Los Angeles Times
December 25, 2010
by Nicholas Riccardi
A proposal to consolidate a swath of 250,000 acres of wilderness study areas in New Mexico has sparked an outcry from groups fearing an influx of illegal immigrants and drugs from Mexico. But the Border Patrol says the designation has little effect on its work.
Reporting from the Potrillo Mountains Wilderness — A new front has opened in the centuries-old battle over preserving federal lands in the West, with some advocates of a tighter border arguing that designating some lands as wilderness — meaning they are so precious that no mechanized vehicle can enter — hinders border security.
The U.S. Border Patrol and other law enforcement agencies can take vehicles into wilderness areas while chasing lawbreakers. But to patrol the lands by vehicle, plant sensors or build operating bases, they must get permission from the federal agency controlling the region. Some retired agents say they were told by managers of wilderness areas that they could not use helicopters to pick up injured migrants, or that they could patrol only on horseback.
Critics point to Arizona, the main gateway for illegal immigrants and drugs from Mexico; much of that traffic passes through wilderness areas in the south-central and eastern parts of the state. A Border Patrol agent was shot to death this month in an isolated canyon south of Tucson, in an area being studied for wilderness designation.
Republican Rep. Rob Bishop of Utah has proposed a law to allow the Border Patrol unlimited access to federal lands along the border, just as it has access to all private land. The current situation, he said, forces the agency to ask permission to do its job.
"There is now a conflict," he said, "between wilderness and border security."
Environmental groups and some federal officials, however, contend that the conflict is overblown and that there is more cooperation than confrontation between the Border Patrol and land managers. They point to a Government Accountability Office report issued in October that found that 22 of 26 Border Patrol station chiefs in the southwest said that though environmental regulations can cause delays, they have no effect on overall security.
Lynn Scarlett, who as deputy secretary of Interior under President George W. Bush in 2006 drew up an agreement with the patrol on how to police wilderness lands, acknowledged there have been misunderstandings over the issue.
But she argued that the belief that Border Patrol efforts are hindered in wilderness areas stems not from facts, but a deep distrust of federal environmental protections among some in the West. "The debate about the Border Patrol becomes another vehicle for that long-standing debate," she said.
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/dec/25/nation/la-na-border-wilderness-20101225
Showing posts with label New Mexico. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New Mexico. Show all posts
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Monday, October 11, 2010
No Border Wall group launches Web site
Rio Grande Guardian
October 11, 2010
McALLEN, Oct. 11 - The No Border Wall coalition has launched its own Web site, to go alongside the blogs it has been running these past few years.
With a lot of information and citation links to documents and newspaper articles embedded throughout, the group hopes the new site will become a point of entry into the issue for reporters, researchers, policy makers, and the general public.
The Web site address is www.No-Border-Wall.com .
Scott Nicol, a spokesman for the No Border Wall group, said the Web site is designed to be a comprehensive guide to the U.S.-Mexico border wall – its history, effectiveness or otherwise, and the types of wall designs being floated and built.
Nicol said it is vital that national policies of the magnitude of a border wall are based on facts, rather than misleading sound bites. “That is why we have made every effort to ensure the accuracy of the information that is presented on the Web site,” he said.
The border wall issue was huge in the Rio Grande Valley a few years ago, when the Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Michael Chertoff was developing plans to build hundreds of miles of border fencing. The issue has since waned at least as far as news coverage is concerned.
The Guardian asked Nicol to detail why the Web site has been developed now and why it will be relevant in the weeks and months ahead. Here is his response:
“This is a critical time in the struggle to prevent hundreds of miles of additional border walls from being built. With mid-term elections less than a month away, politicians from all over the country are calling for the erection of more border walls. Some go so far as to demand that double-layered walls stretch continuously from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico.
“South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, who hopes that his backing of Tea Party candidates will give him a power base in the Senate, has twice this year introduced amendments that would require hundreds of miles of additional border wall, ignoring the fact that at an average cost of $7.5 million per mile his new walls would cost taxpayers $2,647,500,000.
“Even more extreme than DeMint is Kansas Representative Todd Tiahrt, who is running for the Senate. He has introduced legislation that requires continuous double-layered border walls along the entire 2,000 mile long border.
“From Rand Paul in Kentucky to Michael Gardiner in Rhode Island, conservative candidates are trying to outdo one another in their support for more and more border walls, in an effort to show voters that only they (certainly not their opponent!) can secure our nation's borders and keep us safe.
“Most of their claims regarding spillover violence and the effectiveness of border walls are at best urban myths, and at times outright lies.”
Nicol said the No Border Wall has launched its new Web site in an effort to present the facts.
“Any discussion of the future of the border, and those of us who live here, should be based in fact, not simply sound bites that appeal to the irrational fears and misconceptions of voters in Kansas or South Carolina or Kentucky.
“If, as many predict, there is a big shift in Congressional control, those who campaigned on border walls will feel obliged to follow through. As we saw with the Secure Fence Act (passed just weeks before the mid-term election) once legislation is passed it is extremely difficult to do anything about it. We need to work to educate people now.”
http://www.riograndeguardian.com/rggnews_story.asp?story_no=22
October 11, 2010
McALLEN, Oct. 11 - The No Border Wall coalition has launched its own Web site, to go alongside the blogs it has been running these past few years.
