"We will hear presentations from our law enforcement agencies regarding public safety and then open the discussion to the public," Lucio said. "I sincerely hope people will join in and share their stories."
Parts of the border wall have been built in all four southern border states since the passage of the Congressional Secure Fence Act in 2006. A 70-mile-long, 20-foot high section of the wall has been built in the Rio Grande Valley.
Lucio said there has been no firm assessment that quantifies the social, cultural or economic impact of the fence.
The aim of the meeting is to bring together diverse groups, organizations and individuals in order to discuss the impact of the wall on the local community.
“In order for Texans to respond to federal policy, we need to have facts, figures and analysis,” Lucio said. "However, when it comes to the federal border wall, there exists very little centralized information. This public meeting represents an opportunity for Valley residents to unite and study the impact that the border wall is having on us.”
http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/articles/wall-131220-border-impact.html
September 14, 2011
A public meeting on the impact of the border wall is set for Saturday, organized by State Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr.
The meeting will take place from 11 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. at the Fort Brown Memorial Golf Course Clubhouse, 300 River Levee Road in Brownsville.
"We will hear presentations from our law enforcement agencies regarding public safety and then open the discussion to the public," Lucio said. "I sincerely hope people will join in and share their stories."
Parts of the border wall have been built in all four southern border states since the passage of the Congressional Secure Fence Act in 2006. A 70-mile-long, 20-foot high section of the wall has been built in the Rio Grande Valley.
Lucio said there has been no firm assessment that quantifies the social, cultural or economic impact of the fence.
The aim of the meeting is to bring together diverse groups, organizations and individuals in order to discuss the impact of the wall on the local community.
“In order for Texans to respond to federal policy, we need to have facts, figures and analysis,” Lucio said. "However, when it comes to the federal border wall, there exists very little centralized information. This public meeting represents an opportunity for Valley residents to unite and study the impact that the border wall is having on us.”
http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/articles/wall-131220-border-impact.html
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Lucio to Hold Public Meeting to Discuss Impact of Border Wall
Rio Grande Guardian
September 14, 2011
by Steve Taylor
BROWNSVILLE, Sept. 14 - State Sen. Eddie Lucio is to hold a public meeting on Saturday to discuss the Border Wall.
The meeting takes place from 11 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. on Saturday at the Fort Brown Memorial Golf Course Clubhouse at 300 River Levee Road in Brownsville.
“We need to know more, much more, about the federal border wall,” said Lucio, D-Brownsville. “At the meeting, we will be hearing from our law enforcement agencies, sharing our personnel stories about the wall and discussing potential solutions.”
Lucio said he sincerely hopes citizens affected by the wall will join him at the meeting.
“In order for our communities to respond to federal policy, we need to have facts, figures and analysis. Saturday's meeting is a step in the right direction,” he said.
Brownsville residents were in the forefront of the opposition groups that sprang up in 2006 and 2007 in opposition to the border wall. They held rallies on the international bridges and organized public meetings. It was to no avail. The Department of Homeland Security built the border wall in the city and on University of Texas at Brownsville land.
Lucio explained why more needs to be learned about the border wall and its impact.
“Since Congress passed the Secure Fence Act in 2006, 70 miles of fencing - 20 feet high - has been built in the Rio Grande Valley. But because the river is the true boundary between Texas and Mexico, the wall actually lies north of the border, dividing residential and commercial properties that run to the river edge,” he said.
Lucio pointed out that during this year’s regular 82nd legislative session he filed a bill that dealt with the federal border wall.
“My bill, Senate Bill 1809, would have required the state government to study the economic impact that the border wall is having on homes, properties, and businesses. The reason is simple. We need to know how many homes are caught in the no man's land between the wall and the river. We need to know how many citrus groves and other agricultural businesses the wall slices through,” he said.
Lucio said he worked hard on this issue and was pleased to see his bill pass the Senate with bipartisan support. “Unfortunately, the bill died when it went to the Texas House of Representatives. To be honest, I was both surprised and disappointed that it did not pass,” Lucio said.
Lucio said it is clear to anyone living in the Lone Star state that Texans value property rights very highly. “With this in mind, you would expect politicians in Texas to be enthusiastic about passing my border wall bill. After all, it would ensure that Texans have accurate information about a controversial federal program that encroaches on local rights,” he said.
“My personal conviction is that border Texans should have the same rights as other Americans when it comes to property rights and freedom of information,” Lucio argued. “Unfortunately, we currently have limited information about the border wall's impact. That is not good enough for the Valley or Texas.”
Lucio said that while Saturday’s public meeting will be a step in the right direction, more needs to be done.
“We need the state government to do its part as well. That is why I plan to file my border wall bill again during the 83rd legislative session in 2013,” Lucio said, assuming he is re-elected.
http://www.riograndeguardian.com/rggnews_story.asp?story_no=24
September 14, 2011
by Steve Taylor
BROWNSVILLE, Sept. 14 - State Sen. Eddie Lucio is to hold a public meeting on Saturday to discuss the Border Wall.
The meeting takes place from 11 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. on Saturday at the Fort Brown Memorial Golf Course Clubhouse at 300 River Levee Road in Brownsville.
