Texas Tribune
May 23, 2014
by Julian Aguilar
EL CALABOZ, Texas — Eloisa Tamez remembers the exact day five years ago when she said it took the federal government just 24 hours to seize and plow through a parcel of land that had been in her Lipan Apache family for generations.
Following two years of courtroom battles with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the agency got the go-ahead in 2009 to extend its controversial border fence across her land. Since then, roughly 75 percent of her formerly three-acre lot has been behind a steel barrier, land that's now the property of the federal government.
Tamez isn’t alone in her opposition to the fence, which was erected to stop undocumented immigrants, human smugglers and drug traffickers from breaching the U.S. border. But her family's allegations that the fence discriminates against Native American tribes with land along the border has added a complicated new layer to the debate.
In partnership with the Human Rights Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law, Tamez and other Lipan Apaches are seeking relief from the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. They allege that the fence has “blocked access to sacred sites and deprives the Lipan Apache of their First Amendment right to express their religious freedoms at certain traditional ceremonies," according to a news release issued when the clinic submitted its report to the U.N. in February. (That report is a supplement to earlier reports the Lipan Apaches and the UT law clinic have submitted to federal and U.N. officials.)
A spokesman for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Rio Grande Valley sector, whose jurisdiction includes El Calaboz in Cameron County, did not respond to a request for comment on the report. The agency would only say that it usually does not comment on pending legal issues.
The federal government has argued that the fence, combined with technology and manpower, is essential to border security. And some border residents have lauded its arrival, saying their land was overrun with trespassers before its construction.
But other border residents, immigrants, environmentalists and human rights groups have not seen the fence in such a positive light. They argue that it sends the wrong message to the U.S.'s southern neighbor and is a waste of resources that hasn’t stopped the flow of illegal migration.
Tamez, who was compensated about $58,000 for her land, said she took the federal money in protest, and used it to fund scholarships for nursing students at the University of Texas at Brownsville.
“I am not going to personally use the money that the government has given me due to this injustice; I want it to live forever in my parents' name,” she said. “They are the ones who worked hard on this land to give us a life.”
Margo Tamez, Eloisa’s daughter and a professor of indigenous studies at the University of British Columbia, said the Lipan Apaches never surrendered their land to the federal government and, under current treaty obligations, still have a right to craft their own cultural, educational and governmental practices. Without access to all of their land, she said, those rights are curtailed, hindering the tribe's ability to maintain its culture.
“The indigenous people such as the Lipan Apaches are vulnerable and threatened,” she said. “They have already been subject to assimilation.”
The latest report filed with U.N. officials argues that seizure of Native American land requires consent, and that there is legal precedent for it.
“Indigenous communities have a right to be previously consulted in deciding any measures that affect their territory,” the report states.
The Tamez family wants the border wall to come down, an unlikely scenario.
But Ariel Dulitzky, the director of UT Law's Human Rights Clinic, said other positive outcomes are possible, including financial compensation for the Lipan Apaches or at least a recommendation for more consultation with affected populations in the future.
“The [U.N.] could recommend that the U.S. adopt a measure to take into consideration the rights of the Lipan Apaches — for instance, how the Border Patrol carries out activities in the Lipan Apache areas,” he said.
Dulitzky said he expects a response this summer. The timing could be crucial as the government considers further expanding the border fence. If the U.S. Congress passes immigration reform, it is likely that border security triggers will be included in the legislation. Several Republican lawmakers have said additional fencing is a key element to heightening security.
“New legislation is expected to double and triple the border wall fencing and presence of border patrol agents,” the report states. “If the [U.S. government] is not held to account for the legacy of colonization and the border wall’s discriminatory effects, critical traditional knowledge will be lost.”
http://www.texastribune.org/2014/05/22/indigenous-texans-seek-un-support-over-border-fenc/
Showing posts with label Eloisa Tamez. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Eloisa Tamez. Show all posts
Friday, May 23, 2014
Thursday, April 10, 2014
Local professor uses settlement for scholarships
Brownsville Herald
April 10, 2014
by Melissa Montoya
A battle waged against the federal government has paid off for Eloisa G. Tamez, a professor at the University of Texas at Brownsville.
One of Brownsville’s most vocal opponents to the border fence, Tamez took the federal government to task when it tried to condemn her land to build a swath of border fence there.
The federal government is expected to pay Tamez $56,000 for the land it took from her, according to court documents. Tamez said she will be establishing a scholarship for students at the university with a portion of her settlement.
The scholarship fund launches on May 3, her parent’s 80th wedding anniversary. Her parents are deceased, but Tamez said she wanted to honor them this way because, even though they left school at an early age, they were strong proponents of education.
“The reason this is important to me and for the community to know and everyone else to know, including the federal government, is that land was taken from me by the government — land that had been part of the outcome of how my mother and my father and grandparents before them carved a life for us because they were farmers,” Tamez said.
The scholarship fund ensures her parents will be remembered and makes a good situation out of a bad one. The scholarships are for graduate nursing students where Tamez teaches as an associate professor in the College of Nursing.
Tamez is one of a group of people who fought the seizure of their land for the fence. She said the government was reluctant to give information on why the border fence needed to be built.
“It was almost like we weren’t worth receiving an explanation,” Tamez said. “We are supposed to be quiet about it. I wanted to know why... That’s what education does for you; it helps you to verbalize.”
The land in dispute was .026 acres along the Rio Grande Valley. Tamez and her family have lived on the land since 1767 when a Spanish land grant gifted them the property. The litigation had been pending since 2008.
The protracted legal battle was worth it, Tamez said.
“I told them you can take my land, you can build a walk across it, but you’re not going to take my voice,” Tamez said.
Tamez is still uncertain how much money will go into the scholarship fund, but it needs to reach $20,000 in order for it to be ready for distribution. She said she hopes students will benefit from what was a bad situation.
“This converts something negative into a positive outcome for this community,” Tamez said.
http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/local/article_ce9ac5f0-c120-11e3-a221-001a4bcf6878.html
April 10, 2014
by Melissa Montoya
A battle waged against the federal government has paid off for Eloisa G. Tamez, a professor at the University of Texas at Brownsville.
One of Brownsville’s most vocal opponents to the border fence, Tamez took the federal government to task when it tried to condemn her land to build a swath of border fence there.
The federal government is expected to pay Tamez $56,000 for the land it took from her, according to court documents. Tamez said she will be establishing a scholarship for students at the university with a portion of her settlement.
The scholarship fund launches on May 3, her parent’s 80th wedding anniversary. Her parents are deceased, but Tamez said she wanted to honor them this way because, even though they left school at an early age, they were strong proponents of education.
“The reason this is important to me and for the community to know and everyone else to know, including the federal government, is that land was taken from me by the government — land that had been part of the outcome of how my mother and my father and grandparents before them carved a life for us because they were farmers,” Tamez said.
The scholarship fund ensures her parents will be remembered and makes a good situation out of a bad one. The scholarships are for graduate nursing students where Tamez teaches as an associate professor in the College of Nursing.
Tamez is one of a group of people who fought the seizure of their land for the fence. She said the government was reluctant to give information on why the border fence needed to be built.
“It was almost like we weren’t worth receiving an explanation,” Tamez said. “We are supposed to be quiet about it. I wanted to know why... That’s what education does for you; it helps you to verbalize.”
The land in dispute was .026 acres along the Rio Grande Valley. Tamez and her family have lived on the land since 1767 when a Spanish land grant gifted them the property. The litigation had been pending since 2008.
The protracted legal battle was worth it, Tamez said.
“I told them you can take my land, you can build a walk across it, but you’re not going to take my voice,” Tamez said.
Tamez is still uncertain how much money will go into the scholarship fund, but it needs to reach $20,000 in order for it to be ready for distribution. She said she hopes students will benefit from what was a bad situation.
“This converts something negative into a positive outcome for this community,” Tamez said.
http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/local/article_ce9ac5f0-c120-11e3-a221-001a4bcf6878.html
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
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
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
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
The Texans who live on the ‘Mexican side’ of the border fence: ‘Technically, we’re in the United States’
Yahoo News
December 21, 2011
by Liz Goodwin
BROWNSVILLE, Texas—Pamela Taylor's living room has a Santa-hat-wearing stuffed dog atop a red doily on her coffee table, poinsettias near the couch, and, in the center of the room, an angel-topped Christmas tree with a few wrapped presents underneath.
Outside, the Christmas spirit is less visible, amid repeated warnings to KEEP OUT—though a "Merry Christmas!" sign hangs next to a warning to would-be trespassers that they're being filmed by a surveillance system. Written outside the front gate is the message: "Don't even think about parking here."
This will be Taylor's fourth Christmas living on what some Texans call the "Mexican side" of the U.S. border fence. Although she lives in Texas, her home is south of the 18-feet steel-and-concrete border wall erected by the American government. Taylor, who is 84, can see it from her front porch.
The wall was built to satisfy a law, passed in 2006 and 2008, that authorized 700 miles of fence on the southern border, 315 miles of it in Texas. President Bush said the fence would make the border safer and was "an important step toward immigration reform." Many of the 2012 Republican presidential candidates, with the exception of Texas Gov. Rick Perry, say they want to build a fence that spans the entire U.S. border. The Brownsville area shows just how complicated that project would be.
Because of a decades-old treaty with Mexico prohibiting building in the Rio Grande floodplain, the government built its border fence more than a mile north of the snaky river, trapping tens of thousands of acres of Texas--land in Cameron and Hidalgo counties--on the wrong side of the fence. The border wall is also riddled with miles-long gaps, seemingly placed at random. The U.S. Border Patrol says that illegal crossers are pushed to these gaps, where they are more easily apprehended.
Some Texans, like Taylor, live completely on the other side of the $6.2 million-a-mile wall. Others had their property split in half by the fence, after the government seized portions of their land. At least 200 people in Cameron County had some of their land seized for the fence.
'It's really done nothing for us'
Ten years ago, Taylor found a stranger sitting in her living room. "He had used my bathroom, he had shaved and cleaned himself off and he was watching the border patrol go by, sitting in that rocking chair," she said in an interview with Yahoo News. A few years later, she found 40 kilos of marijuana hidden in her bougainvilleas.
Taylor says she had to work hard to get her citizenship when she married an American soldier and moved to Texas from England after World War II. She doesn't think illegal immigrants should get a chance to become citizens. "If anything comes really easy, it's not appreciated," she said.
But the government's solution to the problem strikes her as ridiculous. "It's really done nothing for us because they're still coming across," Taylor says. Earlier this year, teenage illegal immigrants pounded on her front door in the middle of the night. She called the Border Patrol, which arrested them and a group of Hondurans they were trafficking, according to Taylor. She keeps a gun and a taser in her house, just in case.
'This is our property'
A few miles east of Taylor's house, Tim Loop's green two-story home, where he lives with his wife and two daughters, is also stuck behind the border wall. He agrees that the fence is not solving anything. Driving in his truck along the fence this week, he pointed out several places where scuffmarks suggested that people had recently climbed over. On one part of the fence not too far from his house, a torn shirt hung from the top of a pole.
Loop worries that the government will close the gaps in the fence. A complete wall wouldn't let him get to his house from the road, which is on the "American" side. The road also provides access to his farm, which grows sugar cane, grapefruit, corn, and other crops, for his eight employees.
Earlier this year, Homeland Security told landowners that it planned to close the gaps with 15-feet-wide gates that would have keypads on them. Each landowner would get a personal code to open the gate, and the government would be in charge of who else might be allowed to use each code.
"This is our property behind here," Loop said in an interview with Yahoo News. "We don't want somebody else to be the boss of our gate."
Taylor worries about a proposed highway whose path would require the government to move the fence closer to her house. "We will be more shut in than ever before," she said.
'We're in the United States'
Bob Lucio, the owner of a 165-acre golf course that lies entirely on the "Mexican" side of the fence, says the thought of Homeland Security using a secured gate to close the one entrance to the course keeps him up at night.