With a lot of information and citation links to documents and newspaper articles embedded throughout, the group hopes the new site will become a point of entry into the issue for reporters, researchers, policy makers, and the general public.
The Web site address is www.No-Border-Wall.com .
Scott Nicol, a spokesman for the No Border Wall group, said the Web site is designed to be a comprehensive guide to the U.S.-Mexico border wall – its history, effectiveness or otherwise, and the types of wall designs being floated and built.
Nicol said it is vital that national policies of the magnitude of a border wall are based on facts, rather than misleading sound bites. “That is why we have made every effort to ensure the accuracy of the information that is presented on the Web site,” he said.
The border wall issue was huge in the Rio Grande Valley a few years ago, when the Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Michael Chertoff was developing plans to build hundreds of miles of border fencing. The issue has since waned at least as far as news coverage is concerned.
The Guardian asked Nicol to detail why the Web site has been developed now and why it will be relevant in the weeks and months ahead. Here is his response:
“This is a critical time in the struggle to prevent hundreds of miles of additional border walls from being built. With mid-term elections less than a month away, politicians from all over the country are calling for the erection of more border walls. Some go so far as to demand that double-layered walls stretch continuously from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico.
“South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, who hopes that his backing of Tea Party candidates will give him a power base in the Senate, has twice this year introduced amendments that would require hundreds of miles of additional border wall, ignoring the fact that at an average cost of $7.5 million per mile his new walls would cost taxpayers $2,647,500,000.
“Even more extreme than DeMint is Kansas Representative Todd Tiahrt, who is running for the Senate. He has introduced legislation that requires continuous double-layered border walls along the entire 2,000 mile long border.
“From Rand Paul in Kentucky to Michael Gardiner in Rhode Island, conservative candidates are trying to outdo one another in their support for more and more border walls, in an effort to show voters that only they (certainly not their opponent!) can secure our nation's borders and keep us safe.
“Most of their claims regarding spillover violence and the effectiveness of border walls are at best urban myths, and at times outright lies.”
Nicol said the No Border Wall has launched its new Web site in an effort to present the facts.
“Any discussion of the future of the border, and those of us who live here, should be based in fact, not simply sound bites that appeal to the irrational fears and misconceptions of voters in Kansas or South Carolina or Kentucky.
“If, as many predict, there is a big shift in Congressional control, those who campaigned on border walls will feel obliged to follow through. As we saw with the Secure Fence Act (passed just weeks before the mid-term election) once legislation is passed it is extremely difficult to do anything about it. We need to work to educate people now.”
http://www.riograndeguardian.com/rggnews_story.asp?story_no=22
Friday, January 30, 2009
Border fence averaged $3.9 million per mile
Arizona Daily Star
January 30, 2009
by Brady McCombs
January 30, 2009
by Brady McCombs
The flurry of fencing erected along the U.S.-Mexico border in the past three years by the Department of Homeland Security has cost more than expected, a government report shows.
The 140 miles of pedestrian fencing put up under the Secure Border Initiative prior to Oct. 31 of last year cost an average of $3.9 million per mile with costs ranging from $400,000 to $15.1 million a mile, a Government Accountability Office report released Thursday found.
http://www.azstarnet.com/altsn/default/newsletterclickthru/278112
To read the GAO's full report on the cost of border wall construction, go to:
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d09244r.pdf
That per-mile average is more than the $3 million estimated by the Congressional Budget Office in August 2006 and much more than the $2.2 million estimated by the Senate used during the immigration reform debate that same year. Even the highest estimate at the time, $3.2 million per mile from U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., ended up being too low.
Pedestrian fences, sometimes called primary fences, are 10-foot-or-higher steel barriers designed to stop or slow down people on foot.
Richard Stana, director of homeland security issues at the Government Accountability Office, said the GAO carried out the report to answer an intriguing question: If Homeland Security would have used the $393 million appropriated to the SBInet virtual fence project in fiscal years 2007-08, how many more miles of physical barriers could have been built?
The answer: 73 miles of pedestrian fencing or 232 miles of vehicle barriers; or 36 miles of pedestrian fences and 116 miles of vehicle barriers, the report says.
Project 28, the Boeing Co.-led virtual-fence test project anchored by nine camera and radar towers along a 28-mile stretch of border flanking Sasabe, Ariz., was delayed eight months by glitches and plagued with problems, a previous GAO report found. The second generation of virtual fences was scheduled to go up in late 2008, but the work was abruptly halted in August.
In reviewing Customs and Border Protection estimates of total contracts for fencing segments — the GAO did not independently verify or validate the information — the report offers a preliminary analysis of the actual costs of the biggest and fastest buildup of border barriers in U.S. history.
"It gives you an idea of what the fence is going to cost," Stana said of the report.
Final costs are still pending.
The report only calculates the cost of the miles finished before Oct. 31 of last year.
Earlier this week, Homeland Security officials said the agency has brought the total miles of primary fencing and vehicle barriers along the Southwest border to 601 miles, 69 miles short of the goal of 670 miles set during the Bush administration. That means there are more than 200 miles of fencing put up whose costs have not been calculated.