“We need to know more, much more, about the federal border wall,” said Lucio, D-Brownsville. “At the meeting, we will be hearing from our law enforcement agencies, sharing our personnel stories about the wall and discussing potential solutions.”
Lucio said he sincerely hopes citizens affected by the wall will join him at the meeting.
“In order for our communities to respond to federal policy, we need to have facts, figures and analysis. Saturday's meeting is a step in the right direction,” he said.
Brownsville residents were in the forefront of the opposition groups that sprang up in 2006 and 2007 in opposition to the border wall. They held rallies on the international bridges and organized public meetings. It was to no avail. The Department of Homeland Security built the border wall in the city and on University of Texas at Brownsville land.
Lucio explained why more needs to be learned about the border wall and its impact.
“Since Congress passed the Secure Fence Act in 2006, 70 miles of fencing - 20 feet high - has been built in the Rio Grande Valley. But because the river is the true boundary between Texas and Mexico, the wall actually lies north of the border, dividing residential and commercial properties that run to the river edge,” he said.
Lucio pointed out that during this year’s regular 82nd legislative session he filed a bill that dealt with the federal border wall.
“My bill, Senate Bill 1809, would have required the state government to study the economic impact that the border wall is having on homes, properties, and businesses. The reason is simple. We need to know how many homes are caught in the no man's land between the wall and the river. We need to know how many citrus groves and other agricultural businesses the wall slices through,” he said.
Lucio said he worked hard on this issue and was pleased to see his bill pass the Senate with bipartisan support. “Unfortunately, the bill died when it went to the Texas House of Representatives. To be honest, I was both surprised and disappointed that it did not pass,” Lucio said.
Lucio said it is clear to anyone living in the Lone Star state that Texans value property rights very highly. “With this in mind, you would expect politicians in Texas to be enthusiastic about passing my border wall bill. After all, it would ensure that Texans have accurate information about a controversial federal program that encroaches on local rights,” he said.
“My personal conviction is that border Texans should have the same rights as other Americans when it comes to property rights and freedom of information,” Lucio argued. “Unfortunately, we currently have limited information about the border wall's impact. That is not good enough for the Valley or Texas.”
Lucio said that while Saturday’s public meeting will be a step in the right direction, more needs to be done.
“We need the state government to do its part as well. That is why I plan to file my border wall bill again during the 83rd legislative session in 2013,” Lucio said, assuming he is re-elected.
http://www.riograndeguardian.com/rggnews_story.asp?story_no=24
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Gates to Be Added to Border Wall
KRGV
September 13, 2011
by Farrah Fazal
PROGRESO - All along the border wall are openings that smugglers use. Illegals also go through them. Smugglers see an opportunity in the openings, but not for much longer.
“The bad guys like to use the access points,” says Border Patrol spokesman Dan Milian. “Once we put the gates, it’s going to increase security for the residents and push the activity out to the underdeveloped remote areas.”
Milian says the holes in the wall will start going away in the Valley next month. Eighty gates on the 95 miles of fence will cover the openings. Milian says land owners and law enforcement will unlock the gates two different ways.
“It’s going to be a keypad entry; every person will have access to the code,” says Milian. “Within each unit, they have the radio system. When they hit the mike, it will have a frequency which will communicate with the receiver and open the gate.”
Milian says the gate could be open for periods of time if farmers need more access to their land.
“If it will stop the traffic on our property, we welcome that,” says Othal Brand, general manager and president of Water District No. 3 in McAllen.
Brand says if you're going to build a fence, you need to build the gates. Not all farmers feel the way he does. Only a handful showed up to hear the Border Patrol's plans during a recent public meeting.
CHANNEL 5 NEWS asked a Border Patrol spokesman what happens if a smuggler decides to hold a gun to a farmer's head to get him to open the door. He said it's a tough situation. He also says agents plan on patrolling the gates 24/7, 365 days a year.
http://www.krgv.com/news/local/story/Gates-to-Be-Added-to-Border-Wall/jP0juewnaE6oWKRPriBTkg.cspx
September 13, 2011
by Farrah Fazal
PROGRESO - All along the border wall are openings that smugglers use. Illegals also go through them. Smugglers see an opportunity in the openings, but not for much longer.
“The bad guys like to use the access points,” says Border Patrol spokesman Dan Milian. “Once we put the gates, it’s going to increase security for the residents and push the activity out to the underdeveloped remote areas.”
Milian says the holes in the wall will start going away in the Valley next month. Eighty gates on the 95 miles of fence will cover the openings. Milian says land owners and law enforcement will unlock the gates two different ways.
“It’s going to be a keypad entry; every person will have access to the code,” says Milian. “Within each unit, they have the radio system. When they hit the mike, it will have a frequency which will communicate with the receiver and open the gate.”
Milian says the gate could be open for periods of time if farmers need more access to their land.
“If it will stop the traffic on our property, we welcome that,” says Othal Brand, general manager and president of Water District No. 3 in McAllen.
Brand says if you're going to build a fence, you need to build the gates. Not all farmers feel the way he does. Only a handful showed up to hear the Border Patrol's plans during a recent public meeting.