"If that happens, I don't think we can survive," he told Yahoo News during an interview in his office.
Lucio worked with Homeland Security to beautify the fence. Near the course, the wall is several feet shorter than elsewhere and is painted green. The wall is so subtle that some putters, many of them "winter Texans" from Canada and the Midwest, don't realize they're on the south side of the border wall, he says. A gate would change that.
"Technically, we're in the United States," Lucio said. But during a drug-cartel gun battle in June just across the Mexican border from his property, several Border Patrol agents lined up on the north side of the fence and didn't venture beyond it, he said. It gave him the impression that the Border Patrol was securing the fence line in times of trouble, instead of the actual border.
"The whole situation left me kind of numb," he said. "It's kind of like, 'You're on your own, buddy.'"
Rosalinda Huey, a spokeswoman for the Customs and Border Patrol, declined to comment on that episode but said agents patrol both sides of the fence.
'I couldn't sell my house now'
The landowners on the other side of the fence in Brownsville know their property isn't as valuable as it once was. "Would you want to buy a house behind the border wall?" Loop asked dryly.
The government didn't offer to buy the land it walled off from the rest of Texas, or to compensate people for the subsequent devaluation. It offered only to pay for the strips of land that were seized for the fence's path.
Eloisa Tamez, a nursing professor at the University of Texas at Brownsville and an outspoken opponent of the fence, refused to sell the government a quarter of an acre of her three-acre plot. She was initially offered $100 for the patch of land, which was used for the fence that now bisects her property.
Tamez's family has lived on her land since the 1700s. The family traditionally held an Easter party near the river, which is now on the other side of the wall. The only way Tamez can access the other part of her land is through a gap 1,200 feet away, which she can reach only by trespassing on her neighbors' land.
The government's offer eventually went up to $13,000, but she still didn't accept. She refused to sign the papers and is locked in a court battle with the government over the quarter acre it took from her.
"I couldn't sell my house now," she says.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/texas-americans-live-wrong-side-border-fence-christmas-183312787.html
December 21, 2011
by Liz Goodwin
BROWNSVILLE, Texas—Pamela Taylor's living room has a Santa-hat-wearing stuffed dog atop a red doily on her coffee table, poinsettias near the couch, and, in the center of the room, an angel-topped Christmas tree with a few wrapped presents underneath.
Outside, the Christmas spirit is less visible, amid repeated warnings to KEEP OUT—though a "Merry Christmas!" sign hangs next to a warning to would-be trespassers that they're being filmed by a surveillance system. Written outside the front gate is the message: "Don't even think about parking here."
This will be Taylor's fourth Christmas living on what some Texans call the "Mexican side" of the U.S. border fence. Although she lives in Texas, her home is south of the 18-feet steel-and-concrete border wall erected by the American government. Taylor, who is 84, can see it from her front porch.
The wall was built to satisfy a law, passed in 2006 and 2008, that authorized 700 miles of fence on the southern border, 315 miles of it in Texas. President Bush said the fence would make the border safer and was "an important step toward immigration reform." Many of the 2012 Republican presidential candidates, with the exception of Texas Gov. Rick Perry, say they want to build a fence that spans the entire U.S. border. The Brownsville area shows just how complicated that project would be.
Because of a decades-old treaty with Mexico prohibiting building in the Rio Grande floodplain, the government built its border fence more than a mile north of the snaky river, trapping tens of thousands of acres of Texas--land in Cameron and Hidalgo counties--on the wrong side of the fence. The border wall is also riddled with miles-long gaps, seemingly placed at random. The U.S. Border Patrol says that illegal crossers are pushed to these gaps, where they are more easily apprehended.
Some Texans, like Taylor, live completely on the other side of the $6.2 million-a-mile wall. Others had their property split in half by the fence, after the government seized portions of their land. At least 200 people in Cameron County had some of their land seized for the fence.
'It's really done nothing for us'
Ten years ago, Taylor found a stranger sitting in her living room. "He had used my bathroom, he had shaved and cleaned himself off and he was watching the border patrol go by, sitting in that rocking chair," she said in an interview with Yahoo News. A few years later, she found 40 kilos of marijuana hidden in her bougainvilleas.
Taylor says she had to work hard to get her citizenship when she married an American soldier and moved to Texas from England after World War II. She doesn't think illegal immigrants should get a chance to become citizens. "If anything comes really easy, it's not appreciated," she said.
But the government's solution to the problem strikes her as ridiculous. "It's really done nothing for us because they're still coming across," Taylor says. Earlier this year, teenage illegal immigrants pounded on her front door in the middle of the night. She called the Border Patrol, which arrested them and a group of Hondurans they were trafficking, according to Taylor. She keeps a gun and a taser in her house, just in case.
'This is our property'
A few miles east of Taylor's house, Tim Loop's green two-story home, where he lives with his wife and two daughters, is also stuck behind the border wall. He agrees that the fence is not solving anything. Driving in his truck along the fence this week, he pointed out several places where scuffmarks suggested that people had recently climbed over. On one part of the fence not too far from his house, a torn shirt hung from the top of a pole.
Loop worries that the government will close the gaps in the fence. A complete wall wouldn't let him get to his house from the road, which is on the "American" side. The road also provides access to his farm, which grows sugar cane, grapefruit, corn, and other crops, for his eight employees.
Earlier this year, Homeland Security told landowners that it planned to close the gaps with 15-feet-wide gates that would have keypads on them. Each landowner would get a personal code to open the gate, and the government would be in charge of who else might be allowed to use each code.
"This is our property behind here," Loop said in an interview with Yahoo News. "We don't want somebody else to be the boss of our gate."
Taylor worries about a proposed highway whose path would require the government to move the fence closer to her house. "We will be more shut in than ever before," she said.
'We're in the United States'
Bob Lucio, the owner of a 165-acre golf course that lies entirely on the "Mexican" side of the fence, says the thought of Homeland Security using a secured gate to close the one entrance to the course keeps him up at night.
"If that happens, I don't think we can survive," he told Yahoo News during an interview in his office.
Lucio worked with Homeland Security to beautify the fence. Near the course, the wall is several feet shorter than elsewhere and is painted green. The wall is so subtle that some putters, many of them "winter Texans" from Canada and the Midwest, don't realize they're on the south side of the border wall, he says. A gate would change that.
"Technically, we're in the United States," Lucio said. But during a drug-cartel gun battle in June just across the Mexican border from his property, several Border Patrol agents lined up on the north side of the fence and didn't venture beyond it, he said. It gave him the impression that the Border Patrol was securing the fence line in times of trouble, instead of the actual border.
"The whole situation left me kind of numb," he said. "It's kind of like, 'You're on your own, buddy.'"
Rosalinda Huey, a spokeswoman for the Customs and Border Patrol, declined to comment on that episode but said agents patrol both sides of the fence.
'I couldn't sell my house now'
The landowners on the other side of the fence in Brownsville know their property isn't as valuable as it once was. "Would you want to buy a house behind the border wall?" Loop asked dryly.
The government didn't offer to buy the land it walled off from the rest of Texas, or to compensate people for the subsequent devaluation. It offered only to pay for the strips of land that were seized for the fence's path.
Eloisa Tamez, a nursing professor at the University of Texas at Brownsville and an outspoken opponent of the fence, refused to sell the government a quarter of an acre of her three-acre plot. She was initially offered $100 for the patch of land, which was used for the fence that now bisects her property.
Tamez's family has lived on her land since the 1700s. The family traditionally held an Easter party near the river, which is now on the other side of the wall. The only way Tamez can access the other part of her land is through a gap 1,200 feet away, which she can reach only by trespassing on her neighbors' land.
The government's offer eventually went up to $13,000, but she still didn't accept. She refused to sign the papers and is locked in a court battle with the government over the quarter acre it took from her.
"I couldn't sell my house now," she says.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/texas-americans-live-wrong-side-border-fence-christmas-183312787.html
Friday, September 9, 2011
10 years of increased border security
San Antonio Express News
September 9, 2011
By Jason Buch and Lynn Brezosky
LAREDO — In the decade since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, property owners along the Rio Grande have lost land to the border fence and those who live near gaps in the unfinished structure are in the mouth of a funnel for illegal immigration and smuggling.
Travelers can no longer gain entry into the U.S. simply by declaring “American citizen.” Instead, they're met with long lines, rifle-toting customs officers and an array of electronics to scan documents and vehicles.
Cross-border communities in West Texas have withered and died when the unofficial crossings they relied upon were closed. A privately run detention center holding thousands of immigrants went up in a flash near the border.
RFID scanners, X-ray and Gamma-ray machines, SENTRI passes and FAST lanes have become part of the border lexicon, the response to the terrorist attack that cost thousands of U.S. lives and the effort to prevent it from happening again.
“It changed the way we live in this country, and rightfully so,” said Gene Garza, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection field office director who oversees eight ports of entry from Brownsville to Del Rio. “I think we were too relaxed. I think it raised the level of security in this country.”
Overseeing the changes for the last eight years is the Department of Homeland Security with its 200,000 employees and $50 billion annual budget. Often derided as a behemoth bureaucracy, officials defend it as a way to bring the nearly two dozen agencies tasked with protecting the country under one roof.
“I can tell you that our ability to investigate customs related crimes or to investigate immigration related crime would be enhanced by bringing it all under one agent,” said Jerry Robinette, the special agent in charge of the San Antonio office for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which covers much of South Texas.
But the increased security has divided communities, separated families, and, according to Cynta De Narvaez, a West Texas activist who lives in Terlingua, weakened cross border communication and made some border communities more susceptible to the corrupting influences of drug traffickers.
“We messed up pretty badly,” said De Narvaez, who's worked with Mexican families in remote towns that were cut off from U.S. grocery stores and medical facilities after 9/11. “We just didn't do our homework. I think we were in a pretty bad situation and everyone drummed up this stuff about border security.”
The wall
Half a continent away from ground zero, on a small plot of land with three white frame houses, Texas border resident Eloisa Tamez sees daily a reminder of the 9/11 attacks — what locals call the muro, or border wall.
“They defaced our community, and no telling the outcome on wildlife,” she said. “We are those unrecognized, invisible victims of 9/11. We should be having a memorial also, because we lost our land.”
Tamez was the poster child of protests against the Secure Fence Act of 2006, a keystone of President Bush's pledge to crack down on illegal immigration and secure the porous southern border.
The tangle was that in Texas, most of the land backing up to the Rio Grande was private, in some cases dating to Spanish land grants predating America's Revolutionary War. A map leaked to the press showed federal engineers had drawn lines for the fence without local input. It cut through a college campus and wildlife preserves and created a “no man's land” south of the fence that would have engulfed much of a small city.
There were bumper stickers and protests. At one, Tamez shouted “ No al muro!” and beat apart a wall-shaped piñata.
In the end, the fence that went up near her wasn't very imposing. It stretches in back of neighborhoods like a long row of toothpicks.
The fence is intermittent, meaning migrants and drug traffickers just come through the gaps. About an hour west in Granjeno, now backed by a reinforced levee-wall, resident Gloria Garza said one such opening funnels migrants through at a rate that has neighbors terrified.
“It used to be those people would come now and then... you'd give them a lunch bag or water,” she said. “We don't do that any more.”
She's seen them hiding in her plants, sitting on her porch. One rang the doorbell to say thanks; the smuggler had told him residents were paid a sort of campsite fee. Another was belligerent and demanded water. The faces are from India and China, not just Mexico and Central America.
Border Patrol spokesman Daniel Milian said the agency recently hosted two open houses to tell residents that punch-code gates were on the way.
“It's a very lengthy process as far as getting all the particulars behind the gates, figuring out what dimensions they needed to be, what type of design they wanted to use,” he said.
