Public Radio International - The World
August 12, 2013
It’s a clear, breezy morning on the scrubby hills overlooking the Tijuana River Valley south of San Diego.
Border Patrol jeeps cruise the dirt roads that run up and down the hills along the fence that marks the US-Mexico border. One drags a makeshift rake behind it to comb the road, so agents can later spot fresh footprints.
Mike McCoy, a 71-year-old veterinarian, has spent more than half his life working to protect the estuary formed where this river meets the Pacific Ocean.
He's heading down toward a place called Smuggler’s Gulch.
“This was probably the most difficult cut for them, and the most problematic cut for us,” McCoy said.
By “us” he means the activists and local land managers who fought against a massive earth-moving project that filled in the deep gulch and built a road across it in 2009.
“Before (the road) was going down these switchbacks,” he said. “And that took a long time."
Now, he says, Border Patrol agents just fly right through.
Starting in the 1990s, this place became ground zero in the battle to secure the border.
Back then, hundreds of illegal immigrants swarmed down the hills nightly from Tijuana. The Army Corps of Engineers built a 10-foot high fence, but it wasn’t much of a deterrent. So in 1996, Congress authorized a triple-layer fence to be built along 14 miles of the border.
McCoy and other environmentalists challenged the project based on federal environmental laws.
“The fence, to me, was a real threat to what might occur in the estuary,” he said.
Conservationists worried especially that filling in Smuggler’s Gulch would disrupt the flow of water and change the estuary’s ecology.
And they succeeded in slowing down construction for years.
Then came 9/11, and Congress ordered a massive expansion of the fence project–from 14 miles to 700 miles along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Environmentalists challenged much of that as well, and again slowed construction in many spots.
Paul Ganster, of the Institute for Regional Studies of the Californias at San Diego State University, says that put the Department of Homeland Security in a tough spot.
“It was ordered by Congress to build so many miles of fence by a certain amount of time and they weren’t able to proceed to do this,” he said.
So Congress responded by giving DHS the right to waive all laws that could slow construction of the fence.
“And that removed a major tool of environmentalists and others opposed to the construction,” he said. “And it really removed a lot of the requirements for an open process, for public hearings, things that citizens and communities and environmentalists fought for, really from the '70s.”
Since then, DHS has waived dozens of federal and state laws to build new sections of the fence, some of it across protected land and habitat for endangered and threatened animals.
McCoy says deer and jaguar and Sonoran pronghorn are just some of the species being affected as the fences chop up their breeding grounds.
In some places, fencing has also contributed to flooding, erosion and destruction of habitat.
To date, about 650 miles of the nearly 2000-mile U.S.-Mexico border are fenced off.
But legislators concerned with border security say that’s still not enough.
Florida Republican Marco Rubio spoke on the Senate floor earlier this year in support of the border security component of the senate’s immigration bill. The bill called for hundreds of miles of more fencing, and it would give Homeland Security even more power to waive laws to build it.
“We have a sovereign right to protect out border. And we have a crisis on the southern border of the United States,” Rubio said at the time.
A handful of Democrats fought the waiver, led by Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon.
Wyden told his colleagues, “Strengthening our immigration system should not come at the cost of throwing our environmental laws aside.”
And Wyden argued that the bill should at least include a sunset clause for the waiver.
But the environmental concerns didn’t get much traction. The bill passed the Senate by a wide margin.
Back in San Diego, Shawn Moran of the Border Patrol agents union says more fencing is a good thing. He says the San Diego fence has slowed illegal traffic here to a trickle. And adding hundreds of miles of new fencing probably would help by funneling illegal traffic into areas agents can control, he added.
“It’s not the answer to border security, but it is a primary tool that the border patrol has to slow down things,” he said.
Walking along the border, activist Mike McCoy admits that the environmental impact of all this fencing through the Tijuana River estuary hasn’t been “all bad.” Illegal crossers used to tromp through sensitive areas in the estuary. And he does understand the need for a secure border.
“I just think that we could’ve done better, biologically and ecologically, than what we did with this approach,” he said.
What really rankles McCoy is the supreme trump card held by one federal agency.
“It’s kind of my way or the highway type thing. And that’s not the way America worked to me. We all had a say in what went forward.”
The fate of the new environmental waiver, and the broader immigration bill that it’s part of, is uncertain. The House of Representatives has said it will write its own immigration reform bill, rather than take up the Senate’s bill.
But whatever happens in the Capitol, it’s likely that as the debate over immigration and border security gets louder, environmental concerns will remain barely a whisper.
http://www.pri.org/stories/science/environment/u-s-border-fence-skirts-environmental-review-14659.html
Showing posts with label Tijuana. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tijuana. Show all posts
Monday, August 12, 2013
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
A Rusted Gate In The Border Fence Opens For The First Time
KPBS
April 29, 2013
By Adrian Florido
SAN DIEGO — In 2008, the U.S. Border Patrol in San Diego replaced a flimsy fence with a tall, thick one at Friendship Park, a spot where families separated by the border have long come to talk through the fence. They built a gate into it to allow for maintenance on both sides. But it had never been opened, so it rusted shut.
Jim Brown, an architect, negotiated to get Border Patrol to open the gate for the first time ever this Sunday, just for a few minutes. They agreed.
“I came out with some WD-40," he said. "It was kind of comical — a little tiny can from a convenience store, spraying it on the hinges. No, it would not budge. So Border Patrol came out with some torches and what not, and popped it open.”
It just so happened that Sunday, Luis Angulo had come to meet his 5-year-old daughter for the first time — through the fence. She was born in Mexico. He lives in San Diego.
“My sister, she’s a lawyer in Mexico and she told me 'hey, you can try to see your daughter from here,'" he said, as the little girl stuck her fingers through the fence's tight mesh.
Bronwyn Ingram, San Diego Mayor Bob Filner’s fiancée, was standing nearby. She was there to help swing the gate open, and she said stories like Angulo's show that the ties that bind border cities are stronger than the fence that separates them.
“When you come here and you spend time, and you see the families talking together, putting their fingers through the fence to touch each other, it’s really moving," she said.
As crowds gathered on both sides of the fence, Ingram and Filner moved toward the gate. Brown removed a large steel beam lock and swung the gate open. The faces of people on the other side, usually obscured by the fence’s tight mesh, suddenly became clear. Cheers erupted on both sides.
Mayor Filner called Luis Angulo toward the opening. He hesitated, but then his daughter walked through, looking up at him. He picked her up and gave her giant hug.
A few minutes later, two Border Patrol agents secured the gate again. Brown said the Border Patrol had installed a greasing mechanism to keep the gate from rusting shut again. He said he hopes that means opening the gate in a gesture of binational friendship will become a more common occurrence.
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2013/apr/29/rusted-gate-border-fence-opens-first-time/
April 29, 2013
By Adrian Florido
SAN DIEGO — In 2008, the U.S. Border Patrol in San Diego replaced a flimsy fence with a tall, thick one at Friendship Park, a spot where families separated by the border have long come to talk through the fence. They built a gate into it to allow for maintenance on both sides. But it had never been opened, so it rusted shut.
Jim Brown, an architect, negotiated to get Border Patrol to open the gate for the first time ever this Sunday, just for a few minutes. They agreed.
“I came out with some WD-40," he said. "It was kind of comical — a little tiny can from a convenience store, spraying it on the hinges. No, it would not budge. So Border Patrol came out with some torches and what not, and popped it open.”
It just so happened that Sunday, Luis Angulo had come to meet his 5-year-old daughter for the first time — through the fence. She was born in Mexico. He lives in San Diego.
“My sister, she’s a lawyer in Mexico and she told me 'hey, you can try to see your daughter from here,'" he said, as the little girl stuck her fingers through the fence's tight mesh.
Bronwyn Ingram, San Diego Mayor Bob Filner’s fiancée, was standing nearby. She was there to help swing the gate open, and she said stories like Angulo's show that the ties that bind border cities are stronger than the fence that separates them.
“When you come here and you spend time, and you see the families talking together, putting their fingers through the fence to touch each other, it’s really moving," she said.
As crowds gathered on both sides of the fence, Ingram and Filner moved toward the gate. Brown removed a large steel beam lock and swung the gate open. The faces of people on the other side, usually obscured by the fence’s tight mesh, suddenly became clear. Cheers erupted on both sides.
Mayor Filner called Luis Angulo toward the opening. He hesitated, but then his daughter walked through, looking up at him. He picked her up and gave her giant hug.
A few minutes later, two Border Patrol agents secured the gate again. Brown said the Border Patrol had installed a greasing mechanism to keep the gate from rusting shut again. He said he hopes that means opening the gate in a gesture of binational friendship will become a more common occurrence.
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2013/apr/29/rusted-gate-border-fence-opens-first-time/
Saturday, October 6, 2012
Border Patrol promises consistent access to Friendship Park
San Diego Untion Tribune
October 6, 2012
by Jordan England-Nelson
October 6, 2012
by Jordan England-Nelson
IMPERIAL BEACH — The Border Patrol on Saturday made a new commitment to providing consistent access to Friendship Park, a concrete plaza split by the U.S.-Mexico border fence where friends and families on either side have gathered for generations.
Friends of Friendship Park, a coalition that has pushed for greater access and more regular hours of operation at the site, praised the new arrangement.
Access had been intermittent since 2009, when ground was broken for a secondary fence extending from Smuggler’s Gulch to the sea, said the Rev. John Fanestil, a Methodist pastor and a spokesman for the coalition. He said Border Patrol agents were not consistently on call to let visitors inside, leading to an “atmosphere of uncertainty” which meant that “for all intents and purposes, the park was not accessible in any meaningful way.”
Border Patrol spokesman Jerry Conlin said the park was never officially closed, but that “enforcement takes priority” and agents were not always available to let people in. Rotating staff will now be available Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Some groups have objected to Friendship Park because they see it as a way for undocumented immigrants to visit their families without having to return to Mexico. Others object to what the park has come to represent.
Peter Nunez, chairman of the Center for Immigration Studies, a research organization that calls for less immigration, said he has nothing against families coming together at the site. But he criticized the way immigrant advocates have exploited the park.
“The fence symbolizes in their minds the absurdity of immigration law,” Nunez said. “But the park was never meant to symbolize anything about immigration. It’s about friendship between two neighboring countries.”
Friendship Park came about after First Lady Pat Nixon’s 1971 inauguration of Border Field State Park, where she told crowds on either side of the barbed-wire demarcation line: “I hate to see a fence anywhere.”
Fanestil has been visiting Friendship Park for years to administer Sunday Communion. He used to pass wafers through chinks in the fence and into the mouths of congregants on the other side, resulting in a distinct display of transnational transubstantiation.
Steel mesh was added to the primary fence earlier this year to prevent people from passing objects from one side to the other.
Fanestil, who plans on resuming border sacraments today, said he is looking for ways to continue his two-nations-under-God take on the holy rites. He is reaching out to a Mexican minister interested in simultaneously performing the service on the Mexican side of the fence. They even want to use the same loaf of bread, splitting it beforehand and taking one half to each side.
“Newcomers say it [the mesh] reminds them of visiting someone in jail,” Fanestil said. “But you can still strike up a conversation and make friends. That’s why the park is named that way.”
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
One giant gesture: La Mano de la Paz
San Diego City Beat
March 21, 2012
by Kinsee Morlan
Standing at the western end of the United States / Mexico border fence is like being plopped into the middle of an awkward conversation between Frida Kahlo and Dick Cheney. Nowhere are the differences between the two cultures more apparent.
During the past few years, Playas de Tijuana has undergone a facelift. A nice, new wooden boardwalk runs alongside the beach, businesses are popping up and a handful of noisy vendors—hawking fresh coconuts, churros and frozen treats—pitch their goods. The bullring hovers in the distance as for-sale, fighting roosters run freely around a dusty lot nearby. Tourists and locals frequent the revamped park (recently renamed Parque del Mar, although locals don’t call it that), some to snap photos, others to take advantage of cell-phone signals that don’t always recognize the precise location of the international boundary. A large fiberglass sculpture of dolphins frolicking in the sea has been placed in the middle of a concrete slab in the park, just feet away from the fence.
On the U.S. side of the border, signs of new construction are visible, too. A huge crane casts a shadow across the fence. It’s parked a few feet in front of a temporary construction platform that stretches out into the Pacific Ocean. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is in the middle of replacing the old border fence—a rusted, ragtag wall made of recycled helicopter landing pads from the Gulf War—with a much higher, sturdier barrier. A new tower structure, complete with what appear to be video cameras, adds to the militarized feeling—one of the reasons few folks visit the surrounding state park these days. But no matter how high the fence is or how many Border Patrol agents sit at the ready, it all seems futile—the fence still ends abruptly in the ocean, met by the vastness of the sea.
Artists have already responded to the new fence, covering its brown, oxidized steel columns with white messages and images commenting on, and questioning the need for, a higher fence. One artist has taken the iconic street sign that warns freeway drivers about immigrant families darting across the road, flipped the image on its side and armed the father, who’s pulling a woman and child forward, with a small bundle of balloons.
“This should be a very, very important place, but it’s like nothing is here to let you know,” Youn Woo Chaa says, squinting in the afternoon sun as he looks out over the border fence. “It’s a little strange. And the dolphin piece, why is that here? It doesn’t make sense for me as an artist.”
Chaa, a Korean artist with long black dreads dangling down his back, first set foot on the site more than 15 years ago. It was different then—not as developed on either side— and he remembers being astounded by the openness of the border. Born in Seoul, his idea of an international border came from the one separating South Korea from North Korea. “You cannot cross through that border,” he laughs. “Maybe if you’re a 007 secret agent or something.”
The closest Chaa ever got to his hometown border was the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Three years of military service is required in South Korea (up to 10 years is mandatory in the North), and Chaa was stationed in the DMZ for a short time before too many deaths, mostly caused by friendly fire, exploding mines and other accidents, forced a commander to relocate his unit, Chaa says.
Chaa eventually married a woman from the United States and moved to Los Angeles. He liked the idea of being able to cross an international border whenever he wanted with relative ease—no mines or gunfire—so he started making regular trips to Tijuana. He began feeling strong connections to the Mexican people. The poverty in the region reminded him of Korea in the ’60s, and though he didn’t speak Spanish, he felt as though Mexican people understood him and vice versa.
“It’s like I can open the curtains to their minds,” he says. “I know who they truly are, what they want and how to talk to them. I feel much closer to Korean people when I’m here in Mexico.”
The language barrier is partially responsible for giving Chaa his big idea. He noticed that when Mexicans said hello to him, they often nodded their heads and threw up a quick peace sign, as if trying to communicate friendliness without having to understand words. The image stuck with him, and while visiting the border fence in Playas about a year ago, he suddenly knew exactly what he needed to do.
“La Mano de la Paz", a giant hand making a peace sign—that’s what the park needed. Nothing too kitschy or corny. Something elegant and interactive with a water feature at the base of the sculpture that misted, creating a rainbow at certain angles, plus an interactive component that responded to noise by generating the image of a snowflake on a circular LCD screen below the sculpture’s elevated base. The hand would need to be at least 15 feet high and made of galvanized steel wires, welded and wound together in a way that made each finger end in its own unique fingerprint.
“After I got the idea, I got stuck on it, and I started hating those stupid dolphins even more,” Chaa says. “That sculpture is falling apart, anyway. It’s fine for some hotel or resort front, but not here. The border is right there, you know?”
When Angel Hernández Huerta got the call from the elderly lady at a basket shop in Rosarito, he was skeptical. Probably just another gringo looking for a weaver to make a bunch of cheap goods, he thought. He arranged a meeting in a parking lot, and when he saw that Chaa was Asian, not American, his wariness grew. What was this guy really up to? Hernández pretended not to speak or understand any English. He listened as Chaa explained to the translator that he was an artist looking for a professional weaver who could collaborate on his art pieces. Eventually, Hernández decided that Chaa was harmless, maybe even interesting.
“Now Angel’s like a brother. We’ve been working together six or seven years,” Chaa says, patting the husky artisan on the back
But finding Hernández took much longer than that one parking-lot introduction.
Twelve years ago, Chaa stopped liking the art he’d been making. He was becoming known for his ancient-artifact-inspired work, but it was starting to feel fake. He wanted a more direct connection to primitive peoples and their art. While meditating in the desert one day, he got his answer: Go to the Amazon.
“I was, like, Amazon dot-com? What? Why?” he says.
Eventually, the voice in his head made it clear that he should go to the Amazon jungle. A few months later, he bought a one-way ticket, packed a backpack and made the trip. At first, he was interested in investigating the “art instinct.” He wanted to know if primitive people had an inclination to make and own art, or if it was ingrained through economics and other external influences.
“I didn’t have to go around asking that question, though, because they had hanging art in their house,” he says. “I asked, ‘What is the function?’ And it’s just beautiful—that is the function. So, I got my answer the first week.”