CHANNEL 5 NEWS asked a Border Patrol spokesman what happens if a smuggler decides to hold a gun to a farmer's head to get him to open the door. He said it's a tough situation. He also says agents plan on patrolling the gates 24/7, 365 days a year.
http://www.krgv.com/news/local/story/Gates-to-Be-Added-to-Border-Wall/jP0juewnaE6oWKRPriBTkg.cspx
Friday, September 9, 2011
10 years of increased border security
San Antonio Express News
September 9, 2011
By Jason Buch and Lynn Brezosky
LAREDO — In the decade since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, property owners along the Rio Grande have lost land to the border fence and those who live near gaps in the unfinished structure are in the mouth of a funnel for illegal immigration and smuggling.
Travelers can no longer gain entry into the U.S. simply by declaring “American citizen.” Instead, they're met with long lines, rifle-toting customs officers and an array of electronics to scan documents and vehicles.
Cross-border communities in West Texas have withered and died when the unofficial crossings they relied upon were closed. A privately run detention center holding thousands of immigrants went up in a flash near the border.
RFID scanners, X-ray and Gamma-ray machines, SENTRI passes and FAST lanes have become part of the border lexicon, the response to the terrorist attack that cost thousands of U.S. lives and the effort to prevent it from happening again.
“It changed the way we live in this country, and rightfully so,” said Gene Garza, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection field office director who oversees eight ports of entry from Brownsville to Del Rio. “I think we were too relaxed. I think it raised the level of security in this country.”
Overseeing the changes for the last eight years is the Department of Homeland Security with its 200,000 employees and $50 billion annual budget. Often derided as a behemoth bureaucracy, officials defend it as a way to bring the nearly two dozen agencies tasked with protecting the country under one roof.
“I can tell you that our ability to investigate customs related crimes or to investigate immigration related crime would be enhanced by bringing it all under one agent,” said Jerry Robinette, the special agent in charge of the San Antonio office for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which covers much of South Texas.
But the increased security has divided communities, separated families, and, according to Cynta De Narvaez, a West Texas activist who lives in Terlingua, weakened cross border communication and made some border communities more susceptible to the corrupting influences of drug traffickers.
“We messed up pretty badly,” said De Narvaez, who's worked with Mexican families in remote towns that were cut off from U.S. grocery stores and medical facilities after 9/11. “We just didn't do our homework. I think we were in a pretty bad situation and everyone drummed up this stuff about border security.”
The wall
Half a continent away from ground zero, on a small plot of land with three white frame houses, Texas border resident Eloisa Tamez sees daily a reminder of the 9/11 attacks — what locals call the muro, or border wall.
“They defaced our community, and no telling the outcome on wildlife,” she said. “We are those unrecognized, invisible victims of 9/11. We should be having a memorial also, because we lost our land.”
Tamez was the poster child of protests against the Secure Fence Act of 2006, a keystone of President Bush's pledge to crack down on illegal immigration and secure the porous southern border.
The tangle was that in Texas, most of the land backing up to the Rio Grande was private, in some cases dating to Spanish land grants predating America's Revolutionary War. A map leaked to the press showed federal engineers had drawn lines for the fence without local input. It cut through a college campus and wildlife preserves and created a “no man's land” south of the fence that would have engulfed much of a small city.
There were bumper stickers and protests. At one, Tamez shouted “ No al muro!” and beat apart a wall-shaped piñata.
In the end, the fence that went up near her wasn't very imposing. It stretches in back of neighborhoods like a long row of toothpicks.
The fence is intermittent, meaning migrants and drug traffickers just come through the gaps. About an hour west in Granjeno, now backed by a reinforced levee-wall, resident Gloria Garza said one such opening funnels migrants through at a rate that has neighbors terrified.
“It used to be those people would come now and then... you'd give them a lunch bag or water,” she said. “We don't do that any more.”
She's seen them hiding in her plants, sitting on her porch. One rang the doorbell to say thanks; the smuggler had told him residents were paid a sort of campsite fee. Another was belligerent and demanded water. The faces are from India and China, not just Mexico and Central America.
Border Patrol spokesman Daniel Milian said the agency recently hosted two open houses to tell residents that punch-code gates were on the way.
“It's a very lengthy process as far as getting all the particulars behind the gates, figuring out what dimensions they needed to be, what type of design they wanted to use,” he said.
The economics
Some of the changes wrought by 9/11 took years to manifest themselves. For almost eight years after the attacks, it was possible to enter the U.S. at the international bridges simply by declaring citizenship.
Travelers are now encouraged to show a passport card, enhanced drivers license, a passport or documents identifying them as part of a trusted traveler program. CBP cannot deny entry to a U.S. citizen, but someone trying to get through without approved documents is likely to face a battery of questions and possibly spend some time in secondary inspection. Short-term visitors from Mexico must cough up $150 for a border crossing card.
That's had an impact on commerce. Les Norton, whose family owns three stores in the downtown Laredo shopping district full of shops that offer “ mayoreo y menudeo” (wholesale and retail) products primarily to Mexican customers who walk across the international bridge, said increased scrutiny makes it harder for shoppers to enter the U.S. and longer lines discourage them.
It wiped out McAllen merchant Monica Weisberg-Stewart's customer base: the maquila workers who'd cross by foot and take a bus to shop for discounted bras and dresses.
“In over 57 years of family business, we've never seen anything like this,” she said. “This was worse than any peso devaluation.”