The price tag of the fencing won't be available until all the segments are completed and contracts with private companies are closed out, Stana said.
Prior to the Secure Border Initiative, which was launched in November 2005, the federal government had constructed 78 miles of pedestrian fencing and 57 miles of vehicle barriers, the GAO report shows.
The most expensive miles came in San Diego, where construction teams had to fill in a canyon known as "Smuggler's Gulch" with 35,000 truckloads of dirt. That 3.5-mile project, which is scheduled to be completed this year, could end up costing as much $16.5 million per mile, the report shows.
Vehicle barriers, the report found, came in slightly less expensive. The 75 miles of vehicle barriers put up — under chest-high steel barriers designed to stop cars and trucks but not people — cost an average of $1 million per mile, with costs ranging from $200,000 to $1.8 million, the report said.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated it would cost $1.3 million per mile in the August 2006 document.
Of Arizona's 350 miles of U.S.-Mexico border, there are 128 miles of pedestrian fencing and 151.6 miles of vehicle barriers, according to a Dec. 19 Customs and Border Protection release.
On StarNet: Find a multimedia presentation on the history of the border at azstarnet.com/bordertimeline
On StarNet: Find a multimedia presentation on the history of the border at azstarnet.com/bordertimeline
To read the GAO's full report on the cost of border wall construction, go to:
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d09244r.pdf
Monday, December 8, 2008
Mexico planting own 'green wall' along border
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
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
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
As border fence rises, so does ire in southern New Mexico
Las Cruces Sun-News
October 7, 2008
LAS CRUCES — West of Sunland Park, a controversial barrier is rising.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has finished building about 3.3 miles of pedestrian fence in Doña Ana County along the international border, said Angela de Rocha, spokeswoman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Washington, D.C.
Another 3.5 miles remain to be built in the county before January.
The total cost of all pedestrian fencing in Doña Ana County is about $22 million.
In total, 110 miles of fencing are planned for the U.S. Border Patrol's El Paso sector, which includes all of New Mexico and the two westernmost counties of Texas.
The project has prompted plenty of controversy. City of Sunland Park officials have voiced opposition in the form of a council resolution.
Doña Ana County Commissioner Dolores Saldaña-Caviness, whose district encompasses Sunland Park and Santa Teresa, said the border fence isn't the right solution to immigration problems. She said she's not certain what the solution should be, but said it rests in the hands of federal officials.
"For me, the fence is an ugly barrier," she said. "It really bothers me that things are happening or aren't happening in Washington, D.C., and I don't think the fence is the answer."
The pedestrian fence under construction is east of the Santa Teresa Port of Entry. It consists of metal, mesh-like panels that are roughly 15 feet to 18 feet tall.
In addition to pedestrian fencing, 20.8 miles of vehicle barriers — concrete-filled piping aimed at stopping cars from crossing the border — are slated to be built in Doña Ana County, according to de Rocha. The cost is $21.3 million.
In Luna County, 12.8 miles of vehicle barriers are under construction and contracts have been awarded for an additional 11.3 miles. In Hidalgo County, 12.7 miles will be built. Construction of vehicle fencing in Hidalgo and Luna County will cost $46.8 million.
Asked if the fence is working to reduce illegal immigration, Martin Hernandez, a spokesman with U.S. Border Patrol, said it's part of "a multi-year plan to gain operational control of our nation's borders by using the right mixture of technology, infrastructure and personnel." He cited a decline in numbers of immigrants being caught.
"Apprehensions this year are at a 60-percent decrease from last year — 28,000 apprehensions compared to 75,500 last year," he said in an e-mailed statement.
Sunland Park resident Trinidad Lozano, 83, said she's doubtful how successful the fence will be.
"I know the government does things for the best, but I don't think it's going to keep (immigrants) from coming back and forth whenever they want," she said. "That thing is costing the people a lot of money, just for nothing. Maybe it helps a little; I don't know."
Homeland Security is working to complete 670 miles of fencing on the U.S.-Mexico border by the end of this year. About 340 miles of fence has been built and Congress has approved $2.6 billion for construction. But Homeland Security officials recently told Congress the project might not be finished on target and asked to re-route $400 million from other projects toward the fence construction.
Some pedestrian fencing in Anapra and vehicle barriers in Santa Teresa already existed before Congress approved the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which authorized the recent construction.
De Rocha said the old fencing was part of 78 miles of fencing along the entire U.S.-Mexico border that had been erected over the years. That construction wasn't part of a comprehensive project and occurred piece-meal, she said.
Border fencing has met perhaps the stiffest opposition in Texas, where Homeland Security has faced legal challenges and loud protests from border residents and community leaders.
Last month, El Paso County decided to take its case against the DHS to the Supreme Court. The lawsuit — which the city, the Tigua tribe and other local groups joined — challenges the constitutionality of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff's use of waivers to bypass dozens of laws and build the barrier quickly.
http://www.lcsun-news.com/ci_10656054
October 7, 2008
LAS CRUCES — West of Sunland Park, a controversial barrier is rising.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has finished building about 3.3 miles of pedestrian fence in Doña Ana County along the international border, said Angela de Rocha, spokeswoman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Washington, D.C.
Another 3.5 miles remain to be built in the county before January.
