Feds attempt to seize land|Motion cites lack of communication

The Brownsville Herald
April 16, 2013
by Mark Reagan


A prolonged fight over .026 acres of land along the Rio Grande is slowly edging forward after U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen ordered the landowner’s lawyers to start talking to the government.

In 2008, the U.S. government sued Eloisa G. Tamez and 14 other landowners — including the Brownsville and Matamoros Bridge Co. — in an effort to take the properties and build sections of the border fence on them, court documents show.
“The public purpose for which said land is taken is to construct, install, operate, and maintain roads, fencing, vehicle barriers, security lighting, and related structures designed to help secure the United States/Mexico border within the State of Texas,” the original suit states.

That litigation was filed July 1, 2008.

Hanen said he called Tuesday’s hearing because he wanted to know the status of the case because “it kind of stalled.”

According to the government, the case stalled because lead California-based lawyer Peter Schey, who represents the landowners, wasn’t responding to routine court matters.

The government filed a motion April 1 to take immediate possession of the property.

“Counsel for the United States of America has exercised due diligence in attempting to reach defendant’s counsel regarding this Motion but all recent attempts to contact Defendant’s counsel have failed,” the document states.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric A. Hudson said Tuesday it’s the government’s view that since it didn’t receive any response in 21 days, all objections by Tamez’s counsel were waived.

But Schey filed an opposed motion Monday.

“The agreed upon Proposed Scheduling Order sets deadlines and trial in this cause well into the future and it is unclear why, and plaintiff has failed to explain why, it requires an immediate Order of possession on the small strip of additional land involved in its present motion,” the document states.

The motion suggests allowing “reasonable time” for the United States to file a memorandum of points and authorities supporting its request for immediate possession, for the defendants to file oppositions, for the government to file any reply briefs and then for a prompt hearing to be held.

However, Hanen said he thought the case has dragged on long enough.

“I’m not going to make the government jump through hoops if y’all aren’t going to respond,” Hanen said, adding that he thought Tamez’s lawyers were acting negligent. “You’ve got to act like responsible counsel of record.”

The judge called it unfair to Tamez and the court for the government to not receive responses from the attorney.

Hanen scheduled an April 30 hearing on the motion for immediate possession and suggested that the landowners consider hiring a third lawyer or removing Schey from the case.

Schey said his clients were working to include a third, local, attorney.

http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/local/article_d83b1e5e-a707-11e2-83bf-0019bb30f31a.html

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/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Security, Wildlife At Stake Behind Brownsville's Border Fence

KSAT 12
July 8, 2011
Jessie Degollado

BROWNSVILLE, Texas -- Pamela Taylor's prediction before the border fence was built near her Brownsville home was correct, she said.

"This is referred to as a funnel," Taylor said because traffic flows toward the openings in the massive metal fence with no gates.

Even before her house just beyond the Rio Grande ended up behind the fence, Taylor said she would find illegal immigrants on her property.

Yet despite the fence and the U.S. Border Patrol agents being on the lookout, "we're not safer," she said.

Taylor described a recent incident involving two people who she said were knocking on her door while her dog had corralled others who she said were trying to steal her car parked in the driveway.

Taylor said the juveniles were "coyotes" bringing illegal immigrants across the river.

"They had people from Honduras with them," she said. The illegal immigrants who were apprehended by Border Patrol.

But Taylor said she is prepared to defend herself if necessary.

"If people come in, they're going to have to suffer the consequences," she said.
Her neighbor down the street even has a sign warning, "Caution. Firearms in Use."

Taylor has her own sign that conveys a different message, "We're part of America. We need representation and protection, not a fence."

On the environmental side, the Nature Conservancy's Southmost Preserve in Brownsville also is now behind the fence.

Since then, Max Ponds, the preserve manager, said it appears little has changed in its operation.

"It may be due to it's not entirely fenced. There are no gates at this point in time," Ponds said.

The preserve's sabal palm forest that once blanketed much of the Rio Grande Valley is often the route taken by a variety of wildlife, like those photographed for El Valle, The Rio Grande Delta, a bilingual book published by the Gorgas Science Foundation that chronicles the region's biodiversity and cultural legacy.

However, once the animals, like endangered ocelots, reach the fence, Ponds said there are openings at its base every 500 feet.