The long lines are a burden as well to Nuevo Laredo resident Jose Manuel Zamora Diaz, who crosses several times a day to buy goods in Laredo that he ships to Mexico City and sells. When lines reach 1 ½ to two hours, he can sometimes only cross once a day, Zamora Diaz said.
CBP has put in programs intended to make the bridges run more smoothly, most of which involve CBP electronically collecting information about people and goods before they reach the ports of entry. Travelers with a SENTRI pass pay about $125 and undergo a background check to use an expedited lane.
In order to qualify for bringing goods across through expedited commercial lanes, customs broker Daniel B. Hastings Jr. said he's dropped money into heightened security including random drug tests for employees, camera surveillance of trucks as they're loaded and measures that restrict the movement of employees and visitors around company property.
“Our lives have changed in that we have placed security at a paramount of importance,” Hastings said.
Increased security or no, large-scale international commerce continues to thrive. Trade between the U.S. and Mexico is at an all-time high.
Some positive impact
The focus on security has had a positive economic impact as well. The major population centers along the Texas-Mexico border performed well in the recession, in part due to the increased federal spending there.
Since 2004, the number of Border Patrol agents in the country has doubled to more than 20,000 by 2010. In the Laredo Border Patrol sector, the number has increased by more than 800 to 1,858. In the Rio Grande Valley sector, it's increased by about 1,000 to 2,441. An entry-level position with Border Patrol pays about $38,000.
“For every one government employee that comes, like Border Patrol or a customs inspector, the multiplier factor can be 3.1 to 3.7” jobs created, said Hastings, who serves on the board of directors for the International Bank of Commerce in Laredo and is a past member of the board of directors for the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas' San Antonio branch.
Those government employees spend money on things like “housing, retail, electricity, schooling,” Hastings said. “Plus they're paying taxes. So the impact is exponential.”
In addition, the government has spent money on infrastructure and technology. Newfangled scanners grace ports of entry and Border Patrol checkpoints and agents now zoom up and down the river in airboats and overhead in helicopters and airplanes.
Humanitarian costs
Even as Homeland Security finds ways to accommodate border life — Laredo's new port director said he plans to add more pedestrian lanes to the international bridge there and CBP says that next year the famous Boquillas crossing at Big Bend National Park will reopen — there are broader implications.
University of Texas law professor Denise Gilman said the fence is only part of how the Sept. 11 attacks brought a sea change in how the nation viewed the southern border and illegal immigrants.
“I remember President (Vicente) Fox and President Bush meeting and promising that there was going to be reform, that we were going to bring the approximately 11 million undocumented individuals out of the shadows,” she said. “Those negotiations completely fell apart and we went pretty much in the other direction.”
Deportations escalated, she said, as did detentions. There was the round-the-clock construction to erect the “tent city” detention center in Raymondville in time for Bush to announce the end of “catch and release” of non-Mexican illegal immigrants. Allegations of human rights abuses have been rampant.
University of Texas-El Paso economist Thomas Fullerton published a study on how the attacks impacted border trade.
“Even while El Paso wasn't hit by any of the planes, it was clear that regulatory practices at the airport and the international bridges were disrupting travel and commuting patterns,” he said.
It was a multi-year effect, he said, that started with three-hour wait times on the Mexican side of international bridges in the months after the attacks.
“The geographic proximity of Ciudad Juarez was dealt a blow by 9-11,” he said. “It was as if Ciudad Juarez all of a sudden was three hours south in the interior of Mexico.”
Laredo resident Roberto Sanchez said he crosses to Nuevo Laredo occasionally to buy medicine. The longer wait times are a hassle, Sanchez said, but he's more concerned about the lack of bathrooms on the bridge than the increased scrutiny.
“They check every card from everybody,” he said. “But that's OK, because it's more secure.”
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/10-years-of-increased-border-security-2163562.php#page-1
September 9, 2011
By Jason Buch and Lynn Brezosky
LAREDO — In the decade since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, property owners along the Rio Grande have lost land to the border fence and those who live near gaps in the unfinished structure are in the mouth of a funnel for illegal immigration and smuggling.
Travelers can no longer gain entry into the U.S. simply by declaring “American citizen.” Instead, they're met with long lines, rifle-toting customs officers and an array of electronics to scan documents and vehicles.
Cross-border communities in West Texas have withered and died when the unofficial crossings they relied upon were closed. A privately run detention center holding thousands of immigrants went up in a flash near the border.
RFID scanners, X-ray and Gamma-ray machines, SENTRI passes and FAST lanes have become part of the border lexicon, the response to the terrorist attack that cost thousands of U.S. lives and the effort to prevent it from happening again.
“It changed the way we live in this country, and rightfully so,” said Gene Garza, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection field office director who oversees eight ports of entry from Brownsville to Del Rio. “I think we were too relaxed. I think it raised the level of security in this country.”
Overseeing the changes for the last eight years is the Department of Homeland Security with its 200,000 employees and $50 billion annual budget. Often derided as a behemoth bureaucracy, officials defend it as a way to bring the nearly two dozen agencies tasked with protecting the country under one roof.
“I can tell you that our ability to investigate customs related crimes or to investigate immigration related crime would be enhanced by bringing it all under one agent,” said Jerry Robinette, the special agent in charge of the San Antonio office for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which covers much of South Texas.