The total cost of all pedestrian fencing in Doña Ana County is about $22 million.
In total, 110 miles of fencing are planned for the U.S. Border Patrol's El Paso sector, which includes all of New Mexico and the two westernmost counties of Texas.
The project has prompted plenty of controversy. City of Sunland Park officials have voiced opposition in the form of a council resolution.
Doña Ana County Commissioner Dolores Saldaña-Caviness, whose district encompasses Sunland Park and Santa Teresa, said the border fence isn't the right solution to immigration problems. She said she's not certain what the solution should be, but said it rests in the hands of federal officials.
"For me, the fence is an ugly barrier," she said. "It really bothers me that things are happening or aren't happening in Washington, D.C., and I don't think the fence is the answer."
The pedestrian fence under construction is east of the Santa Teresa Port of Entry. It consists of metal, mesh-like panels that are roughly 15 feet to 18 feet tall.
In addition to pedestrian fencing, 20.8 miles of vehicle barriers — concrete-filled piping aimed at stopping cars from crossing the border — are slated to be built in Doña Ana County, according to de Rocha. The cost is $21.3 million.
In Luna County, 12.8 miles of vehicle barriers are under construction and contracts have been awarded for an additional 11.3 miles. In Hidalgo County, 12.7 miles will be built. Construction of vehicle fencing in Hidalgo and Luna County will cost $46.8 million.
Asked if the fence is working to reduce illegal immigration, Martin Hernandez, a spokesman with U.S. Border Patrol, said it's part of "a multi-year plan to gain operational control of our nation's borders by using the right mixture of technology, infrastructure and personnel." He cited a decline in numbers of immigrants being caught.
"Apprehensions this year are at a 60-percent decrease from last year — 28,000 apprehensions compared to 75,500 last year," he said in an e-mailed statement.
Sunland Park resident Trinidad Lozano, 83, said she's doubtful how successful the fence will be.
"I know the government does things for the best, but I don't think it's going to keep (immigrants) from coming back and forth whenever they want," she said. "That thing is costing the people a lot of money, just for nothing. Maybe it helps a little; I don't know."
Homeland Security is working to complete 670 miles of fencing on the U.S.-Mexico border by the end of this year. About 340 miles of fence has been built and Congress has approved $2.6 billion for construction. But Homeland Security officials recently told Congress the project might not be finished on target and asked to re-route $400 million from other projects toward the fence construction.
Some pedestrian fencing in Anapra and vehicle barriers in Santa Teresa already existed before Congress approved the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which authorized the recent construction.
De Rocha said the old fencing was part of 78 miles of fencing along the entire U.S.-Mexico border that had been erected over the years. That construction wasn't part of a comprehensive project and occurred piece-meal, she said.
Border fencing has met perhaps the stiffest opposition in Texas, where Homeland Security has faced legal challenges and loud protests from border residents and community leaders.
Last month, El Paso County decided to take its case against the DHS to the Supreme Court. The lawsuit — which the city, the Tigua tribe and other local groups joined — challenges the constitutionality of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff's use of waivers to bypass dozens of laws and build the barrier quickly.
http://www.lcsun-news.com/ci_10656054
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Mexico, US find no al-Qaida links since 9/11
Associated Press / San Jose Mercury News
September 12, 2008
MEXICO CITY—Mexico says it has arrested 12 people on terrorism charges in the years since the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S., but an official said none were linked to Muslim extremist groups like al-Qaida nor were any planning to strike in the United States.
Officials from both nations say there hasn't been any sign of the southern U.S. border becoming an entry point for terrorists, as had been feared after the suicide jetliner hijackings that struck New York and Washington.
The Mexican government revealed the 12 arrests to The Associated Press this week in response to a public information request seeking details of any terrorism arrests in the last seven years. The request was made in February.
Many Americans feared Islamic terrorists from al-Qaida might try to slip into the United States by linking up with the criminal gangs and drug cartels that control large swaths of Mexico and smuggle drugs and migrants across the border.
Months after the 2001 attack, President Bush pushed Mexico to increase security. "We need to use our technology to make sure that we weed out those who we don't want in our country, the terrorists, the 'coyotes,' the smugglers, those that prey on innocent life," he said.
Asked whether Mexico's 12 terrorism arrests were linked to plots against the United States, an official at the Mexican Attorney General's office said none "had anything to do with that."
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she wasn't authorized to be quoted by name, said those detained had links to Basque militants in Spain or were involved in radical domestic activities in Mexico.
Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said Friday the U.S. continually works with Mexico to ensure terrorists don't turn to Mexico and so far there is no evidence that has happened.
"There's no indication that there's been a direct al-Qaida presence in Mexico," he said. "But there certainly have been individuals that present security concerns."
He wouldn't elaborate, but one of the U.S. government's recent worries has been smuggling networks moving East African migrants through Latin America and into the U.S. Two such smugglers operating in Mexico and Belize were arrested last year.
In a speech Wednesday on international terrorism threats, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the biggest threat in Mexico is likely the powerful drug trade, in which gangs target both police and civilians and often behead their enemies.
"These enterprises may currently be criminal enterprises, but we cannot rule out the possibility in the future that they may take on a more political coloration," he said.