To help creatures find the "notebook paper-sized openings," Ponds said he came up with an idea.

He said he sprays the openings with fox urine, "so they would have a sense of smell they would investigate."

Ponds said he's already seen coyotes come through, although reptiles like the Texas tortoise need larger openings for their hard shells.

Both he and Taylor said although the fence is an unattractive addition to the landscape they appreciate the Border Patrol agents who crisscross back and forth along the fence.

"We have no gripe with Border Patrol. They're here for us," Taylor said.
Ponds said, "I sleep at night knowing someone's out there."

http://www.ksat.com/news/28492473/detail.html

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

Some Residents Say Border Fence Has Been Ineffective

KRGV
March 21, 2011
by Manuel de la Rosa

BROWNSVILLE - Some residents living near the border fence say it hasn't stopped human and drug smuggling.

Joel De La Garza runs a grocery store on Oklahoma Street. He has owned it for several years. De La Garza used to see immigrants on a daily basis. Now, he rarely sees them because of the fence right in front of his business.

"We do see some of them but not as many as we used to before the wall went up. The reason why they aren't coming is the opening is quite far away from here," says De La Garza.

Many residents we spoke to see immigrants backpacking with what is believed to be drugs. It's usually at dawn or early in the morning. Law enforcement officials say drug smugglers are doing this due to the security at the border.

The border fence was supposed to slow down human and drug trafficking. The Border Patrol reports they aren't catching as many immigrants.

Federal authorities say there is proof in the numbers the wall is working. Residents who are on the front line don't see it the same way.

When the gates are installed, it may change the smuggling efforts, but for now, these residents say the smugglers have adapted to the border fence.

http://www.krgv.com/news/local/story/Some-Residents-Say-Border-Fence-Has-Been/ALiMYL37lEWNRlsVr1S6sw.cspx

Texas landowners stuck on wrong side of border fence

Los Angeles Times
February 28, 2011
by Richard Marosi

Reporting from Brownsville, Texas — The Rio Grande once ran wide and deep behind the four-room house that Pamela Taylor and her husband hammered together more than half a century ago. Migrant workers had to take a ferry upriver to get across from Mexico, and a flood once inundated the family's citrus groves.

Over time, the waters receded, the river narrowed and Mexico got closer. Thieves led by a one-legged man stole Taylor's horses from the barn and beans off the stove. Drug smugglers hid marijuana in her bushes. Migrant workers would camp in her front yard and bring her fresh tortillas in the morning.

The once-swift river now could be crossed with little more than a leaky inner tube. Still, there was some comfort in knowing that, on the map anyway, the Rio Grande marked the international boundary. Nowadays, Taylor isn't so sure.

The Homeland Security Department last year put up a tall steel barrier across the fields from Taylor's home. The government calls it the border fence, but it was erected about a quarter-mile north of the Rio Grande, leaving Taylor's home between the fence and the river. Her two acres now lie on a strip of land that isn't Mexico but doesn't really seem like the United States either.

The government doesn't keep count, but Taylor and other residents think there are about eight houses stranded on the other side of the fence.

"It's a no man's land," Taylor said. "They said they were going to build a fence to protect all the people. We were just lost in the draw."

When the Homeland Security Department began its Southwest border buildup four years ago, erecting barriers seemed a straightforward enough proposition. The international boundary is ruler-straight for hundreds of miles from California to New Mexico, and planners laid the fencing down right on the border, traversing deserts, mountains and valleys.

But here, where the border's eastern edge meets the Gulf of Mexico, the urgency of national security met headlong with geographical reality. The Rio Grande twists through Brownsville and surrounding areas, and planners had to avoid building on the flood plain. So the barriers in some places went up more than a mile from the river.

While the border fence almost everywhere else divides Mexico and the U.S., here it divides parts of the city.

Authorities defend the barrier, saying it helps control illegal immigration and drug trafficking. The fencing doesn't stop immigrants, but they say it slows people down and funnels them to areas where U.S. Border Patrol agents can respond quickly.

In and around Brownsville, the fence slices through two-lane roads, backyards, agricultural fields, citrus groves and pastures for more than 21 miles, trapping tens of thousands of acres, according to some property owners' estimates. (The Homeland Security Department did not keep track of the total.) Narrow gaps allow back-and-forth access for cars and tractors, pedestrians and Border Patrol agents, but they are spaced as much as a mile apart.