The economics
Some of the changes wrought by 9/11 took years to manifest themselves. For almost eight years after the attacks, it was possible to enter the U.S. at the international bridges simply by declaring citizenship.
Travelers are now encouraged to show a passport card, enhanced drivers license, a passport or documents identifying them as part of a trusted traveler program. CBP cannot deny entry to a U.S. citizen, but someone trying to get through without approved documents is likely to face a battery of questions and possibly spend some time in secondary inspection. Short-term visitors from Mexico must cough up $150 for a border crossing card.
That's had an impact on commerce. Les Norton, whose family owns three stores in the downtown Laredo shopping district full of shops that offer “ mayoreo y menudeo” (wholesale and retail) products primarily to Mexican customers who walk across the international bridge, said increased scrutiny makes it harder for shoppers to enter the U.S. and longer lines discourage them.
It wiped out McAllen merchant Monica Weisberg-Stewart's customer base: the maquila workers who'd cross by foot and take a bus to shop for discounted bras and dresses.
“In over 57 years of family business, we've never seen anything like this,” she said. “This was worse than any peso devaluation.”
The long lines are a burden as well to Nuevo Laredo resident Jose Manuel Zamora Diaz, who crosses several times a day to buy goods in Laredo that he ships to Mexico City and sells. When lines reach 1 ½ to two hours, he can sometimes only cross once a day, Zamora Diaz said.
CBP has put in programs intended to make the bridges run more smoothly, most of which involve CBP electronically collecting information about people and goods before they reach the ports of entry. Travelers with a SENTRI pass pay about $125 and undergo a background check to use an expedited lane.
In order to qualify for bringing goods across through expedited commercial lanes, customs broker Daniel B. Hastings Jr. said he's dropped money into heightened security including random drug tests for employees, camera surveillance of trucks as they're loaded and measures that restrict the movement of employees and visitors around company property.
“Our lives have changed in that we have placed security at a paramount of importance,” Hastings said.
Increased security or no, large-scale international commerce continues to thrive. Trade between the U.S. and Mexico is at an all-time high.
Some positive impact
The focus on security has had a positive economic impact as well. The major population centers along the Texas-Mexico border performed well in the recession, in part due to the increased federal spending there.
Since 2004, the number of Border Patrol agents in the country has doubled to more than 20,000 by 2010. In the Laredo Border Patrol sector, the number has increased by more than 800 to 1,858. In the Rio Grande Valley sector, it's increased by about 1,000 to 2,441. An entry-level position with Border Patrol pays about $38,000.
“For every one government employee that comes, like Border Patrol or a customs inspector, the multiplier factor can be 3.1 to 3.7” jobs created, said Hastings, who serves on the board of directors for the International Bank of Commerce in Laredo and is a past member of the board of directors for the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas' San Antonio branch.
Those government employees spend money on things like “housing, retail, electricity, schooling,” Hastings said. “Plus they're paying taxes. So the impact is exponential.”
In addition, the government has spent money on infrastructure and technology. Newfangled scanners grace ports of entry and Border Patrol checkpoints and agents now zoom up and down the river in airboats and overhead in helicopters and airplanes.
Humanitarian costs
Even as Homeland Security finds ways to accommodate border life — Laredo's new port director said he plans to add more pedestrian lanes to the international bridge there and CBP says that next year the famous Boquillas crossing at Big Bend National Park will reopen — there are broader implications.
University of Texas law professor Denise Gilman said the fence is only part of how the Sept. 11 attacks brought a sea change in how the nation viewed the southern border and illegal immigrants.
“I remember President (Vicente) Fox and President Bush meeting and promising that there was going to be reform, that we were going to bring the approximately 11 million undocumented individuals out of the shadows,” she said. “Those negotiations completely fell apart and we went pretty much in the other direction.”
Deportations escalated, she said, as did detentions. There was the round-the-clock construction to erect the “tent city” detention center in Raymondville in time for Bush to announce the end of “catch and release” of non-Mexican illegal immigrants. Allegations of human rights abuses have been rampant.
University of Texas-El Paso economist Thomas Fullerton published a study on how the attacks impacted border trade.
“Even while El Paso wasn't hit by any of the planes, it was clear that regulatory practices at the airport and the international bridges were disrupting travel and commuting patterns,” he said.
It was a multi-year effect, he said, that started with three-hour wait times on the Mexican side of international bridges in the months after the attacks.
“The geographic proximity of Ciudad Juarez was dealt a blow by 9-11,” he said. “It was as if Ciudad Juarez all of a sudden was three hours south in the interior of Mexico.”
Laredo resident Roberto Sanchez said he crosses to Nuevo Laredo occasionally to buy medicine. The longer wait times are a hassle, Sanchez said, but he's more concerned about the lack of bathrooms on the bridge than the increased scrutiny.
“They check every card from everybody,” he said. “But that's OK, because it's more secure.”
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/10-years-of-increased-border-security-2163562.php#page-1
September 9, 2011
By Jason Buch and Lynn Brezosky
LAREDO — In the decade since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, property owners along the Rio Grande have lost land to the border fence and those who live near gaps in the unfinished structure are in the mouth of a funnel for illegal immigration and smuggling.
Travelers can no longer gain entry into the U.S. simply by declaring “American citizen.” Instead, they're met with long lines, rifle-toting customs officers and an array of electronics to scan documents and vehicles.
Cross-border communities in West Texas have withered and died when the unofficial crossings they relied upon were closed. A privately run detention center holding thousands of immigrants went up in a flash near the border.
RFID scanners, X-ray and Gamma-ray machines, SENTRI passes and FAST lanes have become part of the border lexicon, the response to the terrorist attack that cost thousands of U.S. lives and the effort to prevent it from happening again.
“It changed the way we live in this country, and rightfully so,” said Gene Garza, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection field office director who oversees eight ports of entry from Brownsville to Del Rio. “I think we were too relaxed. I think it raised the level of security in this country.”
Overseeing the changes for the last eight years is the Department of Homeland Security with its 200,000 employees and $50 billion annual budget. Often derided as a behemoth bureaucracy, officials defend it as a way to bring the nearly two dozen agencies tasked with protecting the country under one roof.
“I can tell you that our ability to investigate customs related crimes or to investigate immigration related crime would be enhanced by bringing it all under one agent,” said Jerry Robinette, the special agent in charge of the San Antonio office for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which covers much of South Texas.
But the increased security has divided communities, separated families, and, according to Cynta De Narvaez, a West Texas activist who lives in Terlingua, weakened cross border communication and made some border communities more susceptible to the corrupting influences of drug traffickers.
“We messed up pretty badly,” said De Narvaez, who's worked with Mexican families in remote towns that were cut off from U.S. grocery stores and medical facilities after 9/11. “We just didn't do our homework. I think we were in a pretty bad situation and everyone drummed up this stuff about border security.”
The wall
Half a continent away from ground zero, on a small plot of land with three white frame houses, Texas border resident Eloisa Tamez sees daily a reminder of the 9/11 attacks — what locals call the muro, or border wall.
“They defaced our community, and no telling the outcome on wildlife,” she said. “We are those unrecognized, invisible victims of 9/11. We should be having a memorial also, because we lost our land.”
Tamez was the poster child of protests against the Secure Fence Act of 2006, a keystone of President Bush's pledge to crack down on illegal immigration and secure the porous southern border.
The tangle was that in Texas, most of the land backing up to the Rio Grande was private, in some cases dating to Spanish land grants predating America's Revolutionary War. A map leaked to the press showed federal engineers had drawn lines for the fence without local input. It cut through a college campus and wildlife preserves and created a “no man's land” south of the fence that would have engulfed much of a small city.
There were bumper stickers and protests. At one, Tamez shouted “ No al muro!” and beat apart a wall-shaped piñata.
In the end, the fence that went up near her wasn't very imposing. It stretches in back of neighborhoods like a long row of toothpicks.
The fence is intermittent, meaning migrants and drug traffickers just come through the gaps. About an hour west in Granjeno, now backed by a reinforced levee-wall, resident Gloria Garza said one such opening funnels migrants through at a rate that has neighbors terrified.
“It used to be those people would come now and then... you'd give them a lunch bag or water,” she said. “We don't do that any more.”
She's seen them hiding in her plants, sitting on her porch. One rang the doorbell to say thanks; the smuggler had told him residents were paid a sort of campsite fee. Another was belligerent and demanded water. The faces are from India and China, not just Mexico and Central America.
Border Patrol spokesman Daniel Milian said the agency recently hosted two open houses to tell residents that punch-code gates were on the way.
“It's a very lengthy process as far as getting all the particulars behind the gates, figuring out what dimensions they needed to be, what type of design they wanted to use,” he said.
The economics
Some of the changes wrought by 9/11 took years to manifest themselves. For almost eight years after the attacks, it was possible to enter the U.S. at the international bridges simply by declaring citizenship.
Travelers are now encouraged to show a passport card, enhanced drivers license, a passport or documents identifying them as part of a trusted traveler program. CBP cannot deny entry to a U.S. citizen, but someone trying to get through without approved documents is likely to face a battery of questions and possibly spend some time in secondary inspection. Short-term visitors from Mexico must cough up $150 for a border crossing card.
That's had an impact on commerce. Les Norton, whose family owns three stores in the downtown Laredo shopping district full of shops that offer “ mayoreo y menudeo” (wholesale and retail) products primarily to Mexican customers who walk across the international bridge, said increased scrutiny makes it harder for shoppers to enter the U.S. and longer lines discourage them.
It wiped out McAllen merchant Monica Weisberg-Stewart's customer base: the maquila workers who'd cross by foot and take a bus to shop for discounted bras and dresses.
“In over 57 years of family business, we've never seen anything like this,” she said. “This was worse than any peso devaluation.”
The long lines are a burden as well to Nuevo Laredo resident Jose Manuel Zamora Diaz, who crosses several times a day to buy goods in Laredo that he ships to Mexico City and sells. When lines reach 1 ½ to two hours, he can sometimes only cross once a day, Zamora Diaz said.
CBP has put in programs intended to make the bridges run more smoothly, most of which involve CBP electronically collecting information about people and goods before they reach the ports of entry. Travelers with a SENTRI pass pay about $125 and undergo a background check to use an expedited lane.
In order to qualify for bringing goods across through expedited commercial lanes, customs broker Daniel B. Hastings Jr. said he's dropped money into heightened security including random drug tests for employees, camera surveillance of trucks as they're loaded and measures that restrict the movement of employees and visitors around company property.
“Our lives have changed in that we have placed security at a paramount of importance,” Hastings said.
Increased security or no, large-scale international commerce continues to thrive. Trade between the U.S. and Mexico is at an all-time high.
Some positive impact
The focus on security has had a positive economic impact as well. The major population centers along the Texas-Mexico border performed well in the recession, in part due to the increased federal spending there.
Since 2004, the number of Border Patrol agents in the country has doubled to more than 20,000 by 2010. In the Laredo Border Patrol sector, the number has increased by more than 800 to 1,858. In the Rio Grande Valley sector, it's increased by about 1,000 to 2,441. An entry-level position with Border Patrol pays about $38,000.
“For every one government employee that comes, like Border Patrol or a customs inspector, the multiplier factor can be 3.1 to 3.7” jobs created, said Hastings, who serves on the board of directors for the International Bank of Commerce in Laredo and is a past member of the board of directors for the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas' San Antonio branch.
Those government employees spend money on things like “housing, retail, electricity, schooling,” Hastings said. “Plus they're paying taxes. So the impact is exponential.”
In addition, the government has spent money on infrastructure and technology. Newfangled scanners grace ports of entry and Border Patrol checkpoints and agents now zoom up and down the river in airboats and overhead in helicopters and airplanes.
Humanitarian costs
Even as Homeland Security finds ways to accommodate border life — Laredo's new port director said he plans to add more pedestrian lanes to the international bridge there and CBP says that next year the famous Boquillas crossing at Big Bend National Park will reopen — there are broader implications.