The U.S. has dramatically increased border security, adding fencing and border agents and monitoring more closely those who cross at border stations.
Mexico also has become much more vigilant of foreigners entering both legally and illegally.
Many people from Muslim countries now have trouble getting visas to visit Mexico, and officials have arrested dozens of Christian Iraqis who fled violence in their homeland and tried to sneak into Southern California through Mexico.
Thomas Sanderson, deputy director of the transnational threats project at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said al-Qaida usually sends its members through Europe because, unlike Mexico, citizens of those countries can enter U.S. territory without a visa.
"We are more likely to see people come in through airplanes," he said.
He also doubts al-Qaida operatives would expose themselves to organized crime or smuggling groups in Mexico. "They'd be concerned that their cover or their effort would be exposed. It's unfamiliar territory for them," he said.
Pressed to discuss the 12 peopled arrested, the Mexican official would say only that five were Spaniards linked to the Basque separatist group ETA and that seven were Mexicans detained in domestic cases.
She said the purported ETA members were living in Mexico to help finance the group's operations in the Basque region of northern Spain and were not planning attacks.
The official said some of the seven Mexican suspects were tied to murky domestic militant groups that have planted crude bombs at banks, government offices and oil pipelines across Mexico in recent years.
None of those attacks caused human casualties but several of the pipeline attacks had a big financial impact by interrupting fuel supplies to major industries.
http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_10447567
September 12, 2008
MEXICO CITY—Mexico says it has arrested 12 people on terrorism charges in the years since the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S., but an official said none were linked to Muslim extremist groups like al-Qaida nor were any planning to strike in the United States.
Officials from both nations say there hasn't been any sign of the southern U.S. border becoming an entry point for terrorists, as had been feared after the suicide jetliner hijackings that struck New York and Washington.
The Mexican government revealed the 12 arrests to The Associated Press this week in response to a public information request seeking details of any terrorism arrests in the last seven years. The request was made in February.
Many Americans feared Islamic terrorists from al-Qaida might try to slip into the United States by linking up with the criminal gangs and drug cartels that control large swaths of Mexico and smuggle drugs and migrants across the border.
Months after the 2001 attack, President Bush pushed Mexico to increase security. "We need to use our technology to make sure that we weed out those who we don't want in our country, the terrorists, the 'coyotes,' the smugglers, those that prey on innocent life," he said.
Asked whether Mexico's 12 terrorism arrests were linked to plots against the United States, an official at the Mexican Attorney General's office said none "had anything to do with that."
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she wasn't authorized to be quoted by name, said those detained had links to Basque militants in Spain or were involved in radical domestic activities in Mexico.
Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said Friday the U.S. continually works with Mexico to ensure terrorists don't turn to Mexico and so far there is no evidence that has happened.
"There's no indication that there's been a direct al-Qaida presence in Mexico," he said. "But there certainly have been individuals that present security concerns."
He wouldn't elaborate, but one of the U.S. government's recent worries has been smuggling networks moving East African migrants through Latin America and into the U.S. Two such smugglers operating in Mexico and Belize were arrested last year.
In a speech Wednesday on international terrorism threats, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the biggest threat in Mexico is likely the powerful drug trade, in which gangs target both police and civilians and often behead their enemies.
"These enterprises may currently be criminal enterprises, but we cannot rule out the possibility in the future that they may take on a more political coloration," he said.
The U.S. has dramatically increased border security, adding fencing and border agents and monitoring more closely those who cross at border stations.
Mexico also has become much more vigilant of foreigners entering both legally and illegally.
Many people from Muslim countries now have trouble getting visas to visit Mexico, and officials have arrested dozens of Christian Iraqis who fled violence in their homeland and tried to sneak into Southern California through Mexico.
Thomas Sanderson, deputy director of the transnational threats project at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said al-Qaida usually sends its members through Europe because, unlike Mexico, citizens of those countries can enter U.S. territory without a visa.
"We are more likely to see people come in through airplanes," he said.
He also doubts al-Qaida operatives would expose themselves to organized crime or smuggling groups in Mexico. "They'd be concerned that their cover or their effort would be exposed. It's unfamiliar territory for them," he said.
Pressed to discuss the 12 peopled arrested, the Mexican official would say only that five were Spaniards linked to the Basque separatist group ETA and that seven were Mexicans detained in domestic cases.
She said the purported ETA members were living in Mexico to help finance the group's operations in the Basque region of northern Spain and were not planning attacks.
The official said some of the seven Mexican suspects were tied to murky domestic militant groups that have planted crude bombs at banks, government offices and oil pipelines across Mexico in recent years.
None of those attacks caused human casualties but several of the pipeline attacks had a big financial impact by interrupting fuel supplies to major industries.
http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_10447567
On the border, on the edge
Boston Globe
September 14, 2008
COLUMBUS, N.M. - On a bumpy dirt road along the US-Mexico border, the mayor of this tiny town pulled his truck tight beside the government's multimillion-dollar new fence. He wanted a closer look, but someone else was watching, too.
A sport utility vehicle was on him in minutes, lights blazing.
"The Border Patrol is right in back of us now," Mayor Eddie Espinoza said with a sigh, pulling over for what has become a routine stop, even for him. "Most of the guys, they're not local. . . . It used to upset me quite a bit. Now it's part of the situation that you've got to deal with."