Chaa wandered from village to village, witnessing what had become of the indigenous peoples’ way of life, which had been devastated by the Brazilian government’s pursuit of the Amazon’s natural resources.
The Brazilian military wasn’t exactly accommodating—Chaa managed to get himself arrested and put in a makeshift prison. He escaped, but was shot with a pellet gun in the process. He calls getting shot “the big accident” that ultimately helped him find his way.
“I thought, ‘This is so bad; this is so, so bad. And I cannot do anything about this reality. What can I do?’” he recalls.
He left the Amazon knowing he had to make art that would tell the story of the plight of the indigenous people. He tried a couple of different methods before settling on weaving, a skill he’d seen on display in the villages he visited. With no background in textiles, he taught himself traditional weaving techniques but replaced the geometric patterns with portraiture and other real-life images. The process, though, took too long. His hands were starting to cramp and he couldn’t do the work himself or find anyone in L.A. willing to help. So, he went looking for a weaver and a better technique in Mexico.
The result was stunning. With Hernández by his side, Chaa is able to make large-scale weavings that, from afar, look as well-done as a Renaissance painting. Close up, viewers see that the images are created through carefully woven colored fibers, similar to the those found in baskets. An exhibition of the work is on view at the Universidad Tecnologica de Tijuana through April 29.
Chaa’s been weaving for a decade now, but his idea for the peace-sign sculpture required learning a new skill: welding. Because of his experience with weaving, he knew he could do it as long as he found the right teacher.
Victor Chavez has run a successful welding shop and storefront in Rosarito for 12 years. At the height of his business, back when tourism was booming, he had 40 workers in his factory making everything from custom gates to those giant, familiar ants made of welded rebar and rocks. Chavez is actually working on a book about the ants—he claims his shop was the first to carry them, and they’ve since become one of the most popular Mexican souvenirs.
Chaa and Hernández knew Chavez was their guy. They showed him the drawing of the sculpture and asked if it was possible. Chavez didn’t know, but he was willing to try.
“Art, I start with Chaa,” Chavez says proudly. “Before I made artisan things for tourists. I do real art with him. It’s different when you’re making art. It’s different than the things I normally make. When you’re making art, you don’t want to stop, you know?”
Chavez says Hernández learned to weld in three days. Chaa’s getting it, too, and he’s teaching himself how to galvanize steel because he wants more control over the end result. The ragtag team has made three small-scale hand sculptures so far, and they estimate that about 1,000 hours were spent on each one.
“Even with my weaving pieces, people say it’s between art and insanity,” Chaa says, holding up one of the hands. “This is really insane.”
Back at the park near the border, Hernández tells me he might like welding more than weaving. He doesn’t mind staying up all night with Chavez and Chaa working on the hands. He and Chavez both say the project is the biggest, most exciting thing they’ve ever worked on. And they’re starting to hate the dolphin sculpture almost as much as Chaa does.
“A lot of Mexican people, we don’t want that thing,” Hernández says. “It’s so sad for me; the border line. It keeps going up and up, higher and higher. So, we need to do something nice to break that feeling.”
Jorge Conde, director of cultural affairs at the Universidad Tecnologica de Tijuana, is somewhat of a bigwig in the Tijuana art scene. He says he’s behind “La Mano de la Paz” 100 percent.
“I really love the location of the piece,” he says as he shows Chaa’s exhibition, which he curated. “The concept is very important to say, ‘Latin America is a continent of peace.’ And it won’t be kitsch at all. Not in the hands of Chaa.”
Conde stands back from one of Chaa’s large-scale pieces, a woven portrait of a nude woman with her back to the viewer. “This one is my favorite. Just look at it, see the shadow on her back?”
Conde will be a driving force behind getting the necessary permits and approval for removing the dolphins and mounting “La Mano de la Paz.” He’s joined forces with Martina Montenegro, director of the arts nonprofit Casa de Cultura Playas, who’s also a fan of the project.
“It’s very important because it’s related to hope, peace and fraternity between two countries,” Montenegro says. “The fence has a very negative impact, when you’re talking about two countries that are supposed to be friends. This is not the way you treat your friends.”
Funding for the project will come through a Kickstarter campaign. The team is hoping to raise $50,000 through crowd-sourcing, offering small versions of the sculpture and things like T-shirts and hoodies in exchange for higher bids; they say they’ll secure the rest of the funding through grants and private donations. If enough money is raised, Chaa, Hernández and Chavez will begin work on the full-size version of the hand this summer. They hope to have the piece done and installed by the end of the year.
The biggest hurdle, though, could be figuring out who has jurisdiction in the park.
“That’s a good question,” laughs Margarita Diaz, director of the nonprofit Proyecto Fronterizo de Educación Ambiental. “The land is everyone’s and no one’s.”
Diaz, another supporter of “La Mano de la Paz,” says the land is being transferred from state to city property and that her nonprofit, which was selected by a dozen nonprofits to represent them, has submitted a formal request to have the land turned over to them. She says that since Mexican President Felipe Calderón and his wife came to visit Playas de Tijuana in 2010, demanding the region be redeveloped, the state stepped in and did a lot of quick construction—including adding the dolphin sculpture—without first checking with the community.
“It’s a mess,” Diaz says. “And no one likes those dolphins. They’re falling apart and dangerous. I want to rip them down with my bare hands.”
Getting the Instituto Municipal de Cultura y Arte (IMAC), the organization that oversees Tijuana’s public-art program, on their side could be a challenge, too. Elsa Arnaiz Rosas, director of IMAC, says she enjoys the present art.
“I’ve seen the dolphins, and I know they do need maintenance, but I think they’re lovely,” she says. “I wouldn’t want to see the sculpture go.”
On the way back from touring Chaa’s art show at the university, the “La Mano de la Paz” team is spread out in a big van. Conde slows the vehicle after it merges onto one of Tijuana’s main highways and points toward two huge construction projects near El Trompo, Tijuana’s children’s museum.
“That’s going to be the Human Rights Museum,” he says. “And that will be the Centro Estatal de Las Artes, a new art center.”
Chavez smiles and says that things in Mexico are starting to improve. He’s seen his business drop by more than 80 percent since drug-war violence erupted a few years ago and tourism plummeted, but he hopes things will get better.
“How long do you think before Americans forget all this violence stuff and come back?” he asks. “I think one, maybe two years. I think ‘La Mano de la Paz’ could help. Peace—we have a lot to learn here in Mexico, but this sculpture could be a start.”
http://www.sdcitybeat.com/sandiego/article-10316-one-giant-gesture-la.html
March 21, 2012
by Kinsee Morlan
Standing at the western end of the United States / Mexico border fence is like being plopped into the middle of an awkward conversation between Frida Kahlo and Dick Cheney. Nowhere are the differences between the two cultures more apparent.
During the past few years, Playas de Tijuana has undergone a facelift. A nice, new wooden boardwalk runs alongside the beach, businesses are popping up and a handful of noisy vendors—hawking fresh coconuts, churros and frozen treats—pitch their goods. The bullring hovers in the distance as for-sale, fighting roosters run freely around a dusty lot nearby. Tourists and locals frequent the revamped park (recently renamed Parque del Mar, although locals don’t call it that), some to snap photos, others to take advantage of cell-phone signals that don’t always recognize the precise location of the international boundary. A large fiberglass sculpture of dolphins frolicking in the sea has been placed in the middle of a concrete slab in the park, just feet away from the fence.
On the U.S. side of the border, signs of new construction are visible, too. A huge crane casts a shadow across the fence. It’s parked a few feet in front of a temporary construction platform that stretches out into the Pacific Ocean. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is in the middle of replacing the old border fence—a rusted, ragtag wall made of recycled helicopter landing pads from the Gulf War—with a much higher, sturdier barrier. A new tower structure, complete with what appear to be video cameras, adds to the militarized feeling—one of the reasons few folks visit the surrounding state park these days. But no matter how high the fence is or how many Border Patrol agents sit at the ready, it all seems futile—the fence still ends abruptly in the ocean, met by the vastness of the sea.
Artists have already responded to the new fence, covering its brown, oxidized steel columns with white messages and images commenting on, and questioning the need for, a higher fence. One artist has taken the iconic street sign that warns freeway drivers about immigrant families darting across the road, flipped the image on its side and armed the father, who’s pulling a woman and child forward, with a small bundle of balloons.
“This should be a very, very important place, but it’s like nothing is here to let you know,” Youn Woo Chaa says, squinting in the afternoon sun as he looks out over the border fence. “It’s a little strange. And the dolphin piece, why is that here? It doesn’t make sense for me as an artist.”
Chaa, a Korean artist with long black dreads dangling down his back, first set foot on the site more than 15 years ago. It was different then—not as developed on either side— and he remembers being astounded by the openness of the border. Born in Seoul, his idea of an international border came from the one separating South Korea from North Korea. “You cannot cross through that border,” he laughs. “Maybe if you’re a 007 secret agent or something.”
The closest Chaa ever got to his hometown border was the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Three years of military service is required in South Korea (up to 10 years is mandatory in the North), and Chaa was stationed in the DMZ for a short time before too many deaths, mostly caused by friendly fire, exploding mines and other accidents, forced a commander to relocate his unit, Chaa says.
Chaa eventually married a woman from the United States and moved to Los Angeles. He liked the idea of being able to cross an international border whenever he wanted with relative ease—no mines or gunfire—so he started making regular trips to Tijuana. He began feeling strong connections to the Mexican people. The poverty in the region reminded him of Korea in the ’60s, and though he didn’t speak Spanish, he felt as though Mexican people understood him and vice versa.
“It’s like I can open the curtains to their minds,” he says. “I know who they truly are, what they want and how to talk to them. I feel much closer to Korean people when I’m here in Mexico.”
The language barrier is partially responsible for giving Chaa his big idea. He noticed that when Mexicans said hello to him, they often nodded their heads and threw up a quick peace sign, as if trying to communicate friendliness without having to understand words. The image stuck with him, and while visiting the border fence in Playas about a year ago, he suddenly knew exactly what he needed to do.
“La Mano de la Paz", a giant hand making a peace sign—that’s what the park needed. Nothing too kitschy or corny. Something elegant and interactive with a water feature at the base of the sculpture that misted, creating a rainbow at certain angles, plus an interactive component that responded to noise by generating the image of a snowflake on a circular LCD screen below the sculpture’s elevated base. The hand would need to be at least 15 feet high and made of galvanized steel wires, welded and wound together in a way that made each finger end in its own unique fingerprint.
“After I got the idea, I got stuck on it, and I started hating those stupid dolphins even more,” Chaa says. “That sculpture is falling apart, anyway. It’s fine for some hotel or resort front, but not here. The border is right there, you know?”
When Angel Hernández Huerta got the call from the elderly lady at a basket shop in Rosarito, he was skeptical. Probably just another gringo looking for a weaver to make a bunch of cheap goods, he thought. He arranged a meeting in a parking lot, and when he saw that Chaa was Asian, not American, his wariness grew. What was this guy really up to? Hernández pretended not to speak or understand any English. He listened as Chaa explained to the translator that he was an artist looking for a professional weaver who could collaborate on his art pieces. Eventually, Hernández decided that Chaa was harmless, maybe even interesting.
“Now Angel’s like a brother. We’ve been working together six or seven years,” Chaa says, patting the husky artisan on the back
But finding Hernández took much longer than that one parking-lot introduction.
Twelve years ago, Chaa stopped liking the art he’d been making. He was becoming known for his ancient-artifact-inspired work, but it was starting to feel fake. He wanted a more direct connection to primitive peoples and their art. While meditating in the desert one day, he got his answer: Go to the Amazon.
“I was, like, Amazon dot-com? What? Why?” he says.
Eventually, the voice in his head made it clear that he should go to the Amazon jungle. A few months later, he bought a one-way ticket, packed a backpack and made the trip. At first, he was interested in investigating the “art instinct.” He wanted to know if primitive people had an inclination to make and own art, or if it was ingrained through economics and other external influences.
“I didn’t have to go around asking that question, though, because they had hanging art in their house,” he says. “I asked, ‘What is the function?’ And it’s just beautiful—that is the function. So, I got my answer the first week.”
Chaa wandered from village to village, witnessing what had become of the indigenous peoples’ way of life, which had been devastated by the Brazilian government’s pursuit of the Amazon’s natural resources.
The Brazilian military wasn’t exactly accommodating—Chaa managed to get himself arrested and put in a makeshift prison. He escaped, but was shot with a pellet gun in the process. He calls getting shot “the big accident” that ultimately helped him find his way.
“I thought, ‘This is so bad; this is so, so bad. And I cannot do anything about this reality. What can I do?’” he recalls.
He left the Amazon knowing he had to make art that would tell the story of the plight of the indigenous people. He tried a couple of different methods before settling on weaving, a skill he’d seen on display in the villages he visited. With no background in textiles, he taught himself traditional weaving techniques but replaced the geometric patterns with portraiture and other real-life images. The process, though, took too long. His hands were starting to cramp and he couldn’t do the work himself or find anyone in L.A. willing to help. So, he went looking for a weaver and a better technique in Mexico.
The result was stunning. With Hernández by his side, Chaa is able to make large-scale weavings that, from afar, look as well-done as a Renaissance painting. Close up, viewers see that the images are created through carefully woven colored fibers, similar to the those found in baskets. An exhibition of the work is on view at the Universidad Tecnologica de Tijuana through April 29.
Chaa’s been weaving for a decade now, but his idea for the peace-sign sculpture required learning a new skill: welding. Because of his experience with weaving, he knew he could do it as long as he found the right teacher.
Victor Chavez has run a successful welding shop and storefront in Rosarito for 12 years. At the height of his business, back when tourism was booming, he had 40 workers in his factory making everything from custom gates to those giant, familiar ants made of welded rebar and rocks. Chavez is actually working on a book about the ants—he claims his shop was the first to carry them, and they’ve since become one of the most popular Mexican souvenirs.
Chaa and Hernández knew Chavez was their guy. They showed him the drawing of the sculpture and asked if it was possible. Chavez didn’t know, but he was willing to try.
“Art, I start with Chaa,” Chavez says proudly. “Before I made artisan things for tourists. I do real art with him. It’s different when you’re making art. It’s different than the things I normally make. When you’re making art, you don’t want to stop, you know?”
Chavez says Hernández learned to weld in three days. Chaa’s getting it, too, and he’s teaching himself how to galvanize steel because he wants more control over the end result. The ragtag team has made three small-scale hand sculptures so far, and they estimate that about 1,000 hours were spent on each one.
“Even with my weaving pieces, people say it’s between art and insanity,” Chaa says, holding up one of the hands. “This is really insane.”
Back at the park near the border, Hernández tells me he might like welding more than weaving. He doesn’t mind staying up all night with Chavez and Chaa working on the hands. He and Chavez both say the project is the biggest, most exciting thing they’ve ever worked on. And they’re starting to hate the dolphin sculpture almost as much as Chaa does.
“A lot of Mexican people, we don’t want that thing,” Hernández says. “It’s so sad for me; the border line. It keeps going up and up, higher and higher. So, we need to do something nice to break that feeling.”
Jorge Conde, director of cultural affairs at the Universidad Tecnologica de Tijuana, is somewhat of a bigwig in the Tijuana art scene. He says he’s behind “La Mano de la Paz” 100 percent.
“I really love the location of the piece,” he says as he shows Chaa’s exhibition, which he curated. “The concept is very important to say, ‘Latin America is a continent of peace.’ And it won’t be kitsch at all. Not in the hands of Chaa.”
Conde stands back from one of Chaa’s large-scale pieces, a woven portrait of a nude woman with her back to the viewer. “This one is my favorite. Just look at it, see the shadow on her back?”
Conde will be a driving force behind getting the necessary permits and approval for removing the dolphins and mounting “La Mano de la Paz.” He’s joined forces with Martina Montenegro, director of the arts nonprofit Casa de Cultura Playas, who’s also a fan of the project.
“It’s very important because it’s related to hope, peace and fraternity between two countries,” Montenegro says. “The fence has a very negative impact, when you’re talking about two countries that are supposed to be friends. This is not the way you treat your friends.”
Funding for the project will come through a Kickstarter campaign. The team is hoping to raise $50,000 through crowd-sourcing, offering small versions of the sculpture and things like T-shirts and hoodies in exchange for higher bids; they say they’ll secure the rest of the funding through grants and private donations. If enough money is raised, Chaa, Hernández and Chavez will begin work on the full-size version of the hand this summer. They hope to have the piece done and installed by the end of the year.
The biggest hurdle, though, could be figuring out who has jurisdiction in the park.
“That’s a good question,” laughs Margarita Diaz, director of the nonprofit Proyecto Fronterizo de Educación Ambiental. “The land is everyone’s and no one’s.”