University of Texas law professor Denise Gilman said the fence is only part of how the Sept. 11 attacks brought a sea change in how the nation viewed the southern border and illegal immigrants.
“I remember President (Vicente) Fox and President Bush meeting and promising that there was going to be reform, that we were going to bring the approximately 11 million undocumented individuals out of the shadows,” she said. “Those negotiations completely fell apart and we went pretty much in the other direction.”
Deportations escalated, she said, as did detentions. There was the round-the-clock construction to erect the “tent city” detention center in Raymondville in time for Bush to announce the end of “catch and release” of non-Mexican illegal immigrants. Allegations of human rights abuses have been rampant.
University of Texas-El Paso economist Thomas Fullerton published a study on how the attacks impacted border trade.
“Even while El Paso wasn't hit by any of the planes, it was clear that regulatory practices at the airport and the international bridges were disrupting travel and commuting patterns,” he said.
It was a multi-year effect, he said, that started with three-hour wait times on the Mexican side of international bridges in the months after the attacks.
“The geographic proximity of Ciudad Juarez was dealt a blow by 9-11,” he said. “It was as if Ciudad Juarez all of a sudden was three hours south in the interior of Mexico.”
Laredo resident Roberto Sanchez said he crosses to Nuevo Laredo occasionally to buy medicine. The longer wait times are a hassle, Sanchez said, but he's more concerned about the lack of bathrooms on the bridge than the increased scrutiny.
“They check every card from everybody,” he said. “But that's OK, because it's more secure.”
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/10-years-of-increased-border-security-2163562.php#page-1
Sunday, February 27, 2011
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
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
Monday, December 27, 2010
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
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
Thursday, March 25, 2010
A Small Victory in the Border Wall Boondoggle
Texas Observer
March 5, 2010
by Melissa del Bosque
Much has been written in the Observer about the border wall boondoggle winding its way along the Texas-Mexico border. At $2.4 billion and counting the 670 mile border wall ranges from California to Texas. Several landowners in Texas are still fighting for fair compensation for their land from the U.S. government.
Brownsville landowner Eloisa Tamez, 74, has been one of the most outspoken landowners against the 18-foot wall being built through her backyard. In January, I wrote a story “All Walled Up” about the battle between Cameron County landowners such as Tamez and the Department of Homeland Security who has seized their land to build the wall.
At the time, DHS was back for more and planned to seize an additional piece of her property so that she would be unable to access her land on the southern side of the wall.
The other day she sent me some good news in an email “DHS backed away. I was notified that there will not be a second taking,” she wrote. “I want the people to know that it pays to raise your voice when the government practices injustice and violates human rights.”
Finally, some good news to report on the border wall front. Eloisa Tamez has been a consistent crusader for the rights of border landowners. It’s good to see a victory among all of the injustice.
http://www.texasobserver.org/lalinea/a-small-victory-in-the-border-wall-boondoggle
March 5, 2010
by Melissa del Bosque
Much has been written in the Observer about the border wall boondoggle winding its way along the Texas-Mexico border. At $2.4 billion and counting the 670 mile border wall ranges from California to Texas. Several landowners in Texas are still fighting for fair compensation for their land from the U.S. government.
Brownsville landowner Eloisa Tamez, 74, has been one of the most outspoken landowners against the 18-foot wall being built through her backyard. In January, I wrote a story “All Walled Up” about the battle between Cameron County landowners such as Tamez and the Department of Homeland Security who has seized their land to build the wall.
At the time, DHS was back for more and planned to seize an additional piece of her property so that she would be unable to access her land on the southern side of the wall.
The other day she sent me some good news in an email “DHS backed away. I was notified that there will not be a second taking,” she wrote. “I want the people to know that it pays to raise your voice when the government practices injustice and violates human rights.”
Finally, some good news to report on the border wall front. Eloisa Tamez has been a consistent crusader for the rights of border landowners. It’s good to see a victory among all of the injustice.
http://www.texasobserver.org/lalinea/a-small-victory-in-the-border-wall-boondoggle
Friday, December 18, 2009
Feds Trying to Take More Land Along Border Wall
KRGV Channel 5
December 17, 2009
CAMERON COUNTY - Dr. Eloisa Tamez says the federal government is trying once again to take her land. Earlier this month, she received a letter from the Department of Homeland Security asking for permission to access her property to do "site surveys." Tamez owns land along the border wall just west of the Brownsville city limits.
The letter asks her to grant permission for "entry" during the next year. The land in question is south of the actual border wall and south of the levy. "They took my land. They built the wall. Now, they want more land. I need an explanation. What do they need that land for," she asked.
Tamez says she will not sign the letter.
Tamez has been a vocal opponent of the wall. She's already involved in federal lawsuit over the border wall. She wants a jury to decide how much she should be compensated for the initial land that was taken. Tamez says that case is expected to go trial next spring.
http://www.krgv.com/content/news/story/Feds-Trying-to-Take-More-Land-Along-Border-Wall/oyZyob-lBUeAOK_LdvFMsg.cspx
December 17, 2009
CAMERON COUNTY - Dr. Eloisa Tamez says the federal government is trying once again to take her land. Earlier this month, she received a letter from the Department of Homeland Security asking for permission to access her property to do "site surveys." Tamez owns land along the border wall just west of the Brownsville city limits.
The letter asks her to grant permission for "entry" during the next year. The land in question is south of the actual border wall and south of the levy. "They took my land. They built the wall. Now, they want more land. I need an explanation. What do they need that land for," she asked.
Tamez says she will not sign the letter.
Tamez has been a vocal opponent of the wall. She's already involved in federal lawsuit over the border wall. She wants a jury to decide how much she should be compensated for the initial land that was taken. Tamez says that case is expected to go trial next spring.
http://www.krgv.com/content/news/story/Feds-Trying-to-Take-More-Land-Along-Border-Wall/oyZyob-lBUeAOK_LdvFMsg.cspx
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Gringo Pass to Brownsville: Good Neighbor Board urges Obama to take new tack on Border Wall
San Antonio Current
December 2009
by Greg Harman
For a while it looked like the Border Wall was going to be a boon for Martha Gay and her Gringo Pass gas station in Lukeville, Arizona. Homeland Security’s subcontractor Kiewit was paying out $100,000 per month for Gringo Pass land to host a cement batching plant and store equipment. A water deal at 50-cents a gallon had the company owing Gay another $2 million in short order.
Then the flood came.
In the desert, water rushes fast over the hard earth like a sheet, seeking out low spots, arroyos, canyons, sinkholes. What the rainfall found was the border wall. Gay’s attorneys allege that after that water hit the wall it channeled directly into her convenience store, doing an estimated $6 million in damages. All of a sudden the wall wasn’t such a hot item at Gay’s Gringo Pass.
It may have been a freak flood in Presidio, Texas, that forced Homeland Security to finally reject miles of proposed wall construction there, but folks are still feeling jitters regarding the miles of wall constructed in the Valley across private property and through federally protected wilderness.
Nancy Brown, spokesperson for U.S. Fish and Wildlife at the South Texas Refuge Complex said wall construction has finished through the federally protected lands, but how it will affect rainfall and flooding is unknown. “From the beginning we have asked ‘What about hydrology studies?’ and to my knowledge that has never been addressed,” Brown said.
Eloisa Tamez brought a class-action lawsuit against Homeland Security through which she hopes to force the government to pay a fair price for her property. But if she harbored any illusions that a change of administration in Washington would help resolve the issue, nearly a year of non-action on immigration and border justice by Obama has disabused her for such notions.
“Obama and [Homeland Security Secretary Janet] Napolitano have done nothing but take the place of the previous administration. It’s just a new name with the same policies. We have been totally abandoned,” she said.
Now the Good Neighbor Environmental Board has come up with some ideas for Obama.
In a December 2 letter, the advisory board dedicated to matters pertaining to U.S.-Mexico borderlands environmental justice wrote that while the wall was “mandated” by Congress and had “some positive outcomes” that “the construction has caused negative impacts on natural and cultural resources. For instance, the wall has been blamed for flooding on the Mexican side of the river in cities such as Nogales, Sonoyta, and Palomas. Construction also unearthed Native American burial sites of both the Tohono O’odham and the Kymeyaay, and failed to allow room for migration wildlife.
In a series of recommendations to the President, the group urged that those elements of the REAL ID Act that had allowed former Homeland Secretary Michael Chertoff to waive dozens of other federal laws to build the wall be repealed and that future “border security infrastructure” conform to federal environmental laws under the National Environmental Policy Act.
Border Wall activist Scott Nicol of the No Border Wall Coalition said repealing the REAL ID Act section is critical.
“Much of the environmental damage that the Environmental Board wants to address would never have occurred if DHS was required to obey all of nation's laws. It is because DHS failed to act responsibly from the beginning that there is now a need for monitoring and mitigation of the severe damage that they have inflicted upon border communities and refuges,” Nichol wrote in an email to the Current. “Border walls in Texas are in clear violation of the endangered species act, and DHS never released any studies proving that the walls stuffed into the Rio Grande's flood control levees do not put communities at risk. Hopefully President Obama will reverse the Bush-era policies, and implement the Board's recommendations."
Will actually grasping the Nobel Peace Prize on Thursday convert Obama into a border-loving justice hound? We can only hope.
http://www.sacurrent.com/blog/queblog.asp?perm=70063
December 2009
by Greg Harman
For a while it looked like the Border Wall was going to be a boon for Martha Gay and her Gringo Pass gas station in Lukeville, Arizona. Homeland Security’s subcontractor Kiewit was paying out $100,000 per month for Gringo Pass land to host a cement batching plant and store equipment. A water deal at 50-cents a gallon had the company owing Gay another $2 million in short order.
Then the flood came.
In the desert, water rushes fast over the hard earth like a sheet, seeking out low spots, arroyos, canyons, sinkholes. What the rainfall found was the border wall. Gay’s attorneys allege that after that water hit the wall it channeled directly into her convenience store, doing an estimated $6 million in damages. All of a sudden the wall wasn’t such a hot item at Gay’s Gringo Pass.
It may have been a freak flood in Presidio, Texas, that forced Homeland Security to finally reject miles of proposed wall construction there, but folks are still feeling jitters regarding the miles of wall constructed in the Valley across private property and through federally protected wilderness.
Nancy Brown, spokesperson for U.S. Fish and Wildlife at the South Texas Refuge Complex said wall construction has finished through the federally protected lands, but how it will affect rainfall and flooding is unknown. “From the beginning we have asked ‘What about hydrology studies?’ and to my knowledge that has never been addressed,” Brown said.
Eloisa Tamez brought a class-action lawsuit against Homeland Security through which she hopes to force the government to pay a fair price for her property. But if she harbored any illusions that a change of administration in Washington would help resolve the issue, nearly a year of non-action on immigration and border justice by Obama has disabused her for such notions.
“Obama and [Homeland Security Secretary Janet] Napolitano have done nothing but take the place of the previous administration. It’s just a new name with the same policies. We have been totally abandoned,” she said.
Now the Good Neighbor Environmental Board has come up with some ideas for Obama.
In a December 2 letter, the advisory board dedicated to matters pertaining to U.S.-Mexico borderlands environmental justice wrote that while the wall was “mandated” by Congress and had “some positive outcomes” that “the construction has caused negative impacts on natural and cultural resources. For instance, the wall has been blamed for flooding on the Mexican side of the river in cities such as Nogales, Sonoyta, and Palomas. Construction also unearthed Native American burial sites of both the Tohono O’odham and the Kymeyaay, and failed to allow room for migration wildlife.
In a series of recommendations to the President, the group urged that those elements of the REAL ID Act that had allowed former Homeland Secretary Michael Chertoff to waive dozens of other federal laws to build the wall be repealed and that future “border security infrastructure” conform to federal environmental laws under the National Environmental Policy Act.