The federal government has poured millions of dollars into barricading the border here, erecting a 15-foot-tall steel fence and bringing in hundreds of new agents to patrol it. But in the village beside the fence, resentment simmers. Residents say they feel neglected by politicians whose focus is on a line in the sand 3 miles to the south, and not on the worsening hardships of the Americans living within sight of it.
With New Mexico a swing state in the coming presidential election - and even more influential as the state with the nation's highest proportion of Latinos - villagers hope their votes will matter.
"What is the point of putting everything on the border, and nothing here?" said Arnoldo Rubio, a town councilor. "Why don't they come here and pay attention to the town?"
Columbus, population 1,765, is a farming town along Highway 9, a two-lane ribbon of road flanked by endless scrub-covered desert, with a ragged mountain range on the horizon. Though it is New Mexico's only 24-hour border crossing, the town is eerily quiet, a spare grid of gravelly streets and weedy lots, with a post office, one bank and no stoplights.
It is hard to imagine now, but Columbus was fleetingly famous in 1916, when Pancho Villa's revolutionary army raided it from Mexico. For a time Columbus was the state's biggest city, but it dwindled, and the last train stopped in 1961. An immigration amnesty in 1986 helped revive the town: From 1990 to 2000, the population nearly tripled. The vast majority are Latino.
Barely half of the town's adults are citizens and eligible to vote. The rest are a mix of noncitizen legal residents, and some illegal immigrants. Of the 680 registered voters, about half are Democrats, and the rest are Republicans or independents. Turnout ranges from more than 60 percent for a local election to a few dozen voters in this year's presidential primaries.
The village is not lacking for issues. Half the townspeople live in trailers, some without phones or electricity. More than a third of the families earned less than $10,000 a year, according to the 2000 census. Residents went without clean running water until last spring - and then the water bills nearly doubled.
The shortage of decent jobs is Columbus's biggest problem, according to the mayor as well as the gray-haired farmhands and the school principal. Most of the town depends on the onion, chile, and cotton fields - but the jobs are grueling and unstable. For about six months a year, farm workers labor in the dirt under the searing sun, with an eye out for scorpions and rattlesnakes. They can earn roughly $15 an hour, if they work fast.
But the rest of the year, there is nothing. Workers move away or collect unemployment. About half of the adults here have less than a ninth grade education and aren't fluent in English. Up to 14 percent of the town is unemployed, triple the state's rate.
Teenagers see little future here. In the onion fields, the biggest employer in town, more than 90 percent of the pickers are aged 50 and older. María and Simón Medina, knelt side by side one recent morning, clipping fat onions and dumping them in a bucket. A son was away at college.
"We don't have young people here anymore," said María Medina, 57, eyes squinting under a straw hat.
At 4 a.m. the same field is full, half-lit by giant klieg lights and miners' bulbs strapped to workers' foreheads. The owners, the Johnson family, let them work at night to avoid the sun.
But Juan López, was uneasy. A snake bit a worker two weeks earlier, and the nearest hospital is 30 miles away.
"After 50 years this town doesn't grow," said López, 63, clippers in hand. "There are so many things missing."
Espinoza said he is trying to improve things. But to attract employers, he needs better roads and utilities and more educated workers.
He is building the first new school in 50 years, working with the government to expand the border crossing to attract more business, and shutting off water service to delinquent residents to force them to pay their bills. Next he plans to tackle the town's falling-down trailers.
"Right now if we [were] to go and inspect houses most of them would be condemned," Espinoza said.
On Missouri Street, Jesús Miramontes, 72, lives in a rickety trailer without heat or electricity. To survive, he keeps pigs and chickens for his wife and two grandchildren, who live with him.
Miramontes was a life-long farmhand who now lives on a cramped lot, with a vast field behind it. He keeps talking about adding electricity, but never does it.
"Everything's so expensive," said Miramontes.
He is a legal resident, and would like to vote in the elections. But he cannot afford the $675 fee to apply for US citizenship. It is a tenth of what he earned last year.
Francisca and José Morales expected more from America when they moved here from Mexico more than a decade ago. José and a daughter, María, became US citizens, and she has earned her GED. But now the family lives 12 to a trailer on Iowa Street, on a dirt yard filled with chickens and strewn with children's Matchbox cars.
José, María, and another daughter, Hilda, all head to the chile fields at dawn, anxious to save money for the hard months when the work runs out. Lately, they have noticed that the owner is buying giant tractor-like machines to replace them.
"We need a factory," said Francisca Morales, swatting away flies in her kitchen, where she sorted and soaked dry beans for dinner.
"I have two girls who should be working in other things and not in the fields."
As gas, food, and water prices soared this summer, the family hunkered down in the 90-degree heat. They turned off the air-conditioning, drained the wading pool, and stopped watering the plants. Morales, who works at home caring for eight children, started showering every three days.
Many of the issues in the presidential election are crammed under their roof: lack of health insurance, little education, unstable jobs, and desperation for change. The two adults who can vote, José and María, say they are backing Barack Obama.
"He's promising to help the people," said José.
María had dreamed of becoming a nursing assistant when she came here at age 15 from Mexico. Now 27, she comes home caked in dirt from pulling chiles from branches all day.