"My son-in-law tells people we live in a gated community," joked Taylor, 82, who shares her modest home with her daughter's family.

Originally from England, she married her Mexican American husband during World War II, and picked tomatoes and cotton to scrape enough money together in 1948 to build a modest home and raise four adopted children.

She never learned to speak much Spanish and struggled with Mexican food. "My father-in-law told me I was the only person he knew that made square tortillas," Taylor recalled. Hers has been a life defined by adapting, but she said nothing prepared her for America's new border barrier.

"We feel abandoned here," she said. "That's why we refer to it as the Mexican side of the fence."

Planning challenges and fierce opposition held off construction crews for several years, making Brownsville the last border city to get barriers under the Secure Fence Act of 2006.

Tensions escalated in this mostly Latino, working-class city of 172,000 when people realized that large segments of the fence would not sit anywhere near the international boundary.

Some residents got the word by studying maps of the project at public hearings. Others answered knocks on their front doors to find Border Patrol agents bearing clipboards: Would they sign a waiver allowing the government to begin surveying their land?

Landowners were offered compensation, but many were outraged. They protested at public hearings, lobbied politicians in Washington and fought court battles. The government had to start condemnation proceedings against more than 100 residents, some of them poor farmers or senior citizens with centuries-old ties to the community.

Construction crews bulldozed orchards, drained lakes and graded over driveways and roads. The fence towers 18 feet and its steel posts, a few inches apart, whistle like a freight train when northern winds blow.

Eloisa Tamez, 75, who lives on land granted to her ancestors by the king of Spain in 1767, rejected the government's offer of $13,500 for a 50-foot-wide strip across her three acres west of Brownsville. The government seized the land and built the fence anyway. Now, three-quarters of the fallow acreage where her family once grew tomatoes, squash and okra is south of the barrier.

"It represents my heritage. This land here is what gave me life. I didn't have riches or luxuries, but we had food that was good for us," said Tamez, who is in a legal battle with the federal government over the seizure of her land. "I didn't want to let the government have it to build this monstrosity."

Rancher Alberto "Beto" Garza and his father have been cut off from their cattle. Ninfa Young, 56, said she can't stroll over to her neighbor's farm to pick watermelons. Nature Conservancy manager Maxwell B. Pons said the 6,000 feet of fencing on the Southmost Preserve severs an important corridor for coyotes and Texas tortoises.

At the Loop farm on the outskirts of Brownsville, dozens of citrus trees were bulldozed to make way for the fence, which splits the family's 900 acres. On the Brownsville side, Debbie and Leonard Loop tend groves of oranges and grapefruit; on the "Mexican" side, their son, Ray Loop, cultivates soybeans, sunflowers and watermelons.

Things could get more complicated. With the government planning this year to install gates at 40 of the gaps, the family wonders about access. Residents will be provided with access codes, according to border authorities. But they've also heard that the gates would be locked during a high national security alert. Debbie Loop, 69, wonders how her young granddaughters would get through to the Brownsville side of the fence under that scenario.

"It's an eerie feeling crossing that," Loop said, as she drove with her husband through the fence line onto her son's farmland. "In the past, if you needed to get out in a hurry, you could. Now you have to find a gap."

Duncan L. Hunter, the former congressman from San Diego County who co-wrote the fencing legislation before leaving office in 2009, visited Brownsville in 2008 to explain how barriers helped reduce the numbers of undocumented immigrants flooding into California border cities.

Though the Brownsville fence placement sounds "illogical," it is probably necessary if it means cutting off illegal crossings, said Hunter, who expressed surprise that the barrier here was placed so far from the river. Asked about the location, border officials said in a statement that a number of factors were considered, including the flood plain and "historic illegal crossing patterns."

"From time immemorial, the way that you keep people from going into a restricted area is a fence," Hunter said, citing a significant drop in crime in San Diego after the fence there was built in the 1990s. "It brought calm to both sides of the border."

Longtime resident Taylor, however, said the no man's land where her property ended up hardly qualifies as tranquil.