Border Wall activist Scott Nicol of the No Border Wall Coalition said repealing the REAL ID Act section is critical.
“Much of the environmental damage that the Environmental Board wants to address would never have occurred if DHS was required to obey all of nation's laws. It is because DHS failed to act responsibly from the beginning that there is now a need for monitoring and mitigation of the severe damage that they have inflicted upon border communities and refuges,” Nichol wrote in an email to the Current. “Border walls in Texas are in clear violation of the endangered species act, and DHS never released any studies proving that the walls stuffed into the Rio Grande's flood control levees do not put communities at risk. Hopefully President Obama will reverse the Bush-era policies, and implement the Board's recommendations."
Will actually grasping the Nobel Peace Prize on Thursday convert Obama into a border-loving justice hound? We can only hope.
http://www.sacurrent.com/blog/queblog.asp?perm=70063
Monday, June 15, 2009
Proximity of border fence to homes and businesses upsets many
Brownsville Herald
June 14, 2009
by Laura Martinez
June 14, 2009
by Laura Martinez
Joe De La Garza established his mom-and-pop store back in 1966 on South Oklahoma Road in rural Cameron County.
It wasn't too long ago that he and his grandchildren would walk up and down the levee, located across the street from his store, for exercise.
Things have changed, De La Garza said, as he watched a construction worker use a backhoe to remove dirt for the continued construction of the border fence.
"It's all nonsense," De La Garza, 73, said as he looked at the 18-foot tall brown border fence in front of his store, De La Garza Grocery.
The border fence is two-and-one-half miles away from the Rio Grande, he said, and that is just wrong. Landowners like De La Garza were under the impression the fence would be built 180 feet from the river, not from his storefront, he said.
"What the heck are they doing out here? It doesn't look right," De La Garza said.
The fence's construction is part of the 2006 Secure Fence Act, which is part of the government's comprehensive immigration reform that includes securing the nation's border. The Department of Homeland Security is overseeing the fence's construction.
Last Thursday, the Texas Border Coalition penned a letter to President Barack Obama asking him to halt the fence construction so his administration could review the nation's border security policy.
"Without such an order, construction will proceed, wasting billions of taxpayer dollars on a border security tactic that fails its basic purpose in defiance of realistic, proven alternatives," said Eagle Pass Mayor Chad Foster, chairman of the Texas Border Coalition.
The letter is signed by dozens of local politicians, including Brownsville Mayor Pat M. Ahumada Jr., Cameron County Judge Carlos H. Cascos and state legislators Eddie Lucio Jr., Eddie Lucio III and Rene Oliveira.
In the interim, fence construction in Cameron County is visible up and down South Oklahoma Road a few miles outside the Brownsville city limits, except along some sections of the road where pending lawsuits against the fencing temporarily have halted building, at least for now.
Although De La Garza doesn't like the fencing, he knew it was just a matter of time before it would be built because the government was determined to build it whether the residents liked it or not.
"It's not going to stop the people" from trying to come across, De La Garza said, adding that it in fact could increase illegal immigration since there could be fewer U.S. Border Patrol agents patrolling the area because of the fence.
De La Garza sees Border Patrol agents driving around the area about every 15 to 20 minutes or at times once an hour.
"They (Border Patrol) might say, ‘We got a fence now, so we don't have to worry because people aren't going to come across,' " the local businessman said. "This is not going to stop them. I don't think so."
In Cameron County, 34.8 miles of fencing is planned. As of June 5, 11.7 miles of fencing had been completed, said Claude R. Knighten, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Washington, D.C. Roughly 9.3 miles of fence are slated to be built along South Oklahoma and Southmost roads, with 3.4 miles to be constructed on South Oklahoma and 5.9 miles on Southmost.
‘CLOSED IN'
From her front door about a mile away, Otalia Perez sees the landscape De La Garza now sees.
Perez from her front door could see the levee, with acres of green land shortly behind it.
All she sees now is a brown barrier known as the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's border fence, blocking her view of everything located right in front of her home.
"We feel closed in," said Perez, 73, of the barrier erected weeks ago in front of her home. "It's sad, very sad."
As an American flag hoisted on a flagpole waves proudly in her front yard, Perez contends that nothing could be done to stop the fence's construction.
Simply put, the government was going to build the fence whether the residents liked it or not, she said.
The DHS in May 2008 filed a land condemnation suit against Otalia and Tomas R. Perez for 2.19 acres of land they owned in front of their home, court documents show. In August 2008, the DHS paid the Perezes $21,086.49 for the property.
Many fence protestors had hoped Obama would put a halt to fence's construction, but a few months after taking office, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano announced the fence's construction would continue.
Additional fencing in Cameron County is visible along Military Highway, also known as Highway 281. Much of the fencing in this area was constructed earlier this year, including on property owned by UTB-TSC Associate Professor Eloisa Tamez, a strong opponent of the fence.
Pending is fencing to be constructed on land owned by the city of Brownsville; city officials earlier this month agreed to give to the DHS some 15 acres of land to build a temporary fence, which would be removed when the city begins construction on the East Loop project. The DHS already had the land title.
Back at De La Garza's store, the businessman wonders how the fencing will hold up during hard rains and hurricane season.
"The soil here? Once it gets wet, it loosens everything, and if the wind starts to get it, I believe it is going to collapse," he said.
http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/border-99022-fence-garza.htmlSaturday, April 25, 2009
Judge's Order: hole in wall
Brownsville Herald
April 24, 2009
by Kevin Sieff
April 24, 2009
by Kevin Sieff
The border fence on Eloisa Tamez's property may be complete, but the case is not yet closed, according to state District Judge Andrew Hanen.
On Friday morning, Hanen held a hearing to discuss Tamez's request for a temporary restraining order - a request filed Thursday just as the government was beginning construction behind her El Calaboz home.
Construction on the fence was completed the same day that the TRO request was made and before Hanen could take any action on it.
Tamez claimed in the request that federal officials shirked a previous Hanen order to consult with her before beginning construction.
The restraining order request is moot now that the barrier is up, Hanen said Friday, but he suggested that the government should accommodate Tamez's concerns about access to her property - half of which is south of the fence. The government's current plan is to provide several gates for landowners. But the closest one to Tamez's home is a mile away, making her property effectively inaccessible, her attorney, Peter Schey, argued.
Hanen was receptive to Tamez's concerns - and her desire for access - citing her property's cultural and historical significance. "We're not going to put in a turnstile so that illegal immigrants have access," Hanen assured two federal attorneys.
But the attorneys were steadfast in their opposition to a gate on Tamez's land.
"With all due respect, I don't think that's going to happen," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Aiman. "A gate at that particular location does not meet the operational concerns of (U.S. Customs and Border Protection)."
Unsatisfied with that conclusion, Hanen asked the two parties to negotiate privately. When their meeting proved ineffective, the judge decided to visit Tamez's property himself on Friday afternoon. Hanen walked with attorneys and border patrol agents from Tamez's land to the nearest access point and then along the levee to the southern half of her tract. It was about a 45-minute jaunt, according to one of Tamez's attorneys, Corinna Spencer-Scheurich.
"It was a big gesture on his (Hanen's) part," Spencer-Scheurich said. "I hope he sees that the government needs to be penalized in some way for failing to consult with Dr. Tamez."
http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/tamez_97315___article.html/hanen_property.html#slComments
Friday, April 24, 2009
Border fence fight persists: Landowner: Government violated court order by building wall
Brownsville Herald
April 23, 2009
by Kevin Seiff
April 23, 2009
by Kevin Seiff
Less than one week after a federal judge cleared the way for construction of the border fence on Eloisa Tamez's property, the barrier has been completed on her swath of land in El Calaboz.
But Tamez and her attorneys say the government ignored U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen's court order by hastily building the fence. On April 16, Hanen mandated federal officials to "consult with the landowners of the property in question prior to exercising the rights given in this order."
But according to Tamez, no such consultation ever took place. After she noticed construction materials on her property, her attorney, Peter Schey, filed for a temporary restraining order on Thursday, claiming that the court's stipulation had been ignored. "We would like to begin an immediate discussion regarding the defendant's concerns," Schey wrote.
But by 3 p.m. Thursday, the fence had already been built on Tamez's three-acre property, before a hearing on the restraining order could take place. Construction was completed in less than 24 hours.
"It's an outrage," Tamez said. " The government is acting without regard for the judge's decision."
The court-ordered consultation was meant to inform Tamez when and how her property would be transferred to the government and how the barrier's environmental impact would be minimized.
A hearing meant to address Tamez's request for a restraining order is scheduled for 9 a.m. today in Hanen's court, but with construction now complete it's unclear what purpose it will serve.
Tamez has her own suggestions.
"They're going to have to tear it down," she said. "They can't get away with this."
Throughout the 18-month-long case, the federal government has declined requests for comment due to pending litigation.
http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/tamez_97265___article.html/property_order.htmlFriday, April 17, 2009
Path of the border wall cuts off land grant heir’s property
New Mexico Independent
April 17, 2009
by Marjorie Childress
April 17, 2009
by Marjorie Childress
ALBUQUERQUE — Even though Dr. Eloisa Tamez calls Texas home, she was in New Mexico Thursday afternoon when she got some unwanted news.
In the name of border security, the federal government served her condemnation papers on part of the border-land that’s been in her family for generations.Tamez, who was in town for an academic conference, told NMI that her attorneys emailed her about the condemnation order earlier in the day.
As President Obama traveled to Mexico this week, many folks were focusing on hotly debated security threats coming from Mexico. But the Tamez case illustrated to others why New Mexicans ought to be paying as close attention to what’s happening just across the border in Texas by the U.S. government itself.
Tamez, a University of Texas at Brownsville professor of nursing, owns three acres of land in El Calaboz, Texas, “just up the river” from Brownsville. The property is a remnant of what her family once owned — but one that has a lot of meaning for her.
What many may not realize is that in Texas the federal government is using eminent domain powers to take private property of U.S. citizens north of the border in order to build the so-called border wall, often effectively cutting property owners off from their land south of the newly constructed wall.
The massive wall being constructed along the U.S./Mexico border does not sit on the actual border, which in Texas is the Rio Grande.
Tamez’s land was once part of the San Pedro de Carricitos Land Grant, created by the King of Spain in 1767. While it was handed down to Tamez through many generations, her heritage on the land actually predates even the land grant, she explained. Tamez’s ancestors include tribal members of the indigenous Lipan Apache.
And now, the federal government wants to cut her off from most of her land.
That’s because her property sits square in the path of the authorized border wall. Tamez has been fighting the efforts of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to condemn and bisect her land with the wall since 2007 — one of the last hold-outs in her community.
She’s tried to meet the government half way, she said, offering to replace a barbed wire fence on her property with a 10-foot wall. And she’s asked for an opening in the wall that would allow her to access what would be over half of her land south of the wall. She said she hasn’t received a response from the government.
While government officials have told Tamez that the wall will only take a quarter of an acre of her land, she said, Tamez totals the loss much higher — more than half of the land will be gone because there will be no access to it. Nor will it be worth much on the market if she’s forced to sell, she added.
And, as she learned yesterday, time is running out. She was in Albuquerque to give a presentation on the very topic Thursday at the Western Social Sciences Association Conference at the University of New Mexico. That is when she learned she had been served with the condemnation notice by the feds.
When it comes to the land condemnations in Texas, maps of the location of the new walls show them running through many lower-income, Mexican American communities, Tamez said.
This is easily seen on the ground as well, she said, with the wall stopping at wealthy resorts with golf courses.
“They choose our communities because immigrants blend in,” she said. “But that’s stereotyping and discriminatory. Not to mention, un-American.”
Tamez said she had hoped things would be different with President Obama, but that’s not been the case so far.