Diaz, another supporter of “La Mano de la Paz,” says the land is being transferred from state to city property and that her nonprofit, which was selected by a dozen nonprofits to represent them, has submitted a formal request to have the land turned over to them. She says that since Mexican President Felipe Calderón and his wife came to visit Playas de Tijuana in 2010, demanding the region be redeveloped, the state stepped in and did a lot of quick construction—including adding the dolphin sculpture—without first checking with the community.
“It’s a mess,” Diaz says. “And no one likes those dolphins. They’re falling apart and dangerous. I want to rip them down with my bare hands.”
Getting the Instituto Municipal de Cultura y Arte (IMAC), the organization that oversees Tijuana’s public-art program, on their side could be a challenge, too. Elsa Arnaiz Rosas, director of IMAC, says she enjoys the present art.
“I’ve seen the dolphins, and I know they do need maintenance, but I think they’re lovely,” she says. “I wouldn’t want to see the sculpture go.”
On the way back from touring Chaa’s art show at the university, the “La Mano de la Paz” team is spread out in a big van. Conde slows the vehicle after it merges onto one of Tijuana’s main highways and points toward two huge construction projects near El Trompo, Tijuana’s children’s museum.
“That’s going to be the Human Rights Museum,” he says. “And that will be the Centro Estatal de Las Artes, a new art center.”
Chavez smiles and says that things in Mexico are starting to improve. He’s seen his business drop by more than 80 percent since drug-war violence erupted a few years ago and tourism plummeted, but he hopes things will get better.
“How long do you think before Americans forget all this violence stuff and come back?” he asks. “I think one, maybe two years. I think ‘La Mano de la Paz’ could help. Peace—we have a lot to learn here in Mexico, but this sculpture could be a start.”
http://www.sdcitybeat.com/sandiego/article-10316-one-giant-gesture-la.html
Monday, February 20, 2012
Pot-smuggling tunnels in Tijuana grow more elaborate
McClatchy / Boston Herald
February 20, 2012
by Tim Johnson
TIJUANA, Mexico _ When smuggling goes smoothly for the marijuana division of the huge Sinaloa Cartel, cross-border deliveries unfold with clockwork precision.
Harvested marijuana arrives in plastic-wrapped bales to a depot hidden among the rundown warehouses on the Mexican side of the concrete U.S. border fence.
Once enough marijuana is collected, workers drop the vacuum-packed bales through shafts leading to the ever-more-elaborate tunnels that cross underneath the border through the clay-laden soil.
U.S. agents have been waging war against the tunnels for years, using a range of high-tech devices from ground-penetrating radar to seismic sensors to find and destroy them. But despite the efforts, drug smugglers continue to build the tunnels, often spending $1 million to dig a single pathway equipped with lighting, forced-air ventilation, water pumps, shoring on walls and hydraulic elevators.
Lately, new tunnels have included railways. The bales move on electric mining carts with hand throttles that roll at up to 15 mph.
"A tunnel represents an incursion into the U.S., and it’s a national security event," said Jose M. Garcia, who oversees the federal multi-agency San Diego Tunnel Task Force.
The location of the tunnels helps explain why agents have such difficulty finding them. The area where the most advanced tunnels have been found is adjacent to the Tijuana international airport, where scores of planes take off and land daily. Nearby warehouses buzz with legitimate activity.
"All that noise from the airport is a great advantage to them," said Victor Clark Alfaro, an anthropologist and human rights activist in Tijuana who also lectures at San Diego State University. "This border is perforated like an anthill."
U.S. officials say they have found more than 160 tunnels since 1990 along the 1,954-mile border, mostly in the stretch of Mexico that borders Arizona and California. In the past 15 months, U.S. agents have busted increasingly sophisticated tunnels.
Geography and geology make the intensely urban Tijuana-San Diego corridor ideal for the tunnels. Tijuana is Mexico’s sixth largest city, with 1.3 million people, while San Diego is the eighth largest U.S. city, with several interstate highways. Moreover, soil here has a composition that’s easy to dig.
In a two-week span last November, U.S. agents shut down two sophisticated tunnels that led from an area near Tijuana’s airport to the Otay Mesa industrial park on the U.S. side. Some 49 tons of marijuana were seized. The discoveries marked the second year in a row in which elaborate tunnels were found within a mile of the busy Otay Mesa border crossing.
U.S. officials are sensitive about a public view that they aren’t finding the tunnels.
"Understandably, American citizens react to news stories about the discovery of a large tunnel, complete with plumbing, lights, ventilation and a rudimentary railway system, with a mixture of surprise, indignation, alarm and dismay," Laura E. Duffy, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California, told the Senate drug caucus last June.
"How, they ask, can such a sophisticated illegal structure be constructed right under our noses?"
Part of the difficulty, she said, is that drug traffickers use horizontal drills that cost up to $75,000 and can cut without disturbing topsoil. The tunnels run anywhere from 30 to 90 feet deep, avoiding greater depths, which would hit underground water tables.
Drug traffickers also have been adept at setting up bogus U.S. companies to rent space in bustling Otay Mesa and its 600 warehouses and 12,000 businesses. Many firms are unaware of activities by their neighbors, perhaps noticing only if there’s truck traffic at unusual hours.
Garcia said that even with devices such as seismic sensors, a majority of tunnel busts came from tip-offs by informants or suspicious warehouse operators.
Big tunnels are thought to be the work of the Sinaloa Cartel, which has seized control of Tijuana from the local Arellano-Felix cartel after years of bloody conflict and now is operating in tandem with remnants of the group.
Sinaloa operatives employ mining engineers and architects to help construct their tunnels, while keeping knowledge of locations to as few people as possible.
Experts on the San Diego Tunnel Task Force say "some tunnel excavators in Mexico are killed when the job is done to prevent them from spreading the word on the location," Duffy told senators.
Marijuana growers are turning to ever-larger plantations to meet the capacity of bigger tunnels. Last July, soldiers found a 300-acre screened and irrigated marijuana plantation near San Quintin, 150 miles south of Tijuana, which was four times larger than any such site that had been seized before. Eight months earlier, soldiers seized 148 tons _ 134 metric tons _ of pot in Tijuana, a record.
U.S. and Mexican agents say that tunnel digging, using pneumatic spades, generally is limited to teams of six or seven men. They live at the Tijuana site where the tunnel begins, and excavation is timed to conclude with the harvesting of marijuana crops in late summer and early autumn, so there’s little time for the tunnel to sit idle and be detected.
"The process is tedious," Garcia said, involving working day and night and lugging bags of dirt along the shaft for removal.
But even with million-dollar investments, Garcia said, the tunnel builders "recoup that by making just one trip, given the value of the narcotics we’ve seized."
Most bales of marijuana carry stickers, often fanciful images such as Donald Duck, Captain America, Budweiser or Homer Simpson. The stickers indicate ownership and destination, U.S. agents said.
Tunnel operatives make sure to recoup their investments first.
"The way it works is the tunnel guys build it, so their stuff gets through first. Once it gets through, they start hiring out" to other drug organizations, said Louis Gomez, the supervisor of the San Diego Tunnel Task Force, which includes agents of Customs and Border Protection, the Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement.
Tunnel shafts on the Tijuana side that a McClatchy Newspapers journalist visited included one hidden in the floor of a walk-in freezer in a warehouse that’s only two football fields away from warehouses on the U.S. side of the border.
Another shaft was hidden in a unique fashion: "It was the entire floor of a bathroom that went up and down, and they used a hydraulic lift like you’d see in a service station," Garcia said.
Tijuana Police Chief Alberto Capella Ibarra said the tunnels kept growing in sophistication.
"It speaks of the strength and economic power of the cartels, because these tunnels are a huge investment for them," Capella said.
http://news.bostonherald.com/news/international/americas/view.bg?&articleid=1405102&format=&page=1&listingType=intamer#articleFull
February 20, 2012
by Tim Johnson
TIJUANA, Mexico _ When smuggling goes smoothly for the marijuana division of the huge Sinaloa Cartel, cross-border deliveries unfold with clockwork precision.
Harvested marijuana arrives in plastic-wrapped bales to a depot hidden among the rundown warehouses on the Mexican side of the concrete U.S. border fence.
Once enough marijuana is collected, workers drop the vacuum-packed bales through shafts leading to the ever-more-elaborate tunnels that cross underneath the border through the clay-laden soil.
U.S. agents have been waging war against the tunnels for years, using a range of high-tech devices from ground-penetrating radar to seismic sensors to find and destroy them. But despite the efforts, drug smugglers continue to build the tunnels, often spending $1 million to dig a single pathway equipped with lighting, forced-air ventilation, water pumps, shoring on walls and hydraulic elevators.
Lately, new tunnels have included railways. The bales move on electric mining carts with hand throttles that roll at up to 15 mph.
"A tunnel represents an incursion into the U.S., and it’s a national security event," said Jose M. Garcia, who oversees the federal multi-agency San Diego Tunnel Task Force.
The location of the tunnels helps explain why agents have such difficulty finding them. The area where the most advanced tunnels have been found is adjacent to the Tijuana international airport, where scores of planes take off and land daily. Nearby warehouses buzz with legitimate activity.
"All that noise from the airport is a great advantage to them," said Victor Clark Alfaro, an anthropologist and human rights activist in Tijuana who also lectures at San Diego State University. "This border is perforated like an anthill."
U.S. officials say they have found more than 160 tunnels since 1990 along the 1,954-mile border, mostly in the stretch of Mexico that borders Arizona and California. In the past 15 months, U.S. agents have busted increasingly sophisticated tunnels.
Geography and geology make the intensely urban Tijuana-San Diego corridor ideal for the tunnels. Tijuana is Mexico’s sixth largest city, with 1.3 million people, while San Diego is the eighth largest U.S. city, with several interstate highways. Moreover, soil here has a composition that’s easy to dig.
In a two-week span last November, U.S. agents shut down two sophisticated tunnels that led from an area near Tijuana’s airport to the Otay Mesa industrial park on the U.S. side. Some 49 tons of marijuana were seized. The discoveries marked the second year in a row in which elaborate tunnels were found within a mile of the busy Otay Mesa border crossing.
U.S. officials are sensitive about a public view that they aren’t finding the tunnels.
"Understandably, American citizens react to news stories about the discovery of a large tunnel, complete with plumbing, lights, ventilation and a rudimentary railway system, with a mixture of surprise, indignation, alarm and dismay," Laura E. Duffy, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California, told the Senate drug caucus last June.
"How, they ask, can such a sophisticated illegal structure be constructed right under our noses?"
Part of the difficulty, she said, is that drug traffickers use horizontal drills that cost up to $75,000 and can cut without disturbing topsoil. The tunnels run anywhere from 30 to 90 feet deep, avoiding greater depths, which would hit underground water tables.
Drug traffickers also have been adept at setting up bogus U.S. companies to rent space in bustling Otay Mesa and its 600 warehouses and 12,000 businesses. Many firms are unaware of activities by their neighbors, perhaps noticing only if there’s truck traffic at unusual hours.
Garcia said that even with devices such as seismic sensors, a majority of tunnel busts came from tip-offs by informants or suspicious warehouse operators.
Big tunnels are thought to be the work of the Sinaloa Cartel, which has seized control of Tijuana from the local Arellano-Felix cartel after years of bloody conflict and now is operating in tandem with remnants of the group.
Sinaloa operatives employ mining engineers and architects to help construct their tunnels, while keeping knowledge of locations to as few people as possible.
Experts on the San Diego Tunnel Task Force say "some tunnel excavators in Mexico are killed when the job is done to prevent them from spreading the word on the location," Duffy told senators.
Marijuana growers are turning to ever-larger plantations to meet the capacity of bigger tunnels. Last July, soldiers found a 300-acre screened and irrigated marijuana plantation near San Quintin, 150 miles south of Tijuana, which was four times larger than any such site that had been seized before. Eight months earlier, soldiers seized 148 tons _ 134 metric tons _ of pot in Tijuana, a record.
U.S. and Mexican agents say that tunnel digging, using pneumatic spades, generally is limited to teams of six or seven men. They live at the Tijuana site where the tunnel begins, and excavation is timed to conclude with the harvesting of marijuana crops in late summer and early autumn, so there’s little time for the tunnel to sit idle and be detected.
"The process is tedious," Garcia said, involving working day and night and lugging bags of dirt along the shaft for removal.
But even with million-dollar investments, Garcia said, the tunnel builders "recoup that by making just one trip, given the value of the narcotics we’ve seized."
Most bales of marijuana carry stickers, often fanciful images such as Donald Duck, Captain America, Budweiser or Homer Simpson. The stickers indicate ownership and destination, U.S. agents said.
Tunnel operatives make sure to recoup their investments first.
"The way it works is the tunnel guys build it, so their stuff gets through first. Once it gets through, they start hiring out" to other drug organizations, said Louis Gomez, the supervisor of the San Diego Tunnel Task Force, which includes agents of Customs and Border Protection, the Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement.
Tunnel shafts on the Tijuana side that a McClatchy Newspapers journalist visited included one hidden in the floor of a walk-in freezer in a warehouse that’s only two football fields away from warehouses on the U.S. side of the border.
Another shaft was hidden in a unique fashion: "It was the entire floor of a bathroom that went up and down, and they used a hydraulic lift like you’d see in a service station," Garcia said.
Tijuana Police Chief Alberto Capella Ibarra said the tunnels kept growing in sophistication.
"It speaks of the strength and economic power of the cartels, because these tunnels are a huge investment for them," Capella said.
http://news.bostonherald.com/news/international/americas/view.bg?&articleid=1405102&format=&page=1&listingType=intamer#articleFull
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Border fence blocks access to important historical site
San Diego City Beat
December 21, 2011
by Kinsee Morlan
Before fences marked the U.S.-Mexico border, a series of small obelisks dotted the landscape and identified the line separating the two countries. Fifty-two monuments were erected between 1849 and 1857, and then, due to population growth in the border region and questions about where the international border actually was, more than 200 more monuments were built from 1891 to 1894, bringing the total to 258.
One of the original 52 monuments, Border Monument 258, still stands inside Border Field State Park, just a few hundred feet from the Pacific Ocean. It was the first monument built after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War and set the international boundary. Historian Charles W. Hughes is among those who believe that two time capsules are buried under Monument 258—one placed in 1840 when the temporary monument went up and one possibly placed in 1851 when the permanent structure was built.
Made of a block of polished marble, Monument 258 was a hotspot for tourists on their way to or back from Tijuana. Some visitors would even chip off a piece of the marble and take it with them as a souvenir.
“If you came to San Diego between the 1850s up into the early 1900s, it was one of the places to go,” said Hughes, who published an article on the history of the monument in Journal of San Diego History in 2007 and considers it to be one of the oldest and most important historical sites in San Diego. “It was like going out to Cabrillo National Monument.”
Hughes said the U.S. military used Border Field State Park as a training ground and tested drones, or unmanned aircraft, just before World War II, which dramatically decreased visitations to the park. Since then, the park has remained largely underused, except by people separated by immigration status who continue to use the park as a way to meet up with family members and friends on the other side of the border. In 1971, First Lady Pat Nixon dedicated the land surrounding Monument 258 as Friendship Park, a symbol of the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico and recognizing the binational use of the land.
Last week on CityBeat’s Canvassed blog, we reported that a replacement fence had gone up at Border Field State Park, completely blocking access to Border Monument 258 from the U.S. side by three feet. The new fence, which was sited by the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC), replaces the original border fence, which had bisected Monument 258, allowing access from both sides of the border.
Even in 2008, when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) erected a double fence at Friendship Park, activists with Friends of Friendship Park made sure access to the monument was maintained, even if limited by a gateway that was locked outside of set hours. Members of Friends of Friendship Park said they were shocked and disappointed when they saw the new location of the fence last week.
“Those in the U.S. have a right to access the monument without having to get in their car, cross the border and drive to Las Playas,” said Nathan Trotter of Friends of Friendship Park. “I think it’s a crime for the IBWC or Border Patrol to deprive us of an object of such historical interest.”
Bruce Coons, executive director of Save Our Heritage Organisation, agreed. “First of all, it’s American territory, and it belongs to us,” Coons said. “It’s really asinine to put the monument on the other side of the fence.”
IBWC spokesperson Sally Spener said the commission has yet to receive any complaints about the location of the replacement fence, but if it does, she said IBWC might be willing to relocate the fence.
“In regards to Monument 258, we are certainly willing to work with the community if they have specific concerns because of the unique nature and the unique role that Monument 258 has played in border history,” she said.
Coons and Trotter said they weren’t aware the fence was going to be relocated until construction began last week, so they’ve just begun lodging complaints with IBWC and elected officials.
“No notifications went out, so nobody in the community knew about this,” Trotter said. “So, I guess it’s good to hear [IBWC] might be willing to negotiate with us in moving the fence and allowing access to the monument again.”