The fence funnels more illegal immigrants than ever through her property, she said, because it is close to an easily breached gap. Taylor is all for bolstering national security, but adding agents, cameras and lighting would have been more effective, she said.

She still opens her house to patrol agents on Thanksgiving and Christmas for turkey dinner. It's the politicians and senior officials who earn her wrath. She attended hearings and sent letters and e-mails to numerous officials, and got few responses.

"It was like talking to a brick wall," she said.

These days, immigrants walk across a small dam that serves as a footbridge, traversing the Rio Grande in minutes. Crossings trigger the immediate appearance of Border Patrol agents on the river side of the fence, but Taylor fears that U.S. Customs and Border Protection could someday reposition its agents behind the barrier, leaving her family more vulnerable.

Heightened U.S. enforcement efforts, Taylor said, have bred a meaner, more desperate class of illegal immigrants. Some banged on her doors and windows last week, possibly seeking help. She can hear the "booms and bangs" from the drug wars in Matamoros, and Mexican military helicopters have strayed over her house, she said.

"We're not afraid, but we do realize that Matamoros could spill over here," said Taylor, who keeps three assault rifles loaded. The guns give her a sense of safety, she said, unlike the fence: "It's not providing security for us, and it's actually shutting us out of America."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-texas-fence-20110228,0,7333306,full.story

Border fence construction nears completion in Hope Park

Brownsville Herald
December 26, 2010
by Jazmine Ulloa

On a crisp December morning, Justo Ahumada stood at the edge of the levee near Hope Park watching a group of construction workers ply at the rusty iron fence now snaking its way along the U.S.-Mexico border. Their highlighter-yellow jackets beamed under the gray skies.

He pointed to a spot beyond them, just within sight, where he crossed the Rio Grande from Matamoros for the first time. He had been 17, maybe 18.

“There weren’t any Border Patrol agents back then,” he recalled. “We’d cross to work for the season, then we’d cross back to go home, back with our family.”

Now employees with the construction company, Kiewit, are extending the U.S.-Mexico border fence, finishing up the one mile in Brownsville needed to complete the 34 miles slated for Cameron County. The iron bars stretch along Military Highway and block the view of the river from Hope Park, a green space created off Levee Street to commemorate ties between the United States and Mexico.

Texas, which was allocated about 115 miles of fencing, is the last state to see the initiative completed, according to the Department of Homeland Security. About 1.3 miles of the fence are still to be constructed in El Paso and Del Rio — another 0.2 miles of fencing devised to prevent vehicles from crossing the border were planned for and already created along the state’s southern border.

For those who fought against the creation of the fence — dubbed the “The Wall” by its opponents — its completion is disheartening, a historic symbol that will long divide a once bicultural, binational area. It is also a sign the battle might be over, though some refuse to lose it. Still, those in favor of enhanced border security say it’s a necessary step to ensure the nation’s safety, especially as the drug war rages in open warfare on the streets of Mexico.

Among those most bereaved by the final installation of the fence are property owners. Eloisa Tamez remembers when federal surveyors came to her door in 2008, asking her to sign property condemnation documents — papers that would outright hand over the land her family has nurtured and cultivated since 1767, when they attained it through a Spanish land grant.

She quickly became one of the most vocal opponents against the fence, grazing the front page of the New York Times and the cover of The Economist. She denied the contractors access to her property, and was sued the federal government and to this day continues in court proceedings with DHS.

“There are gaps all over the fence, and they have not compensated any of us for our land,” she said. “They continue with the injustice, and reasons to validate it keep changing.”

When plans for the fence began rolling forward, Tamez recalls, the federal government said the construction was to protect the United States from terrorists crossing into the United States. Now they say the fence is needed to protect against violence surging Mexico, she said.

Rusty Monsees, who back in 2008 agreed to sell 3.3 acres of his land to the government, was still sued by the government, even as he was one of the staunchest advocates for the fence. The lawsuit filed against him – one of more than 100 land condemnation cases pending in Cameron County – was a type of case the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers called a "friendly land condemnation."

Now workers have built the fence running through his citrus yard, cutting him access to some of his acreage. Monsees believes the fence is worthless and a waste.

“It is a bad use of money,” he said. “When they (government officials) asked me about the fence initially, I said I thought it was a good idea. But if you do not follow up, people learn to get around it. You have to have people on the ground, and you have to have them on the ground every day, 24 hours a day in specific areas for patrol.”