“They talk about cultural sensitivity, but have ignored us and continued to move forward with the contracts to build the wall,” she elaborated.
“I’m appalled that the president right away said this country would stop the torture and close Guantanamo. But what does he call what’s happening to us? Do we not count?”
Other participants at the WSSA Conference, when hearing about the condemnation notice delivered to Tamez, said New Mexicans should sit up and take notice.
Cynthia Bejaranos, a professor of criminal justice at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, said the land condemnations in Texas are a trend in the “de-constitutionalization” of border communities.
“I’m a fourth generation U.S. citizen who grew up in Anthony, and have been a resident of the border region my entire life,” she told NMI. “The institutional law enforcement presence with associated police tactics and surveillance has grown massively, with serious implications for the human rights of our Mexican-American communities.”
“I have to go through a checkpoint every time I leave Las Cruces, in any direction,” she continued. “These measures are in the name of border security, but over the past 20 years I’ve seen little to warrant it. And this condemnation of private land in other parts of the southwest are part of the trend — many of us wonder if it’s the next thing we’ll have to deal with.”
http://newmexicoindependent.com/25220/path-of-the-border-wall-cuts-off-land-grant-heirs-propertyObama, guns, and Eloisa Tamez
San Antonio Current
April 17, 2009
by Greg Harman
Eloisa Tamez, who you may remember from the Current’s border series, is headed back to South Texas today.
She had been presenting at a conference in Albuquerque about the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border when she got word that back at home a federal judge had ruled that U.S. Homeland Security has the right to take a quarter-acre of her South Texas border land. This is land in her family inhabited before Spanish colonization, she has argued, and was deeded to her relatives through a Spanish Land Grant.
It’s been a year since Tamaz walked with me atop the earthen levy on the back side of her property. For the university professor, it’s been a year of going in and out of court fighting Homeland Security.
While I couldn’t reach Eloisa this morning, her daughter Margo returned by call, sharing how distraught she and her mother were on hearing the news yesterday.
Margo said compounding the shock was the fact that her mother had approached no fewer than six different appraisal companies trying to get a good appraisal on her land with no luck.
One finally agreed, Margo Tamez said, but then “fell off the face of the earth.”
The ramifications of the ruling for more than a dozen other landowners that had joined her mother’s lawsuit is unclear, she added.
Prominent and sustained violence in several Northern Mexico border towns appears to have provided the government justification to continue forward with nearly 700 miles of border wall construction ordered by Congress, in spite of the hope many had held out that Obama’s new administration could force a policy reversal.
However, when President Obama met with fellow Harvard alum President Felipe Calderon yesterday in Mexico City, individual liberty and indigenous land rights weren’t on the agenda.
Crime was.
From CNN, we read:
Individual liberty and indigenous land rights have received little mention in the court of U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen. (For more on human rights and the Wall, check out the analysis of this University of Texas-based group.)
To visit, it seems bizarre to think seizing property in out-of-the-way El Calaboz could have any impact on guns heading south or drugs coming north. If that’s the point.
The New Mexico Independent caught up with Tamez, adding to the discussion:
In recent months, El Calaboz, a small community outside Brownsville, has been overrun by Homeland contractors in burst of a sort of “mili-tourism,” Margo Tamez told me.
Nebraska plates are in abundance, thanks to Halliburton subsidiary Kiewit, she said. “They’ve just been overrun by Nebraska license plates."
http://www.sacurrent.com/blog/queblog.asp?perm=69675
April 17, 2009
by Greg Harman
Eloisa Tamez, who you may remember from the Current’s border series, is headed back to South Texas today.
She had been presenting at a conference in Albuquerque about the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border when she got word that back at home a federal judge had ruled that U.S. Homeland Security has the right to take a quarter-acre of her South Texas border land. This is land in her family inhabited before Spanish colonization, she has argued, and was deeded to her relatives through a Spanish Land Grant.
It’s been a year since Tamaz walked with me atop the earthen levy on the back side of her property. For the university professor, it’s been a year of going in and out of court fighting Homeland Security.
While I couldn’t reach Eloisa this morning, her daughter Margo returned by call, sharing how distraught she and her mother were on hearing the news yesterday.
Margo said compounding the shock was the fact that her mother had approached no fewer than six different appraisal companies trying to get a good appraisal on her land with no luck.
One finally agreed, Margo Tamez said, but then “fell off the face of the earth.”
The ramifications of the ruling for more than a dozen other landowners that had joined her mother’s lawsuit is unclear, she added.
Prominent and sustained violence in several Northern Mexico border towns appears to have provided the government justification to continue forward with nearly 700 miles of border wall construction ordered by Congress, in spite of the hope many had held out that Obama’s new administration could force a policy reversal.
However, when President Obama met with fellow Harvard alum President Felipe Calderon yesterday in Mexico City, individual liberty and indigenous land rights weren’t on the agenda.
Crime was.
From CNN, we read:
"At a time when the Mexican government has so courageously taken on the drug cartels that have plagued both sides of the borders," Obama said alongside Calderon in a ceremony in Mexico, "it is absolutely critical that the United States joins as a full partner in dealing with this issue, both through initiatives like the Merida Initiative, but also on our side of the border in dealing with the flow of guns and cash south."
Individual liberty and indigenous land rights have received little mention in the court of U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen. (For more on human rights and the Wall, check out the analysis of this University of Texas-based group.)
To visit, it seems bizarre to think seizing property in out-of-the-way El Calaboz could have any impact on guns heading south or drugs coming north. If that’s the point.
The New Mexico Independent caught up with Tamez, adding to the discussion:
What many may not realize is that in Texas the federal government is using eminent domain powers to take private property of U.S. citizens north of the border in order to build the so-called border wall, often effectively cutting property owners off from their land south of the newly constructed wall.
The massive wall being constructed along the U.S./Mexico border does not sit on the actual border, which in Texas is the Rio Grande.
Tamez’s land was once part of the San Pedro de Carricitos Land Grant, created by the King of Spain in 1767. While it was handed down to Tamez through many generations, her heritage on the land actually predates even the land grant, she explained. Tamez’s ancestors include tribal members of the indigenous Lipan Apache.
The massive wall being constructed along the U.S./Mexico border does not sit on the actual border, which in Texas is the Rio Grande.
Tamez’s land was once part of the San Pedro de Carricitos Land Grant, created by the King of Spain in 1767. While it was handed down to Tamez through many generations, her heritage on the land actually predates even the land grant, she explained. Tamez’s ancestors include tribal members of the indigenous Lipan Apache.
In recent months, El Calaboz, a small community outside Brownsville, has been overrun by Homeland contractors in burst of a sort of “mili-tourism,” Margo Tamez told me.
Nebraska plates are in abundance, thanks to Halliburton subsidiary Kiewit, she said. “They’ve just been overrun by Nebraska license plates."
http://www.sacurrent.com/blog/queblog.asp?perm=69675
Judge clears way for border fence on Eloisa Tamez's land
Associated Press / Brownsville Herald
April 16, 2009
by Christopher Sherman
April 16, 2009
by Christopher Sherman
McALLEN - A federal judge rejected the last of the objections from one of the border fence's fiercest opponents Thursday, giving the government immediate possession of her land and clearing the way for construction to begin.
U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen issued his order in Brownsville, denying the arguments from Eloisa Tamez that the government failed to provide enough information about the fence it will build, the access that will be available from her land in El Calaboz and its offer of compensation.
Tamez's persistent legal fight against the border fence delayed for more than a year the government's efforts to take possession of a quarter acre of land she said was part of a Spanish land grant to her family.
Neither Tamez nor her attorney Peter Schey immediately returned calls seeking comment.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has nearly completed the 670 miles of fencing mandated by Congress along the U.S.-Mexico border. South Texas landowners have proved to be some of its staunchest opponents.
Construction of the border fence in the rural El Calaboz community was already proceeding around Tamez's property.
Tamez and others had hoped the new administration of President Barack Obama might halt the fence, but the Department of Homeland Security has allowed the portions where contracts to build the fence were already awarded to proceed.
Tamez and other South Texas landowners won a battle in December when Hanen rejected government requests that a land commission be established to determine how much the government paid property owners for their land. Instead, Tamez and others will be able to argue their cases before juries later this year.
The government has offered $13,500 for Tamez's .26 acres.
In Hanen's order Thursday, he ruled that the government had explained sufficiently the type of gates that would be installed within a half-mile of Tamez's property, the form of the 15 to 18 foot fence and how it arrived at the $13,500 compensation figure.
The order noted that $8,500 was for the slice of land and $5,000 was for the negative impact on the remaining three-acre property.
http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/tamez_97016___article.html/fence_government.htmlTamez loses legal battle to stop DHS building border fence
Rio Grande Guardian
April 17, 2009
April 17, 2009
McALLEN, April 16 - U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen in Brownsville on Thursday issued an order granting the federal government's request to condemn the ancestral land of the Tamez family. University of Texas at Brownsville Professor Eloisa Tamez has gained international acclaim for her efforts to stop a border wall being built on her 0.26 acres of land in rural El Calaboz, Cameron County. Tamez is Lipan Apache. Her land has been in the family since before Spanish colonization. It was designated to them through Spanish Crown law. Now, her supporters say, it is in the possession of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Tamez could not be reached for comment at press time. However, she did predict the government would eventually take her land in an interview with the Guardian in January, 2008. “I just believe that eventually I will probably lose the land, not that I will quit fighting,” Tamez said. Click here to watch Tamez video. Tamez has fought the border wall plan in federal court for over a year, arguing that the government failed to communicate its plans. Attorney Abner Burnett, of the Texas Civil Rights Project in San Juan, represented Tamez. “DHS is acting like bullies,” Burnett told the Guardian, when the lawsuit was filed. “They had the opportunity to come and talk to these people and say here’s what we would like to do. They could have met in a coffee shop. They did not do that. They said, we are coming on your land and if you don’t sign a waiver we’re going to sue you.” Tamez won a partial battle last year when Hanen ordered the Department of Homeland Security to enter into meaningful negotiates with her. In his ruling, Thursday, Hanen said he was satisfied the government had negotiated in good faith. Under the ruling, the government must pay Tamez $13,500 before the 15 to 18 feet high fence can be erected. The ruling said seizure of the land is worth $8,500 and the distress caused to the family is worth $5,000. Ironically, Tamez, heard about Hanen’s order while participating in the Western Social Sciences Association (WSSA) Conference in Albuquerque, where she was participating in a Three part panel: “Indigenous People's and the U.S.-Mexico Border: Militarization, Resistance, and Rights.” She is with a group of colleagues from several bi-national indigenous border communities and experts on militarization and the impact of the border wall. “I am captive in my own land,” Tamez told the conference. “The Tamez family reports that this is an urgent situation which needs international attention and wide press coverage,” said Wendy Kenin, a friend of the Tamez family. Kenin said Eloisa Tamez will be available for interview between panel discussions on militarization of the border and resistance on the border at the WSSA conference on Friday.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Back to the Wall: Can Janet Napolitano stop the border-fence boondoggle?
Texas Observer
February 6, 2009
by Melissa del Bosque
As President Barack Obama champions change in Washington, D.C., Eloisa Tamez waits to see whether an 18-foot steel and concrete wall will be built in her backyard.
February 6, 2009
by Melissa del Bosque
As President Barack Obama champions change in Washington, D.C., Eloisa Tamez waits to see whether an 18-foot steel and concrete wall will be built in her backyard.
The Department of Homeland Security has already taken Tamez to court in an effort to condemn a piece of property, a mile inland from the Rio Grande, that has been in her family since the 18th century. The wooden survey stakes that sprout from her land remind her that the bulldozers could arrive anytime. “Just about every week, DHS announces that they will start building,” Tamez says. “It seems to be some kind of strategy to keep everybody here uptight and nervous.”
