Courthouse News Service
March 14, 2014
by Jamie Ross
WASHINGTON (CN) - A professor won her bid for government records revealing the names and addresses of landowners whose properties might be affected by the Texas-Mexico border fence.
"Revealing the identities of landowners in the wall's planned construction site may shed light on the impact on indigenous communities, the disparate impact on lower-income minority communities, and the practices of private contractors," U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ruled Friday.
The information was requested by Denise Gilman, a clinical professor at the University of Texas-Austin School of Law researching the human-rights impact of the border fence.
A federal law passed in 2006 ordered the construction of a fence or wall along portions of the U.S.-Mexico border. It mandated reinforced fencing along at least 700 miles of the southwest border, but left the specific location up to the Department of Homeland Security.
In 2009, Gilman filed a Freedom of Information Act request for records detailing where the government planned to build parts of the wall and what information it was using to decide where to build.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released thousands of documents, but redacted certain information, including the names and addresses of landowners.
Gilman challenged the government's redactions, arguing that the public interest in how the wall would impact landowners outweighed any privacy concerns of private landowners.
She said the information would help the public understand the size of the wall and the agency's decisions about where to place it, including whether U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) was treating property owners fairly.
The CBP insisted that disclosure put the landowners' privacy rights at risk, and they faced unwanted contact from "the media, other members of the public, including other landowners involved in a similar process, and potential harassment."
Howell agreed with Gilman that "the public interest in learning how CBP negotiated with private citizens regarding the planning and construction of the border wall is significant."
"This public interest outweighs the privacy interest in landowners' names and addresses in CBP emails," she wrote.
However, she said the agency doesn't have to disclose emails relating to its assessment of the need for fencing, as information in the emails reveals areas that are patrolled by fewer Border Patrol agents due to their difficulty to patrol.
"Such information discloses the CBP's operations and vulnerabilities, which are not readily-accessible public information, the disclosure of which could risk appropriation to circumvent the law," Howell wrote.
Also, if Gilman seeks email attachments excluded from the records she received, she must file a new Freedom of Information Act request to receive them, the judge concluded.
"The schedule on which CBP was required to release records to the plaintiff is set out in the second clause and was thus a separate requirement from the scope of the responsive records set out in the first clause," Howell wrote.
http://www.courthousenews.com/2014/03/17/66225.htm
Showing posts with label condemnation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label condemnation. Show all posts
Monday, March 17, 2014
Saturday, May 4, 2013
Feds may acquire more land for new border fence construction, CBP proposal shows
The Monitor
May 1, 2013
by Jacqueline Armendariz
McALLEN — About 100 people in Starr and Hidalgo counties could be impacted under a proposed construction plan regarding the final sections of the border fence, with more than half living at a nursing home, federal documents show.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection draft plan differs from that of the International Boundary and Water Commission, the bi-national agency tasked with regulating the U.S-Mexico border and water releases along the Rio Grande.
The plan also hinges on whether funding is available to finish the job. As recently as March, federal officials said the remaining border fence project was halted due to a lack of funding.
But the border security component of Congress’ comprehensive immigration reform debate opens up the possibility that could change.
The path of the wall likely is not a surprise for residents of the three area communities impacted — Rio Grande City, Roma and Los Ebanos — as federal legislation for the project goes back to 2006.
However, two documents recently released by CBP show a another path for the fence that will likely mean a second round of property condemnations, Scott Nicol, chair of the Sierra Club Borderlands Team, said.
Nicol warns the fence plan will have serious consequences for humans and wildlife, which roam through the nearby federal refuge, because of the flood plains there.
“It’s an issue of CBP saying the water’s just going to pass right through these walls. The evidence with walls of almost the same design, in the past, shows that’s not the case,” he said. “Basically, if you stick a wall in the middle of a flood plain it’s going to act as a dam.”
He points to examples of the same fence construction in Arizona that, in some instances, have clogged with debris that eventually backed up as high as six feet.
The environmental advocacy group obtained the CBP records through the Freedom of Information Act and released them to The Monitor. One is a proposed fence plan dated November 30, 2012 from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The other is a CBP Facilities Management and Engineering department planning document from March 1 titled “Comprehensive Immigration Reform Planning.”
The bi-partisan group of senators known as the Gang of Eight rolled out their comprehensive immigration reform bill last month. While the impact of the federal government’s sequestration is felt, the legislation included $1.5 billion for new border wall construction — the final pieces of which were never constructed in the three towns.
When contacted for this story, CBP cited an email exchange with Nicol that had been forwarded to The Monitor. In the email dated March 29, CBP stated it worked closely with the IBWC on the proposed plan to address flooding concerns.
“On February 2012, IBWC’s Principal Engineer issued a letter approving that the referenced fence segments could be built without adversely impacting the floodplain, so long as CBP follows the proposed alignment and design, as well as provides maintenance and provides any future repairs,” the email reads in part.
However, the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers plan from November notes areas of deviation, due to various engineering reasons, from the path approved by the IBWC and developed with flood concerns in mind.
Bill Brooks, CBP branch chief of the agency’s southwest border media division, said CBP’s statement in the email confirming fence construction in the three cities has been delayed due to a lack of funding hasn’t changed.
“The so-called ‘Gang of 8’ immigration bill is proposed legislation and we cannot make decisions on or even speculate on the outcome of proposed legislation,” Brooks said in a statement to The Monitor.
This week, an IBWC spokesperson said the agency had not received the border fence plan from November to evaluate it.
CBP notes in one of the documents that the boundary commission agency warns it’s an international treaty violation if flood waters are pushed away from the U.S. into Mexico.
Nicols said that could to happen if the government’s fence path is followed, while gaps in the wall could also flood even more U.S. lands north of the structure during a substantial rain event.
The CBP document titled “Comprehensive Immigration Reform Planning” outlines a timeline indicating that within the next six months the government will notify property owners it wants their land.
The nursing home within the potential condemnation area, according to maps, is likely Retama Manor Nursing Center in Rio Grande City. A staff member who answered the facility’s phone last week said he was not aware the nursing home may need to relocate. A representative for the nursing home’s parent company in Atlanta said no one would be available for comment on the situation until next week.
In an email dated March 29, sent to the Sierra Club and released to The Monitor, Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, also said CBP told him fence construction was on hold because of a lack of funding.
Cuellar’s office sent a statement Friday that has no mention of the phrase “border fence” in response to a series of questions from The Monitor on the subject, including whether he is aware of the proposal that might cause nearly 100 residents in his congressional district to relocate.
“It is our responsibility to ensure that our law enforcement officers have the necessary tools and equipment to keep our communities safe,” Cuellar said, in part. “We ought to pass an immigration bill that that enhances border security and ensures a comprehensive guest worker plan to provide opportunities for those hard working individuals and families who have come to our great country.”
Within one of the documents, the government notes 95 percent of cases result in condemnation, meaning property owners are taken to court for their land. Nicol notes most of those who could be affected by the plan won’t likely have the resources to take the government to court to fight for the best price for their land.
“They’re sort of guaranteed to get shafted,’ he said.
The wall, he said, is nothing more than a political prop, particularly when one considers the number of immigrants entering the country illegally has decreased likely due to an economic downturn and increasing cartel drug violence.
“It’s something you can walk in front of a look tough. The fact that it doesn’t do anything doesn’t matter,” he said. “I think it’s kind of despicable to tear up people’s property and wildlife refuges and potentially cause flooding that could ruin homes and drown people.”
http://www.themonitor.com/news/local/article_6c0bf08a-b45b-11e2-91e6-001a4bcf6878.html
May 1, 2013
by Jacqueline Armendariz
McALLEN — About 100 people in Starr and Hidalgo counties could be impacted under a proposed construction plan regarding the final sections of the border fence, with more than half living at a nursing home, federal documents show.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection draft plan differs from that of the International Boundary and Water Commission, the bi-national agency tasked with regulating the U.S-Mexico border and water releases along the Rio Grande.