James Brown, an architect and Friends of Friendship Park volunteer, said that IBWC isn’t allowed to build anything within three feet of the monument. He said even with that requirement, there’s a design solution.
“I wish I would have known earlier about the decision to relocate the fence,” Brown said. “The solution is simple—they just need to put the posts three feet away, and they can surround the monument with all the mesh they want.”
http://www.sdcitybeat.com/sandiego/article-9964-border-fence-blocks-access-to-important-historical-site.html
December 21, 2011
by Kinsee Morlan
Before fences marked the U.S.-Mexico border, a series of small obelisks dotted the landscape and identified the line separating the two countries. Fifty-two monuments were erected between 1849 and 1857, and then, due to population growth in the border region and questions about where the international border actually was, more than 200 more monuments were built from 1891 to 1894, bringing the total to 258.
One of the original 52 monuments, Border Monument 258, still stands inside Border Field State Park, just a few hundred feet from the Pacific Ocean. It was the first monument built after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War and set the international boundary. Historian Charles W. Hughes is among those who believe that two time capsules are buried under Monument 258—one placed in 1840 when the temporary monument went up and one possibly placed in 1851 when the permanent structure was built.
Made of a block of polished marble, Monument 258 was a hotspot for tourists on their way to or back from Tijuana. Some visitors would even chip off a piece of the marble and take it with them as a souvenir.
“If you came to San Diego between the 1850s up into the early 1900s, it was one of the places to go,” said Hughes, who published an article on the history of the monument in Journal of San Diego History in 2007 and considers it to be one of the oldest and most important historical sites in San Diego. “It was like going out to Cabrillo National Monument.”
Hughes said the U.S. military used Border Field State Park as a training ground and tested drones, or unmanned aircraft, just before World War II, which dramatically decreased visitations to the park. Since then, the park has remained largely underused, except by people separated by immigration status who continue to use the park as a way to meet up with family members and friends on the other side of the border. In 1971, First Lady Pat Nixon dedicated the land surrounding Monument 258 as Friendship Park, a symbol of the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico and recognizing the binational use of the land.
Last week on CityBeat’s Canvassed blog, we reported that a replacement fence had gone up at Border Field State Park, completely blocking access to Border Monument 258 from the U.S. side by three feet. The new fence, which was sited by the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC), replaces the original border fence, which had bisected Monument 258, allowing access from both sides of the border.
Even in 2008, when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) erected a double fence at Friendship Park, activists with Friends of Friendship Park made sure access to the monument was maintained, even if limited by a gateway that was locked outside of set hours. Members of Friends of Friendship Park said they were shocked and disappointed when they saw the new location of the fence last week.
“Those in the U.S. have a right to access the monument without having to get in their car, cross the border and drive to Las Playas,” said Nathan Trotter of Friends of Friendship Park. “I think it’s a crime for the IBWC or Border Patrol to deprive us of an object of such historical interest.”
Bruce Coons, executive director of Save Our Heritage Organisation, agreed. “First of all, it’s American territory, and it belongs to us,” Coons said. “It’s really asinine to put the monument on the other side of the fence.”
IBWC spokesperson Sally Spener said the commission has yet to receive any complaints about the location of the replacement fence, but if it does, she said IBWC might be willing to relocate the fence.
“In regards to Monument 258, we are certainly willing to work with the community if they have specific concerns because of the unique nature and the unique role that Monument 258 has played in border history,” she said.
Coons and Trotter said they weren’t aware the fence was going to be relocated until construction began last week, so they’ve just begun lodging complaints with IBWC and elected officials.
“No notifications went out, so nobody in the community knew about this,” Trotter said. “So, I guess it’s good to hear [IBWC] might be willing to negotiate with us in moving the fence and allowing access to the monument again.”
James Brown, an architect and Friends of Friendship Park volunteer, said that IBWC isn’t allowed to build anything within three feet of the monument. He said even with that requirement, there’s a design solution.
“I wish I would have known earlier about the decision to relocate the fence,” Brown said. “The solution is simple—they just need to put the posts three feet away, and they can surround the monument with all the mesh they want.”
http://www.sdcitybeat.com/sandiego/article-9964-border-fence-blocks-access-to-important-historical-site.html
Saturday, December 17, 2011
US-Mexico immigration: Even oceans have borders
BBC
December 16, 2011
By Valeria Perasso
The US government is erecting a fence in the ocean to divide California from Tijuana, Mexico. Immigration and environmental activists say it is a costly, dangerous endeavour that will do little to keep out unauthorised migrants.
On a sunny strip of beach south of San Diego, California, the US government is literally battling the tide of illegal immigration.
Border authorities are building a fence extending 300ft (91m) into the surf, in an effort to prevent would-be migrants from walking over the frontier from Mexico's Tijuana Beach to Imperial Beach, California, during low tide.
The US government's latest King Canute-like effort will make an existing fence longer, higher, tougher to scale and, officials say, more resilient to the tide.
'Operational need'
Border officials note that during November officers caught several undocumented migrants swimming in the Pacific Ocean or landing ashore in small fishing boats.
"There is a clear operational need for this development," says Michael Hance, field operation supervisor with the border patrol in the San Diego sector.
"The southern side of the border is densely populated and in the past many people found an easy way into the US through these beaches. We need physical infrastructure as well as border agents in the area."
But critics say the $4.3m (£2.79m) extension is unnecessary, noting that heavy surveillance near San Diego has driven most of the migrant flow eastward into the Arizona desert. And environmental activists fear the heavy metal barrier sunk into the ocean will harm marine life.
Meeting place
That physical infrastructure has interrupted the sandy landscape of the Tijuana and San Diego beaches since the early 1990s, when the first fence was built to run 22km inland from the Pacific shore.
On the beach, the fence is made of iron bars sunk into the sand, and further inland, the bars are replaced by graffiti-marred corrugated iron sheets, bent and torn by the marine wind.
The sections extending into the surf remain under construction, and today a visitor sees a pier constructed to allow heavy kit to pound support piles into the sand.
On the southern side of the wall, the Playa de Tijuana teems on weekends with families from the poor neighbourhoods along the border.
The beach is also a meeting place for friends and loved ones on either side of the border. Here, people chat and hug through the fence.
The latest $4.3m renovation, just under way, will extend the fence further into the ocean and increase its height to about 18ft (5.4m) from about 13ft, allowing it to protrude above the surface no matter the tide.
The steel poles holding up the wall will be treated with an anti-corrosion coating. The poles will also be given a slick coating to make them harder to climb.
The wall is scheduled to be completed in March and is expected to last 30 years.
'Symbolic move'
For all the expense and effort the government is throwing into fencing off the ocean, statistics show arrests in the area are already at an all-time low.
Border patrol agents detained 68,000 undocumented immigrants in 2010 in the San Diego sector, down from 630,000 in 1986, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency statistics.
Local immigration activists put the decline down to a steady increase in manned patrols and surveillance over the last six years.
"We don't understand why they are spending so much money here: it is just a symbolic move to say that they are actually doing something to prevent undocumented immigration," says Pedro Rios of the San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium.
"The new surf fence is being built in what is probably the area where the rate of border crossings has gone down most dramatically."
Wildlife affected
Furthermore, environmental organisations say the metal barrier in the water is an invasion of the ocean that will most certainly take its toll on the local fauna.
"The wall could block the circulation of species, especially surface marine species," says Matt Clark, spokesman for Defenders of Wildlife.
Dan Millis, borderlands team coordinator at the Sierra Club, says sections of the wall erected in the Arizona desert have had "a major effect on the migration patterns of desert species".
Architect Teddy Cruz of the University of California at San Diego predicts the fence will increase sedimentation and flooding in the Tijuana estuary.
"There are natural canyons in the region that cross the border without following political conventions," Mr Cruz says. "The effect will be worse for those http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifthat live in settlements on the Mexican side of the border, the waste from these settlements flows towards the estuary blocking water circulation."
The Border Patrol argues the surf fence's environmental impact will be minimal.
"Our experts have done environmental assessments and they did not find any evidence that the habitat will be damaged," says Mr Hance.
"We do what we have to do. And this project, both in terms of design and investment, is appropriate for the safety requirements in the San Diego area."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16164451
December 16, 2011
By Valeria Perasso
The US government is erecting a fence in the ocean to divide California from Tijuana, Mexico. Immigration and environmental activists say it is a costly, dangerous endeavour that will do little to keep out unauthorised migrants.
On a sunny strip of beach south of San Diego, California, the US government is literally battling the tide of illegal immigration.
Border authorities are building a fence extending 300ft (91m) into the surf, in an effort to prevent would-be migrants from walking over the frontier from Mexico's Tijuana Beach to Imperial Beach, California, during low tide.
The US government's latest King Canute-like effort will make an existing fence longer, higher, tougher to scale and, officials say, more resilient to the tide.
'Operational need'
Border officials note that during November officers caught several undocumented migrants swimming in the Pacific Ocean or landing ashore in small fishing boats.
"There is a clear operational need for this development," says Michael Hance, field operation supervisor with the border patrol in the San Diego sector.
"The southern side of the border is densely populated and in the past many people found an easy way into the US through these beaches. We need physical infrastructure as well as border agents in the area."
But critics say the $4.3m (£2.79m) extension is unnecessary, noting that heavy surveillance near San Diego has driven most of the migrant flow eastward into the Arizona desert. And environmental activists fear the heavy metal barrier sunk into the ocean will harm marine life.
Meeting place
That physical infrastructure has interrupted the sandy landscape of the Tijuana and San Diego beaches since the early 1990s, when the first fence was built to run 22km inland from the Pacific shore.
On the beach, the fence is made of iron bars sunk into the sand, and further inland, the bars are replaced by graffiti-marred corrugated iron sheets, bent and torn by the marine wind.
The sections extending into the surf remain under construction, and today a visitor sees a pier constructed to allow heavy kit to pound support piles into the sand.
On the southern side of the wall, the Playa de Tijuana teems on weekends with families from the poor neighbourhoods along the border.
The beach is also a meeting place for friends and loved ones on either side of the border. Here, people chat and hug through the fence.
The latest $4.3m renovation, just under way, will extend the fence further into the ocean and increase its height to about 18ft (5.4m) from about 13ft, allowing it to protrude above the surface no matter the tide.
The steel poles holding up the wall will be treated with an anti-corrosion coating. The poles will also be given a slick coating to make them harder to climb.
The wall is scheduled to be completed in March and is expected to last 30 years.
'Symbolic move'
For all the expense and effort the government is throwing into fencing off the ocean, statistics show arrests in the area are already at an all-time low.
Border patrol agents detained 68,000 undocumented immigrants in 2010 in the San Diego sector, down from 630,000 in 1986, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency statistics.
Local immigration activists put the decline down to a steady increase in manned patrols and surveillance over the last six years.
"We don't understand why they are spending so much money here: it is just a symbolic move to say that they are actually doing something to prevent undocumented immigration," says Pedro Rios of the San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium.
"The new surf fence is being built in what is probably the area where the rate of border crossings has gone down most dramatically."
Wildlife affected
Furthermore, environmental organisations say the metal barrier in the water is an invasion of the ocean that will most certainly take its toll on the local fauna.
"The wall could block the circulation of species, especially surface marine species," says Matt Clark, spokesman for Defenders of Wildlife.
Dan Millis, borderlands team coordinator at the Sierra Club, says sections of the wall erected in the Arizona desert have had "a major effect on the migration patterns of desert species".
Architect Teddy Cruz of the University of California at San Diego predicts the fence will increase sedimentation and flooding in the Tijuana estuary.
"There are natural canyons in the region that cross the border without following political conventions," Mr Cruz says. "The effect will be worse for those http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifthat live in settlements on the Mexican side of the border, the waste from these settlements flows towards the estuary blocking water circulation."
The Border Patrol argues the surf fence's environmental impact will be minimal.
"Our experts have done environmental assessments and they did not find any evidence that the habitat will be damaged," says Mr Hance.
"We do what we have to do. And this project, both in terms of design and investment, is appropriate for the safety requirements in the San Diego area."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16164451
Saturday, November 26, 2011
U.S. to extend border fence 300 feet into Pacific
Los Angeles Times
November 25, 2011
by Richard Marosi
Reporting from Imperial Beach— Pounding surf and corrosive sea air have stymied efforts for years to erect a sturdy fence at the westernmost edge of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Now, the U.S. Border Patrol is trying again, with a $4.3-million project that would extend a nearly quarter-mile barrier 300 feet into the Pacific Ocean and remake one of the more scenic spots on the border.
When completed early next year, a steel fence 18 feet tall will replace a teetering, gap-riddled barrier that did little to discourage people from crossing back and forth on a wide beach linking Tijuana and Imperial Beach.
The "Surf Fence Project" comes as the federal government winds down barrier-building projects that have fortified about 670 miles of the frontier in recent years. Fences have been built atop sand dunes and mountain slopes, through remote deserts and urban streetscapes.
Fortifying the border where it plunges into the Pacific, however, presents unique logistical challenges. Before construction even begins, a government contractor must build a long pier to hold a crane, which will pound the fence posts into the sand. On a recent day, people on the Tijuana side of the beach marveled at the temporary structure, which is under construction, mistakenly believing it would be used for fishing or for docking boats.
Though border fencing efforts have long drawn criticism, no significant opposition has emerged for the surf project, mainly because one kind of barrier or another has existed here since the early 1990s. A fence is necessary, border officials said, to block a gap that opens when the waters recede at low tide.
In the late 1980s and early '90s, hundreds of illegal immigrants would cross at a time and head toward the distant San Diego skyline. More recently, the beach became a popular spot for demonstrators protesting illegal immigration policies. Last year, a group of deported immigrants walked across the line in the sand at the border, in a symbolic protest march. Some of them threw rocks and bottles, said U.S. authorities.
"It still has the potential to be very dangerous, as beautiful as it is," said Assistant Chief Patrol Agent Bruce Parks.
Previous fences couldn't withstand the tidal battering. A barrier constructed of oil-drilling pipes in the early 1990s quickly corroded. Waves washed away some of the steel posts, and others broke off. In 2006, U.S. Marine divers tried to erect a fence made of train rails by maneuvering the rails in the water so they could be pounded in by a pile driver.
It was difficult and dangerous because the rails would swing around at the end of the crane boom as the divers tried to manually place them next to one another in the surf.
For the latest effort, U.S. authorities have turned to a private contractor, Granite Construction Co., which recently built fencing at the base of Otay Mountain east of San Diego. The material used this time will be sturdier: 6-inch steel piping, coated with rust-proof material. The work, Parks said, comes with a 30-year warranty.
Longtime beachgoers think the agency better keep the warranty paperwork. Netza Tapia, 40, said he remembers the days when he would slip through the corroded section of the fence to continue his family walks on the Imperial Beach side of the beach. Jonathan Parra and his friends used to breach the wave-battered gaps regularly to play soccer on Imperial Beach's relatively empty stretch of sand.
The sea, Parra said, doesn't recognize borders. "The strength of the ocean will eventually knock the fence down," Parra said.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-border-fence-20111124,0,6662761.story
November 25, 2011
by Richard Marosi
Reporting from Imperial Beach— Pounding surf and corrosive sea air have stymied efforts for years to erect a sturdy fence at the westernmost edge of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Now, the U.S. Border Patrol is trying again, with a $4.3-million project that would extend a nearly quarter-mile barrier 300 feet into the Pacific Ocean and remake one of the more scenic spots on the border.
When completed early next year, a steel fence 18 feet tall will replace a teetering, gap-riddled barrier that did little to discourage people from crossing back and forth on a wide beach linking Tijuana and Imperial Beach.
The "Surf Fence Project" comes as the federal government winds down barrier-building projects that have fortified about 670 miles of the frontier in recent years. Fences have been built atop sand dunes and mountain slopes, through remote deserts and urban streetscapes.
Fortifying the border where it plunges into the Pacific, however, presents unique logistical challenges. Before construction even begins, a government contractor must build a long pier to hold a crane, which will pound the fence posts into the sand. On a recent day, people on the Tijuana side of the beach marveled at the temporary structure, which is under construction, mistakenly believing it would be used for fishing or for docking boats.
Though border fencing efforts have long drawn criticism, no significant opposition has emerged for the surf project, mainly because one kind of barrier or another has existed here since the early 1990s. A fence is necessary, border officials said, to block a gap that opens when the waters recede at low tide.
In the late 1980s and early '90s, hundreds of illegal immigrants would cross at a time and head toward the distant San Diego skyline. More recently, the beach became a popular spot for demonstrators protesting illegal immigration policies. Last year, a group of deported immigrants walked across the line in the sand at the border, in a symbolic protest march. Some of them threw rocks and bottles, said U.S. authorities.
"It still has the potential to be very dangerous, as beautiful as it is," said Assistant Chief Patrol Agent Bruce Parks.