If that’s the strategy, it has worked. Last February, the Observer wrote about Tamez’ fight to keep her land in El Calaboz, a small rural community west of Brownsville (“Holes in the Wall,” Feb. 22, 2008). Since then, the 73-year-old has sued the federal government, held several protests against DHS on her property and, in the process, become an international spokeswoman for indigenous rights. (Tamez is part Lipan Apache.) But like many others, she remains trapped in the slow grind of a Washington bureaucracy that demands she forfeit her land to make room for a border wall that could end up costing taxpayers $30 billion—and which bypasses golf courses and resorts but targets working-class families and landowners like Tamez.
A new presidential administration and a new Homeland Security chief could bring an end to Tamez’ troubles. Along with the 121 other border residents embroiled in lawsuits with DHS, Tamez is cautiously optimistic that Janet Napolitano, Obama’s new secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, will stop the construction before it’s too late.
“Once the wall is built, it means that DHS has lawlessly taken my land,” Tamez says. “It will take me until my last days to right that wrong. And after I am gone, my children will have to take up the fight.”
In 2006, with the passage of the Secure Fence Act, Congress mandated the construction of 670 miles of fence along the southern border by the end of 2008. As of Jan. 21, according to Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Angela de Rocha, 582.2 miles had been built. Despite the Dec. 31 cutoff date in the Secure Fence Act, DHS is still building its wall. So far it appears that properties entangled in lawsuits, like Tamez’, have been mostly bypassed. But there’s no telling how long that will last.
In Tamez’ case, U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Hanen in Brownsville, has likely ensured that the bulldozers won’t be rolling in tomorrow. In March, he ruled that negotiations must take place between landowners and Homeland Security before property can be seized. The trial, set for June, will determine whether DHS has conducted “good faith negotiations” with Tamez over a fair price for her land.
Meanwhile, the agency continues putting up the fence on federally owned property such as the Lower Rio Grande Valley Wildlife Refuge, just east of McAllen, where other federal judges have allowed DHS to move ahead without negotiations. In Eagle Pass, a small border city 145 miles southwest of San Antonio, a mile of fence has already been built through the city-owned golf course. DHS plans to build another mile through the city’s downtown park, says Mayor Chad Foster.
Eagle Pass was the first city in Texas to get hit with former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff’s prerogative to waive federal law and condemn property to speed construction of the wall. Congress granted this unprecedented power in the 2005 REAL ID Act. “We weren’t even aware of it when it came,” Foster says. “It was just another blow under Chertoff—a tactic to steamroller us.”
The mayor hopes that Napolitano, as a former elected official from a border state, will work with communities and local elected officials on both sides of the border to come up with alternatives to the fence. “Napolitano understands the border and she has a history with the border governors,” Foster says. “And in this country boy’s opinion, that’s the way we’re going to resolve this issue—by working with our neighbors.” Chertoff never showed much interest in that approach.
When she was governor of Arizona, Napolitano once said, “Build a 50-foot fence; I’ll show you a 51-foot ladder.” Despite the comment, the new Homeland Security secretary is not completely against fencing. During her Senate confirmation hearing on Jan. 15, she told senators that a fence in urban areas “might make some sense.” Napolitano was not asked to elaborate, but in past hearings, Border Patrol agents have testified that fencing in urban areas gives them time to detain crossers before they blend in with crowds of people.Immigration reform and border control will not be the first items on the new Congress’ agenda, says U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat who has been a staunch opponent of the border fence. And with an economic crisis and two wars being waged, they’re not high on the Obama administration’s agenda, either. “There’s a shift in priorities now with the economy,” Grijalva says. “Throwing $450 million at a fence pales in comparison to fixing our economy.”
The shift in focus away from border security might give Napolitano some much-needed time to evaluate and reinvent a department that has been taxpayers’ worst nightmare, and private contractors’ idea of heaven, ever since its creation after 9/11. In 2006, the agency estimated that a mile of fence would cost $1 million. By August 2008, the price tag had shot up to $7.5 million per mile.
Last year, legislators finally became frustrated by the agency’s lack of disclosure and escalating costs, and they refused to appropriate more funds to DHS to finish building the wall. Chertoff then transferred money from other programs, including port security and virtual fence technology, to continue the construction.
That’s been the mantra of the department Napolitano has inherited: Build fence, no matter the cost. “She has inherited that mentality,” says Grijalva, “and no doubt there is a rush to get the fence done.”
Napolitano has also inherited a pork-barrel mentality. From the agency’s inception, it has enthusiastically outsourced a majority of its duties. No one has benefited quite like the Boeing Corp. In 2006, Boeing won a three-year contract to build 6,000 miles of physical and virtual fences along the southern and northern borders. As of last August, Boeing had been awarded $993 million, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Boeing also has the right to three one-year extensions to the contract if Homeland Security is happy with the results.
Which raises another endemic problem: oversight, or the lack thereof. Private companies who get DHS contracts do not have to report the progress or outcomes of their work to the American taxpayer. Even members of Congress have difficulty getting answers about how the billions are being spent—another legacy of the Bush administration that Napolitano will have to grapple with. “The administration has ... hidden contractor overcharges from Congress, international auditors and the public,” Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman of California said in 2007, “impeding oversight and diminishing accountability.”
Conveniently enough, private contractors are also doing more of the oversight. The fence-building project, called SBInet, is a component of the DHS’s Secure Border Initiative program. In a 2007 audit report, Richard Skinner, inspector general for Homeland Security, said that 65 of the 98 DHS staffers responsible for oversight of SBInet were private contractors. After being criticized by Congress for the lack of oversight, DHS estimated that it would need at least 470 employees to properly oversee SBInet contracts. After a round of hiring, the agency still has only about half the staff it needs: 129 government employees and 164 contractors, according to a September 2008 GAO report.
“So much is kept under wraps, you don’t know what worked and what didn’t,” says Pete Sepp, a spokesperson for the nonprofit National Taxpayers Union. “You don’t know whether the expenditures that went out of the government’s treasury were worth it or not.”
But it is clear that those expenditures amount to a virtually bottomless pit. Stunningly enough, Boeing’s SBInet contract has no spending limit, despite repeated protests from government auditors. As costs continue to climb, DHS must go to Congress to beg for more money—and until last year, when Congress finally applied the brakes, they were getting it.
“We don’t want another industrial-military complex where contractors have an inordinate amount of control over policy,” Grijalva says. Referring to the Department of Defense, long known for its largesse in doling out private contracts, Grijalva adds, “We don’t need another DOD, which is what’s starting to happen at DHS.”
It’s been happening all along. A 2006 Forbes magazine article estimated that DHS had already doled out $130 billion in private contracts since 9/11. The department is certainly not shy about wooing private contractors; it even has a Web page called “Open for Business.”
“The federal government now spends nearly 40 percent of discretionary spending on contracts with private companies, a record level,” Waxman said in 2007. “This surge in contract spending has enriched private contractors like Halliburton, but it has come at a steep cost to taxpayers through rising waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement.”
Nobody has gotten richer off DHS contracts than Boeing. And as the lead contractor on the border, the company has in turn subcontracted out a large portion of the management, design and development of the fence to hundreds of other companies. Boeing will not release the names of those subcontractors, calling this “proprietary information.” Among the names that have leaked out is Texas-based Perot Systems, owned by former presidential candidate Ross Perot.
One classic example of the waste to which Waxman referred is Boeing’s Project 28. In this pilot project, a high-tech “virtual fence” with video surveillance towers, sensors and radar devices was to be put up along 28 miles of the Mexican border. After an original $20 million investment was run through, DHS gave Boeing $65 million to upgrade its software; the original version, one used by police dispatchers, did not meet the Border Patrol’s needs. The system had been developed, it turned out, without consulting with Border Patrol agents working in the field.
Last year, Congress deemed Project 28 a failure. Once touted as a key component of border security by the Bush administration, the virtual fence was put on hold, with the remaining money transferred to build more physical fence.
Sepp says it will be a stiff challenge for Napolitano to reform Homeland Security. “The new secretary will have to bring an outsider’s perspective and approach it as if it were a fresh initiative,” Sepp says. “It will have to be a top-down process. Congress will be the wild card, because they will have to decide how much power they are willing to cede to the executive branch to rein in costs.”
Members of Congress typically find it difficult to ignore the power of lobbyists from companies like Boeing, or requests from their home districts to invest in pet border-security projects. And when it comes to lobbying, Boeing, the second-largest aerospace and defense contractor in the world, has some of the most powerful connections in the Beltway. Its board of directors includes such Washington heavyweights as former Secretary of Commerce William Daley, who served on the Obama/Biden transition team, and Kenneth Duberstein, a former chief of staff for President Ronald Reagan. In 2008, Boeing was the top recipient of federal contracts, at $2.9 billion, according to the nonprofit OMB Watch.
During the 2008 election cycle, Boeing gave more than $2.1 million to political campaigns. The top recipient was Barack Obama, who received $167,098. Most members of the Texas congressional delegation also got some of Boeing’s bounty, led by Republican Ron Paul ($22,688) and Democrats Ciro Rodriguez ($10,250), Silvestre Reyes ($10,000), Solomon Ortiz ($7,500) and Ruben Hinojosa ($2,500). Republican Sen. John Cornyn’s re-election campaign got $9,000 from Boeing.
Reyes, Ortiz and Hinojosa all voted against the Secure Fence Act in 2006. Rodriguez was not a member of Congress at the time but told the Observer that he opposes building the fence. Obama, Cornyn and Paul all voted for the fence legislation. Cornyn did not respond to requests for comment. Paul’s media director, Jesse Benton, said that his contributions came not from Boeing but from individuals who identified themselves as Boeing employees. “Dr. Paul often says that lobbyists do not even bother to visit him on Capitol Hill because they already know they will get zero concessions,” Benton said in an e-mail. Ortiz reiterated his opposition to the border fence in an e-mail, adding that “campaign contributions have not altered or influenced my position on the border security.”
Janet Napolitano has thus far refused to talk about her plans for the border fence. She told the Arizona Star in December that she would have no comment “Until I actually get in and see what the status of the project is, the status of payment of the project is, what’s anticipated, what problems have been incurred and the like.”
Eloisa Tamez, Mayor Chad Foster and others who’ve been battling Homeland Security think Napolitano should come to Texas and take a gander. “The new secretary needs to come to Cameron County and see what the land looks like,” says Tamez. “Chertoff never set foot down here.”
In 2007, Congress tried to force DHS to reach out to border communities. Rep. Ciro Rodriguez added wording to a Homeland Security appropriations bill requiring the agency to consult with folks about plans for the fence. The agency’s response was to outsource the job—in this case, to E2M, a Colorado company. E2M asked border residents to submit their questions and complaints in writing to a stenographer. They have received no responses.
Tamez, long since tired of waiting, sued Homeland Security last February over the plan to run the fence through the center of her land. Tamez filed a motion for formal discovery in federal court in Brownsville to force the agency to explain how the value of her property is being assessed and what DHS plans to do with her land. Among other things that DHS hasn’t made clear to property owners like Tamez is whether there will be entryways to access their properties on the other side of the fence. Nor do they know whether the fence on their land will have cameras or other surveillance devices, which could be an invasion of their privacy.
Unlike most complainants, Tamez has been granted a jury trial, scheduled for June. “We’re really lucky here, because we have a judge who really values and follows the Constitution,” she says. Her lawsuit seeks fair market value for her land, claiming this right under the U.S. Constitution. (Most property owners have been awarded far less than market value by the feds.) Ultimately, she hopes her legal action will put off the fence-building long enough for the Obama administration to halt the construction.
Along with property owners, environmental and wildlife-conservation organizations have also been battling the DHS in court, but with little success. The nonprofit Defenders of Wildlife and the Sierra Club petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court last March, arguing that the Homeland Security secretary’s authority to waive laws to build the border wall violates the constitution’s separation of powers. In June, the court rejected the petitions without explanation.