The plan also hinges on whether funding is available to finish the job. As recently as March, federal officials said the remaining border fence project was halted due to a lack of funding.
But the border security component of Congress’ comprehensive immigration reform debate opens up the possibility that could change.
The path of the wall likely is not a surprise for residents of the three area communities impacted — Rio Grande City, Roma and Los Ebanos — as federal legislation for the project goes back to 2006.
However, two documents recently released by CBP show a another path for the fence that will likely mean a second round of property condemnations, Scott Nicol, chair of the Sierra Club Borderlands Team, said.
Nicol warns the fence plan will have serious consequences for humans and wildlife, which roam through the nearby federal refuge, because of the flood plains there.
“It’s an issue of CBP saying the water’s just going to pass right through these walls. The evidence with walls of almost the same design, in the past, shows that’s not the case,” he said. “Basically, if you stick a wall in the middle of a flood plain it’s going to act as a dam.”
He points to examples of the same fence construction in Arizona that, in some instances, have clogged with debris that eventually backed up as high as six feet.
The environmental advocacy group obtained the CBP records through the Freedom of Information Act and released them to The Monitor. One is a proposed fence plan dated November 30, 2012 from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The other is a CBP Facilities Management and Engineering department planning document from March 1 titled “Comprehensive Immigration Reform Planning.”
The bi-partisan group of senators known as the Gang of Eight rolled out their comprehensive immigration reform bill last month. While the impact of the federal government’s sequestration is felt, the legislation included $1.5 billion for new border wall construction — the final pieces of which were never constructed in the three towns.
When contacted for this story, CBP cited an email exchange with Nicol that had been forwarded to The Monitor. In the email dated March 29, CBP stated it worked closely with the IBWC on the proposed plan to address flooding concerns.
“On February 2012, IBWC’s Principal Engineer issued a letter approving that the referenced fence segments could be built without adversely impacting the floodplain, so long as CBP follows the proposed alignment and design, as well as provides maintenance and provides any future repairs,” the email reads in part.
However, the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers plan from November notes areas of deviation, due to various engineering reasons, from the path approved by the IBWC and developed with flood concerns in mind.
Bill Brooks, CBP branch chief of the agency’s southwest border media division, said CBP’s statement in the email confirming fence construction in the three cities has been delayed due to a lack of funding hasn’t changed.
“The so-called ‘Gang of 8’ immigration bill is proposed legislation and we cannot make decisions on or even speculate on the outcome of proposed legislation,” Brooks said in a statement to The Monitor.
This week, an IBWC spokesperson said the agency had not received the border fence plan from November to evaluate it.
CBP notes in one of the documents that the boundary commission agency warns it’s an international treaty violation if flood waters are pushed away from the U.S. into Mexico.
Nicols said that could to happen if the government’s fence path is followed, while gaps in the wall could also flood even more U.S. lands north of the structure during a substantial rain event.
The CBP document titled “Comprehensive Immigration Reform Planning” outlines a timeline indicating that within the next six months the government will notify property owners it wants their land.
The nursing home within the potential condemnation area, according to maps, is likely Retama Manor Nursing Center in Rio Grande City. A staff member who answered the facility’s phone last week said he was not aware the nursing home may need to relocate. A representative for the nursing home’s parent company in Atlanta said no one would be available for comment on the situation until next week.
In an email dated March 29, sent to the Sierra Club and released to The Monitor, Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, also said CBP told him fence construction was on hold because of a lack of funding.
Cuellar’s office sent a statement Friday that has no mention of the phrase “border fence” in response to a series of questions from The Monitor on the subject, including whether he is aware of the proposal that might cause nearly 100 residents in his congressional district to relocate.
“It is our responsibility to ensure that our law enforcement officers have the necessary tools and equipment to keep our communities safe,” Cuellar said, in part. “We ought to pass an immigration bill that that enhances border security and ensures a comprehensive guest worker plan to provide opportunities for those hard working individuals and families who have come to our great country.”
Within one of the documents, the government notes 95 percent of cases result in condemnation, meaning property owners are taken to court for their land. Nicol notes most of those who could be affected by the plan won’t likely have the resources to take the government to court to fight for the best price for their land.
“They’re sort of guaranteed to get shafted,’ he said.
The wall, he said, is nothing more than a political prop, particularly when one considers the number of immigrants entering the country illegally has decreased likely due to an economic downturn and increasing cartel drug violence.
“It’s something you can walk in front of a look tough. The fact that it doesn’t do anything doesn’t matter,” he said. “I think it’s kind of despicable to tear up people’s property and wildlife refuges and potentially cause flooding that could ruin homes and drown people.”
http://www.themonitor.com/news/local/article_6c0bf08a-b45b-11e2-91e6-001a4bcf6878.html
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Feds attempt to seize land|Motion cites lack of communication
The Brownsville Herald
April 16, 2013
by Mark Reagan
A prolonged fight over .026 acres of land along the Rio Grande is slowly edging forward after U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen ordered the landowner’s lawyers to start talking to the government.
In 2008, the U.S. government sued Eloisa G. Tamez and 14 other landowners — including the Brownsville and Matamoros Bridge Co. — in an effort to take the properties and build sections of the border fence on them, court documents show.
“The public purpose for which said land is taken is to construct, install, operate, and maintain roads, fencing, vehicle barriers, security lighting, and related structures designed to help secure the United States/Mexico border within the State of Texas,” the original suit states.
That litigation was filed July 1, 2008.
Hanen said he called Tuesday’s hearing because he wanted to know the status of the case because “it kind of stalled.”
According to the government, the case stalled because lead California-based lawyer Peter Schey, who represents the landowners, wasn’t responding to routine court matters.
The government filed a motion April 1 to take immediate possession of the property.
“Counsel for the United States of America has exercised due diligence in attempting to reach defendant’s counsel regarding this Motion but all recent attempts to contact Defendant’s counsel have failed,” the document states.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric A. Hudson said Tuesday it’s the government’s view that since it didn’t receive any response in 21 days, all objections by Tamez’s counsel were waived.
But Schey filed an opposed motion Monday.
“The agreed upon Proposed Scheduling Order sets deadlines and trial in this cause well into the future and it is unclear why, and plaintiff has failed to explain why, it requires an immediate Order of possession on the small strip of additional land involved in its present motion,” the document states.
The motion suggests allowing “reasonable time” for the United States to file a memorandum of points and authorities supporting its request for immediate possession, for the defendants to file oppositions, for the government to file any reply briefs and then for a prompt hearing to be held.
However, Hanen said he thought the case has dragged on long enough.
“I’m not going to make the government jump through hoops if y’all aren’t going to respond,” Hanen said, adding that he thought Tamez’s lawyers were acting negligent. “You’ve got to act like responsible counsel of record.”
The judge called it unfair to Tamez and the court for the government to not receive responses from the attorney.
Hanen scheduled an April 30 hearing on the motion for immediate possession and suggested that the landowners consider hiring a third lawyer or removing Schey from the case.
Schey said his clients were working to include a third, local, attorney.
http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/local/article_d83b1e5e-a707-11e2-83bf-0019bb30f31a.html
April 16, 2013
by Mark Reagan
A prolonged fight over .026 acres of land along the Rio Grande is slowly edging forward after U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen ordered the landowner’s lawyers to start talking to the government.