The average cost of pedestrian fence, which is designed to prevent the passage of people, across all of the nation’s sectors is $6.5 million per mile — including all planning, material and construction costs with the exception of costs associated with adverse condemnation. That totals to about $748 million in Texas alone. The average cost of fence designed specifically to prevent vehicles from passing through is $1.8 million per mile.

But Daniel Milian, supervisor of Public Affairs for the U.S. Border Patrol, said the fence was an added security measure for the country, helping the department with its day-to-day operations and putting its resources to better use.

The fence “serves a delay, it becomes another obstacle for smugglers,” he explained. “It also provides a bottleneck effect. It forces them to cross in areas where we have the technical advantage, where we have more time to respond.”

Back at the riverside, Ahumada, 84, says he must have made the journey through the roads from his native Tampico in Tamaulipas, the river and into Brownsville more than six times, he said. Like millions before him, he came to the United States in search of jobs and new opportunities. But when he realized an anti-immigrant sentiment growing in the country, he settled in Bayview in the 1950s, where he picked crops and worked odd jobs. He eventually became a U.S. citizen.

"What a shame for the people coming to look for work these days," he lamented.

http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/border-120934-fence-park.html

GOP: Border security remains issue despite statistics

Brownsville Herald
August 8, 2010
by Jazmine Ulloa

An independent study that found that deportations of illegal immigrants have increased under President Barack Obama drew fire from Texas Republicans who said the figures skirt Obama’s inadequate response to the issue of border security.

The report released last week by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University said that 279,035 undocumented immigrants had been deported in the first nine months of this fiscal year — a 10 percent increase compared to the 254,763 deportations in the same time frame in 2008, the last and busiest year of President George W. Bush’s administration.

The findings come amid a tense political debate that has pitted comprehensive immigration reform against questions about whether the Obama administration has done enough to secure the nation’s borders.

Supporters of immigration reform have said the nation is in a period of enforcement, in which not only deportations but also immigration prosecutions continue at high levels, similar to the situation under Bush.

Studies show Obama continues to pour billions of dollars into the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Some immigration attorneys say he has stepped up the criminalization of immigrants so much that they have given the system a new name — “crimmigration.”

The TRAC study states that the deportation figures undermine blasts from GOP leaders that Obama has failed to secure the U.S.-Mexico border.

But Texas Republican leaders said that although Obama might be targeting noncitizens inside the country, he is not placing enough focus on tightening the border to keep undocumented immigrants from entering in the first place.

“While we are pleased these actions are increasing, you cannot secure the border with investigations and prosecutions alone,” said Katherine Cesinger, deputy press secretary for the Office of Gov. Rick Perry. “The governor has continually urged the Obama administration to increase the number of law enforcement personnel patrolling the Texas-Mexico border. Without adequate manpower available to patrol the border, it will continue to be exploited by drug and human traffickers.”



How to secure the border?



Border security came to the forefront of the immigration debate when an Arizona rancher was killed allegedly by drug smugglers, leading eventually to a new Arizona law that has incited national controversy because it requires local, county and state law enforcement officers to enforce immigration law.

But surging violence in Mexico has kept border security at the center of the debate, often displacing comprehensive immigration reform. Gov. Rick Perry on a recent trip to Brownsville was clear about his position — border security first, immigration reform second.

“The whole issue of immigration reform is a waste of time until you focus on the issue of border security,” Perry said. And for most Republican leaders, the issue appears to be about more resources, more technology and more boots on the ground along the border.

President Obama announced in May that he would deploy 1,200 National Guardsmen to the Southwest border and request $500 million for border protection and law enforcement activities to combat illegal activity. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Defense Department announced last month that more than 250 of those troops would begin arriving in Texas this month.

But in Brownsville, Perry said he did not think Obama was sending enough troops to the state, which he said needed at least 3,000 — not the mere 286 it has been allocated.

“It is a first step. I will be blunt — it is a baby step,” he said of the deployment.

In a op-ed article in the Austin-American Statesman, U.S. Rep Henry McCaul (R-Austin) and U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Laredo) call for a “layered strategy” to patrol the Texas-Mexico border. The congressmen push for the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which use cameras, radar systems and other sensors to provide real-time intelligence to the Border Patrol.