The results of Homeland Security’s sweeping powers were all too vivid when Noah Kahn, a federal lands associate with Defenders of Wildlife, recently went to see some of the border fence under construction just east of McAllen. The steel and concrete fence is being built on a federally owned tract of the Lower Rio Grande National Wildlife Refuge. “Mud and fill were being dumped in the wetlands,” Kahn says. “Palm trees and native hardwoods were covered in mud. A silt fence had been installed, but it was clearly too little, too late.”
Kahn sees the damage as directly related to Homeland Security’s ability to ignore legal restrictions. “When you disregard environmental laws, it leads to real adverse impacts,” he says. “It’s not just an academic argument.”
So far, the new Homeland Security regime has provided few clues about how it will reinvent the department—or overhaul the waste-laden SBInet project. During her six years as Arizona governor, Napolitano managed to anger groups on both sides of the immigration debate. She was the first governor to call for National Guard troops to patrol the border, pleasing the right wing. She supported drivers’ licenses for undocumented immigrants, angering conservatives.
Napolitano’s early actions at Homeland Security have hardly done more to indicate a clear direction beyond assessing the damage already done. Her first directives to the staff involved gathering information and reviewing programs and strategies inherited from the Bush years. Urging the staff to create a “more effective and efficient department” is about as specific as she’s gotten so far.
But like others who battled the old department and lost, Kahn sees reasons for hope, noting that Napolitano “has made the comment that DHS is still a new agency and there is still an opportunity to shape it. I think she will make the agency more transparent and more responsive.”
All of which is well and good, Tamez says. But she won’t rest until Napolitano stops the bulldozers. “I’m just really angry,” she says. “It’s aggravating and appalling that the executive branch continues to persecute us. They have tried in every way to keep us from having justice served.”
http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=2951Thursday, January 1, 2009
Valley still barrier to border fence
San Antonio Express-News
December 29, 2008
BROWNSVILLE — U.S. Customs and Border Protection has a color map showing the progress on a border fence that isn't quite done — with the Rio Grande Valley the point of lasting stubbornness.
Agency officials are hailing the accomplishments on a barrier that looks vastly different from what many in middle America might envision, saying they will complete 90 percent of their 670-mile, end-of-year goal before President George W. Bush leaves office.
But what was to be one of Bush's bragging points met unforeseen opposition from landowners and city governments clinging to their traditional relationship with the Rio Grande and shared heritage with Mexico.
Many in the Valley sport “No Border Wall” bumper stickers on their cars, and hundreds have showed up to protest what's seen as an insult to Mexicans who fill their stores and restaurants. Environmentalists fear the yet-unknown impact on at least two nature preserves that will be cut off by the fence and say it will disrupt one of the nation's last habitats for rare wildcats.
In two cases, the government reached compromises — one to reinforce 22 miles of levee to double as a border wall, the other to repair and heighten an existing fence at the University of Texas at Brownsville.
Another 14.4 miles of fencing in sections in Rio Grande City, Roma and Los Ebanos has been delayed, with the government citing engineering difficulties due to Rio Grande flood plains.
As planned, the three segments would affect historic and picturesque areas, including Los Ebanos' famed hand-pulled ferry. But CBP spokeswoman Angela de Rocha said the areas had been identified as high-traffic smuggling zones and that fencing would still go up.
Of the 670-mile goal, CBP maps call for 300 miles of fencing to deter vehicles and 370 miles to discourage pedestrians.
As of Dec. 12, the agency had completed 278 miles of pedestrian fencing and 248 miles of vehicle fencing, leaving it 144 miles short. But all construction contracts have been let, and about 50 miles is going up per week, de Rocha said.
That rate could mean completion by the time Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff steps down.
Except maybe for the Valley.
Red patches on the map indicate construction that hasn't begun. Aside from two small dabs in New Mexico and south of El Paso, the red is in the Valley, interrupted by the compromise levee portion in Hidalgo County.
De Rocha said contracts had been let but that she didn't know when construction on the Valley's remaining miles would begin.
While border fencing was conceived with the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 and became a national goal with an address by Bush in 2006 on immigration, de Rocha said the groundwork was laid during the administration of President Theodore Roosevelt.
Roosevelt set aside a federal easement along the border to be used for security, which has allowed fencing to go up in California, Arizona and New Mexico at a fast pace.
“Old Teddy was thinking ahead there,” she said.
From El Paso to the Valley, the government was able to build on levees it already owned via the U.S. arm of the International Boundary and Water Commission, which oversees the Rio Grande.
But in the Valley, levees can be a mile or more from the river, with private property in between. Planners have also been stumped by hydrology and engineering challenges with the flood plain, de Rocha said.
The government filed 293 condemnation actions to take land, of which about 180 were settled with landowners agreeing on a price. Another 113 have been “adversarial,” but some of them have also since been settled, Justice Department spokesman Andrew Ames said.
U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen, who has heard the cases, has ruled that the government has a right to the land in about 170 cases, but the possession has been piecemeal and has impeded access to build. He has agreed to allow some cases to go to trial so a jury can hear evidence on fair compensation, though in some cases the government already has possession.
There are hopes that Janet Napolitano, President-elect Barack Obama's pick for Homeland Security secretary, might back down on unconstructed segments or use a late provision allowing the department to change plans, but Napolitano has not indicated that.
Border Patrol Assistant Chief Lloyd Easterling said Congress mandated the 670 miles and that it was too soon to tell whether his agency would ask for more.
“We're funded for the 670 miles, and we're going to get that part completed and then from there we're going to try to assess what we've done and evaluate,” he said.
But Easterling said the fence was fulfilling the goal of slowing unauthorized border crossings, part of a three-pronged approach of fencing, technology and personnel.
“In some cases, even a few seconds (of slowing down border crossers) is what we're after, where we didn't have that long before,” he said. “They either have to burrow under it, which we've seen, or they have to go over it or cut through it, and those things are easily seen.”
Arrest numbers are down 17 percent since the fence was built, and while the economy may be deterring job seekers, the numbers don't correspondent with dips from previous economic slowdowns, Easterling said.
“I'm not going to tell you we've won any battles or any war, but we're definitely headed in the right direction,” he said.
Fighting for a higher price, meanwhile, was a battle considered worthwhile for Valley landowners, some of whose properties have been in their families since Spanish land grants in the 1700s.
UT-Brownsville Professor Eloisa Tamez, who has become the poster child for anti-fence landowners, said the glitch now was getting land appraisals with all area appraisers already contracted to work for the government. Her case is scheduled for trial in the spring.
Overall, she's lost faith in a government she said is violating the Constitution and trampling on mostly poor, mostly Hispanic landowners.
“One wonders, is there any justice at all in the implementation of this mandate?” she said.
“We're still in America, we're not an appendage of America.”
“It's been a tough year,” she said. “But for now, it ends on a good note. There's no wall in my backyard.”
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/36815049.html
December 29, 2008
BROWNSVILLE — U.S. Customs and Border Protection has a color map showing the progress on a border fence that isn't quite done — with the Rio Grande Valley the point of lasting stubbornness.
Agency officials are hailing the accomplishments on a barrier that looks vastly different from what many in middle America might envision, saying they will complete 90 percent of their 670-mile, end-of-year goal before President George W. Bush leaves office.
But what was to be one of Bush's bragging points met unforeseen opposition from landowners and city governments clinging to their traditional relationship with the Rio Grande and shared heritage with Mexico.
Many in the Valley sport “No Border Wall” bumper stickers on their cars, and hundreds have showed up to protest what's seen as an insult to Mexicans who fill their stores and restaurants. Environmentalists fear the yet-unknown impact on at least two nature preserves that will be cut off by the fence and say it will disrupt one of the nation's last habitats for rare wildcats.
In two cases, the government reached compromises — one to reinforce 22 miles of levee to double as a border wall, the other to repair and heighten an existing fence at the University of Texas at Brownsville.
Another 14.4 miles of fencing in sections in Rio Grande City, Roma and Los Ebanos has been delayed, with the government citing engineering difficulties due to Rio Grande flood plains.
As planned, the three segments would affect historic and picturesque areas, including Los Ebanos' famed hand-pulled ferry. But CBP spokeswoman Angela de Rocha said the areas had been identified as high-traffic smuggling zones and that fencing would still go up.
Of the 670-mile goal, CBP maps call for 300 miles of fencing to deter vehicles and 370 miles to discourage pedestrians.
As of Dec. 12, the agency had completed 278 miles of pedestrian fencing and 248 miles of vehicle fencing, leaving it 144 miles short. But all construction contracts have been let, and about 50 miles is going up per week, de Rocha said.
That rate could mean completion by the time Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff steps down.
Except maybe for the Valley.
Red patches on the map indicate construction that hasn't begun. Aside from two small dabs in New Mexico and south of El Paso, the red is in the Valley, interrupted by the compromise levee portion in Hidalgo County.
De Rocha said contracts had been let but that she didn't know when construction on the Valley's remaining miles would begin.
While border fencing was conceived with the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 and became a national goal with an address by Bush in 2006 on immigration, de Rocha said the groundwork was laid during the administration of President Theodore Roosevelt.
Roosevelt set aside a federal easement along the border to be used for security, which has allowed fencing to go up in California, Arizona and New Mexico at a fast pace.
“Old Teddy was thinking ahead there,” she said.
From El Paso to the Valley, the government was able to build on levees it already owned via the U.S. arm of the International Boundary and Water Commission, which oversees the Rio Grande.
But in the Valley, levees can be a mile or more from the river, with private property in between. Planners have also been stumped by hydrology and engineering challenges with the flood plain, de Rocha said.
The government filed 293 condemnation actions to take land, of which about 180 were settled with landowners agreeing on a price. Another 113 have been “adversarial,” but some of them have also since been settled, Justice Department spokesman Andrew Ames said.
U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen, who has heard the cases, has ruled that the government has a right to the land in about 170 cases, but the possession has been piecemeal and has impeded access to build. He has agreed to allow some cases to go to trial so a jury can hear evidence on fair compensation, though in some cases the government already has possession.
There are hopes that Janet Napolitano, President-elect Barack Obama's pick for Homeland Security secretary, might back down on unconstructed segments or use a late provision allowing the department to change plans, but Napolitano has not indicated that.
Border Patrol Assistant Chief Lloyd Easterling said Congress mandated the 670 miles and that it was too soon to tell whether his agency would ask for more.
“We're funded for the 670 miles, and we're going to get that part completed and then from there we're going to try to assess what we've done and evaluate,” he said.
But Easterling said the fence was fulfilling the goal of slowing unauthorized border crossings, part of a three-pronged approach of fencing, technology and personnel.
“In some cases, even a few seconds (of slowing down border crossers) is what we're after, where we didn't have that long before,” he said. “They either have to burrow under it, which we've seen, or they have to go over it or cut through it, and those things are easily seen.”
Arrest numbers are down 17 percent since the fence was built, and while the economy may be deterring job seekers, the numbers don't correspondent with dips from previous economic slowdowns, Easterling said.
“I'm not going to tell you we've won any battles or any war, but we're definitely headed in the right direction,” he said.
Fighting for a higher price, meanwhile, was a battle considered worthwhile for Valley landowners, some of whose properties have been in their families since Spanish land grants in the 1700s.
UT-Brownsville Professor Eloisa Tamez, who has become the poster child for anti-fence landowners, said the glitch now was getting land appraisals with all area appraisers already contracted to work for the government. Her case is scheduled for trial in the spring.
Overall, she's lost faith in a government she said is violating the Constitution and trampling on mostly poor, mostly Hispanic landowners.
“One wonders, is there any justice at all in the implementation of this mandate?” she said.
“We're still in America, we're not an appendage of America.”
“It's been a tough year,” she said. “But for now, it ends on a good note. There's no wall in my backyard.”
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/36815049.html
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