In 2008, the U.S. government sued Eloisa G. Tamez and 14 other landowners — including the Brownsville and Matamoros Bridge Co. — in an effort to take the properties and build sections of the border fence on them, court documents show.
“The public purpose for which said land is taken is to construct, install, operate, and maintain roads, fencing, vehicle barriers, security lighting, and related structures designed to help secure the United States/Mexico border within the State of Texas,” the original suit states.
That litigation was filed July 1, 2008.
Hanen said he called Tuesday’s hearing because he wanted to know the status of the case because “it kind of stalled.”
According to the government, the case stalled because lead California-based lawyer Peter Schey, who represents the landowners, wasn’t responding to routine court matters.
The government filed a motion April 1 to take immediate possession of the property.
“Counsel for the United States of America has exercised due diligence in attempting to reach defendant’s counsel regarding this Motion but all recent attempts to contact Defendant’s counsel have failed,” the document states.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric A. Hudson said Tuesday it’s the government’s view that since it didn’t receive any response in 21 days, all objections by Tamez’s counsel were waived.
But Schey filed an opposed motion Monday.
“The agreed upon Proposed Scheduling Order sets deadlines and trial in this cause well into the future and it is unclear why, and plaintiff has failed to explain why, it requires an immediate Order of possession on the small strip of additional land involved in its present motion,” the document states.
The motion suggests allowing “reasonable time” for the United States to file a memorandum of points and authorities supporting its request for immediate possession, for the defendants to file oppositions, for the government to file any reply briefs and then for a prompt hearing to be held.
However, Hanen said he thought the case has dragged on long enough.
“I’m not going to make the government jump through hoops if y’all aren’t going to respond,” Hanen said, adding that he thought Tamez’s lawyers were acting negligent. “You’ve got to act like responsible counsel of record.”
The judge called it unfair to Tamez and the court for the government to not receive responses from the attorney.
Hanen scheduled an April 30 hearing on the motion for immediate possession and suggested that the landowners consider hiring a third lawyer or removing Schey from the case.
Schey said his clients were working to include a third, local, attorney.
http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/local/article_d83b1e5e-a707-11e2-83bf-0019bb30f31a.html
Monday, October 22, 2012
Border fence gap to close
El Paso Inc.
October 21, 2012
by David Crowder
The 18-foot-high border fence intended to seal the U.S.-Mexican border from San Diego to Brownsville will soon close a half-mile gap just west of Downtown El Paso.
The new section will run right through the spot where many historians believe Spanish explorer Don Juan de Oñate crossed the Rio Grande in 1598.
Rancher Chip Johns, who owns the property, recognizes the inevitability of the fence. But he doesn't like much about it - not the damage that will be done, not the presence of the heavy-gauge steel barrier and not the price the government is offering.
"They're trying to put that ugly fence right through the property," said Johns. The land on West Paisano Drive near the Yandell Drive overpass includes historic monuments, the former La Hacienda Restaurant and several buildings from the 1890s that were the first Fort Bliss. The fence picks up again near the site of the former Asarco smelter.
Just when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will start construction to fill the gap is uncertain, said Ramiro Cordero, a Border Patrol special operations supervisor.
"There's still a lot of things that need to happen with the property owners and right of entry before they give us the green light to do it," Cordero said.
Documents Johns provided El Paso Inc. indicate he is being offered $22,300 for 19,608 square feet, or about half an acre, along the southern property line parallel to the American Canal.
"I understand that we need a fence and all that, but I'm not going to accept the high-handedness of what they're trying to do to us," he said. "We need something that is more esthetically pleasing than that damn ugly fence, otherwise I'm going to have to get kinda Western with them."
Johns, who runs the 250,000-acre JCJ Ranch along the border in New Mexico, thinks having the fence across the back of the Hacienda property will diminish its possibilities for redevelopment.
The property should be a tourist attraction, he said, given the history of the old Hacienda Restaurant building. Built in the 1850s by pioneer El Pasoan Simeon Hart, it was described by a traveler of the time as a large and luxurious residence built in the Mexican style.
But the restaurant has been closed for years, the Fort Bliss buildings are now low-income apartments and the historical monuments have been vandalized.
"I still feel that between Old Fort Bliss and the Hacienda and the Oñate crossing site, there's a viable attraction that needs to be developed by the city, the city or somebody," he said. "But I'm 68, and I'm tired of it."
Johns said he is haggling with the government over the price of the land it intends to buy with his agreement, or condemn without it.
"I have been told if I do not acquiesce to their demands, they will put a condemnation suit on me," he said. "So that is a done deal."
Changing attitudes
The border fence was greeted with opposition and protests when work began in El Paso County in 2007. The county challenged the fence all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and lost in 2009.
The controversy has died down since, and some attitudes about the fence have changed.
In El Paso County, the biggest disputes with Homeland Security involved area farmers and the El Paso County Water Improvement District No. 1, better known as the irrigation district.
Jesus "Chuy" Reyes, general manager of the district headquartered in Clint, said one battle focused on Johns' property and plans to leave an important irrigation head gate on the south side of the barrier.
"That head gate is very important to the irrigation district's movement of water," Reyes said. "Any failure of those gates could potentially flood downtown El Paso in a crisis like the one we had in 2006."
That was the year a major storm flooded many areas of the city.
Another problem, Reyes said, would have been the theft of vital irrigation works.
"We're always battling thievery by people coming across the river and stealing parts," Reyes said. "There are some scary aspects about leaving the American Canal on the south side of that fence."
But Reyes' brother, U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-El Paso, was able to procure $16 million that will be spent to put the American Canal works and part of the canal itself underground.
"That would let Homeland Security route their fence so they could leave those structures on the north side," Chuy Reyes said. "We're happy now."
Some area farmers have also changed their opinions about the fence.
"Our farmers down here on the river are happy because they no longer have that illegal traffic coming through their fields," Reyes said. "They no longer have the danger of the drug smugglers because it's really curtailed now.
"It is working. We hear of drug smugglers coming over the fence, and Border Patrol is always dealing with cuts in the fence, but the community that lives along the border is very happy that the fence is there now. I get those comments all the time."
Huge disparities
There's a new controversy over the border fence in the Brownsville area. Recent reports show huge disparities in the prices property owners have been getting from Homeland Security.
"Since 2008, hundreds of land owners on the border have sought fair prices for property that was condemned to make way for the fence," the Associated Press reported last week after conducting an investigation. "But many of them received initial offers that were far below market value.
"And dozens accepted those amounts without seeking any legal help, only to discover neighbors had won far larger settlements after hiring attorneys."
In one case, a south Texas farmer accepted the government's offer of $1,650 for a slice of his back yard and then learned that one neighbor was paid more than $65,000 for a similar lot while another got $1 million, according to the AP.
http://www.elpasoinc.com/news/local_news/article_eab8ab70-1b7d-11e2-87ab-0019bb30f31a.html
October 21, 2012
by David Crowder
The 18-foot-high border fence intended to seal the U.S.-Mexican border from San Diego to Brownsville will soon close a half-mile gap just west of Downtown El Paso.
The new section will run right through the spot where many historians believe Spanish explorer Don Juan de Oñate crossed the Rio Grande in 1598.
Rancher Chip Johns, who owns the property, recognizes the inevitability of the fence. But he doesn't like much about it - not the damage that will be done, not the presence of the heavy-gauge steel barrier and not the price the government is offering.
"They're trying to put that ugly fence right through the property," said Johns. The land on West Paisano Drive near the Yandell Drive overpass includes historic monuments, the former La Hacienda Restaurant and several buildings from the 1890s that were the first Fort Bliss. The fence picks up again near the site of the former Asarco smelter.