"If this town would progress, I would stay," María Morales said in Spanish.
"The truth is I want to go to Colorado. There's more work. Here, you have to fight for everything. Here it doesn't matter if you're a US citizen. The opportunities are the same."
. . .
In Columbus people like to say they don't even notice the border. They straddle two cultures, languages and towns.
James Johnson, the boss of the onion field, speaks Spanish with a Mexican lilt, and Rubio, the town councilor, is a US citizen who has never learned to speak English. Columbus residents regularly flow across the border to the bigger city of Palomas for cheaper eyeglasses, prescription drugs, and Mexico's government-subsidized gas (almost $2 cheaper a gallon).
But in the eight years of the Bush administration, the border has become much more visible to everyone. For one thing, there is the fence. To boost national security after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and curb illegal immigration, the US government last year built a fence of concrete-filled steel poles that runs 6 miles east to west and 5 feet underground.
Along with the fence, the federal government deployed hundreds of agents to patrol it.
Seemingly overnight, the area's border patrol rose to roughly 400 people from only 80 six years ago - and from only two guys who lived in town when Espinoza was a kid in the 1960s.
Now agents are all over town - perched on lookout towers, riding all-terrain vehicles in the dead of night, in helicopters, and on horseback. The Border Patrol says the number of illegal immigrants tromping through fields and backyards has plunged from about 300 a day two years ago to almost none. They also credit the build-up of agents with keeping the bloody drug war and other crime in Mexico from spilling onto US soil.
"For the last year it's been nothing but 'Thank you, thank you, thank you,' " said James G. Acosta, a supervisory border patrol agent for the Border Patrol. Espinoza has been trying to get the border agents - who can earn upward of $70,000 a year - to move to Columbus and create a middle class. The average Columbus resident earned $6,700 a year, according to the 2000 census.
But Columbus has no shopping mall and no movie theater. Kids hang out in parks or make music CDs at the library. For adults, the town has three restaurants and one bar, the Pancho Villa Salon, which attracted four women one recent Friday for "Ladies Night."
Acosta winced at the thought of moving here.
"What do you have for a family from New York or Michigan to ask them to move to this little town?" said Acosta, who lives almost two hours to the north in Las Cruces.
"How the hell do you keep busy?"
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/articles/2008/09/14/on_the_border_on_the_edge/?page=1
September 14, 2008
COLUMBUS, N.M. - On a bumpy dirt road along the US-Mexico border, the mayor of this tiny town pulled his truck tight beside the government's multimillion-dollar new fence. He wanted a closer look, but someone else was watching, too.
A sport utility vehicle was on him in minutes, lights blazing.
"The Border Patrol is right in back of us now," Mayor Eddie Espinoza said with a sigh, pulling over for what has become a routine stop, even for him. "Most of the guys, they're not local. . . . It used to upset me quite a bit. Now it's part of the situation that you've got to deal with."
The federal government has poured millions of dollars into barricading the border here, erecting a 15-foot-tall steel fence and bringing in hundreds of new agents to patrol it. But in the village beside the fence, resentment simmers. Residents say they feel neglected by politicians whose focus is on a line in the sand 3 miles to the south, and not on the worsening hardships of the Americans living within sight of it.
With New Mexico a swing state in the coming presidential election - and even more influential as the state with the nation's highest proportion of Latinos - villagers hope their votes will matter.
"What is the point of putting everything on the border, and nothing here?" said Arnoldo Rubio, a town councilor. "Why don't they come here and pay attention to the town?"
Columbus, population 1,765, is a farming town along Highway 9, a two-lane ribbon of road flanked by endless scrub-covered desert, with a ragged mountain range on the horizon. Though it is New Mexico's only 24-hour border crossing, the town is eerily quiet, a spare grid of gravelly streets and weedy lots, with a post office, one bank and no stoplights.
It is hard to imagine now, but Columbus was fleetingly famous in 1916, when Pancho Villa's revolutionary army raided it from Mexico. For a time Columbus was the state's biggest city, but it dwindled, and the last train stopped in 1961. An immigration amnesty in 1986 helped revive the town: From 1990 to 2000, the population nearly tripled. The vast majority are Latino.
Barely half of the town's adults are citizens and eligible to vote. The rest are a mix of noncitizen legal residents, and some illegal immigrants. Of the 680 registered voters, about half are Democrats, and the rest are Republicans or independents. Turnout ranges from more than 60 percent for a local election to a few dozen voters in this year's presidential primaries.
The village is not lacking for issues. Half the townspeople live in trailers, some without phones or electricity. More than a third of the families earned less than $10,000 a year, according to the 2000 census. Residents went without clean running water until last spring - and then the water bills nearly doubled.
The shortage of decent jobs is Columbus's biggest problem, according to the mayor as well as the gray-haired farmhands and the school principal. Most of the town depends on the onion, chile, and cotton fields - but the jobs are grueling and unstable. For about six months a year, farm workers labor in the dirt under the searing sun, with an eye out for scorpions and rattlesnakes. They can earn roughly $15 an hour, if they work fast.
But the rest of the year, there is nothing. Workers move away or collect unemployment. About half of the adults here have less than a ninth grade education and aren't fluent in English. Up to 14 percent of the town is unemployed, triple the state's rate.