Previous fences couldn't withstand the tidal battering. A barrier constructed of oil-drilling pipes in the early 1990s quickly corroded. Waves washed away some of the steel posts, and others broke off. In 2006, U.S. Marine divers tried to erect a fence made of train rails by maneuvering the rails in the water so they could be pounded in by a pile driver.
It was difficult and dangerous because the rails would swing around at the end of the crane boom as the divers tried to manually place them next to one another in the surf.
For the latest effort, U.S. authorities have turned to a private contractor, Granite Construction Co., which recently built fencing at the base of Otay Mountain east of San Diego. The material used this time will be sturdier: 6-inch steel piping, coated with rust-proof material. The work, Parks said, comes with a 30-year warranty.
Longtime beachgoers think the agency better keep the warranty paperwork. Netza Tapia, 40, said he remembers the days when he would slip through the corroded section of the fence to continue his family walks on the Imperial Beach side of the beach. Jonathan Parra and his friends used to breach the wave-battered gaps regularly to play soccer on Imperial Beach's relatively empty stretch of sand.
The sea, Parra said, doesn't recognize borders. "The strength of the ocean will eventually knock the fence down," Parra said.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-border-fence-20111124,0,6662761.story
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Border Fence Into Pacific Ocean To Be Rebuilt
KPBS
November 3, 2011
By Ruxandra Guidi
SAN DIEGO — The "surf fence" runs 300-feet into the Pacific Ocean. It was originally built between 1993 and 1994 as a barrier to illegal border crossers and smugglers.
The new fence will look essentially the same: Metal pipes, 6-inches in diameter, rising out of the sand, with 4-inches in between. But it is designed to stay in good shape for as long as 30 years.
"The fencing is just another tool that we have," said Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Michael Jimenez, referring to its design. "It helps to slow down the entry of these people to give our agents a chance to make an arrest. Because a fence alone isn't going to stop people from coming in."
But the fence is designed to be wide enough for fish and other wildlife to make it back and forth across the border.
Rebuilding efforts in this and other parts of the Southwestern border fence have been delayed over the years, due to environmental impact assessments for things like land use, geology, and protected species.
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2011/nov/03/mexico-illegal-immigration-tijuana-san-diego/
November 3, 2011
By Ruxandra Guidi
SAN DIEGO — The "surf fence" runs 300-feet into the Pacific Ocean. It was originally built between 1993 and 1994 as a barrier to illegal border crossers and smugglers.
The new fence will look essentially the same: Metal pipes, 6-inches in diameter, rising out of the sand, with 4-inches in between. But it is designed to stay in good shape for as long as 30 years.
"The fencing is just another tool that we have," said Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Michael Jimenez, referring to its design. "It helps to slow down the entry of these people to give our agents a chance to make an arrest. Because a fence alone isn't going to stop people from coming in."
But the fence is designed to be wide enough for fish and other wildlife to make it back and forth across the border.
Rebuilding efforts in this and other parts of the Southwestern border fence have been delayed over the years, due to environmental impact assessments for things like land use, geology, and protected species.
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2011/nov/03/mexico-illegal-immigration-tijuana-san-diego/
Thursday, October 6, 2011
2 illegal immigrants die in San Diego-area maritime accidents
One is found dead inside a smuggling boat washed ashore at Pacific Beach and the other dies in an attempt to swim around a border fence.
Los Angeles Times
October 6, 2011
by Richard Marosi
Reporting from San Diego -- An illegal immigrant was found dead inside a smuggling boat that came ashore at San Diego's Pacific Beach and another died in a failed attempt to swim around a border fence in separate maritime incidents since Tuesday, according to federal authorities.
Early Wednesday morning, U.S. Border Patrol agents inspecting a 16-foot panga boat near Law Street at Pacific Beach discovered a dead Mexican man and another unidentified person. Following footprints along the beach, the agents found 13 additional illegal immigrants hiding in a residential area.
Eleven of the immigrants were hospitalized and released. One man suffering from dehydration and hypothermia remained in the hospital, according to Border Patrol spokesman Scott Simon.
The group of nine men and six women were all Mexican nationals, he said. Authorities are investigating whether a smuggler also was aboard the boat. The immigrant's cause of death has yet to be determined.
The skiff appeared to be caught in turbulent waters during the trip from Baja California. Smuggling groups often depart from as far away as Ensenada on journeys in rickety boats that can take 12 hours or more.
In another recent incident, seven immigrants were rescued a mile off San Diego's Mission Beach after their boat broke down Sunday.
Smugglers show no signs of letting up on their maritime trafficking attempts. Border authorities arrested 633 illegal immigrants in 183 maritime incidents during the federal fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Illegal immigrants also continue trying on their own. On Tuesday night, a 43-year-old man died attempting to swim around a border fence that extends into the breakers at San Diego County's Border Field State Park.
He was not wearing a wet suit or flotation device, Simon said. Two other illegal immigrants who tried to swim around the border fence were arrested.
Over the last year, four people have died in maritime smuggling incidents, including two immigrants who died while their boat tried to land at Torrey Pines State Beach, north of San Diego.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-1006-smuggling-boat-20111006,0,7261822.story
Los Angeles Times
October 6, 2011
by Richard Marosi
Reporting from San Diego -- An illegal immigrant was found dead inside a smuggling boat that came ashore at San Diego's Pacific Beach and another died in a failed attempt to swim around a border fence in separate maritime incidents since Tuesday, according to federal authorities.
Early Wednesday morning, U.S. Border Patrol agents inspecting a 16-foot panga boat near Law Street at Pacific Beach discovered a dead Mexican man and another unidentified person. Following footprints along the beach, the agents found 13 additional illegal immigrants hiding in a residential area.
Eleven of the immigrants were hospitalized and released. One man suffering from dehydration and hypothermia remained in the hospital, according to Border Patrol spokesman Scott Simon.
The group of nine men and six women were all Mexican nationals, he said. Authorities are investigating whether a smuggler also was aboard the boat. The immigrant's cause of death has yet to be determined.
The skiff appeared to be caught in turbulent waters during the trip from Baja California. Smuggling groups often depart from as far away as Ensenada on journeys in rickety boats that can take 12 hours or more.
In another recent incident, seven immigrants were rescued a mile off San Diego's Mission Beach after their boat broke down Sunday.
Smugglers show no signs of letting up on their maritime trafficking attempts. Border authorities arrested 633 illegal immigrants in 183 maritime incidents during the federal fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Illegal immigrants also continue trying on their own. On Tuesday night, a 43-year-old man died attempting to swim around a border fence that extends into the breakers at San Diego County's Border Field State Park.
He was not wearing a wet suit or flotation device, Simon said. Two other illegal immigrants who tried to swim around the border fence were arrested.
Over the last year, four people have died in maritime smuggling incidents, including two immigrants who died while their boat tried to land at Torrey Pines State Beach, north of San Diego.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-1006-smuggling-boat-20111006,0,7261822.story
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Friendship Park At U.S.-Mexico Border Turns 40
KPBS
August 18, 2011
by Jill Replogle
SAN DIEGO — On August 18, 1971, then-first lady Pat Nixon reached her hand toward a barbed wire fence separating the U.S.-Mexico border and greeted residents on the other side.
The event happened during the inauguration of Friendship Park, which butts up against the border fence south of San Diego. But in recent years, the park has become a subject of controversy.
A triple-layer fence — built in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks —now runs through the park, making cross-border handshakes impossible.
Jamie Gates, one of the founders of the organization Friends of Friendship Park, said the fence has ruined the bi-national nature of the park.
“In the process of building the new fence, they really destroyed what has for decades and decades and decades been a place where families have gathered,” Gates said.
The group is working with U.S. border officials on a redesign that would allow for cross-border gatherings without compromising security. The plan features a 60-foot retractable gate, which could be opened and closed by the U.S. Border Patrol.
Friends of Friendship Park will celebrate the park’s 40th anniversary on Saturday. Activities will include a cross-border salsa lesson, a bi-national music jam session, and testimonies from families who have used the park as a meeting place.
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2011/aug/18/friendship-park-turns-forty/
August 18, 2011
by Jill Replogle
SAN DIEGO — On August 18, 1971, then-first lady Pat Nixon reached her hand toward a barbed wire fence separating the U.S.-Mexico border and greeted residents on the other side.
The event happened during the inauguration of Friendship Park, which butts up against the border fence south of San Diego. But in recent years, the park has become a subject of controversy.
A triple-layer fence — built in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks —now runs through the park, making cross-border handshakes impossible.
Jamie Gates, one of the founders of the organization Friends of Friendship Park, said the fence has ruined the bi-national nature of the park.
“In the process of building the new fence, they really destroyed what has for decades and decades and decades been a place where families have gathered,” Gates said.
The group is working with U.S. border officials on a redesign that would allow for cross-border gatherings without compromising security. The plan features a 60-foot retractable gate, which could be opened and closed by the U.S. Border Patrol.
Friends of Friendship Park will celebrate the park’s 40th anniversary on Saturday. Activities will include a cross-border salsa lesson, a bi-national music jam session, and testimonies from families who have used the park as a meeting place.
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2011/aug/18/friendship-park-turns-forty/
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Park redesign could relieve tensions at US-Mexico border
UPI
April 14, 2011
by Beth Elderkin
A possible redesign of Friendship Park, a small patch of land separated by two eight-foot high black metal fences on the national border between San Diego, Calif. and Tijuana, Mexico, has become the center of a heated international debate.
Dedicated in 1971 to bi-national unity between the United States and Mexico by former first lady Pat Nixon, the small section of protected Border Field State Park is officially referred to as Friendship Circle, but more commonly known as Friendship Park.The area has sparked tense cross-border conflicts between groups who wish to open the park for full bi-national access, and U.S. Border patrol, which prioritizes national security.
Over the past five years, increased security by the United States Border Patrol has restricted park access to U.S. residents and limited cross-cultural contact.
But after years of cross-cultural tension, a compromise on a redesign of the park appears to be within reach. In February, Border Patrol agreed to consider a design that would create more open spaces, but still serve security needs.
"(The redesign) doesn't make the park feel like you're walking into a prison," said Jill Holslin, a member of Friends of Friendship Park, one of the groups advocating more open space.
Friendship Park was once a frequently-visited spot by people living in the U.S. who wanted to communicate with friends and family in Mexico. People gathered on both sides of the fence to share picnics, sometimes even “sneaking tamales across the fence,” Holslin said.
A 1994 measure limited access to the border fence, but it wasn't until 2006 that Friendship Park was severely impacted. That's when Pres. George W. Bush approved the Secure Fence Act, which increased border security and initialized the construction of a secondary fence. That fence, completed in 2009, was built about 100 feet away from the original border fence, creating a buffer space that prohibits cross-border access from Friendship Park, which lies between the two fences.
“[Before], it was minimal problems or obstacles as far as border patrol or access to the area,” said Daniel Watman of Border Encuentro, which is fighting for increased park access. “When they started bringing in the secondary wall, that’s when it created quite an obstacle for us.”
Ever since the secondary fence was completed, access to the main park area is only allowed on the weekends between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., and only 25 to 30 people are allowed inside at a time, for a maximum of 30 minutes. Friendship Park is reachable through Border Field State Park by car, or via a 40-minute walk along Imperial Beach.
Physical contact is prohibited and border patrol officers have the option to restrain suspicious people within 100 feet of the fence. Border patrol agent Ronnie Harden said the primary reason is to prevent items from being passed through the slats and over the fence.
“It’s so easy for them to pass things that are contraband or things that can be used on either side, like illegal documents,” he said.
Park access advocacy groups, including Friends of Friendship Park, No Border Wall and Border Encuentro, are working for increased access to the park, particularly for people who want to communicate with family and friends on the other side of the border fence.
According to Border Patrol Public Affairs Office supervisor Steven Pitts, the park redesign, if approved, could begin construction as early as June, and would take approximately three to six months to complete.
The changes to Friendship Park could include an area around the boundary that could expand to up to 60 feet, depending on the size of the crowd at any given event, Watman said.
The idea of this is “to open up the entrance to this kind of no-man’s land between the two lands,” said Public Art and Architecture architect and Friendship Park designer James Brown.
U.S. visitors would be able to walk right up to the fence and interact with those on the other side. This would be made possible through a metal reinforced mesh fence. The mesh would be tight enough to make physical contact impossible, said Border Patrol Public Affairs Office representative Justin De La Torre.
Harden, who works the midnight to 8 a.m. shift, said the secondary fence and added border security is necessary to the safety of the U.S. national border; especially late at night when illegal border crossings are more likely to occur.
“People who cross at this time of night aren’t trying to see their families. They’re trying to get somewhere,” he said.
Holslin agrees that cross-border security is important in maintaining order along the border:
“We are not working against the Border Patrol," she said. "We want to work with them"
Holslin said increasing park access could actually help improve security along the border, since a higher number of visitors would prevent drug cartels from overtaking the area and increasing crime.
Watman said a redesigned Friendship Park is a way to not only maintain a safe environment, but do so in a way that symbolizes the bi-national friendship former first lady Nixon celebrated 40 years ago.
“I don’t feel like it’s enforcement versus friendship. I believe they both can be present,” he said. “They kind of both need to be present.”
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/1969/12/31/Park-redesign-could-relieve-tensions-at-US-Mexico-border/UPIU-9751301078945/
April 14, 2011
by Beth Elderkin
A possible redesign of Friendship Park, a small patch of land separated by two eight-foot high black metal fences on the national border between San Diego, Calif. and Tijuana, Mexico, has become the center of a heated international debate.
Dedicated in 1971 to bi-national unity between the United States and Mexico by former first lady Pat Nixon, the small section of protected Border Field State Park is officially referred to as Friendship Circle, but more commonly known as Friendship Park.The area has sparked tense cross-border conflicts between groups who wish to open the park for full bi-national access, and U.S. Border patrol, which prioritizes national security.
Over the past five years, increased security by the United States Border Patrol has restricted park access to U.S. residents and limited cross-cultural contact.
But after years of cross-cultural tension, a compromise on a redesign of the park appears to be within reach. In February, Border Patrol agreed to consider a design that would create more open spaces, but still serve security needs.
"(The redesign) doesn't make the park feel like you're walking into a prison," said Jill Holslin, a member of Friends of Friendship Park, one of the groups advocating more open space.
Friendship Park was once a frequently-visited spot by people living in the U.S. who wanted to communicate with friends and family in Mexico. People gathered on both sides of the fence to share picnics, sometimes even “sneaking tamales across the fence,” Holslin said.
A 1994 measure limited access to the border fence, but it wasn't until 2006 that Friendship Park was severely impacted. That's when Pres. George W. Bush approved the Secure Fence Act, which increased border security and initialized the construction of a secondary fence. That fence, completed in 2009, was built about 100 feet away from the original border fence, creating a buffer space that prohibits cross-border access from Friendship Park, which lies between the two fences.
“[Before], it was minimal problems or obstacles as far as border patrol or access to the area,” said Daniel Watman of Border Encuentro, which is fighting for increased park access. “When they started bringing in the secondary wall, that’s when it created quite an obstacle for us.”
Ever since the secondary fence was completed, access to the main park area is only allowed on the weekends between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., and only 25 to 30 people are allowed inside at a time, for a maximum of 30 minutes. Friendship Park is reachable through Border Field State Park by car, or via a 40-minute walk along Imperial Beach.
Physical contact is prohibited and border patrol officers have the option to restrain suspicious people within 100 feet of the fence. Border patrol agent Ronnie Harden said the primary reason is to prevent items from being passed through the slats and over the fence.
“It’s so easy for them to pass things that are contraband or things that can be used on either side, like illegal documents,” he said.
Park access advocacy groups, including Friends of Friendship Park, No Border Wall and Border Encuentro, are working for increased access to the park, particularly for people who want to communicate with family and friends on the other side of the border fence.
According to Border Patrol Public Affairs Office supervisor Steven Pitts, the park redesign, if approved, could begin construction as early as June, and would take approximately three to six months to complete.
The changes to Friendship Park could include an area around the boundary that could expand to up to 60 feet, depending on the size of the crowd at any given event, Watman said.
The idea of this is “to open up the entrance to this kind of no-man’s land between the two lands,” said Public Art and Architecture architect and Friendship Park designer James Brown.
U.S. visitors would be able to walk right up to the fence and interact with those on the other side. This would be made possible through a metal reinforced mesh fence. The mesh would be tight enough to make physical contact impossible, said Border Patrol Public Affairs Office representative Justin De La Torre.
Harden, who works the midnight to 8 a.m. shift, said the secondary fence and added border security is necessary to the safety of the U.S. national border; especially late at night when illegal border crossings are more likely to occur.
“People who cross at this time of night aren’t trying to see their families. They’re trying to get somewhere,” he said.
Holslin agrees that cross-border security is important in maintaining order along the border:
“We are not working against the Border Patrol," she said. "We want to work with them"
Holslin said increasing park access could actually help improve security along the border, since a higher number of visitors would prevent drug cartels from overtaking the area and increasing crime.