Just when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will start construction to fill the gap is uncertain, said Ramiro Cordero, a Border Patrol special operations supervisor.
"There's still a lot of things that need to happen with the property owners and right of entry before they give us the green light to do it," Cordero said.
Documents Johns provided El Paso Inc. indicate he is being offered $22,300 for 19,608 square feet, or about half an acre, along the southern property line parallel to the American Canal.
"I understand that we need a fence and all that, but I'm not going to accept the high-handedness of what they're trying to do to us," he said. "We need something that is more esthetically pleasing than that damn ugly fence, otherwise I'm going to have to get kinda Western with them."
Johns, who runs the 250,000-acre JCJ Ranch along the border in New Mexico, thinks having the fence across the back of the Hacienda property will diminish its possibilities for redevelopment.
The property should be a tourist attraction, he said, given the history of the old Hacienda Restaurant building. Built in the 1850s by pioneer El Pasoan Simeon Hart, it was described by a traveler of the time as a large and luxurious residence built in the Mexican style.
But the restaurant has been closed for years, the Fort Bliss buildings are now low-income apartments and the historical monuments have been vandalized.
"I still feel that between Old Fort Bliss and the Hacienda and the Oñate crossing site, there's a viable attraction that needs to be developed by the city, the city or somebody," he said. "But I'm 68, and I'm tired of it."
Johns said he is haggling with the government over the price of the land it intends to buy with his agreement, or condemn without it.
"I have been told if I do not acquiesce to their demands, they will put a condemnation suit on me," he said. "So that is a done deal."
Changing attitudes
The border fence was greeted with opposition and protests when work began in El Paso County in 2007. The county challenged the fence all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and lost in 2009.
The controversy has died down since, and some attitudes about the fence have changed.
In El Paso County, the biggest disputes with Homeland Security involved area farmers and the El Paso County Water Improvement District No. 1, better known as the irrigation district.
Jesus "Chuy" Reyes, general manager of the district headquartered in Clint, said one battle focused on Johns' property and plans to leave an important irrigation head gate on the south side of the barrier.
"That head gate is very important to the irrigation district's movement of water," Reyes said. "Any failure of those gates could potentially flood downtown El Paso in a crisis like the one we had in 2006."
That was the year a major storm flooded many areas of the city.
Another problem, Reyes said, would have been the theft of vital irrigation works.
"We're always battling thievery by people coming across the river and stealing parts," Reyes said. "There are some scary aspects about leaving the American Canal on the south side of that fence."
But Reyes' brother, U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-El Paso, was able to procure $16 million that will be spent to put the American Canal works and part of the canal itself underground.
"That would let Homeland Security route their fence so they could leave those structures on the north side," Chuy Reyes said. "We're happy now."
Some area farmers have also changed their opinions about the fence.
"Our farmers down here on the river are happy because they no longer have that illegal traffic coming through their fields," Reyes said. "They no longer have the danger of the drug smugglers because it's really curtailed now.
"It is working. We hear of drug smugglers coming over the fence, and Border Patrol is always dealing with cuts in the fence, but the community that lives along the border is very happy that the fence is there now. I get those comments all the time."
Huge disparities
There's a new controversy over the border fence in the Brownsville area. Recent reports show huge disparities in the prices property owners have been getting from Homeland Security.
"Since 2008, hundreds of land owners on the border have sought fair prices for property that was condemned to make way for the fence," the Associated Press reported last week after conducting an investigation. "But many of them received initial offers that were far below market value.
"And dozens accepted those amounts without seeking any legal help, only to discover neighbors had won far larger settlements after hiring attorneys."
In one case, a south Texas farmer accepted the government's offer of $1,650 for a slice of his back yard and then learned that one neighbor was paid more than $65,000 for a similar lot while another got $1 million, according to the AP.
http://www.elpasoinc.com/news/local_news/article_eab8ab70-1b7d-11e2-87ab-0019bb30f31a.html
Monday, June 4, 2012
Brownsville to recoup fence land, continue project
Brownsville Herald
June 3, 2012
by Emma Perez-Trevino
The city of Brownsville and attorneys for private trusts told U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen Wednesday that their negotiations are progressing regarding land that the federal government condemned to make way for placement of a temporary border fence.
The United States took possession of 15.919 acres of land from the city in 2009, but an agreement that the parties reached contains provisions that the land would revert to the city upon construction of a new levee. The fence would then be moved to the new levee.
The fence was built on what is known as the East Loop levee between the Gateway International Bridge and the B&M International Bridge.
When the city constructs a new levee, the property would revert to the city to allow it to complete the East Loop, which would carry heavy truck traffic from the international bridges to the Port of Brownsville. City officials said at the time that the land also is vital to the contemplated development of the historic downtown area.
Under the agreement reached with the government, the city would be responsible for designing and constructing the replacement levee and barriers, and the temporary fencing would be removed by the government if funding were available.
After the agreement was reached, however, it was learned that the Browne trusts have an interest in some of the property. Their attorney Daniel L. Rentfro Jr. advised Hanen that they are not contesting the agreement between the city and the government. Rentfro said that they have been negotiating with the city and Cameron County and are resolving issues of just compensation.
The government’s attorney Daniel David Hu told Hanen that this is “obviously the city’s business.”
The parties will keep the court informed as they continue to work toward reversion of the property to the city.
http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/articles/land-140991-fence-city.html
June 3, 2012
by Emma Perez-Trevino
The city of Brownsville and attorneys for private trusts told U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen Wednesday that their negotiations are progressing regarding land that the federal government condemned to make way for placement of a temporary border fence.
The United States took possession of 15.919 acres of land from the city in 2009, but an agreement that the parties reached contains provisions that the land would revert to the city upon construction of a new levee. The fence would then be moved to the new levee.
The fence was built on what is known as the East Loop levee between the Gateway International Bridge and the B&M International Bridge.
When the city constructs a new levee, the property would revert to the city to allow it to complete the East Loop, which would carry heavy truck traffic from the international bridges to the Port of Brownsville. City officials said at the time that the land also is vital to the contemplated development of the historic downtown area.
Under the agreement reached with the government, the city would be responsible for designing and constructing the replacement levee and barriers, and the temporary fencing would be removed by the government if funding were available.
After the agreement was reached, however, it was learned that the Browne trusts have an interest in some of the property. Their attorney Daniel L. Rentfro Jr. advised Hanen that they are not contesting the agreement between the city and the government. Rentfro said that they have been negotiating with the city and Cameron County and are resolving issues of just compensation.
The government’s attorney Daniel David Hu told Hanen that this is “obviously the city’s business.”
The parties will keep the court informed as they continue to work toward reversion of the property to the city.
http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/articles/land-140991-fence-city.html
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Border Fence Upends a Valley Farmer’s Life
Texas Monthly / New York Times
November 26, 2011
by Oscar Casares
BROWNSVILLE — One of the obvious advantages of living within a gated community is the sense of security. But what if you live on the wrong side of the gate?
Consider the plight of Tim Loop, 47, who lives on his family farm in Brownsville, at the southernmost point along the United States-Mexico border.
Not so long ago, the Loop farm was a pastoral vision, with its bountiful mesquite and cotton fields and orange groves. Today, imposing sections of 15- to-18-foot-high rust-colored steel bars, some less than 400 feet from Mr. Loop’s front porch, are more likely to catch the eye.