But the increased security has divided communities, separated families, and, according to Cynta De Narvaez, a West Texas activist who lives in Terlingua, weakened cross border communication and made some border communities more susceptible to the corrupting influences of drug traffickers.
“We messed up pretty badly,” said De Narvaez, who's worked with Mexican families in remote towns that were cut off from U.S. grocery stores and medical facilities after 9/11. “We just didn't do our homework. I think we were in a pretty bad situation and everyone drummed up this stuff about border security.”
The wall
Half a continent away from ground zero, on a small plot of land with three white frame houses, Texas border resident Eloisa Tamez sees daily a reminder of the 9/11 attacks — what locals call the muro, or border wall.
“They defaced our community, and no telling the outcome on wildlife,” she said. “We are those unrecognized, invisible victims of 9/11. We should be having a memorial also, because we lost our land.”
Tamez was the poster child of protests against the Secure Fence Act of 2006, a keystone of President Bush's pledge to crack down on illegal immigration and secure the porous southern border.
The tangle was that in Texas, most of the land backing up to the Rio Grande was private, in some cases dating to Spanish land grants predating America's Revolutionary War. A map leaked to the press showed federal engineers had drawn lines for the fence without local input. It cut through a college campus and wildlife preserves and created a “no man's land” south of the fence that would have engulfed much of a small city.
There were bumper stickers and protests. At one, Tamez shouted “ No al muro!” and beat apart a wall-shaped piñata.
In the end, the fence that went up near her wasn't very imposing. It stretches in back of neighborhoods like a long row of toothpicks.
The fence is intermittent, meaning migrants and drug traffickers just come through the gaps. About an hour west in Granjeno, now backed by a reinforced levee-wall, resident Gloria Garza said one such opening funnels migrants through at a rate that has neighbors terrified.
“It used to be those people would come now and then... you'd give them a lunch bag or water,” she said. “We don't do that any more.”
She's seen them hiding in her plants, sitting on her porch. One rang the doorbell to say thanks; the smuggler had told him residents were paid a sort of campsite fee. Another was belligerent and demanded water. The faces are from India and China, not just Mexico and Central America.
Border Patrol spokesman Daniel Milian said the agency recently hosted two open houses to tell residents that punch-code gates were on the way.
“It's a very lengthy process as far as getting all the particulars behind the gates, figuring out what dimensions they needed to be, what type of design they wanted to use,” he said.
The economics
Some of the changes wrought by 9/11 took years to manifest themselves. For almost eight years after the attacks, it was possible to enter the U.S. at the international bridges simply by declaring citizenship.
Travelers are now encouraged to show a passport card, enhanced drivers license, a passport or documents identifying them as part of a trusted traveler program. CBP cannot deny entry to a U.S. citizen, but someone trying to get through without approved documents is likely to face a battery of questions and possibly spend some time in secondary inspection. Short-term visitors from Mexico must cough up $150 for a border crossing card.
That's had an impact on commerce. Les Norton, whose family owns three stores in the downtown Laredo shopping district full of shops that offer “ mayoreo y menudeo” (wholesale and retail) products primarily to Mexican customers who walk across the international bridge, said increased scrutiny makes it harder for shoppers to enter the U.S. and longer lines discourage them.
It wiped out McAllen merchant Monica Weisberg-Stewart's customer base: the maquila workers who'd cross by foot and take a bus to shop for discounted bras and dresses.
“In over 57 years of family business, we've never seen anything like this,” she said. “This was worse than any peso devaluation.”
The long lines are a burden as well to Nuevo Laredo resident Jose Manuel Zamora Diaz, who crosses several times a day to buy goods in Laredo that he ships to Mexico City and sells. When lines reach 1 ½ to two hours, he can sometimes only cross once a day, Zamora Diaz said.
CBP has put in programs intended to make the bridges run more smoothly, most of which involve CBP electronically collecting information about people and goods before they reach the ports of entry. Travelers with a SENTRI pass pay about $125 and undergo a background check to use an expedited lane.
In order to qualify for bringing goods across through expedited commercial lanes, customs broker Daniel B. Hastings Jr. said he's dropped money into heightened security including random drug tests for employees, camera surveillance of trucks as they're loaded and measures that restrict the movement of employees and visitors around company property.
“Our lives have changed in that we have placed security at a paramount of importance,” Hastings said.
Increased security or no, large-scale international commerce continues to thrive. Trade between the U.S. and Mexico is at an all-time high.
Some positive impact
The focus on security has had a positive economic impact as well. The major population centers along the Texas-Mexico border performed well in the recession, in part due to the increased federal spending there.
Since 2004, the number of Border Patrol agents in the country has doubled to more than 20,000 by 2010. In the Laredo Border Patrol sector, the number has increased by more than 800 to 1,858. In the Rio Grande Valley sector, it's increased by about 1,000 to 2,441. An entry-level position with Border Patrol pays about $38,000.
“For every one government employee that comes, like Border Patrol or a customs inspector, the multiplier factor can be 3.1 to 3.7” jobs created, said Hastings, who serves on the board of directors for the International Bank of Commerce in Laredo and is a past member of the board of directors for the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas' San Antonio branch.