In a statement, McCaul said the increased number of deportations was not enough.

“The fact remains that until we commit to a comprehensive strategy to secure our borders and aggressively address illegal immigration, we will continue to see an influx of illegal crossings,” he said.

Frank Morris, chairman of the Cameron County Republicans of Texas, said he has not seen enough commitment by the current administration to border enforcement projects, such as the U.S.-Mexico border fence.

“The fence became so controversial in the media that other means to secure our border had to be utilized instead of completing the fence,” Morris said. “You can’t do these things half-heartedly and say they’re not working. The fence is not working – of course it is not working, it hasn’t been completed.”

Immigration advocates and attorneys counter that the emphasis on border security is part of the GOP’s strategy to obstruct immigration reform, leaving millions of undocumented immigrants to live in the shadows.

Javier Maldonado, in immigration attorney in San Antonio, said the United States has been focusing on border security since 9/11.

“Everything has been about securing the border, from tightening our financial laws, tightening national security laws, to increasing the personnel on the border,” he said. “We need a balance.”

http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/obama-115219-remains-increased.html

Costly efforts to secure border not paying off

Brownsville Herald
June 19, 2010
by Emma Perez Trevino

From the construction of the border fence to the deployment of unmanned aerial drones, federal initiatives have cost billions of dollars to secure the U.S.-Mexico border and have been mired in challenges and setbacks, public records show.

Audits by U.S. Congress’ investigative arm, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), also reflect that numerous initiatives have been stymied and plagued by mismanagement, lack of coordination and no oversight.

And in the case of aerial drones, the rush to deploy new units to secure the border could compromise safety and more.

THE BORDER FENCE AND VIRTUAL FENCE
In November 2005, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security implemented its most expensive and challenging initiatives under U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) Secure Border Initiative (SBI).

The components of SBI included the construction of about $2.6 billion worth of fencing and a $1.6 billion virtual fence.

“It has been an utter failure,” Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos, a Republican, said of SBI, which began under Republican President George W. Bush and has continued under Democratic President Barack Obama’s administration.

GAO reported that as of April, CBP had completed 646 of the 652 miles of fencing and that it plans to have the remaining six miles completed by December. CBP also plans to construct 14 more miles of fencing in the Rio Grande Valley Sector by September.

“CBP reported that tactical infrastructure (fencing), coupled with additional trained agents had increased the miles of the southwest border under control, but despite a $2.6 billion investment, it cannot account separately for the impact of tactical infrastructure,” GAO found.

“I don’t believe that it is doing what they thought, what I thought it was going to do,” Cascos said. The fence is still being constructed in the county, and Cascos said that it has numerous gaps that are being lit by floodlights. “The initiative is not working, not in our part of the country; not based on what I see.”

Meanwhile, the $1.6 billion virtual fence, initiated in 2006 and known as SBInet, covers 53 miles in the Yuma and Tucson sectors. But GAO reported that as of April, Border Patrol agents continued to rely on existing technology rather than SBInet.

“According to my calculations, (the cost of the virtual fence) equals nearly $20 million per mile,” U. S. Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, D-Mississippi, chairman of the U. S. House

of Representatives’ Homeland Security Committee, said in a statement issued June 17, when a hearing was held on the initiative in Washington, D.C.

The plan was to have SBInet in place throughout the 1,989-mile U.S.-Mexico border by 2009.

The virtual fence is composed of a network of sensors, cameras, towers and radars that are supposed to detect and track movement on the border, and transmit the data to video terminals at command centers and agents’ vehicles to assist in identifying illegal activity.

GAO found that sensors can’t differentiate between vehicles, humans and animals — although the ability had been a requirement of the system. The radar also couldn’t differentiate between humans and vehicles.

But those in charge of the project decided to waive these and other significant requirements. “The system is now only required to achieve a 49 percent probability of identifying items of interest that cross the border,” GAO found.

“As even my two daughters know, 49 percent is not even close to a passing grade,” U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, and chairman of the House Subcommittee on Border, Maritime,and Global Counterterrorism, said June 17 in a written statement.