In 2009 the Department of Homeland Security informed Mr. Loop and other landowners along the northern bank of the Rio Grande that the new border fence, which in some areas stands more than a mile from the river, would be cutting through their properties. (A water treaty with Mexico that restricts building within the flood plain prevented the department from simply hugging the north bank.) The three-bedroom home where Mr. Loop lives with his wife and two children ended up on the south side of the fence, inside what essentially became a no-man’s land.
Many gaps remain along the fence line. But now, to seal off these openings, the Homeland Security Department plans to install motorized gates and keypads. Like a handful of other border dwellers in the same situation, Mr. Loop and his family will be required to use a secret code to reach their home — and to re-enter the rest of his country.
“I’ll have to ask permission from the government to live my life,” Mr. Loop said.
It’s an awkward situation that Mr. Loop’s forebears could never have imagined. His grandfather settled this tract of land in the early 1900s, part of the southern migration of farmers who followed the expanding railway and the promise of an Edenic life to the Rio Grande Valley. Since then, the family has grown cotton, soybeans, wheat, cabbage, corn, sorghum and sugar cane. They have endured the merciless heat, the yearly threat of hurricane season and the occasional hard freeze that can easily wipe out a citrus crop.
But although life along the Rio Grande has always demanded ingenuity and resilience, it is doubtful that Mr. Loop’s grandfather ever figured on an enormous steel fence slicing through his land.
In fact, most local residents in this remote, rural and poor corner of the country are accustomed to being virtually forgotten by Washington. That, however, has changed dramatically in the past 10 years. Today the area seems like a cauldron of the nation’s deepest anxieties, a place where concerns about illegal immigration, fears of terrorism and, more recently, nervousness about spillover violence from Mexico’s drug war have boiled into repeated calls for a more secure border.
Mr. Loop seems to consider this a mixed blessing. He credits the initial boots-on-the-ground strategy with a decrease in the number of illegal crossings, but this only makes him question the need for more sections of fence.
“The fence is not doing what it’s supposed to be doing,” he said.
There is no doubt that the new gates and the keypads, the first round of which is scheduled to be completed by spring, will complicate his life. Mr. Loop will be issued a personal pass code, but he will have to provide the Homeland Security Department with the names of everyone who has regular access to it.
According to the “Landowner Reference Guide,” a pamphlet distributed by the Border Patrol, the gates will stay open for a certain part of every day, though the Border Patrol will have discretion over this. Emergency personnel will have access through the gates (which are designed to unlock in the event of a power failure), but the possibility of being caught on the wrong side of the fence weighs heavily on families like the Loops.
There are other worries, too. Mr. Loop wonders if possessing a secret pass code could make him a target for anyone desperate to gain access to the other side. This is, after all, a familiar area to desperate travelers.
The gates and keypads will affect a handful of other properties in the area. Ultimately, that list may include the Lennox Foundation Southmost Preserve, a large tract belonging to the Nature Conservancy, which fought the border fence.
Maxwell Pons, an irascible preserve manager who, like Mr. Loop, lives in a house south of the border fence, has little faith that the government will handle the gate and keypad project any better than the fence.
“They tore down hundred-year-old trees to put up a fence,” Mr. Pons said. “You think they care about how using a keypad is going to affect us?”
Then there is the question of whether motorized gates controlled by secret pass codes will be able to secure a fence that was not all that secure to begin with.
Recently, Mr. Loop noticed what from a distance might have looked like dozens of ants scampering up the south side of the 18-foot-high steel bars. Getting closer, he realized that these were scuff marks — from shoes, boots, sneakers, bare feet; there was no telling for sure — and that whoever left the marks had made it to the top, and over, undeterred.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/us/border-fence-upends-a-rio-grande-valley-farmers-life.html
November 26, 2011
by Oscar Casares
BROWNSVILLE — One of the obvious advantages of living within a gated community is the sense of security. But what if you live on the wrong side of the gate?
Consider the plight of Tim Loop, 47, who lives on his family farm in Brownsville, at the southernmost point along the United States-Mexico border.
Not so long ago, the Loop farm was a pastoral vision, with its bountiful mesquite and cotton fields and orange groves. Today, imposing sections of 15- to-18-foot-high rust-colored steel bars, some less than 400 feet from Mr. Loop’s front porch, are more likely to catch the eye.
In 2009 the Department of Homeland Security informed Mr. Loop and other landowners along the northern bank of the Rio Grande that the new border fence, which in some areas stands more than a mile from the river, would be cutting through their properties. (A water treaty with Mexico that restricts building within the flood plain prevented the department from simply hugging the north bank.) The three-bedroom home where Mr. Loop lives with his wife and two children ended up on the south side of the fence, inside what essentially became a no-man’s land.
Many gaps remain along the fence line. But now, to seal off these openings, the Homeland Security Department plans to install motorized gates and keypads. Like a handful of other border dwellers in the same situation, Mr. Loop and his family will be required to use a secret code to reach their home — and to re-enter the rest of his country.
“I’ll have to ask permission from the government to live my life,” Mr. Loop said.
It’s an awkward situation that Mr. Loop’s forebears could never have imagined. His grandfather settled this tract of land in the early 1900s, part of the southern migration of farmers who followed the expanding railway and the promise of an Edenic life to the Rio Grande Valley. Since then, the family has grown cotton, soybeans, wheat, cabbage, corn, sorghum and sugar cane. They have endured the merciless heat, the yearly threat of hurricane season and the occasional hard freeze that can easily wipe out a citrus crop.
But although life along the Rio Grande has always demanded ingenuity and resilience, it is doubtful that Mr. Loop’s grandfather ever figured on an enormous steel fence slicing through his land.
In fact, most local residents in this remote, rural and poor corner of the country are accustomed to being virtually forgotten by Washington. That, however, has changed dramatically in the past 10 years. Today the area seems like a cauldron of the nation’s deepest anxieties, a place where concerns about illegal immigration, fears of terrorism and, more recently, nervousness about spillover violence from Mexico’s drug war have boiled into repeated calls for a more secure border.
Mr. Loop seems to consider this a mixed blessing. He credits the initial boots-on-the-ground strategy with a decrease in the number of illegal crossings, but this only makes him question the need for more sections of fence.
“The fence is not doing what it’s supposed to be doing,” he said.
There is no doubt that the new gates and the keypads, the first round of which is scheduled to be completed by spring, will complicate his life. Mr. Loop will be issued a personal pass code, but he will have to provide the Homeland Security Department with the names of everyone who has regular access to it.
According to the “Landowner Reference Guide,” a pamphlet distributed by the Border Patrol, the gates will stay open for a certain part of every day, though the Border Patrol will have discretion over this. Emergency personnel will have access through the gates (which are designed to unlock in the event of a power failure), but the possibility of being caught on the wrong side of the fence weighs heavily on families like the Loops.
There are other worries, too. Mr. Loop wonders if possessing a secret pass code could make him a target for anyone desperate to gain access to the other side. This is, after all, a familiar area to desperate travelers.
The gates and keypads will affect a handful of other properties in the area. Ultimately, that list may include the Lennox Foundation Southmost Preserve, a large tract belonging to the Nature Conservancy, which fought the border fence.
Maxwell Pons, an irascible preserve manager who, like Mr. Loop, lives in a house south of the border fence, has little faith that the government will handle the gate and keypad project any better than the fence.
“They tore down hundred-year-old trees to put up a fence,” Mr. Pons said. “You think they care about how using a keypad is going to affect us?”
Then there is the question of whether motorized gates controlled by secret pass codes will be able to secure a fence that was not all that secure to begin with.
