Austin-American Statesman
December 7, 2008
CIUDAD ACUA, Coahuila — Tractor-trailers rumble across the bridge above, but down on the Rio Grande, it's a peaceful autumn morning as ducks paddle the river and herons glide from bank to bank.
On the U.S. side of the river, in Del Rio , plans are moving ahead for a controversial security wall that will eventually stretch across 670 miles of the southwest border.
But on the Mexican side, authorities have begun work on an entirely different kind of wall: a so-called green wall, made of 400,000 trees to be planted along 217 miles of the Rio Grande.
Eventually, Mexican leaders hope the green wall will stretch the entire length of Mexico's shared border with Texas.
Officials in the state of Coahuila, where the project is beginning, call the green wall a rejection of the U.S. border barrier. The local Mexican officials hope the clusters of cypress, mesquite and ash trees will stand in stark contrast to the concrete and steel fencing being erected by the U.S. Homeland Security Department.
"This is a signal of protest, but it's also an opportunity for dialogue to find shared solutions to the question of immigration," said Gabriela de Valle del Bosque , Coahuila's environmental policy coordinator .
De Valle said the green wall will be an opportunity to bring more environmental consciousness to Mexican border communities. Area residents also will participate in riverside cleanups and classes on ecology and recycling.
Local officials hope the green wall will bring more attention to environmental worries associated with the U.S. border wall, particularly the migration of species such as white-tailed deer.
"If they put in the wall, Mexicans will find another way to get across, but the deer and other animals are not going to find a solution like Mexicans will," said Carlos Lombardo Gomez, who is in charge of technical matters associated with the green wall.
Coahuila Gov. Humberto Moreira said the green wall will result in Mexico's longest parkland corridor.
Moreira is no stranger to grand gestures. His administration has garnered national headlines in Mexico by ushering in a gay marriage law and has promised a state death penalty for murderous kidnappers, even though Mexico now outlaws the death penalty.
At a ceremony marking the start of the green wall, Moreira blasted the U.S. border barrier as a "wall of hate."
U.S. officials say the border fence is needed to bolster security along the southwest border. And supporters of the U.S. border wall warn that Mexico's green version could potentially aid drug runners and human smugglers.
Jim Gilchrist, president of the Minuteman Project, a U.S. activist group that monitors the border flow of illegal immigrants, said the green wall will "provide effective camouflage for criminal drug and human cargo cartels as they mass their illicit products behind the tree lines, awaiting delivery into the U.S. under cover of darkness."
So far, the state of Coahuila, which extends opposite Big Bend National Park almost to the outskirts of Laredo, has planted 2,500 trees along 25 miles of border. The state has approved about $1 million for the tree-planting program. Plans would extend the green wall in other border states such as Tamaulipas and Chihuahua.
The U.S. border wall is unpopular along much of the Texas border and has been opposed by most border communities in the state.
Despite that opposition, federal officials say that 90 percent to 95 percent of the 670-mile barrier should be completed or under construction before President Bush's term ends in January.
The City of Eagle Pass recently lost a court battle against the U.S. government over the border fence, and construction has begun near the city's downtown. Mayor Chad Foster , one of the border wall's most outspoken critics, said he doubts the change of administrations will halt the wall.
"I don't think President-elect Obama will take office soon enough to impact (the) damage being done in our town," Foster said.
So far, 426 miles of pedestrian and vehicle fencing have been built, according to the Homeland Security Department, but that includes just 25 miles in Texas.
Federal officials plan to build 116 miles in the state.
In Mexico, few think the green wall will have any real impact on the U.S. border barrier, but local residents are happy that it will bring more green spaces and parks.
Arturo de la Cruz Talavera, who runs daily at a park beneath the international bridge in Ciudad Acuña, is looking forward to the day when the green wall saplings grow into mature trees.
"The green wall is in favor of life, it will create oxygen," he said. "It's not like the steel wall, which just rejects."
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/world/12/07/1207mexgreenwall.html
Showing posts with label Marfa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marfa. Show all posts
Monday, December 8, 2008
Monday, September 29, 2008
Border wall sparks big debate in small town
San Antonio Express-News
September 29, 2008
By Hernan Rozemberg
PRESIDIO — This tiny border city in the Chihuahuan Desert has steered clear of international political controversy since the Mexican Revolution nearly a century ago, when Pancho Villa set up his headquarters in Ojinaga, across the Rio Grande, after capturing the town in a bloody assault.