Those government employees spend money on things like “housing, retail, electricity, schooling,” Hastings said. “Plus they're paying taxes. So the impact is exponential.”
In addition, the government has spent money on infrastructure and technology. Newfangled scanners grace ports of entry and Border Patrol checkpoints and agents now zoom up and down the river in airboats and overhead in helicopters and airplanes.
Humanitarian costs
Even as Homeland Security finds ways to accommodate border life — Laredo's new port director said he plans to add more pedestrian lanes to the international bridge there and CBP says that next year the famous Boquillas crossing at Big Bend National Park will reopen — there are broader implications.
University of Texas law professor Denise Gilman said the fence is only part of how the Sept. 11 attacks brought a sea change in how the nation viewed the southern border and illegal immigrants.
“I remember President (Vicente) Fox and President Bush meeting and promising that there was going to be reform, that we were going to bring the approximately 11 million undocumented individuals out of the shadows,” she said. “Those negotiations completely fell apart and we went pretty much in the other direction.”
Deportations escalated, she said, as did detentions. There was the round-the-clock construction to erect the “tent city” detention center in Raymondville in time for Bush to announce the end of “catch and release” of non-Mexican illegal immigrants. Allegations of human rights abuses have been rampant.
University of Texas-El Paso economist Thomas Fullerton published a study on how the attacks impacted border trade.
“Even while El Paso wasn't hit by any of the planes, it was clear that regulatory practices at the airport and the international bridges were disrupting travel and commuting patterns,” he said.
It was a multi-year effect, he said, that started with three-hour wait times on the Mexican side of international bridges in the months after the attacks.
“The geographic proximity of Ciudad Juarez was dealt a blow by 9-11,” he said. “It was as if Ciudad Juarez all of a sudden was three hours south in the interior of Mexico.”
Laredo resident Roberto Sanchez said he crosses to Nuevo Laredo occasionally to buy medicine. The longer wait times are a hassle, Sanchez said, but he's more concerned about the lack of bathrooms on the bridge than the increased scrutiny.
“They check every card from everybody,” he said. “But that's OK, because it's more secure.”
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/10-years-of-increased-border-security-2163562.php#page-1
Sunday, May 15, 2011
The town on the wrong side of America's drugs war
The Independant
May 16, 2011
by Guy Adams
Like many a proud Texan, Pamela Taylor likes to mark her turf. So on any given day, she makes sure passers-by can see the Stars and Stripes and the Lone Star Flag of her native state fluttering atop the poles that stand in her front garden.
Ms Taylor has lived in the southern-most city of Brownsville, Texas, since just after the Second World War, when she left the UK to join her late husband John, a US soldier who had been based near Birmingham. With that in mind, she also flies a Union Jack. "I hang it lower than the American flags," she says, "because it's a smaller part of my heritage."
Lately, though, there's been a distinctly surreal flavour to Ms Taylor's colourful display of patriotic identity. About 350 metres from her porch, an imposing metal fence looms into view. It is supposed to divide the US from Mexico, but by a cruel twist of fate, the 83-year-old grandmother's family home has ended up on the "wrong" side. Four years ago, amid the seemingly endless hand-wringing over the flow of drugs and illegal migrants across their southern border, Washington politicians voted to erect a tall fence that would stretch thousands of miles from San Diego, on the Pacific coast, to Brownsville, on the Gulf of Mexico. The best-laid political schemes do not always work out as planned, though. When government engineers arrived in Ms Taylor's neighbourhood, their plan hit a snag: the Mexican border follows the meandering Rio Grande in this area. And the river's muddy banks are too soft and too prone to flooding to support a fence.
As a result, this corner of south-eastern Texas had its barrier constructed on a levee that follows a straight line from half a mile to two miles north of the river, leaving Ms Taylor's bungalow – along with the homes and land of dozens of her angry neighbours – marooned on the Mexican side. "My son-in-law likes to say that we live in a gated community," she says, explaining that to even visit the shops she must pass through a gate watched over by border-patrol officers. "We're in a sort of no man's land. I try to laugh, but it's hard: that fence hasn't just spoiled our view, it's spoiled our lives."
Ms Taylor's domestic situation demonstrates – despite sound bites from politicians (Barack Obama last week gave a major speech on the issue) – there are no simple fixes to America's great immigration debate.
In total, roughly 50,000 acres of sovereign US land is now on the wrong side of the fence, most of it in Texas. Lawmakers believe that is a fair price to pay for the political benefits of being seen as "tough" on immigration.
But to many locals, Ms Taylor included, the headline-prone barrier – which cost $7m a mile (£4.3m) – is an expensive white elephant.
"First of all, it doesn't work," she says. "Anyone with a rope and a bucket can just climb on over. Second, they've used it as an excuse to reduce border patrols. Thirdly, it's left people like me unprotected. While the officers are guarding the fence, any drug smugglers can just walk up to my front door."
Like many of her neighbours, Ms Taylor has been forced to turn her home into a mini-fortress, with alarms and motion sensors and a small arsenal of firearms in strategic positions around the house. "We're never safe," she says. "You just try to avoid living in fear."