“I think the big issue is the way border security has been handled by the past and present administration,” Cascos said. “There is divisiveness and partisanship and a lot of animosity. I believe that it is affecting some of the decision making process. They all work for the same people — the taxpayer — but yet they are also so protective of their own department that they don’t speak to each other, costing time and money.”

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano in March froze funding for SBInet and reallocated $50 million to other available technologies, such as mobile radios, according to GAO.

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, also isn’t satisfied with SBInet, but, “while the implementation of SBInet has been unacceptable, the last thing we need to do is cut border security funding,” Cornyn told The Brownsville Herald in a written statement Friday.

Cornyn said that Obama’s budget request for fiscal year 2011 would cut SBI by more than 25 percent and the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program by more than 12 percent.

“The White House even wanted to cut the Border Patrol by 181 agents — before Congress made clear that wasn’t going to fly,” Cornyn said.

Cornyn said that he introduced legislation that would have reallocated $2 billionin unspent stimulus funds toward much needed personnel, equipment and resources to southwest border communities.

“Unfortunately, it was defeated because Democrats and the president continue to underestimate the gravity of the situation and pay lip service to our citizens who are demanding that their government act,” Cornyn said.

U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, did not return a request for comment.

U.S. Rep. Ruben Hinojosa, D-Texas, said that, “a border wall running through our South Texas land is not the answer to our nation’s security,” adding that alternatives and new tools must first be assessed for their viability and efficiency.

MERIDA INITIATIVE
The Merida Initiative is a three-year plan initiated in 2007 for $1.4 billion in U.S. assistance to Mexico and Central America to fight criminal organizations and disrupt drug and weapons trafficking, illicit financial activities, currency smuggling and human trafficking, the Congressional Research Service noted in a report to Congress in May 2009.

At a May congressional hearing, Thompson said that records showed Mexico has received only $161 million since the plan was implemented.

GAO noted in December 2009 that factors affecting the timing of the Merida funding process included statutory condition of the funds, challenges in fulfilling administrative procedures, and the need to enhance the ability in the U.S., Mexico,and Central America to implement the assistance.

The spokesman for U.S. Rep. Solomon P. Ortiz, D-Texas, said in a statement Friday that Congress and the administration are working with counterparts in Mexico to develop the next phase of the initiative.

According to information from Cornyn’s office, major Mexican drug cartels have 100,000 members, rivaling the size of Mexico’s military.

Cornyn’s office also noted that:

22,700 lives were lost since Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon launched the offensive against drug cartels in December 2006.

9,635 people were killed in Mexican gang or cartel-related violence in 2009, more than triple 2007.

4,324 people were murdered in Cuidad Juarez since 2006.

3,365 lives were lost in the first three months of 2010 as a result of drug-related violence in Mexico.

522 Mexican military and law enforcement officials were killed in 2008.

$25 billion in estimated annual sales of Mexican drugs to the U.S.

“By many accounts, Mexico now ranks as more violent than Iraq or Afghanistan,” Shannon O’Neil, with the Council on Foreign Relations, said in a statement May 27 before congressional committee and subcommittee hearing in Washington D.C. on the future of the Merida Initiative.

O’Neil elaborated that the initiative does not take into account that the U.S. must do its part.

“The Merida Initiative overlooks three U.S.-based factors that perpetuate the drug trade and drug violence: guns, money, and demand,” O’Neil said, noting that all serious studies show that the vast majority of the guns used by the drug trafficking organizations come from the U.S. “As the United States asks Mexico to uphold its laws at great monetary and human cost, it should enforce its own laws.”

Hinojosa said that the Merida Initiative is a crucial strategy that unites the U.S. and Mexico in a commitment to secure the border.

“Both countries are committed to stopping the violence, cracking down on the flow of drugs and weapons that cross our border every day,” he said in a statement to the Herald on Friday. “By helping Mexico in its fight against crime, we are also helping the United States.”

WEAPONS INTERDICTION
A GAO review found in June 2009 significant challenges to the country’s efforts to combat firearm sales in the U. S. and the flow of weapons into Mexico, but the agency noted that evidence indicates that a large proportion of the firearms fueling Mexican drug violence originate in the U.S.

GAO said that according to Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) officials, U.S. efforts are hampered by laws relating to restrictions on collecting and reporting information on purchases, a lack of required background checks for private firearms sales, and limitations on reporting requirements for multiple sales.