Recently, Mr. Loop noticed what from a distance might have looked like dozens of ants scampering up the south side of the 18-foot-high steel bars. Getting closer, he realized that these were scuff marks — from shoes, boots, sneakers, bare feet; there was no telling for sure — and that whoever left the marks had made it to the top, and over, undeterred.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/us/border-fence-upends-a-rio-grande-valley-farmers-life.html
Thursday, September 29, 2011
U.S. mulls Canadian border fence
CBC News
September 29, 2011
The United States is looking at building fences along the border with Canada to help keep out terrorists and other criminals, according to a draft report by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency
The report proposes the use of "fencing and other barriers" on the 49th parallel to manage "trouble spots where passage of cross-border violators is difficult to control."
But a spokesperson for U.S Customs and Border Protection said the government is not considering the fence option "at this time" and instead is looking at the environmental effects of putting more manpower, technology and infrastructure along the border.
The border service is also pondering options including a beefed-up technological presence through increased use of radar, sensors, cameras, drones and vehicle scanners. In addition, it might continue to improve or expand customs facilities at ports of entry.
The agency considered but ruled out the possibility of hiring "significantly more" U.S. Border Patrol agents to increase the rate of inspections, noting staffing has already risen in recent years.
Customs and Border Protection is inviting comment on the options and plans a series of public meetings in Washington and several U.S. border communities next month. It will then decide which ideas to pursue.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano noted last month the challenges of monitoring the vast, sparsely populated northern border region. She stressed manpower, but also a greater reliance on technology.
Ironically, the moves come as Canada and the U.S. try to finalize a perimeter security arrangement that would focus on continental defences while easing border congestion. It would be aimed at speeding passage of goods and people across the Canada-U.S. border, which has become something of a bottleneck since the 911 attacks.
Relatively speaking, Washington has focused more energy and resources on tightening security along the border with Mexico than at the sprawling one with Canada.
But that may be changing.
Only small portion secured
A U.S. Government Accountability Office report recently warned that only a small portion of the border with Canada is properly secure. It said U.S. border officers control just 50 kilometres of the 6,400-kilometre boundary.
The Customs and Border Protection report says while fences have been a big element in deterring unauthorized crossings of the U.S.-Mexican border, "it is unlikely that fencing will play as prominent a role" on the northern border, given its length and terrain that varies from prairie to forest.
However, the agency would use fencing and other barriers such as trenches to control movement and sometimes delay people trying to sneak across the border, increasing the likelihood they could be caught, says the report.
It doesn't provide details about what the fences might look like, but suggests they would be designed to blend into the environment and "complement the natural landscape."
The approach would also involve upgrading roadways and trails near the border.
"The lack of roads or presence of unmaintained roads impedes efficient surveillance operations," says the report. "Improving or expanding the roadway and trail networks could improve mobility, allowing agents to patrol more miles each day and shortening response times."
Over the last two years, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has already made what it calls "critical security improvements along the northern border," adding inspectors at the ports of entry and Border Patrol agents between ports, as well as modernizing land crossings.
Nearly 3,800 Customs and Border Protection officers scrutinize people and goods at crossings. The number of Border Patrol agents working between crossings along the northern parallel has increased 700 per cent since Sept. 11, 2001. And some three dozen land ports of entry are being modernized.
Unmanned U.S. aircraft patrol about 1,500 kilometres along the northern border from Washington to Minnesota as well as more than 300 kilometres of the Canadian border around New York state and Lake Ontario.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/09/29/fence-border-canada.html?cmp=googleeditorspick
September 29, 2011
The United States is looking at building fences along the border with Canada to help keep out terrorists and other criminals, according to a draft report by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency
The report proposes the use of "fencing and other barriers" on the 49th parallel to manage "trouble spots where passage of cross-border violators is difficult to control."
But a spokesperson for U.S Customs and Border Protection said the government is not considering the fence option "at this time" and instead is looking at the environmental effects of putting more manpower, technology and infrastructure along the border.
The border service is also pondering options including a beefed-up technological presence through increased use of radar, sensors, cameras, drones and vehicle scanners. In addition, it might continue to improve or expand customs facilities at ports of entry.
The agency considered but ruled out the possibility of hiring "significantly more" U.S. Border Patrol agents to increase the rate of inspections, noting staffing has already risen in recent years.
Customs and Border Protection is inviting comment on the options and plans a series of public meetings in Washington and several U.S. border communities next month. It will then decide which ideas to pursue.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano noted last month the challenges of monitoring the vast, sparsely populated northern border region. She stressed manpower, but also a greater reliance on technology.
Ironically, the moves come as Canada and the U.S. try to finalize a perimeter security arrangement that would focus on continental defences while easing border congestion. It would be aimed at speeding passage of goods and people across the Canada-U.S. border, which has become something of a bottleneck since the 911 attacks.
Relatively speaking, Washington has focused more energy and resources on tightening security along the border with Mexico than at the sprawling one with Canada.
But that may be changing.
Only small portion secured
A U.S. Government Accountability Office report recently warned that only a small portion of the border with Canada is properly secure. It said U.S. border officers control just 50 kilometres of the 6,400-kilometre boundary.
The Customs and Border Protection report says while fences have been a big element in deterring unauthorized crossings of the U.S.-Mexican border, "it is unlikely that fencing will play as prominent a role" on the northern border, given its length and terrain that varies from prairie to forest.
However, the agency would use fencing and other barriers such as trenches to control movement and sometimes delay people trying to sneak across the border, increasing the likelihood they could be caught, says the report.
It doesn't provide details about what the fences might look like, but suggests they would be designed to blend into the environment and "complement the natural landscape."
The approach would also involve upgrading roadways and trails near the border.
"The lack of roads or presence of unmaintained roads impedes efficient surveillance operations," says the report. "Improving or expanding the roadway and trail networks could improve mobility, allowing agents to patrol more miles each day and shortening response times."
Over the last two years, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has already made what it calls "critical security improvements along the northern border," adding inspectors at the ports of entry and Border Patrol agents between ports, as well as modernizing land crossings.
Nearly 3,800 Customs and Border Protection officers scrutinize people and goods at crossings. The number of Border Patrol agents working between crossings along the northern parallel has increased 700 per cent since Sept. 11, 2001. And some three dozen land ports of entry are being modernized.
Unmanned U.S. aircraft patrol about 1,500 kilometres along the northern border from Washington to Minnesota as well as more than 300 kilometres of the Canadian border around New York state and Lake Ontario.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/09/29/fence-border-canada.html?cmp=googleeditorspick
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Border fence lawsuit to seize wildlife management area land
April 7, 2010
KGBT Channel 4
by Sergio Chapa
Federal authorities in charge of building the border fence have filed a new lawsuit to seize land from a state widlife management area along the Rio Grande.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) filed a land condmenation lawsuit against the Texas Parks & Widlife Department on Wednesday.
Court records show that federal officials are asking for control of 0.80 acres of land from the Anacua Unit of the Las Palamos Wildlife Management Area.
The land is locacted along the Rio Grande River just south of La Feria.
TPWD officials said the lawsuit filed on Wednesday is an addition to land previously seized to build the border fence, which is already in place there.
The two agencies are expected to work out compensation deal for the land described in the lawsuit filed on Wednesday.
http://www.valleycentral.com/news/story.aspx?id=440749
KGBT Channel 4
by Sergio Chapa
Federal authorities in charge of building the border fence have filed a new lawsuit to seize land from a state widlife management area along the Rio Grande.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) filed a land condmenation lawsuit against the Texas Parks & Widlife Department on Wednesday.
Court records show that federal officials are asking for control of 0.80 acres of land from the Anacua Unit of the Las Palamos Wildlife Management Area.