It was not always like this. For most of the almost 70 years she has lived there, Brownsville has been on the frontline of America's immigration debate. But in the old days, things were less confrontational. Families heading north from Mexico would camp overnight in surrounding cotton fields. "We'd wake up in the morning, and the migrant workers would have built a fire and made tortillas," Ms Taylor says. "On occasion, they'd bring me breakfast."
Ms Taylor once found a woman on her porch in the process of giving birth (she called an ambulance and helped care for the woman until help arrived). Another time, she found an exhausted Hispanic man asleep in her armchair (he apologised, saying he had decided to use her bathroom to shave and brush his teeth).
But from the mid-1990s, with the growth of Mexico's drug trade, security declined. Ms Taylor's car was stolen several times. One morning, she found a package containing 50lbs of marijuana in her flowerbed. "I turned it in to the sheriff," she says. "I'm a cancer patient and when I told my doctor, he said I should have used the stuff."
Since the fence went up, crime has further spiralled. "I'm a gung-ho Texan. I've brought up four kids here and I've made this place my life. But there are times, since the barrier went up, when it hasn't felt like home."
Down the road, she has erected a protest banner. "We're part of America," it says. "We need representation and protection, not a fence."
You hear a similar sentiment across Brownsville. Roughly eight in every 10 of the city's 170,000 inhabitants are Latino and most speak Spanish as a first language. Every street corner seems to have a taco stall and the local economy relies heavily on imports from factories south of the border.
Most locals rue the divisive tone of the current immigration debate. The city's former mayor, an attorney named Eddie Trevino, who describes himself as a "very right-wing Democrat", says the furore over the fence demonstrates the extent to which the US immigration system needs a complete overhaul.
"Nobody's in favour of illegal immigration," Mr Trevino says. "Let me be unequivocal about that. We don't want anybody violating our laws.
"But the reality is that our laws are antiquated and need to be updated to make sense in the world in which we live. It made no sense to build this fence, other than making people in other parts of the country feel better and feel a false sense of safety. It's like the old joke: build a 12ft fence and you'll be having a huge demand for 15ft ladders."
Even the city's white, Republican-leaning minority is opposed to the border fence. The well-mown greens of a local golf course are on land that now sits on the "wrong" side, while fields and orchards farmed by generations of landowners have been sliced in two by the metal barrier.
"I'll say right off the bat that I'm a conservative – I believe in hard work and I believe our border needs to be secure," says Debbie Loop, whose 15-acre citrus farm is on both sides of the fence. "But when they signed this fence into law, nobody stopped to think Texas isn't Arizona or California. Our border does not run dirt to dirt. Any idiot could have told them that. My grandchildren now live on the wrong side. Who is going to protect them? Who protects me when I'm in my orchards after dusk? I just want to work hard and earn a living. But they've changed this place forever."
This week, Mr Obama signalled his intention to bring the immigration debate into play in next year's presidential elections, travelling to El Paso, on the other side of Texas from Brownsville, to unveil plans to create a "path to citizenship" for the roughly 12 million undocumented workers thought to be living illegally in the US.
With his speech – aimed to court the growing Latino demographic that now numbers about 50 million people – he entered into electoral-campaign mode. Mr Obama emphasised that his administration has deported more immigrants than that of any of its predecessors. And he ridiculed Republican lawmakers who have endorsed building ever-larger barriers along the border.
"Now they're going to say that we need to quadruple the border patrol," Mr Obama said, reaching out to the large and growing demographic of Latino voters.
"Or they'll want a higher fence. Maybe they'll say we need a moat. Maybe they'll want alligators in the moat. They'll never be satisfied."
The joke might have played well in the next day's news pages – but in Brownsville, they were not laughing.
"Let him come here and say that," was Ms Loop's response.
"Round these parts, people like alligators a whole lot more than politicians."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/the-town-on-the-wrong-side-of-americas-drugs-war-2284669.html
May 16, 2011
by Guy Adams
Like many a proud Texan, Pamela Taylor likes to mark her turf. So on any given day, she makes sure passers-by can see the Stars and Stripes and the Lone Star Flag of her native state fluttering atop the poles that stand in her front garden.
Ms Taylor has lived in the southern-most city of Brownsville, Texas, since just after the Second World War, when she left the UK to join her late husband John, a US soldier who had been based near Birmingham. With that in mind, she also flies a Union Jack. "I hang it lower than the American flags," she says, "because it's a smaller part of my heritage."
Lately, though, there's been a distinctly surreal flavour to Ms Taylor's colourful display of patriotic identity. About 350 metres from her porch, an imposing metal fence looms into view. It is supposed to divide the US from Mexico, but by a cruel twist of fate, the 83-year-old grandmother's family home has ended up on the "wrong" side. Four years ago, amid the seemingly endless hand-wringing over the flow of drugs and illegal migrants across their southern border, Washington politicians voted to erect a tall fence that would stretch thousands of miles from San Diego, on the Pacific coast, to Brownsville, on the Gulf of Mexico. The best-laid political schemes do not always work out as planned, though. When government engineers arrived in Ms Taylor's neighbourhood, their plan hit a snag: the Mexican border follows the meandering Rio Grande in this area. And the river's muddy banks are too soft and too prone to flooding to support a fence.