GAO also documented another problem: ATF and DHS’” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), do not consistently coordinate efforts because the agencies partly lack clear roles and responsibilities, resulting sometimes in duplicate initiatives and confusion during operations.

GAO said that law enforcement agencies and the U.S. Department of State have provided some assistance to Mexican counterparts in combating arms trafficking, but that it has been limited and has not targeted arms trafficking needs.

UNMANNED AIRCRAFT SYSTEMS OR VEHICLES
The Federal Aviation Administration is being bombarded.

State and federal elected officials and private enterprise have been pressuring FAA to issue waivers and exemptions, allowing for unmanned aircraft, also referred to as drones, on the National Airspace System throughout the country and Texas where they would operate together with commercial and private aircraft.

FAA recently approved DHS’s request to allow CBP to operate a drone in West Texas for border security, but a problem occurred in the first flight June 1 into Texas. Although not all details are known, it was serious enough to bring a temporary halt to CBP’s operations to provide personnel with further training.

A request to FAA to allow a drone along the border from West Texas to Brownsville and to the Texas coast is pending.

Ortiz’s spokesman said that the congressman supports the use of unmanned aerial vehicles amid other security initiatives.

In a speech on Nov. 18, 2009 in Arizona, regarding the future of UASs in the national airspace, FAA Administrator J. Randolph Babbitt noted that, “While the UAS is undoubtedly the way of the future, my concern must be on today, and right now, the era of the unmanned aircraft system in civilian airspace is just not here yet. Much as we’d all wish the case were different, the level of technical maturity isn’t where it needs to be for full operation in the National Airspace System.”

Noting that standards need to be developed, Babbitt said that everyone must move in the same direction before it happens. “Those safety standards must be the same for everyone, even if no one’s in the cockpit.”

In the event that FAA approves drone flights into Cameron County, Cascos’ hope is that personnel who operate the drones are well trained and that the aircraft be fully tested “and tested and tested” in a barren area.

“You don’t test it up and down the Rio Grande among urbanized areas. They are a lot larger than kites, and weigh more than kites,” the county judge said.

Brownsville Mayor Pat M. Ahumada Jr. said drones in Cameron County would be fine, “if we were at war with Mexico. But we are not at war. I’m very concerned,” the mayor said about the possible advent of drones in the community.

Ahumada said that the drones, the border fence and virtual fence are “very expensive initiatives with very poor returns.”

“We have gone to extremes. It has caused division in our country,” he said, suggesting that the billions of dollars should instead be spent on combating the demand for drugs in the U.S. and the exportation of firearms, while reinforcing the Border Patrol with more officers.

“Let (the officers) do their job,” he said.

http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/border-113498-secure-initiatives.html

New proposed bill could affect local wildlife refuges

Brownsville Herald
April 15, 2010
by Laura Tillman

After a bill was introduced by House Republicans on Wednesday to transfer operational control of lands along the federal border to the Department of Homeland Security, the local spokesperson for these properties says that the plan is ill advised.

"Whenever two agencies collaborate it can only be better for the American people," said Nancy Brown, outreach specialist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Some House Republicans have claimed that federal land managers are more concerned with protecting wilderness and endangered species than securing U.S. borders.

"The Border Patrol is not being allowed do their job. That has to change," said Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, who introduced the bill. A spokesperson for Bishop said that the Rio Grande Valley’s wildlife refuges would be impacted by the legislation if it is passed.

Brown says that in the Valley, Border Patrol operations are bolstered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

"We work very closely with Border Patrol," Brown said. "We’ve had success in collaborating to address their issues and ours."

Brown said that there had been a "rocky start" in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s collaboration with Border Patrol agents locally, as environmental advocates opposed the construction of the U.S.-Mexico border fence. But Brown says the two agencies have been working together to both fight illegal immigration and maintain the painstakingly assembled wildlife corridor for endangered species.

The 90,000-acre Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge is made up of 115 tracts of land, Brown said, and has required more than $70 million in investment from American taxpayers for acquisition of the land.

"We’re biologists, they’re law enforcement," Brown said. "We don’t know their needs and they don’t know ours. We are there to work with them to ensure that they can do their jobs without destroying these resources that are there for the American people."

http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/bill-111027-republicans-wildlife.html