The land is locacted along the Rio Grande River just south of La Feria.
TPWD officials said the lawsuit filed on Wednesday is an addition to land previously seized to build the border fence, which is already in place there.
The two agencies are expected to work out compensation deal for the land described in the lawsuit filed on Wednesday.
http://www.valleycentral.com/news/story.aspx?id=440749
Thursday, March 25, 2010
A Small Victory in the Border Wall Boondoggle
Texas Observer
March 5, 2010
by Melissa del Bosque
Much has been written in the Observer about the border wall boondoggle winding its way along the Texas-Mexico border. At $2.4 billion and counting the 670 mile border wall ranges from California to Texas. Several landowners in Texas are still fighting for fair compensation for their land from the U.S. government.
Brownsville landowner Eloisa Tamez, 74, has been one of the most outspoken landowners against the 18-foot wall being built through her backyard. In January, I wrote a story “All Walled Up” about the battle between Cameron County landowners such as Tamez and the Department of Homeland Security who has seized their land to build the wall.
At the time, DHS was back for more and planned to seize an additional piece of her property so that she would be unable to access her land on the southern side of the wall.
The other day she sent me some good news in an email “DHS backed away. I was notified that there will not be a second taking,” she wrote. “I want the people to know that it pays to raise your voice when the government practices injustice and violates human rights.”
Finally, some good news to report on the border wall front. Eloisa Tamez has been a consistent crusader for the rights of border landowners. It’s good to see a victory among all of the injustice.
http://www.texasobserver.org/lalinea/a-small-victory-in-the-border-wall-boondoggle
March 5, 2010
by Melissa del Bosque
Much has been written in the Observer about the border wall boondoggle winding its way along the Texas-Mexico border. At $2.4 billion and counting the 670 mile border wall ranges from California to Texas. Several landowners in Texas are still fighting for fair compensation for their land from the U.S. government.
Brownsville landowner Eloisa Tamez, 74, has been one of the most outspoken landowners against the 18-foot wall being built through her backyard. In January, I wrote a story “All Walled Up” about the battle between Cameron County landowners such as Tamez and the Department of Homeland Security who has seized their land to build the wall.
At the time, DHS was back for more and planned to seize an additional piece of her property so that she would be unable to access her land on the southern side of the wall.
The other day she sent me some good news in an email “DHS backed away. I was notified that there will not be a second taking,” she wrote. “I want the people to know that it pays to raise your voice when the government practices injustice and violates human rights.”
Finally, some good news to report on the border wall front. Eloisa Tamez has been a consistent crusader for the rights of border landowners. It’s good to see a victory among all of the injustice.
http://www.texasobserver.org/lalinea/a-small-victory-in-the-border-wall-boondoggle
Sunday, March 7, 2010
In Eagle Pass, divided view of border fence: Many see 2-mile barrier as an eyesore and waste of money; some say it helps quality of life.
March 7, 2010
Austin-American Statesman
by Jeremy Schwartz
EAGLE PASS — As the sun dips toward the horizon, Shelby Park becomes an idyllic place, a rare patch of manicured green along the Texas-Mexico border. Kids practice soccer on the expansive sports fields, and joggers make their afternoon revolutions. A couple of Border Patrol trucks hover in the parking lot alongside the dense stands of cane that hide the Rio Grande from view. Above, two international bridges funnel traffic between Eagle Pass and its Mexican counterpart, Piedras Negras, Coahuila .
Jose Luis Zuniga, watching his two sons practice soccer kicks, takes in the park's newest addition: an $11 million, 14-foot-tall black metal fence.
This part of the fence, finished in October, has roiled emotions like little else in this fast-growing city of 50,000. Like many of his neighbors, Zuniga is bewildered and angered by the placement of the fence, which cuts through nearly two miles of downtown and leaves the city's golf course and premier parkland in what some see as a no man's land between the fence and the river. Illegal immigrants and drug traffickers will simply go around, reasons Zuniga, an engineer at a plant that builds Mossberg shotguns.
"I don't know why they did it," Zuniga says in Spanish as he watches his two sons practice under the lengthening shadows of the international bridge. "Imagine, all that money for nothing."
As construction of 670 miles of fencing along the Southwest border nears completion, at a cost of at least $2.4 billion, border communities like Eagle Pass are struggling to come to terms with their new reality. Is the barrier an effective way to stem the flow of illegal immigrants and drugs across what was an inadequately protected border? Or is it, as Zuniga contends, the physical symbol of a misguided — and expensive — policy that ignores the unique dynamics of the border?
Local Border Patrol agents say the fence plays a vital role in driving immigrant and drug smugglers to the city's edges, where agents have more time to catch them out in the brush — people crossing near downtown can quickly vanish into crowds.
Cesar Cantu, the patrol agent in charge of the Eagle Pass Border Patrol station, says they need one-third fewer agents in downtown now — allowing them to concentrate more on the drug traffickers who prefer to move their product on the outskirts of the city.
Border Patrol agents are quick to point out that the value of drug seizures has gone up — from $41.4 million in 2008 to $76.5 million last year — and apprehensions of illegal immigrants in the Eagle Pass area have steadily decreased over the past five years, as they have throughout the Texas-Mexico border area.
"This is what we need," Cantu says. "Now we have time to do our job and patrol instead of processing aliens."
City officials aren't so sure. Mayor Chad Foster says the border fence hasn't had any "significant impact" on border security since it was built and worries that it will become an eyesore in future years if the federal government later decides not to spend the billions of dollars that maintenance is estimated to cost.
And though many Eagle Pass residents say the fence doesn't interfere with daily life, they resent its presence in their city.
"We feel like we are living with this stigma," Foster said. "My opinion is, this gives a false sense of security. It gives Middle America, which has an embellished idea of the border, the sense that they can sleep at night."
Routed through towns
The erecting of new border barriers, which began in 2006, has been particularly divisive in Texas, which, unlike the rest of the border, already had a physical barrier — the Rio Grande. Because of that, the 110 planned miles of Texas border fence — covering about one-tenth of the state's 1,254-mile border with Mexico — don't straddle the border as the fence does in places like the Arizona desert. Instead, the Texas fence meanders through cities and towns, often sparking protests from residents.
The Eagle Pass portion of the fence begins under the city's second international bridge, where it envelops the municipal golf course, which now lies between the river and the fence. It then jogs across Shelby Park, along the northern edges of soccer and baseball fields, before heading out to the city's less accessible western edge, where high bluffs loom above the river.
In Shelby Park, which sits a few hundred feet from downtown, large gaps in the fencing remain to be filled in with a series of gates that Border Patrol officials say will stay open except during national emergencies. Border officials say the gates will ensure public access to the park; they say they doubt many illegal crossers will make a run for the openings.
The fencing in Eagle Pass is one of several varieties that have been built along the border. The so-called "picket fence" style, featuring tall, thin metal slats a few inches apart, stands in contrast to the more imposing wall-like structures found in parts of the California and Arizona desert and in the Rio Grande Valley. When fully completed, the Eagle Pass section will measure 1.8 miles — about half of the four miles originally planned, but ultimately reduced, by the federal government.
It's just a tiny part of the 110 miles of new fencing that's nearly complete along the Texas border — larger stretches of fencing, measuring more than 50 miles, have gone up in El Paso and in the Rio Grande Valley, and smaller pieces, just a few miles long, have been built in Del Rio and Laredo.
After the U.S. Congress passed the 2006 Secure Fence Act, which mandated the construction of 670 miles of fencing, Foster and other border mayors argued that the barrier was unnecessary, given that apprehensions along the border were already in decline, and could harm relations with Mexico. Foster was worried about the reaction by Eagle Pass' sister city of Piedras Negras. In many ways, Eagle Pass depends on Piedras Negras for survival, as Mexican shoppers have helped fuel the city's economic boom over the past decade. And many families are divided between the two cities, adding to the ties between them.