But although people here are now mostly worried about a major flood threat after massive water releases from Mexican reservoirs, their attention might soon return to the issue that for months has placed them amid the uproar known as the border fence.
The Department of Homeland Security is following a congressional mandate to erect nearly 700 miles of barriers along the 1,952-mile border with Mexico by the end of this year. Some 346 miles are in place.
The move has drawn opposition up and down the border, with national attention focused on the fierce legal showdown taking place in South Texas, where many border landowners are fighting government efforts to condemn land for the project.
Hundreds of miles away in the middle of the desert, Presidio hasn't made national headlines, though a similar outcry is taking place over plans to build 6 miles of fencing to straddle the international bridge here.
With about 5,000 people and the only legal crossing point between El Paso and Del Rio, it's not known as a hub for illegal activity. It's in the Border Patrol's Marfa Sector, the agency's largest — with 510 miles of border — but by far its least active.
In the fiscal year that ends Tuesday, the sector has seen 4,741 illegal crossers detained and nearly 54,665 pounds of marijuana and cocaine seized. That pales in comparison with areas such as the Rio Grande Valley Sector, where agents have netted 94,225 crossers and 387,241 pounds of drugs.
In Presidio, the Border Patrol wanted to replace river levees — federal property, no private land affected — with guardrail-topped concrete walls. But the agency put the project on hold when bids estimated the cost at $20 million per mile, or about $120 million in total.
Going back to the drawing board, the government intends to ask engineers to retool the wall design to bring costs down. But construction has now been pushed back to July 1 thanks to that and flood delays, said Angela De Rocha, a Border Patrol spokeswoman in Washington.
Neither De Rocha nor Bill Brooks, spokesman for the Marfa Sector, would comment on why the agency deemed Presidio, a small town in no man's land, an “urban area” akin to other border cities targeted for fencing, such as Laredo and Brownsville.
But Brooks and his bosses spoke at length for months to the local media and in public meetings on why they sought fencing in Presidio.
Actually, they had asked for fencing for years, even before Congress approved the move two years ago. They said the concrete wall would both protect low-lying areas in Presidio from flooding and push illegal crossers and drug traffickers away from downtown, making them easier targets for border agents.
“It only takes a couple of minutes, and once (crossers) get into the community then they're lost to us,” Brooks told the Marfa-based Big Bend Sentinel in May. “So the point of the fence is to make them go around.”
Many community leaders and local residents said they'd reluctantly buy the anti-flooding argument. But try the national security claim and they scoff.
“I'm completely against the concept of fencing the border,” said Presidio County Judge Jerry Agan, who ended a 29-year career with the Border Patrol in 1999 as deputy chief of the Marfa Sector. “They've done quite a few things that have gotten away from the agency's mission, such as the fence.”
Other officials, from the Presidio city manager to chamber of commerce board members, concurred with Agan's assessment, arguing that a fence would go against the area's historic rapprochement — Presidio is composed mostly of Mexicans who migrated north of the river from Ojinaga.
The Mexican government has consistently labeled the move a slap in the face to cross-border partnership.
Raul Acosta, who has served for two years as the Mexican consul in Presidio, said strained relations would be devastating, since in such a desolate region, the border towns lead an “existence in complete mutual dependence.”
Presidio's reliance on Mexican shoppers became evident in recent weeks, as major floods in Ojinaga closed the international bridge, leaving stores along Presidio's main drag nearly empty.
The bridge is still closed, and folks in Presidio now are without ready access to health services — most typically seek treatment in Ojinaga, since the closest clinic on the U.S. side is 250 miles away in Odessa.
Terry Bishop, who moved to Presidio when he was a teenager and now runs his family's 2,000-acre farm, as well as a golf course, is against the fence politically, but can accept it as a flood-control measure.
“They're going to build it no matter what, so let's at least try to do something right with it,” said Bishop, 54, who leases portions of his property, which is next to the levee, to the government.
A mile or so up the road, preparing to throw just-sliced pork chops on the grill, Polo Pérez was not so willing to give the Border Patrol the benefit of the doubt.
As he saw it, resources are scarce in these parts, and it would make sense that the government invest its millions not in a border fence but in common-sense, needed projects, said Pérez, 50, who is married with three children.
Most roads, such as his, are dirt or gravel and could use paving, he said as two pickups drove by, kicking up plumes of dust. And it would be great to have a local hospital, he added.