Watman said a redesigned Friendship Park is a way to not only maintain a safe environment, but do so in a way that symbolizes the bi-national friendship former first lady Nixon celebrated 40 years ago.
“I don’t feel like it’s enforcement versus friendship. I believe they both can be present,” he said. “They kind of both need to be present.”
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/1969/12/31/Park-redesign-could-relieve-tensions-at-US-Mexico-border/UPIU-9751301078945/
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Finagling Access to Friendship Park
Voice of San Diego
February 27, 2011
by Adrian Florido
For 38 years, Friendship Park was a symbol of amity between Mexico and the United States, despite the fence that separated the two countries and suggested otherwise.
But in 2009, the park that straddled San Diego and Tijuana — where families and friends separated by the fence came to chat, kiss, or graze cheeks — was closed, the casualty of a second fence the U.S. government built to provide an added layer of border security.
Since then, advocates have been pushing to regain access, with only limited success.
But in the last two weeks, they have won their largest concessions yet from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which this summer will begin replacing the primary border fence, now rusted and deteriorating, with a brand new, taller one. The agency has agreed to revise its original designs for the project and allow visitors closer access to the fence over a wider area than originally planned.
Friendship Park, while hardly a park anymore, will be a little friendlier.
"It's impossible for this park, when it's finished, to be beautiful. It won't be," said Jim Brown, an architect who designed an alternative proposal to the Border Patrol's, and who, along with a group of advocates, presented it to agency officials. "But it's going to be a super important symbol amid all this militarization of the border."
The Border Patrol's proposal for access to Friendship Park called for not much more than the current setup. Since last year, the agency has allowed limited access to the border fence on Saturdays and Sundays, letting visitors go through a gate in the new outer fence and enter a corral-like area that gets them within a few feet of the primary fence to talk to people on the other side. But it does not allow them to be close enough to touch or kiss.
The agency has agreed to some of Brown's design proposals, which would allow visitors to walk right up to the fence across about a 100-foot area, depending on whether Border Patrol officials are concerned about a security threat.
To social activists, the reinforced border fence is a symbol of division, enmity, and loved ones torn apart by immigration status. For the Border Patrol and enforcement advocates, it represents security and the containment of illegal crossers and illicit contraband.
Those two perspectives are hard to reconcile, especially amid the constant politicking that surrounds border issues. And if anything, the tug and pull over access to Friendship Park has reaffirmed that notion.
The negotiations have been a give and take. More access in one place has meant more security in another.
The government's original plan for the new fence, for example, was to build it of thick metal pylons with gaps between them, enough space to stick a hand or an arm through. Visitors on the American side would have to stay behind a shoulder high fence a few feet away, so as to prevent them from passing contraband.
But that dashed advocates' hope that families and friends could come together to talk up close, to touch, as they'd always done before.
"We wanted people to be able to have more of a private conversation than the public one they would have if they had to talk across a wide gap," Brown said.
The Border Patrol agreed to allow it. But in exchange, it will build a different kind of fence — a tight mesh one with holes so small that items won't fit through. The agency also plans to install a canopy overhead that will prevent things from being tossed over.
"Our priorities are a little bit different," said Kelly Good, the Border Patrol agent who has negotiated the design with advocates. "Our first priority is security of that area, our second priority is the safety of our agents, our third priority is to make this a place where people want to go and visit. Our last priority is their first priority."
The government's plan would also only have allowed visitors to approach a section of the border fence roughly 50 feet wide. They would have been contained to that area by a fenced-in corral similar to the one that's there now.
Advocates wanted to make a wider stretch accessible, so families could spread out. So the agency agreed to do away with the corral.
But it still wanted the ability to restrict access, or grant it, depending on the so-called security threat level on any given day.
On days when threat levels are perceived to be low, visitors might be allowed to spread out across a 100-foot section of the fence. On riskier days, when agents want to keep a close eye on people, they might only allow access to 40 feet. Brown designed an adjustable barrier system similar to the knee-high ropes that keep visitors from getting too close to paintings at museums. Agents will be able to move the ropes depending on how wide a section of the fence they want to make available.
But some things could not be negotiated, like access to the obelisk monument that First Lady Pat Nixon dedicated as a symbol of friendship between the two countries in 1971, as a reassurance that despite the fence, good will remained. The monument currently straddles both sides of the fence, but the Border Patrol's redesign will leave it on the Mexican side.
That's because the new fence will not be built directly on the international line. When it replaces the existing one, it will move a few feet north. Visitors standing at the fence on the Mexican side will technically be on United States soil.
The Border Patrol wants to be able to perform maintenance on both sides of the fence. Currently, it can only maintain the American side, because to access the other, agents would have to step on Mexican soil. Moving the fence a few feet to the north will allow them to go through a gate and make needed repairs to the other side without technically entering Mexico.
"We're the only ones that will maintain it," Good said, because it is not Mexico's fence.
http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/survival/article_e947d334-42bb-11e0-b13b-001cc4c03286.html
February 27, 2011
by Adrian Florido
For 38 years, Friendship Park was a symbol of amity between Mexico and the United States, despite the fence that separated the two countries and suggested otherwise.
But in 2009, the park that straddled San Diego and Tijuana — where families and friends separated by the fence came to chat, kiss, or graze cheeks — was closed, the casualty of a second fence the U.S. government built to provide an added layer of border security.
Since then, advocates have been pushing to regain access, with only limited success.
But in the last two weeks, they have won their largest concessions yet from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which this summer will begin replacing the primary border fence, now rusted and deteriorating, with a brand new, taller one. The agency has agreed to revise its original designs for the project and allow visitors closer access to the fence over a wider area than originally planned.
Friendship Park, while hardly a park anymore, will be a little friendlier.
"It's impossible for this park, when it's finished, to be beautiful. It won't be," said Jim Brown, an architect who designed an alternative proposal to the Border Patrol's, and who, along with a group of advocates, presented it to agency officials. "But it's going to be a super important symbol amid all this militarization of the border."
The Border Patrol's proposal for access to Friendship Park called for not much more than the current setup. Since last year, the agency has allowed limited access to the border fence on Saturdays and Sundays, letting visitors go through a gate in the new outer fence and enter a corral-like area that gets them within a few feet of the primary fence to talk to people on the other side. But it does not allow them to be close enough to touch or kiss.
The agency has agreed to some of Brown's design proposals, which would allow visitors to walk right up to the fence across about a 100-foot area, depending on whether Border Patrol officials are concerned about a security threat.
To social activists, the reinforced border fence is a symbol of division, enmity, and loved ones torn apart by immigration status. For the Border Patrol and enforcement advocates, it represents security and the containment of illegal crossers and illicit contraband.
Those two perspectives are hard to reconcile, especially amid the constant politicking that surrounds border issues. And if anything, the tug and pull over access to Friendship Park has reaffirmed that notion.
The negotiations have been a give and take. More access in one place has meant more security in another.
The government's original plan for the new fence, for example, was to build it of thick metal pylons with gaps between them, enough space to stick a hand or an arm through. Visitors on the American side would have to stay behind a shoulder high fence a few feet away, so as to prevent them from passing contraband.
But that dashed advocates' hope that families and friends could come together to talk up close, to touch, as they'd always done before.
"We wanted people to be able to have more of a private conversation than the public one they would have if they had to talk across a wide gap," Brown said.
The Border Patrol agreed to allow it. But in exchange, it will build a different kind of fence — a tight mesh one with holes so small that items won't fit through. The agency also plans to install a canopy overhead that will prevent things from being tossed over.
"Our priorities are a little bit different," said Kelly Good, the Border Patrol agent who has negotiated the design with advocates. "Our first priority is security of that area, our second priority is the safety of our agents, our third priority is to make this a place where people want to go and visit. Our last priority is their first priority."
The government's plan would also only have allowed visitors to approach a section of the border fence roughly 50 feet wide. They would have been contained to that area by a fenced-in corral similar to the one that's there now.
Advocates wanted to make a wider stretch accessible, so families could spread out. So the agency agreed to do away with the corral.
But it still wanted the ability to restrict access, or grant it, depending on the so-called security threat level on any given day.
On days when threat levels are perceived to be low, visitors might be allowed to spread out across a 100-foot section of the fence. On riskier days, when agents want to keep a close eye on people, they might only allow access to 40 feet. Brown designed an adjustable barrier system similar to the knee-high ropes that keep visitors from getting too close to paintings at museums. Agents will be able to move the ropes depending on how wide a section of the fence they want to make available.
But some things could not be negotiated, like access to the obelisk monument that First Lady Pat Nixon dedicated as a symbol of friendship between the two countries in 1971, as a reassurance that despite the fence, good will remained. The monument currently straddles both sides of the fence, but the Border Patrol's redesign will leave it on the Mexican side.
That's because the new fence will not be built directly on the international line. When it replaces the existing one, it will move a few feet north. Visitors standing at the fence on the Mexican side will technically be on United States soil.
The Border Patrol wants to be able to perform maintenance on both sides of the fence. Currently, it can only maintain the American side, because to access the other, agents would have to step on Mexican soil. Moving the fence a few feet to the north will allow them to go through a gate and make needed repairs to the other side without technically entering Mexico.
"We're the only ones that will maintain it," Good said, because it is not Mexico's fence.
http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/survival/article_e947d334-42bb-11e0-b13b-001cc4c03286.html
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Federal Agents Go Door-To-Door To Crack Down On Drug Tunnels.
KPBS
December 14, 2010
by Amy Isackson
U.S. federal Authorities are trying out a new tactic in their hunt for subterranean drug smuggling tunnels near the border in San Diego. Authorities are going door-to-door to ask business owners to keep their heads up for underground activity.
"Hello?" shout federal agents as they peek their heads into a warehouse in Otay Mesa, an industrial area just a few blocks from the border fence.
"Hi, how’s it going?," asks an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, who asked not to be named for security reasons, as he introduced himself to the warehouse owner. "I don’t know if you know this or not," the agent tells the owner, "but Otay Mesa is a real hotbed for tunnels. Drug tunnels."
Just last month, federal authorities unearthed two sophisticated tunnels a few blocks from this complex, in the maze of streets filled with generic looking warehouses. The tunnels had electricity and ventilation. One had a hydraulic trap door. And they aren't the only ones that have been discovered in the area. Last year, there was one with an elevator. Back in 2006, authorities found the longest tunnel ever, a mile-and-a-half.
The subterranean passageways surfaced in warehouses nearby. "These are some of the things we’re asking the warehouse managers and owners to be looking for," says the agent, "Things like subterranean noises or jack hammering, without a visible road crew. Or, there’s no construction going on, but you’re hearing construction."
Agents are also asking business owners to be on the lookout for renters who pay in cash and people who keep odd hours.
Agents ask the warehouse manager if they can take a look around. The space is about as big as a football field. Hundreds of boxes bound for Carl’s Jr. restaurants in Mexico are stacked on wooden palates. "That’s toys for kids meals. This is the cheese," says Gabriel Andrade who manages the operation.
He says at least once a week he would pass by the building where they found one of the tunnels last month. He never suspected anything. "I think it is very hard to know. It is a lot of traffic of trucks. We don’t know and hear nothing," says Andrade. He says it’s also difficult to see anything. He says, for example, the neighbors keep their doors closed all day.
That peaks agents’ interest and they go next door. A forklift zips around. Workers unload boxes of chicken taquitos to be sent to U.S. grocery stores.
Margarito Calleja, the manger, says they keep the doors down to keep the sun off the food. "Really, we don’t communicate with people at other warehouses. You arrive. You go inside. You do your work. You leave at 6 in the afternoon. Adios. Bye bye," says Calleja.
There’s constant commotion in the area. Trucks rumble down the roads and ilde outside buildings a few blocks from the commercial border crossing. Joe Garcia, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, say that’s part of what makes Otay Mesa attractive to tunnelers. "You have shipping and distribution going on almost around the clock up here in Otay Mesa. There’s a lot of truck traffic. It is a perfect cover for them," says Garcia.
And that’s the case for the tunnel found on Thanksgiving day.
The ICE agent, who cannot be named, climbs down a ladder in a hole in the floor in the back room of a warehouse, into the tunnel. He pats the wall. "This is a hard clay that’s pretty common in the Otay Mesa area," says the agent. It's another reason tunnelers like this spot. "It holds its form pretty well. Right here you can see the jackhammer lines where the tunnel diggers jack hammered out this clay," says the agent. He says diggers can advance about 10 feet a day. He calculates this 2,000 foot-long tunnel took about 200 days to build. "The construction is impressive. You are navigating underground. Things like GPS don't work and you have to rely on a compasses. It would take an engineer," says the agent.
This tunnel began in kitchen floor of a home in Tijuana. It plunged down 90 feet and travel about a half-mile, beneath the border fence, before surfacing in the warehouse. Smugglers laid tracks in the tunnel and used a homemade cart to ferry tons of drugs underneath the border. They had carved out a room at the bottom of the tunnel where they stored bales of marijuana. With the two tunnels last month, agents seized about 50 tons of marijuana. That’s a record for the U.S.
ICE agent Garcia says they didn’t used to get enormous seizures like that. He says four years ago, Mexican authorities warned the smugglers that a raid was coming. "We know for a fact that in 2006, things were delayed so the cartel could pull their narcotics out of the tunnel," says Garcia.
He says that doesn’t happen anymore. He says now U.S. and Mexican authorities work together, almost like peers. And he says the extra eyes and ears of Otay Mesa business owners will also help authorities outsmart the criminals. "I think the only thing that stops it from being Swiss cheese around here is that it costs a lot of money to build tunnels. Do I think there's another out there? I'd be naive to think we got them all," ponders Garcia. "We're going to keep doing what we are doing, good investigative work." says Garcia.
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2010/dec/14/federal-agents-go-door-door-crackdown-drug-tunnels/
December 14, 2010
by Amy Isackson
U.S. federal Authorities are trying out a new tactic in their hunt for subterranean drug smuggling tunnels near the border in San Diego. Authorities are going door-to-door to ask business owners to keep their heads up for underground activity.
"Hello?" shout federal agents as they peek their heads into a warehouse in Otay Mesa, an industrial area just a few blocks from the border fence.
"Hi, how’s it going?," asks an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, who asked not to be named for security reasons, as he introduced himself to the warehouse owner. "I don’t know if you know this or not," the agent tells the owner, "but Otay Mesa is a real hotbed for tunnels. Drug tunnels."
Just last month, federal authorities unearthed two sophisticated tunnels a few blocks from this complex, in the maze of streets filled with generic looking warehouses. The tunnels had electricity and ventilation. One had a hydraulic trap door. And they aren't the only ones that have been discovered in the area. Last year, there was one with an elevator. Back in 2006, authorities found the longest tunnel ever, a mile-and-a-half.
The subterranean passageways surfaced in warehouses nearby. "These are some of the things we’re asking the warehouse managers and owners to be looking for," says the agent, "Things like subterranean noises or jack hammering, without a visible road crew. Or, there’s no construction going on, but you’re hearing construction."
Agents are also asking business owners to be on the lookout for renters who pay in cash and people who keep odd hours.
Agents ask the warehouse manager if they can take a look around. The space is about as big as a football field. Hundreds of boxes bound for Carl’s Jr. restaurants in Mexico are stacked on wooden palates. "That’s toys for kids meals. This is the cheese," says Gabriel Andrade who manages the operation.
He says at least once a week he would pass by the building where they found one of the tunnels last month. He never suspected anything. "I think it is very hard to know. It is a lot of traffic of trucks. We don’t know and hear nothing," says Andrade. He says it’s also difficult to see anything. He says, for example, the neighbors keep their doors closed all day.
That peaks agents’ interest and they go next door. A forklift zips around. Workers unload boxes of chicken taquitos to be sent to U.S. grocery stores.
Margarito Calleja, the manger, says they keep the doors down to keep the sun off the food. "Really, we don’t communicate with people at other warehouses. You arrive. You go inside. You do your work. You leave at 6 in the afternoon. Adios. Bye bye," says Calleja.
There’s constant commotion in the area. Trucks rumble down the roads and ilde outside buildings a few blocks from the commercial border crossing. Joe Garcia, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, say that’s part of what makes Otay Mesa attractive to tunnelers. "You have shipping and distribution going on almost around the clock up here in Otay Mesa. There’s a lot of truck traffic. It is a perfect cover for them," says Garcia.
And that’s the case for the tunnel found on Thanksgiving day.
The ICE agent, who cannot be named, climbs down a ladder in a hole in the floor in the back room of a warehouse, into the tunnel. He pats the wall. "This is a hard clay that’s pretty common in the Otay Mesa area," says the agent. It's another reason tunnelers like this spot. "It holds its form pretty well. Right here you can see the jackhammer lines where the tunnel diggers jack hammered out this clay," says the agent. He says diggers can advance about 10 feet a day. He calculates this 2,000 foot-long tunnel took about 200 days to build. "The construction is impressive. You are navigating underground. Things like GPS don't work and you have to rely on a compasses. It would take an engineer," says the agent.