Teenagers see little future here. In the onion fields, the biggest employer in town, more than 90 percent of the pickers are aged 50 and older. María and Simón Medina, knelt side by side one recent morning, clipping fat onions and dumping them in a bucket. A son was away at college.
"We don't have young people here anymore," said María Medina, 57, eyes squinting under a straw hat.
At 4 a.m. the same field is full, half-lit by giant klieg lights and miners' bulbs strapped to workers' foreheads. The owners, the Johnson family, let them work at night to avoid the sun.
But Juan López, was uneasy. A snake bit a worker two weeks earlier, and the nearest hospital is 30 miles away.
"After 50 years this town doesn't grow," said López, 63, clippers in hand. "There are so many things missing."
Espinoza said he is trying to improve things. But to attract employers, he needs better roads and utilities and more educated workers.
He is building the first new school in 50 years, working with the government to expand the border crossing to attract more business, and shutting off water service to delinquent residents to force them to pay their bills. Next he plans to tackle the town's falling-down trailers.
"Right now if we [were] to go and inspect houses most of them would be condemned," Espinoza said.
On Missouri Street, Jesús Miramontes, 72, lives in a rickety trailer without heat or electricity. To survive, he keeps pigs and chickens for his wife and two grandchildren, who live with him.
Miramontes was a life-long farmhand who now lives on a cramped lot, with a vast field behind it. He keeps talking about adding electricity, but never does it.
"Everything's so expensive," said Miramontes.
He is a legal resident, and would like to vote in the elections. But he cannot afford the $675 fee to apply for US citizenship. It is a tenth of what he earned last year.
Francisca and José Morales expected more from America when they moved here from Mexico more than a decade ago. José and a daughter, María, became US citizens, and she has earned her GED. But now the family lives 12 to a trailer on Iowa Street, on a dirt yard filled with chickens and strewn with children's Matchbox cars.
José, María, and another daughter, Hilda, all head to the chile fields at dawn, anxious to save money for the hard months when the work runs out. Lately, they have noticed that the owner is buying giant tractor-like machines to replace them.
"We need a factory," said Francisca Morales, swatting away flies in her kitchen, where she sorted and soaked dry beans for dinner.
"I have two girls who should be working in other things and not in the fields."
As gas, food, and water prices soared this summer, the family hunkered down in the 90-degree heat. They turned off the air-conditioning, drained the wading pool, and stopped watering the plants. Morales, who works at home caring for eight children, started showering every three days.
Many of the issues in the presidential election are crammed under their roof: lack of health insurance, little education, unstable jobs, and desperation for change. The two adults who can vote, José and María, say they are backing Barack Obama.
"He's promising to help the people," said José.
María had dreamed of becoming a nursing assistant when she came here at age 15 from Mexico. Now 27, she comes home caked in dirt from pulling chiles from branches all day.
"If this town would progress, I would stay," María Morales said in Spanish.
"The truth is I want to go to Colorado. There's more work. Here, you have to fight for everything. Here it doesn't matter if you're a US citizen. The opportunities are the same."
. . .
In Columbus people like to say they don't even notice the border. They straddle two cultures, languages and towns.
James Johnson, the boss of the onion field, speaks Spanish with a Mexican lilt, and Rubio, the town councilor, is a US citizen who has never learned to speak English. Columbus residents regularly flow across the border to the bigger city of Palomas for cheaper eyeglasses, prescription drugs, and Mexico's government-subsidized gas (almost $2 cheaper a gallon).
But in the eight years of the Bush administration, the border has become much more visible to everyone. For one thing, there is the fence. To boost national security after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and curb illegal immigration, the US government last year built a fence of concrete-filled steel poles that runs 6 miles east to west and 5 feet underground.
Along with the fence, the federal government deployed hundreds of agents to patrol it.
Seemingly overnight, the area's border patrol rose to roughly 400 people from only 80 six years ago - and from only two guys who lived in town when Espinoza was a kid in the 1960s.
Now agents are all over town - perched on lookout towers, riding all-terrain vehicles in the dead of night, in helicopters, and on horseback. The Border Patrol says the number of illegal immigrants tromping through fields and backyards has plunged from about 300 a day two years ago to almost none. They also credit the build-up of agents with keeping the bloody drug war and other crime in Mexico from spilling onto US soil.
"For the last year it's been nothing but 'Thank you, thank you, thank you,' " said James G. Acosta, a supervisory border patrol agent for the Border Patrol. Espinoza has been trying to get the border agents - who can earn upward of $70,000 a year - to move to Columbus and create a middle class. The average Columbus resident earned $6,700 a year, according to the 2000 census.
But Columbus has no shopping mall and no movie theater. Kids hang out in parks or make music CDs at the library. For adults, the town has three restaurants and one bar, the Pancho Villa Salon, which attracted four women one recent Friday for "Ladies Night."
Acosta winced at the thought of moving here.
"What do you have for a family from New York or Michigan to ask them to move to this little town?" said Acosta, who lives almost two hours to the north in Las Cruces.
"How the hell do you keep busy?"
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/articles/2008/09/14/on_the_border_on_the_edge/?page=1
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