That's just for starters — if the government wants it, he could quickly make a longer list, Pérez said.
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/state/29873619.html
September 29, 2008
By Hernan Rozemberg
PRESIDIO — This tiny border city in the Chihuahuan Desert has steered clear of international political controversy since the Mexican Revolution nearly a century ago, when Pancho Villa set up his headquarters in Ojinaga, across the Rio Grande, after capturing the town in a bloody assault.
But although people here are now mostly worried about a major flood threat after massive water releases from Mexican reservoirs, their attention might soon return to the issue that for months has placed them amid the uproar known as the border fence.
The Department of Homeland Security is following a congressional mandate to erect nearly 700 miles of barriers along the 1,952-mile border with Mexico by the end of this year. Some 346 miles are in place.
The move has drawn opposition up and down the border, with national attention focused on the fierce legal showdown taking place in South Texas, where many border landowners are fighting government efforts to condemn land for the project.
Hundreds of miles away in the middle of the desert, Presidio hasn't made national headlines, though a similar outcry is taking place over plans to build 6 miles of fencing to straddle the international bridge here.
With about 5,000 people and the only legal crossing point between El Paso and Del Rio, it's not known as a hub for illegal activity. It's in the Border Patrol's Marfa Sector, the agency's largest — with 510 miles of border — but by far its least active.
In the fiscal year that ends Tuesday, the sector has seen 4,741 illegal crossers detained and nearly 54,665 pounds of marijuana and cocaine seized. That pales in comparison with areas such as the Rio Grande Valley Sector, where agents have netted 94,225 crossers and 387,241 pounds of drugs.
In Presidio, the Border Patrol wanted to replace river levees — federal property, no private land affected — with guardrail-topped concrete walls. But the agency put the project on hold when bids estimated the cost at $20 million per mile, or about $120 million in total.
Going back to the drawing board, the government intends to ask engineers to retool the wall design to bring costs down. But construction has now been pushed back to July 1 thanks to that and flood delays, said Angela De Rocha, a Border Patrol spokeswoman in Washington.
Neither De Rocha nor Bill Brooks, spokesman for the Marfa Sector, would comment on why the agency deemed Presidio, a small town in no man's land, an “urban area” akin to other border cities targeted for fencing, such as Laredo and Brownsville.
But Brooks and his bosses spoke at length for months to the local media and in public meetings on why they sought fencing in Presidio.
Actually, they had asked for fencing for years, even before Congress approved the move two years ago. They said the concrete wall would both protect low-lying areas in Presidio from flooding and push illegal crossers and drug traffickers away from downtown, making them easier targets for border agents.
“It only takes a couple of minutes, and once (crossers) get into the community then they're lost to us,” Brooks told the Marfa-based Big Bend Sentinel in May. “So the point of the fence is to make them go around.”
Many community leaders and local residents said they'd reluctantly buy the anti-flooding argument. But try the national security claim and they scoff.
“I'm completely against the concept of fencing the border,” said Presidio County Judge Jerry Agan, who ended a 29-year career with the Border Patrol in 1999 as deputy chief of the Marfa Sector. “They've done quite a few things that have gotten away from the agency's mission, such as the fence.”
Other officials, from the Presidio city manager to chamber of commerce board members, concurred with Agan's assessment, arguing that a fence would go against the area's historic rapprochement — Presidio is composed mostly of Mexicans who migrated north of the river from Ojinaga.
The Mexican government has consistently labeled the move a slap in the face to cross-border partnership.
Raul Acosta, who has served for two years as the Mexican consul in Presidio, said strained relations would be devastating, since in such a desolate region, the border towns lead an “existence in complete mutual dependence.”
Presidio's reliance on Mexican shoppers became evident in recent weeks, as major floods in Ojinaga closed the international bridge, leaving stores along Presidio's main drag nearly empty.
The bridge is still closed, and folks in Presidio now are without ready access to health services — most typically seek treatment in Ojinaga, since the closest clinic on the U.S. side is 250 miles away in Odessa.
Terry Bishop, who moved to Presidio when he was a teenager and now runs his family's 2,000-acre farm, as well as a golf course, is against the fence politically, but can accept it as a flood-control measure.
“They're going to build it no matter what, so let's at least try to do something right with it,” said Bishop, 54, who leases portions of his property, which is next to the levee, to the government.