This tunnel began in kitchen floor of a home in Tijuana. It plunged down 90 feet and travel about a half-mile, beneath the border fence, before surfacing in the warehouse. Smugglers laid tracks in the tunnel and used a homemade cart to ferry tons of drugs underneath the border. They had carved out a room at the bottom of the tunnel where they stored bales of marijuana. With the two tunnels last month, agents seized about 50 tons of marijuana. That’s a record for the U.S.
ICE agent Garcia says they didn’t used to get enormous seizures like that. He says four years ago, Mexican authorities warned the smugglers that a raid was coming. "We know for a fact that in 2006, things were delayed so the cartel could pull their narcotics out of the tunnel," says Garcia.
He says that doesn’t happen anymore. He says now U.S. and Mexican authorities work together, almost like peers. And he says the extra eyes and ears of Otay Mesa business owners will also help authorities outsmart the criminals. "I think the only thing that stops it from being Swiss cheese around here is that it costs a lot of money to build tunnels. Do I think there's another out there? I'd be naive to think we got them all," ponders Garcia. "We're going to keep doing what we are doing, good investigative work." says Garcia.
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2010/dec/14/federal-agents-go-door-door-crackdown-drug-tunnels/
Monday, February 15, 2010
$57.7-million fence added to an already grueling illegal immigration route
February 15, 2009
Los Angeles Times
by Richard Marosi
Some question the cost, effectiveness and environmental effect of erecting a fence on Otay Mountain, where those who hiked three days up a steep, arid peak were often met by border agents anyway.
Reporting from San Diego - The border barrier dips and curves, zigs and zags, hugging the mountain's contours like a slimmed-down version of the Great Wall of China.
Among the costliest stretch of fencing ever built on the U.S.-Mexico border, the 3.6-mile wall of steel completed last fall is meant to block trafficking routes over Otay Mountain, just east of San Diego.
People seeking to enter the country illegally have hiked the scrub-covered, tarantula-infested peak for years, trying to get to roads leading to San Diego.
"We're no longer conceding this area to smugglers," said Jerome C. Conlin, a U.S. Border Patrol spokesman.
But critics are bewildered. Why, they ask, would people determined to scale a rugged, 3,500-foot peak be deterred by an 18-foot-high fence? They also point out that the Department of Homeland Security deemed it unnecessary in 2006.
"I think it's a Bush-era boondoggle that will have almost no consequence in terms of stemming the flow of immigration," said Char Miller, director of the environmental analysis program at Pomona College. "It was a political decision that took in no account of the environment itself, and in the process damages what was once a pretty remarkable landscape."
The $57.7-million project is one segment in the massive expansion of border infrastructure approved by Congress during George W. Bush's presidency. Homeland Security has erected fencing in small towns, remote valleys and high-desert mesas from the Pacific Ocean to Texas.
At about $16 million a mile, the Otay Mountain barrier cost about four times as much as similar border fencing built during this expansion, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
The Border Patrol's San Diego sector was already one of the country's most heavily fortified frontiers before the mountain fence was constructed, with about 40 of the sector's 60 miles lined with vehicle or pedestrian barriers.
The fencing shifted immigrant flows to remote areas in the backcountry east of San Diego. But some migrants decided to climb Otay Mountain because of its proximity to a warehouse district in San Diego and its easy access on the Mexican side, where the Tijuana-Tecate toll road lies only a few hundred yards away.
Immigrants dropped off at staging grounds off the toll road headed up steep trails into the U.S. Their hikes through canyons and over the arid peak could take up to three days. With limited road access on the mountain, agents simply waited for people to descend to make arrests.
The lack of fencing did not seem to be a problem, said then-U.S. Border Patrol spokesman Richard Kite, interviewed in a 2006 article in the Arizona Daily Star. At Otay Mountain, "you simply don't need a fence. It's such harsh terrain it's difficult to walk, let alone drive," Kite said. "There's no reason to disrupt the land when the land itself is a physical barrier."
The agency said it changed course after reevaluating conditions in the area. Daryl Reed, a current Border Patrol spokesman, said strategies are in constant flux depending on quickly shifting migrant flows and smuggler activity.
"As we continue in our mission, we're always reevaluating situations," Reed said. "We're always going to adapt and change."
One analyst suggested that pressure from Congress to complete about 700 miles of fence led federal officials to approve some questionable projects.
"There's no question that there's tactical justification for certain fencing, but when you set up a target like that, it inevitably means that they're going to build fencing where the tactical justification is weak, and this sounds like one of those places," said Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
But others doubted that border authorities would spend resources in an area that didn't need it.
"If there were other better places to build fencing, then I'm confident the Border Patrol would build it there," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies.
When the federal government broke ground last year, environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, said the project would damage the Otay Mountain Wilderness. Portions of the fence and the 5-mile access road lie in the federally protected area.
The federal government, trying to expedite construction of border fencing, waived more than 30 environmental laws in 2008, including the Wilderness Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act and others that environmentalists said applied to the Otay area.
Contractors had to cut roads, remove boulders, bulldoze hillsides and remove about 530,000 cubic yards of rock to build the Otay fence, which consists of steel posts 4 inches apart topped with metal plates.
It's not clear whether the fence has been a deterrent.
Since the barrier's completion in October, illegal activity has declined and there have been few signs of people trying to cut or breach the fence, authorities say.
"Having this fence here is definitely going to slow them down. . . . It increases our probability of catching them," said Conlin, the Border Patrol spokesman.
But others say the fence's effectiveness hasn't been truly tested because fewer immigrants have been attempting to cross anywhere on the border due to the economic slowdown.
The funding, they said, could have been better spent hiring more agents or building infrastructure in other areas.
When the economy improves, the mountain will once again draw immigrants, fence or no fence, said Pedro Rios, director of the American Friends Service Committee in San Diego.
"It seems to me, if someone is able to climb the mountains in the Otay Wilderness, a 15-foot wall will not make a difference," he said.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-fence15-2010feb15,0,5691127.story
Los Angeles Times
by Richard Marosi
Some question the cost, effectiveness and environmental effect of erecting a fence on Otay Mountain, where those who hiked three days up a steep, arid peak were often met by border agents anyway.
Reporting from San Diego - The border barrier dips and curves, zigs and zags, hugging the mountain's contours like a slimmed-down version of the Great Wall of China.
Among the costliest stretch of fencing ever built on the U.S.-Mexico border, the 3.6-mile wall of steel completed last fall is meant to block trafficking routes over Otay Mountain, just east of San Diego.
People seeking to enter the country illegally have hiked the scrub-covered, tarantula-infested peak for years, trying to get to roads leading to San Diego.
"We're no longer conceding this area to smugglers," said Jerome C. Conlin, a U.S. Border Patrol spokesman.
But critics are bewildered. Why, they ask, would people determined to scale a rugged, 3,500-foot peak be deterred by an 18-foot-high fence? They also point out that the Department of Homeland Security deemed it unnecessary in 2006.
"I think it's a Bush-era boondoggle that will have almost no consequence in terms of stemming the flow of immigration," said Char Miller, director of the environmental analysis program at Pomona College. "It was a political decision that took in no account of the environment itself, and in the process damages what was once a pretty remarkable landscape."
The $57.7-million project is one segment in the massive expansion of border infrastructure approved by Congress during George W. Bush's presidency. Homeland Security has erected fencing in small towns, remote valleys and high-desert mesas from the Pacific Ocean to Texas.
At about $16 million a mile, the Otay Mountain barrier cost about four times as much as similar border fencing built during this expansion, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
The Border Patrol's San Diego sector was already one of the country's most heavily fortified frontiers before the mountain fence was constructed, with about 40 of the sector's 60 miles lined with vehicle or pedestrian barriers.
The fencing shifted immigrant flows to remote areas in the backcountry east of San Diego. But some migrants decided to climb Otay Mountain because of its proximity to a warehouse district in San Diego and its easy access on the Mexican side, where the Tijuana-Tecate toll road lies only a few hundred yards away.
Immigrants dropped off at staging grounds off the toll road headed up steep trails into the U.S. Their hikes through canyons and over the arid peak could take up to three days. With limited road access on the mountain, agents simply waited for people to descend to make arrests.
The lack of fencing did not seem to be a problem, said then-U.S. Border Patrol spokesman Richard Kite, interviewed in a 2006 article in the Arizona Daily Star. At Otay Mountain, "you simply don't need a fence. It's such harsh terrain it's difficult to walk, let alone drive," Kite said. "There's no reason to disrupt the land when the land itself is a physical barrier."
The agency said it changed course after reevaluating conditions in the area. Daryl Reed, a current Border Patrol spokesman, said strategies are in constant flux depending on quickly shifting migrant flows and smuggler activity.
"As we continue in our mission, we're always reevaluating situations," Reed said. "We're always going to adapt and change."
One analyst suggested that pressure from Congress to complete about 700 miles of fence led federal officials to approve some questionable projects.
"There's no question that there's tactical justification for certain fencing, but when you set up a target like that, it inevitably means that they're going to build fencing where the tactical justification is weak, and this sounds like one of those places," said Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
But others doubted that border authorities would spend resources in an area that didn't need it.
"If there were other better places to build fencing, then I'm confident the Border Patrol would build it there," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies.
When the federal government broke ground last year, environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, said the project would damage the Otay Mountain Wilderness. Portions of the fence and the 5-mile access road lie in the federally protected area.
The federal government, trying to expedite construction of border fencing, waived more than 30 environmental laws in 2008, including the Wilderness Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act and others that environmentalists said applied to the Otay area.
Contractors had to cut roads, remove boulders, bulldoze hillsides and remove about 530,000 cubic yards of rock to build the Otay fence, which consists of steel posts 4 inches apart topped with metal plates.
It's not clear whether the fence has been a deterrent.
Since the barrier's completion in October, illegal activity has declined and there have been few signs of people trying to cut or breach the fence, authorities say.
"Having this fence here is definitely going to slow them down. . . . It increases our probability of catching them," said Conlin, the Border Patrol spokesman.
But others say the fence's effectiveness hasn't been truly tested because fewer immigrants have been attempting to cross anywhere on the border due to the economic slowdown.
The funding, they said, could have been better spent hiring more agents or building infrastructure in other areas.
When the economy improves, the mountain will once again draw immigrants, fence or no fence, said Pedro Rios, director of the American Friends Service Committee in San Diego.
"It seems to me, if someone is able to climb the mountains in the Otay Wilderness, a 15-foot wall will not make a difference," he said.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-fence15-2010feb15,0,5691127.story
Friday, January 8, 2010
BORDER FENCE: Smuggler's Gulch project bleeding dirt into Tijuana River estuary
Land Letter
January 7, 2010
by April Reese
Six months after workers filled a canyon south of San Diego to enhance border security, California environmental officials say the controversial project is damaging a nearby estuary.
Customs and Border Protection officials completed the Smuggler's Gulch project in July.
Contractors filled the gulch, long a conduit of illegal activity, and built a new 15-foot-high fence and an access road across it. Once a deep canyon, the gulch is now bridged by a 100-foot-high earthen berm.
Department of Homeland Security officials say the berm allows agents to drive straight across what used to be a formidable obstacle, providing much quicker response times and a safer route to handle law enforcement and public safety emergencies. But while the berm -- as high as some of the West's towering concrete dams -- and accompanying fence may stem the flow of illegal immigrants and drug smugglers, those benefits have come at a significant environmental cost, critics say.
During peak rain events, barren slopes along the newly filled Smuggler's Gulch erode, sending sediment downstream into the Tijuana River estuary.
Like the other drainages in the rugged "border highlands" region, as the westernmost stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border is called, Smuggler's Gulch and other nearby canyons funnel streams from Mexico northward into the Tijuana River and its estuary (Land Letter, Jan. 15, 2009).
The estuary, which has undergone a multi-decade restoration effort, encompasses a national wildlife refuge and state parklands and is home to a number of endangered bird species, including the light-footed clapper rail, the California least tern, the least Bell's vireo and the American peregrine falcon.
California regulators and environmental groups, who warned DHS of the potential adverse effects of the $58 million project when it began, say their fears of damage to the estuary from an influx of eroded sediment are now proving true.
"The river valley keeps getting more and more sediment in it," said Jim Peugh, conservation chair of the San Diego chapter of the Sierra Club. "It has long-term flooding effects and long-term habitat effects for both the river valley and the estuary it flows into."
CBP was able to undertake the project without adhering to state or federal environmental laws due to waiver provisions both in a 1996 law pertaining just to the Smuggler's Gulch area and the REAL ID Act of 2005, which extended the waiver authority to the entire border region (Land Letter, Sept. 22, 2005).
As a result, regulators had little authority to address environmental problems.
"In some places, erosion control practices were not properly employed, in my opinion, and there's been significant erosion," said David Gibson, executive officer of the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board. "Normally I would have issued a violation for failing to meet the [state] standards for construction, but in this case we couldn't do that."
After meeting with CBP and its contractors, however, officials agreed to fix those problems, Gibson added. "Now that they've seen where the weak spots are, they're addressing them," he said.
Most of the sediment choking the estuary is flowing across the border from Mexico, but the fence project has exacerbated the problem, Gibson said.
"This was an extremely large construction project," he noted. "You just can't have that much earthmoving without having major problems."
DHS spokesman Claude Knighten said contractors did employ erosion barriers, such as waddles, and attempted to plant soil-stabilizing vegetation. But some of those efforts did not work as well as officials had expected, he acknowledged.
Some of the seeds that were planted on the newly created slopes, for example, did not take root due to mistimed watering. Contractors have since reseeded those areas and plan to better irrigate the plots to make sure the plantings succeed the second time, Knighten said.
The state is also considering installing trap structures to help keep sediment out of the estuary as part of the larger restoration effort, Gibson added.
Otay Mountain problems
Further east, in the federally protected Otay Mountain Wilderness, another new stretch of fence, along with the new road needed to patrol it, also is causing environmental damage that probably would not have occurred without the waiver.
Construction workers have removed about 100 rare Tecate cypress trees there that survived a 2003 wildfire that wiped out about 68 percent of the tree's habitat. And truck traffic has sent clouds of dust into the air, coating the tree's leaves, which provide food for the equally rare Thorne's hairstreak butterfly.
As the result of a lawsuit from the Center for Biological Diversity, the Fish and Wildlife Service is considering whether to protect the butterfly under the Endangered Species Act.
Knighten of CBP said crews are now wetting the roads to reduce dust. "We'll be monitoring the dust to make sure there aren't any problems," he said.
The Smuggler's Gulch and Otay Mountain projects were part of a far-reaching, congressionally mandated effort to shore up the U.S. southern border with hundreds of miles of new fencing from Texas to California. About 633 miles of new fence have been completed so far, at a cost of $2.4 billion.
Critics say the Smuggler's Gulch project will push illegal border activity further eastward and to the Pacific Ocean, where crossers will take to the water to get around the fence.
January 7, 2010
by April Reese
Six months after workers filled a canyon south of San Diego to enhance border security, California environmental officials say the controversial project is damaging a nearby estuary.
Customs and Border Protection officials completed the Smuggler's Gulch project in July.
Contractors filled the gulch, long a conduit of illegal activity, and built a new 15-foot-high fence and an access road across it. Once a deep canyon, the gulch is now bridged by a 100-foot-high earthen berm.
Department of Homeland Security officials say the berm allows agents to drive straight across what used to be a formidable obstacle, providing much quicker response times and a safer route to handle law enforcement and public safety emergencies. But while the berm -- as high as some of the West's towering concrete dams -- and accompanying fence may stem the flow of illegal immigrants and drug smugglers, those benefits have come at a significant environmental cost, critics say.
During peak rain events, barren slopes along the newly filled Smuggler's Gulch erode, sending sediment downstream into the Tijuana River estuary.
Like the other drainages in the rugged "border highlands" region, as the westernmost stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border is called, Smuggler's Gulch and other nearby canyons funnel streams from Mexico northward into the Tijuana River and its estuary (Land Letter, Jan. 15, 2009).
The estuary, which has undergone a multi-decade restoration effort, encompasses a national wildlife refuge and state parklands and is home to a number of endangered bird species, including the light-footed clapper rail, the California least tern, the least Bell's vireo and the American peregrine falcon.
California regulators and environmental groups, who warned DHS of the potential adverse effects of the $58 million project when it began, say their fears of damage to the estuary from an influx of eroded sediment are now proving true.
"The river valley keeps getting more and more sediment in it," said Jim Peugh, conservation chair of the San Diego chapter of the Sierra Club. "It has long-term flooding effects and long-term habitat effects for both the river valley and the estuary it flows into."