As a result, this corner of south-eastern Texas had its barrier constructed on a levee that follows a straight line from half a mile to two miles north of the river, leaving Ms Taylor's bungalow – along with the homes and land of dozens of her angry neighbours – marooned on the Mexican side. "My son-in-law likes to say that we live in a gated community," she says, explaining that to even visit the shops she must pass through a gate watched over by border-patrol officers. "We're in a sort of no man's land. I try to laugh, but it's hard: that fence hasn't just spoiled our view, it's spoiled our lives."
Ms Taylor's domestic situation demonstrates – despite sound bites from politicians (Barack Obama last week gave a major speech on the issue) – there are no simple fixes to America's great immigration debate.
In total, roughly 50,000 acres of sovereign US land is now on the wrong side of the fence, most of it in Texas. Lawmakers believe that is a fair price to pay for the political benefits of being seen as "tough" on immigration.
But to many locals, Ms Taylor included, the headline-prone barrier – which cost $7m a mile (£4.3m) – is an expensive white elephant.
"First of all, it doesn't work," she says. "Anyone with a rope and a bucket can just climb on over. Second, they've used it as an excuse to reduce border patrols. Thirdly, it's left people like me unprotected. While the officers are guarding the fence, any drug smugglers can just walk up to my front door."
Like many of her neighbours, Ms Taylor has been forced to turn her home into a mini-fortress, with alarms and motion sensors and a small arsenal of firearms in strategic positions around the house. "We're never safe," she says. "You just try to avoid living in fear."
It was not always like this. For most of the almost 70 years she has lived there, Brownsville has been on the frontline of America's immigration debate. But in the old days, things were less confrontational. Families heading north from Mexico would camp overnight in surrounding cotton fields. "We'd wake up in the morning, and the migrant workers would have built a fire and made tortillas," Ms Taylor says. "On occasion, they'd bring me breakfast."
Ms Taylor once found a woman on her porch in the process of giving birth (she called an ambulance and helped care for the woman until help arrived). Another time, she found an exhausted Hispanic man asleep in her armchair (he apologised, saying he had decided to use her bathroom to shave and brush his teeth).
But from the mid-1990s, with the growth of Mexico's drug trade, security declined. Ms Taylor's car was stolen several times. One morning, she found a package containing 50lbs of marijuana in her flowerbed. "I turned it in to the sheriff," she says. "I'm a cancer patient and when I told my doctor, he said I should have used the stuff."
Since the fence went up, crime has further spiralled. "I'm a gung-ho Texan. I've brought up four kids here and I've made this place my life. But there are times, since the barrier went up, when it hasn't felt like home."
Down the road, she has erected a protest banner. "We're part of America," it says. "We need representation and protection, not a fence."
You hear a similar sentiment across Brownsville. Roughly eight in every 10 of the city's 170,000 inhabitants are Latino and most speak Spanish as a first language. Every street corner seems to have a taco stall and the local economy relies heavily on imports from factories south of the border.
Most locals rue the divisive tone of the current immigration debate. The city's former mayor, an attorney named Eddie Trevino, who describes himself as a "very right-wing Democrat", says the furore over the fence demonstrates the extent to which the US immigration system needs a complete overhaul.
"Nobody's in favour of illegal immigration," Mr Trevino says. "Let me be unequivocal about that. We don't want anybody violating our laws.
"But the reality is that our laws are antiquated and need to be updated to make sense in the world in which we live. It made no sense to build this fence, other than making people in other parts of the country feel better and feel a false sense of safety. It's like the old joke: build a 12ft fence and you'll be having a huge demand for 15ft ladders."
Even the city's white, Republican-leaning minority is opposed to the border fence. The well-mown greens of a local golf course are on land that now sits on the "wrong" side, while fields and orchards farmed by generations of landowners have been sliced in two by the metal barrier.
"I'll say right off the bat that I'm a conservative – I believe in hard work and I believe our border needs to be secure," says Debbie Loop, whose 15-acre citrus farm is on both sides of the fence. "But when they signed this fence into law, nobody stopped to think Texas isn't Arizona or California. Our border does not run dirt to dirt. Any idiot could have told them that. My grandchildren now live on the wrong side. Who is going to protect them? Who protects me when I'm in my orchards after dusk? I just want to work hard and earn a living. But they've changed this place forever."
This week, Mr Obama signalled his intention to bring the immigration debate into play in next year's presidential elections, travelling to El Paso, on the other side of Texas from Brownsville, to unveil plans to create a "path to citizenship" for the roughly 12 million undocumented workers thought to be living illegally in the US.
With his speech – aimed to court the growing Latino demographic that now numbers about 50 million people – he entered into electoral-campaign mode. Mr Obama emphasised that his administration has deported more immigrants than that of any of its predecessors. And he ridiculed Republican lawmakers who have endorsed building ever-larger barriers along the border.
"Now they're going to say that we need to quadruple the border patrol," Mr Obama said, reaching out to the large and growing demographic of Latino voters.
"Or they'll want a higher fence. Maybe they'll say we need a moat. Maybe they'll want alligators in the moat. They'll never be satisfied."
The joke might have played well in the next day's news pages – but in Brownsville, they were not laughing.
"Let him come here and say that," was Ms Loop's response.
"Round these parts, people like alligators a whole lot more than politicians."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/the-town-on-the-wrong-side-of-americas-drugs-war-2284669.html
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