A mile or so up the road, preparing to throw just-sliced pork chops on the grill, Polo Pérez was not so willing to give the Border Patrol the benefit of the doubt.
As he saw it, resources are scarce in these parts, and it would make sense that the government invest its millions not in a border fence but in common-sense, needed projects, said Pérez, 50, who is married with three children.
Most roads, such as his, are dirt or gravel and could use paving, he said as two pickups drove by, kicking up plumes of dust. And it would be great to have a local hospital, he added.
That's just for starters — if the government wants it, he could quickly make a longer list, Pérez said.
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/state/29873619.html
Sunday, September 14, 2008
River draws a muddy line on Texas' unfenced border
Associated Press / Houston Chronicle
September 14, 2008
REDFORD, Texas — The Rio Grande takes a wide southern detour when it hits West Texas, as if unwilling to draw too straight a line between the U.S. and Mexico. Locals along this remote stretch of shallow river share the feeling.
People living on both sides of the Big Bend, as the curve is known, are glad to be mostly skipped over by plans for 700 miles of new fence along the U.S.-Mexico border — even if their unspoiled desert boundary risks drawing more illegal traffic as the rest of the line is sealed off.
"The river doesn't divide us here," said local historian Enrique Madrid, raising his voice over the joyful screams of kids, from both sides of Rio Grande, whacking at a pinata during a recent birthday party in the tiny river hamlet of Redford.
"We've crossed it long before the United States existed," he continued. "And we'll be crossing it a long time after the United States disappears."
New walls are doubling up existing barriers in California, closing wide desert valleys in Arizona and New Mexico and fencing off more populated areas of the South Texas riverbank. The new construction will leave some 630 miles along the Big Bend as the longest unfenced piece of southern U.S. frontier.
Here the Rio Grande cuts an elegantly simple border, splitting the two countries into cane-choked banks or towering limestone cliffs. The wet line in the sand means nothing to the desert's circling buzzards and migrating black bears, but it complicates life for the two-nation families and isolated local economies that need both halves of this desert to survive.
Redford, a knot of adobe homes and alfalfa fields some 300 miles downriver from El Paso, made headlines in 1997 when U.S. Marines on a secret anti-drug mission mistakenly gunned down a local high school student, Esequiel Hernandez, Jr., as he herded goats along the Texas bank.
His death prompted the cancellation of U.S. military anti-drug operations amid heated debate over whether soldiers trained to kill foreign enemies can sort friend from foe along America's often uncertain edges.
The alliances are tangled even within Hernandez's own family: A brother has pleaded guilty to smuggling immigrants, while a nephew is applying to the Border Patrol.
Such is life along this skinny stretch of the river, where native peoples built the first settlement on the site of present-day Redford around 1200 A.D.
Local residents crossed freely with the Border Patrol's tacit permission until 2001. Following the 9/11 attacks, agents declared the crossing closed and blockaded its bank with a few small boulders.
The rocks do not stop Amado Bustamante, 79, who lives across from Redford in the Mexican village of El Mulato, from wading across once a month to buy a box of lard.
"It's cheaper" on the Texas side, he said with a smile. "And they haven't caught us yet."
With only 373 agents to cover 510 miles of river, the Border Patrol's Marfa Sector tends to play its defense well behind the line, focusing on highway checkpoints between the border and Interstate 10, a hundred miles or more to the north. Agents also patrol back roads through mountain ranges stretching as much as 5,000 feet above both sides of the river. They visit traditional crossings like Redford as time permits.
"Nature has kindly fenced a lot of this area for us," says Chief Patrol Agent John Smietana.
"We're not able to cover, or even get to, the river in a lot of places on a regular basis. So it is possible to cross the river very easily in some of those places. The hard part is then getting from the river up to one of the roads to get away."
Anecdotal evidence suggests more migrants and smugglers may be willing to try.
Trend-spotting is difficult in the Big Bend since its relatively small enforcement numbers can be tipped by one big bust. But marijuana seizures are up 16 percent this year while the Border Patrol has rescued 11 stranded migrants — more saved than any year on record, though still a trickle compared to the hundreds rescued each year farther west in Arizona.
Other indicators are harder to miss. Ojinaga, a small Mexican border city across from Presidio, just upriver from Redford, has seen an unheard-of 10 drug-related killings so far this year — the last two in a midday hail of bullets on a main street.