CBP was able to undertake the project without adhering to state or federal environmental laws due to waiver provisions both in a 1996 law pertaining just to the Smuggler's Gulch area and the REAL ID Act of 2005, which extended the waiver authority to the entire border region (Land Letter, Sept. 22, 2005).
As a result, regulators had little authority to address environmental problems.
"In some places, erosion control practices were not properly employed, in my opinion, and there's been significant erosion," said David Gibson, executive officer of the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board. "Normally I would have issued a violation for failing to meet the [state] standards for construction, but in this case we couldn't do that."
After meeting with CBP and its contractors, however, officials agreed to fix those problems, Gibson added. "Now that they've seen where the weak spots are, they're addressing them," he said.
Most of the sediment choking the estuary is flowing across the border from Mexico, but the fence project has exacerbated the problem, Gibson said.
"This was an extremely large construction project," he noted. "You just can't have that much earthmoving without having major problems."
DHS spokesman Claude Knighten said contractors did employ erosion barriers, such as waddles, and attempted to plant soil-stabilizing vegetation. But some of those efforts did not work as well as officials had expected, he acknowledged.
Some of the seeds that were planted on the newly created slopes, for example, did not take root due to mistimed watering. Contractors have since reseeded those areas and plan to better irrigate the plots to make sure the plantings succeed the second time, Knighten said.
The state is also considering installing trap structures to help keep sediment out of the estuary as part of the larger restoration effort, Gibson added.
Otay Mountain problems
Further east, in the federally protected Otay Mountain Wilderness, another new stretch of fence, along with the new road needed to patrol it, also is causing environmental damage that probably would not have occurred without the waiver.
Construction workers have removed about 100 rare Tecate cypress trees there that survived a 2003 wildfire that wiped out about 68 percent of the tree's habitat. And truck traffic has sent clouds of dust into the air, coating the tree's leaves, which provide food for the equally rare Thorne's hairstreak butterfly.
As the result of a lawsuit from the Center for Biological Diversity, the Fish and Wildlife Service is considering whether to protect the butterfly under the Endangered Species Act.
Knighten of CBP said crews are now wetting the roads to reduce dust. "We'll be monitoring the dust to make sure there aren't any problems," he said.
The Smuggler's Gulch and Otay Mountain projects were part of a far-reaching, congressionally mandated effort to shore up the U.S. southern border with hundreds of miles of new fencing from Texas to California. About 633 miles of new fence have been completed so far, at a cost of $2.4 billion.
Critics say the Smuggler's Gulch project will push illegal border activity further eastward and to the Pacific Ocean, where crossers will take to the water to get around the fence.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
La Posada at border fence
San Diego Union-Tribune
December 14, 2009
by J Harry Jones
IMPERIAL BEACH — Faith groups from the United States and Mexico gathered yesterday afternoon at Border Field State Park in what was both a religious celebration and a political statement.
The 16th annual La Posada Sin Fronteras was a re-enactment of the biblical story of Mary and Joseph, who were forced to seek shelter after the birth of Christ and were eventually welcomed into a stranger’s home. Participants from both countries compared the biblical tale to the struggle migrants face trying to enter the United States.
One of the messages of the story, the idea of welcoming strangers — and immigrants — is under attack in our times, making the binational celebration even more significant, organizers said. Today, families on both sides of the border are separated by immigration policy and can no longer meet, even at the border fence, organizers said.
This was the first time the celebration was held since a second border fence was constructed earlier this year. The participants were not allowed to touch or exchange gifts with those who had gathered in Mexico for the celebration.
About 150 people, including many members of the media, gathered on the Mexico side of the fence, while on the U.S. side about half that number were present.
U.S. Border Patrol agents allowed 25 people at a time to go through the first fence to the Friendship Monument, which is situated to the north of the Tijuana bullfighting ring and a lighthouse. The remainder were forced to stay back behind the second fence, roughly 100 feet away.
“I want to remind you that while there are few people here, there are many watching and praying,” said Tijuana’s Roman Catholic Archbishop Rafael Romo Muñoz, speaking from Mexico. “Many are praying for friendship and solidarity between our two countries.”
Veterans of earlier celebrations remembered how people would share tacos, hold hands and exchange trinkets through the fence.
“This is a sad occasion on this beautiful winter day,” said Christian Ramirez of the American Friends Service Committee from the U.S. side. “We friends are not allowed to touch each other or exchange food and candy as in the past. This is ridiculous. This is the promise of change we heard a year ago?”
Along the outer fence, dozens of luminarias were set up and lighted at dusk. Each bag, containing a lighted candle, represented a migrant killed while trying to cross the border. Many of the dead were young, and most were identified only as “unknown male.”
One of the organizers of the first Posada Without Borders in 1993 was Roberto Martinez, the migrant activist who died earlier this year. Ramirez said Martinez is “greatly missed” and was undoubtedly looking down on all yesterday afternoon.
Those on the U.S. side had to hike through mud and then on the beach for about two miles because the main road to the friendship monument was flooded. Few seemed to mind the inconvenience.
During the gathering, Christmas carols were sung in both English and Spanish. Although Americans were not allowed to give anything to the Mexicans, at one point bundles of candy came flying over the fence from the Mexico side.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2009/dec/14/la-posada-border-fence/
December 14, 2009
by J Harry Jones
IMPERIAL BEACH — Faith groups from the United States and Mexico gathered yesterday afternoon at Border Field State Park in what was both a religious celebration and a political statement.
The 16th annual La Posada Sin Fronteras was a re-enactment of the biblical story of Mary and Joseph, who were forced to seek shelter after the birth of Christ and were eventually welcomed into a stranger’s home. Participants from both countries compared the biblical tale to the struggle migrants face trying to enter the United States.
One of the messages of the story, the idea of welcoming strangers — and immigrants — is under attack in our times, making the binational celebration even more significant, organizers said. Today, families on both sides of the border are separated by immigration policy and can no longer meet, even at the border fence, organizers said.
This was the first time the celebration was held since a second border fence was constructed earlier this year. The participants were not allowed to touch or exchange gifts with those who had gathered in Mexico for the celebration.
About 150 people, including many members of the media, gathered on the Mexico side of the fence, while on the U.S. side about half that number were present.
U.S. Border Patrol agents allowed 25 people at a time to go through the first fence to the Friendship Monument, which is situated to the north of the Tijuana bullfighting ring and a lighthouse. The remainder were forced to stay back behind the second fence, roughly 100 feet away.
“I want to remind you that while there are few people here, there are many watching and praying,” said Tijuana’s Roman Catholic Archbishop Rafael Romo Muñoz, speaking from Mexico. “Many are praying for friendship and solidarity between our two countries.”
Veterans of earlier celebrations remembered how people would share tacos, hold hands and exchange trinkets through the fence.
“This is a sad occasion on this beautiful winter day,” said Christian Ramirez of the American Friends Service Committee from the U.S. side. “We friends are not allowed to touch each other or exchange food and candy as in the past. This is ridiculous. This is the promise of change we heard a year ago?”
Along the outer fence, dozens of luminarias were set up and lighted at dusk. Each bag, containing a lighted candle, represented a migrant killed while trying to cross the border. Many of the dead were young, and most were identified only as “unknown male.”
One of the organizers of the first Posada Without Borders in 1993 was Roberto Martinez, the migrant activist who died earlier this year. Ramirez said Martinez is “greatly missed” and was undoubtedly looking down on all yesterday afternoon.
Those on the U.S. side had to hike through mud and then on the beach for about two miles because the main road to the friendship monument was flooded. Few seemed to mind the inconvenience.
During the gathering, Christmas carols were sung in both English and Spanish. Although Americans were not allowed to give anything to the Mexicans, at one point bundles of candy came flying over the fence from the Mexico side.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2009/dec/14/la-posada-border-fence/
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Tijuana River Valley Residents Say Border Fence Contributing to Flooding
KPBS San Diego
December 7, 2009
by Amy Isackson
Tijuana River Valley residents say the new border fence is blocking drainage channels. They say rain is washing dirt from the new fence project into flood channels.
The Bush Administration waived all environmental laws to build the fence. Government officials promised to mitigate erosion. However, they didn't water the seeds they planted on the berm in Smuggler's Gulch until late this fall.
Dick Tynan, a rancher in the Tijuana River Valley, spoke with us while peering out his barn door towards the new border fence in Smuggler's Gulch.
Tynan said the bare dirt is creating a major problem.
"The government just dropped the ball on that," Tanyan said. "The water just takes the shortest path and its going to take out more silt as it goes. They've got a backhoe up there now working on it."
Tynan said the drainage channel that City of San Diego emergency crews have been digging is already half full.
He also said roads in the river valley have flooded. He's moved some of his horses to higher ground and is ready to move the rest.
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2009/dec/07/tijuana-river-valley-residents-say-border-fence-co/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
December 7, 2009
by Amy Isackson
Tijuana River Valley residents say the new border fence is blocking drainage channels. They say rain is washing dirt from the new fence project into flood channels.
The Bush Administration waived all environmental laws to build the fence. Government officials promised to mitigate erosion. However, they didn't water the seeds they planted on the berm in Smuggler's Gulch until late this fall.
Dick Tynan, a rancher in the Tijuana River Valley, spoke with us while peering out his barn door towards the new border fence in Smuggler's Gulch.
Tynan said the bare dirt is creating a major problem.
"The government just dropped the ball on that," Tanyan said. "The water just takes the shortest path and its going to take out more silt as it goes. They've got a backhoe up there now working on it."
Tynan said the drainage channel that City of San Diego emergency crews have been digging is already half full.
He also said roads in the river valley have flooded. He's moved some of his horses to higher ground and is ready to move the rest.
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2009/dec/07/tijuana-river-valley-residents-say-border-fence-co/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
Thursday, November 19, 2009
U.S. cracks down on border meeting spot for Mexicans
Reuters
November 19, 2009
by Lizbeth Diaz
TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) - The United States has severely restricted access to a spot on the Mexican border where families and lovers divided by illegal immigration could unite briefly to hold hands or kiss through a fence.
In a move to stop undocumented migrants and the passing of narcotics through gaps in the U.S.-Mexico border fence between San Diego and Tijuana, the United States has fortified the area with a second fence to tighten security.
The Friendship Park on the Pacific Ocean became a place for cross-border weddings, church services, Christmas parties and even yoga classes when opened in 1971 by then U.S. first lady Pat Nixon.
Planned as a U.S. park with access for people on both sides of the frontier, picnic tables and swings were put out of Mexicans' reach in 1994 when the United States raised a mesh fence to stop drug traffickers and illegal immigrants.
But families could sit on either side of the fence to kiss through it, talk and touch one another even as U.S. border agents nearby patrolled to keep out job-hungry illegal immigrants, terrorists and smugglers.
The fence became a popular spot for separated lovers who would pass notes on Valentine's Day.
But the U.S. government's second, larger barrier has sensors, lighting, radars and cameras on the edge of the park. Officials built a patrol road through it and fenced off access to the old mesh fence that abutted onto Mexico.
Work finished on the park fencing earlier this month, sealing off access for Mexicans on the U.S. side unless they take part in highly regulated visits.
"It was an act of cruelty," said Katy Parkinson, a U.S. resident in Tijuana who runs a charity for immigrants. "Here, grandmothers met their grandchildren for the first time, they took photos, people could find each other again."
The Border Patrol says those on the U.S. side can access the old Mexican fence for four hours on Saturdays and Sundays once vetted by agents in groups of up to 25 people.
"People can still meet at designated times," said San Diego-based Border Patrol Agent Jose Morales.
"The second fence was needed because the first one was ... breached by smugglers and people passed drugs and fake IDs through it," he added.
BORDER WALL
Nixon opened the park in Imperial Beach, California, in August 1971 as part of her efforts to promote U.S.-Mexican relations and, as she shook hands with Mexicans that day, was reported as saying "I hate to see a fence anywhere."
The fence is part of the 661-mile double-layered wall along part of the United States' 2,000-mile border with Mexico, built by the U.S. government.
"We will find a way to see each other," said shop assistant Carmen, 29, whose husband lives illegally in Los Angeles and who used to meet regularly at the old park fence. "I can't cross into the United States, I've been deported three times."
Almost 12 million illegal immigrants, mostly Hispanic, live and work in the United States, including millions of Mexicans.
Since the Sept 11 attacks in the United States, political pressure for tighter border controls has grown sharply. Supporters of the border fence say Mexico's violent drug war that has killed more than 15,000 people since late 2006 makes it all the more necessary to keep criminals out.
But some border experts say the fence does not stop those trying to get into the United States and only makes it more dangerous. Some 5,600 people have died trying to cross into the United States from Mexico since the U.S. government increased border security in 1994, human rights groups say.
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE5AI53120091119?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=11621
November 19, 2009
by Lizbeth Diaz
TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) - The United States has severely restricted access to a spot on the Mexican border where families and lovers divided by illegal immigration could unite briefly to hold hands or kiss through a fence.
In a move to stop undocumented migrants and the passing of narcotics through gaps in the U.S.-Mexico border fence between San Diego and Tijuana, the United States has fortified the area with a second fence to tighten security.
The Friendship Park on the Pacific Ocean became a place for cross-border weddings, church services, Christmas parties and even yoga classes when opened in 1971 by then U.S. first lady Pat Nixon.
Planned as a U.S. park with access for people on both sides of the frontier, picnic tables and swings were put out of Mexicans' reach in 1994 when the United States raised a mesh fence to stop drug traffickers and illegal immigrants.
But families could sit on either side of the fence to kiss through it, talk and touch one another even as U.S. border agents nearby patrolled to keep out job-hungry illegal immigrants, terrorists and smugglers.
The fence became a popular spot for separated lovers who would pass notes on Valentine's Day.
But the U.S. government's second, larger barrier has sensors, lighting, radars and cameras on the edge of the park. Officials built a patrol road through it and fenced off access to the old mesh fence that abutted onto Mexico.
Work finished on the park fencing earlier this month, sealing off access for Mexicans on the U.S. side unless they take part in highly regulated visits.
"It was an act of cruelty," said Katy Parkinson, a U.S. resident in Tijuana who runs a charity for immigrants. "Here, grandmothers met their grandchildren for the first time, they took photos, people could find each other again."
The Border Patrol says those on the U.S. side can access the old Mexican fence for four hours on Saturdays and Sundays once vetted by agents in groups of up to 25 people.
"People can still meet at designated times," said San Diego-based Border Patrol Agent Jose Morales.
"The second fence was needed because the first one was ... breached by smugglers and people passed drugs and fake IDs through it," he added.
BORDER WALL
Nixon opened the park in Imperial Beach, California, in August 1971 as part of her efforts to promote U.S.-Mexican relations and, as she shook hands with Mexicans that day, was reported as saying "I hate to see a fence anywhere."
The fence is part of the 661-mile double-layered wall along part of the United States' 2,000-mile border with Mexico, built by the U.S. government.
"We will find a way to see each other," said shop assistant Carmen, 29, whose husband lives illegally in Los Angeles and who used to meet regularly at the old park fence. "I can't cross into the United States, I've been deported three times."
Almost 12 million illegal immigrants, mostly Hispanic, live and work in the United States, including millions of Mexicans.
Since the Sept 11 attacks in the United States, political pressure for tighter border controls has grown sharply. Supporters of the border fence say Mexico's violent drug war that has killed more than 15,000 people since late 2006 makes it all the more necessary to keep criminals out.
But some border experts say the fence does not stop those trying to get into the United States and only makes it more dangerous. Some 5,600 people have died trying to cross into the United States from Mexico since the U.S. government increased border security in 1994, human rights groups say.
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE5AI53120091119?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=11621
Saturday, October 31, 2009
5,100 crosses at Mexico border mark migrant deaths
Associated Press
October 30, 2009
TIJUANA, Mexico -- Rights activists in the norhtern Mexican border city of Tijuana have hung 5,100 small white crosses on the fence straddling the U.S, frontier to commemorate migrants who have died trying to cross.
The protest coincides with preparations for Mexico's Nov. 1 Day of the Dead holiday. The crosses represent the number of migrants estimated to have died in the 15 years since the nited States toughened border security.
The Coalition for the Defense of Migrants also erected a traditional floral offering for the dead.
The Mexican government estimates about 350,000 of its citizens migrate to the U.S. annually.
October 30, 2009
TIJUANA, Mexico -- Rights activists in the norhtern Mexican border city of Tijuana have hung 5,100 small white crosses on the fence straddling the U.S, frontier to commemorate migrants who have died trying to cross.
The protest coincides with preparations for Mexico's Nov. 1 Day of the Dead holiday. The crosses represent the number of migrants estimated to have died in the 15 years since the nited States toughened border security.
The Coalition for the Defense of Migrants also erected a traditional floral offering for the dead.
The Mexican government estimates about 350,000 of its citizens migrate to the U.S. annually.
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