The violence has kept to the Mexican side, even as the smuggling crosses over. In March, Border Patrol investigators broke up a local migrant smuggling operation that employed Francisco Hernandez, brother of the late Esequiel, and his wife, Paula.
Hernandez admitted bringing at least 29 migrants through the Redford crossing over the last three years, allegedly receiving $400 per person from the ringleader, Jose Franco of Odessa. Franco then paid a local cowboy to drive them on ranch roads around a Border Patrol checkpoint, according to court documents.
The cowboy was released without charge after helping investigators set up the sting that brought the group down. In August, Franco received a reduced 21-month sentence after testifying against the Hernandez couple, whose small Redford home faces likely government seizure. Both pleaded guilty to transporting illegal aliens, and face sentencing this month. Court documents allege Paula gave dry clothes to migrants after they crossed the river.
The cowboy — who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from others involved — said word had spread quickly of an easy crossing on the Big Bend's back roads, where migrants did not need to risk a long desert hike or crowd dangerously into sealed tractor-trailers.
"Word of mouth would get around that not only was it safe, but they were treated well," the cowboy said. Migrants generally rode north on the floor of a Chevy Suburban with a sheet over their heads, he said. "They weren't wrapped up in carpets. They were fed. They were able to go to the bathroom."
Smuggling wages are tempting in Presidio County, one of the poorest in the country, where a third of the 8,000 residents live in poverty.
A year after Esequiel's death, the Hernandez family won a $1.9 million wrongful death settlement from the government. But the money was set aside to care for his aging parents, and Francisco never saw much of it, according to his older brother Margarito Hernandez, Sr., a police officer in Presidio.
Francisco "doesn't have a steady job, and he's got five kids," said Margarito. "Those are factors people will take advantage of, if they know you're in need."
The Border Patrol now plans to double its Marfa Sector agents and install vehicle barriers at 30 illegal Big Bend crossings, including Redford's. Six miles of proposed fence flanking Presidio have been postponed after construction bids came in over budget.
But these barriers will not stop locals from splashing through a boundary their forebears have crossed for centuries.
Margarito Hernandez Jr., son of the Presidio policeman, remembers pedaling bikes with his cousins into the Rio Grande "just to see who could actually get to the other side."
Chatting at the birthday party, Margarito, 19, said he has applied to the Border Patrol and dreams of being posted to his family's often unpatrolled hometown as an agent who understands just how muddy a line the river can be.
He nodded his cowboy hat towards a low rise over the river where a white cross marks the spot Esequiel was killed.
"I don't see why an agent couldn't be up there on that hill."
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/6000736.html
September 14, 2008
REDFORD, Texas — The Rio Grande takes a wide southern detour when it hits West Texas, as if unwilling to draw too straight a line between the U.S. and Mexico. Locals along this remote stretch of shallow river share the feeling.
People living on both sides of the Big Bend, as the curve is known, are glad to be mostly skipped over by plans for 700 miles of new fence along the U.S.-Mexico border — even if their unspoiled desert boundary risks drawing more illegal traffic as the rest of the line is sealed off.
"The river doesn't divide us here," said local historian Enrique Madrid, raising his voice over the joyful screams of kids, from both sides of Rio Grande, whacking at a pinata during a recent birthday party in the tiny river hamlet of Redford.
"We've crossed it long before the United States existed," he continued. "And we'll be crossing it a long time after the United States disappears."
New walls are doubling up existing barriers in California, closing wide desert valleys in Arizona and New Mexico and fencing off more populated areas of the South Texas riverbank. The new construction will leave some 630 miles along the Big Bend as the longest unfenced piece of southern U.S. frontier.
Here the Rio Grande cuts an elegantly simple border, splitting the two countries into cane-choked banks or towering limestone cliffs. The wet line in the sand means nothing to the desert's circling buzzards and migrating black bears, but it complicates life for the two-nation families and isolated local economies that need both halves of this desert to survive.
Redford, a knot of adobe homes and alfalfa fields some 300 miles downriver from El Paso, made headlines in 1997 when U.S. Marines on a secret anti-drug mission mistakenly gunned down a local high school student, Esequiel Hernandez, Jr., as he herded goats along the Texas bank.
His death prompted the cancellation of U.S. military anti-drug operations amid heated debate over whether soldiers trained to kill foreign enemies can sort friend from foe along America's often uncertain edges.
The alliances are tangled even within Hernandez's own family: A brother has pleaded guilty to smuggling immigrants, while a nephew is applying to the Border Patrol.
Such is life along this skinny stretch of the river, where native peoples built the first settlement on the site of present-day Redford around 1200 A.D.
Local residents crossed freely with the Border Patrol's tacit permission until 2001. Following the 9/11 attacks, agents declared the crossing closed and blockaded its bank with a few small boulders.
The rocks do not stop Amado Bustamante, 79, who lives across from Redford in the Mexican village of El Mulato, from wading across once a month to buy a box of lard.
"It's cheaper" on the Texas side, he said with a smile. "And they haven't caught us yet."
With only 373 agents to cover 510 miles of river, the Border Patrol's Marfa Sector tends to play its defense well behind the line, focusing on highway checkpoints between the border and Interstate 10, a hundred miles or more to the north. Agents also patrol back roads through mountain ranges stretching as much as 5,000 feet above both sides of the river. They visit traditional crossings like Redford as time permits.
"Nature has kindly fenced a lot of this area for us," says Chief Patrol Agent John Smietana.
"We're not able to cover, or even get to, the river in a lot of places on a regular basis. So it is possible to cross the river very easily in some of those places. The hard part is then getting from the river up to one of the roads to get away."
Anecdotal evidence suggests more migrants and smugglers may be willing to try.
Trend-spotting is difficult in the Big Bend since its relatively small enforcement numbers can be tipped by one big bust. But marijuana seizures are up 16 percent this year while the Border Patrol has rescued 11 stranded migrants — more saved than any year on record, though still a trickle compared to the hundreds rescued each year farther west in Arizona.
Other indicators are harder to miss. Ojinaga, a small Mexican border city across from Presidio, just upriver from Redford, has seen an unheard-of 10 drug-related killings so far this year — the last two in a midday hail of bullets on a main street.
The violence has kept to the Mexican side, even as the smuggling crosses over. In March, Border Patrol investigators broke up a local migrant smuggling operation that employed Francisco Hernandez, brother of the late Esequiel, and his wife, Paula.
Hernandez admitted bringing at least 29 migrants through the Redford crossing over the last three years, allegedly receiving $400 per person from the ringleader, Jose Franco of Odessa. Franco then paid a local cowboy to drive them on ranch roads around a Border Patrol checkpoint, according to court documents.
The cowboy was released without charge after helping investigators set up the sting that brought the group down. In August, Franco received a reduced 21-month sentence after testifying against the Hernandez couple, whose small Redford home faces likely government seizure. Both pleaded guilty to transporting illegal aliens, and face sentencing this month. Court documents allege Paula gave dry clothes to migrants after they crossed the river.
The cowboy — who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from others involved — said word had spread quickly of an easy crossing on the Big Bend's back roads, where migrants did not need to risk a long desert hike or crowd dangerously into sealed tractor-trailers.
"Word of mouth would get around that not only was it safe, but they were treated well," the cowboy said. Migrants generally rode north on the floor of a Chevy Suburban with a sheet over their heads, he said. "They weren't wrapped up in carpets. They were fed. They were able to go to the bathroom."
Smuggling wages are tempting in Presidio County, one of the poorest in the country, where a third of the 8,000 residents live in poverty.
A year after Esequiel's death, the Hernandez family won a $1.9 million wrongful death settlement from the government. But the money was set aside to care for his aging parents, and Francisco never saw much of it, according to his older brother Margarito Hernandez, Sr., a police officer in Presidio.
Francisco "doesn't have a steady job, and he's got five kids," said Margarito. "Those are factors people will take advantage of, if they know you're in need."
The Border Patrol now plans to double its Marfa Sector agents and install vehicle barriers at 30 illegal Big Bend crossings, including Redford's. Six miles of proposed fence flanking Presidio have been postponed after construction bids came in over budget.
But these barriers will not stop locals from splashing through a boundary their forebears have crossed for centuries.
Margarito Hernandez Jr., son of the Presidio policeman, remembers pedaling bikes with his cousins into the Rio Grande "just to see who could actually get to the other side."
Chatting at the birthday party, Margarito, 19, said he has applied to the Border Patrol and dreams of being posted to his family's often unpatrolled hometown as an agent who understands just how muddy a line the river can be.
He nodded his cowboy hat towards a low rise over the river where a white cross marks the spot Esequiel was killed.
"I don't see why an agent couldn't be up there on that hill."
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/6000736.html
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