Foster and other city leaders, hoping to avoid alienating neighbors to the south, tried to deny federal officials access to city land where the fence would be built. After a heated dispute in which the U.S. government successfully sued Eagle Pass in federal court for possession of the land, construction began in 2008.
Eagle Pass was the target of the federal government's first lawsuit against recalcitrant landowners along the border; Foster said city and federal appraisers are negotiating compensation for the land.
The project is nearly finished in Texas, except for a half-mile stretch in Eagle Pass and several miles in the Rio Grande Valley, where city leaders, ranchers, the University of Texas-Brownsville and environmentalists have wrangled with federal officials over where the fence should go.
Miguel Diaz-Barriga, an anthropology professor at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania who is writing a book about the border wall in Texas, said most border residents oppose the wall but want more border security. A recent survey he conducted found that just 16 percent of respondents in Hidalgo County favored a border wall while 80 percent wanted the number of Border Patrol agents to stay the same or increase. "One should not interpret opposition to the border wall to mean (support for) open borders," he said. "In fact, the opposite is true."
Effectiveness disputed
It's unclear whether the fence is accomplishing what the U.S. Congress originally hoped for along the 2,000-mile Southwest border.
Illegal crossings in Eagle Pass reached their height in 2005, when Border Patrol agents in the sector containing Eagle Pass made 68,483 apprehensions, many of them at the golf course. That number has plummeted since then; last year agents made just 17,079 apprehensions — a statistic that is considered the best measure of illegal crossings.
Today, agents say illegal crossings downtown have slowed to a trickle.
Cantu said his agents — who patrol half of Eagle Pass and parts of surrounding Maverick County — process five or six illegal immigrants per day, compared with as many as 300 during the 2005 heyday. Borderwide, apprehensions have fallen dramatically over the past five years, from 1.2 million in 2005 to 556,000 last year.
Much of the immigrant traffic in Eagle Pass declined after local Border Patrol officials instituted a "zero tolerance" policy for immigrants from Central America. Before the 2006 change, "other than Mexican" detainees were simply released and ordered to appear before an immigration judge. Few appeared for their court date, and agents say Central American immigrants began seeking to be caught, viewing the policy as a free pass across the border. Under the new policy, each illegal immigrant was sent before a judge immediately, often doing jail time before being deported back to the immigrant's home country.
The new policy flooded local court dockets, spurred the creation of large detention facilities and deterred large numbers of immigrants from the Eagle Pass area, experts say. The year after the change, apprehensions fell to 23,000 in the Eagle Pass area.
More recently, the recession has helped tamp down the numbers of immigrants seeking work across the border, many experts agree. But Border Patrol officials say that without a fence, there is no guarantee that large flows of illegal immigrants would not have returned to Eagle Pass. "With the fence, it's less likely that (Eagle Pass) would return to the time of mass crossings," said Dennis Smith, Border Patrol spokesman for the area.
The Government Accountability Office, noting that apprehensions along the Southwest border were already declining by 2007, before most of the fencing was built, stated in a November report that the Border Patrol has yet to conduct a systematic evaluation of the fence's effectiveness borderwide.
The report also found that costs soared during the course of the project — the cost of fencing like what was built in Eagle Pass jumped from $3.9 million per mile to $6.5 million. Among the reasons cited in the report was a labor shortage in Texas, the result of a pre-recession construction boom.
GAO investigators said maintenance costs are estimated to reach $6.5 billion over the next 20 years.
Diverting traffic
At the Eagle Pass Municipal Golf Course, retiree Bruce Thompson hits some practice putts as he gets ready to play a round with some friends. The course hugs the Rio Grande, and from the first tee, you can see the cars and trucks lined up on the overhead bridges waiting to cross into the United States. Thompson, a retired special agent with the Department of Justice who has lived in Eagle Pass for more than two decades, remembers the chaos that golfers used to endure: great bunches of immigrants making mad dashes across the expansive greens with Border Patrol agents in hot pursuit. Worse, he said, bandits used to hide in the tall cane along the river, only to jump out at unsuspecting golfers, mugging them for their clubs and cell phones.
"In my opinion, the fence is a good thing," he said. "We used to have them coming across here by the horde. Granted, they are (crossing) somewhere else, but at least not here. It will keep them out of the downtown area. It will make them go to the outskirts."
Thompson also believes the border wall in downtown will clean up the dangerous neighborhoods just across the river in Piedras Negras, which officials say house gangs and stash houses born out of the illicit border crossing business. "I think in the long run, it will be better for the city because it will be safer," he said.
At Eagle Pass's biweekly flea market, held on the edge of Shelby Park, anger toward the border wall is palpable. The fence stands just a few feet from vendors selling everything from old washing machines to used power tools.
"Before it was very beautiful, very nice around here," said Reyes Medina, who has been selling used baseball equipment at the flea market for 15 years. "Now we feel like a catastrophe has hit us. We feel like we are in prison; it's like they have us locked up here."
"This is a wall of shame," fumed vendor Jose de Jesus Hernandez. "I can't look at it any other way."
Reyes said that in the first weeks after the wall was built, business was decimated. Customers, about 90 percent of whom cross the bridge from Mexico, were spooked, he said. Since then, business has slowly improved as customers became more used to the fencing but still hasn't reached pre-fence levels.
In Piedras Negras, where resentment toward the wall runs high — and where Coahuila's governor is building a "green wall" of trees along the Rio Grande as a response — the indignation hasn't translated into boycotts of American stores.
Fernando Estrada, whose family owns a Piedras Negras jewelry store, said that despite his opposition he still crosses the bridge almost weekly to take advantage of sales and specials at American stores like H\u2011E\u2011B. "It feels weird to see the wall when you cross," he said. "You can see it as a symbol of division, and that's why a lot of people don't like it, because it separates communities even more."
After two years, the fence is becoming part of Eagle Pass' psyche. On a recent afternoon at the municipal golf course, students Kimberley Rodriguez and Jennifer Zavala, both members of the CC Winn High School golf club, played in the shadow of the fence.
"It's a little strange," said Rodriguez, 17. "It feels like they are trying to keep us from our families (on the Mexican side of the river) in a way. "
For Zavala, 15, the fence is simply a part of her world. "I can't even remember when the wall was not here," she said. "I never really noticed, because it's part of the landscape."
http://www.statesman.com/news/texas/in-eagle-pass-divided-view-of-border-fence-326471.html
Austin-American Statesman
by Jeremy Schwartz
EAGLE PASS — As the sun dips toward the horizon, Shelby Park becomes an idyllic place, a rare patch of manicured green along the Texas-Mexico border. Kids practice soccer on the expansive sports fields, and joggers make their afternoon revolutions. A couple of Border Patrol trucks hover in the parking lot alongside the dense stands of cane that hide the Rio Grande from view. Above, two international bridges funnel traffic between Eagle Pass and its Mexican counterpart, Piedras Negras, Coahuila .
Jose Luis Zuniga, watching his two sons practice soccer kicks, takes in the park's newest addition: an $11 million, 14-foot-tall black metal fence.
This part of the fence, finished in October, has roiled emotions like little else in this fast-growing city of 50,000. Like many of his neighbors, Zuniga is bewildered and angered by the placement of the fence, which cuts through nearly two miles of downtown and leaves the city's golf course and premier parkland in what some see as a no man's land between the fence and the river. Illegal immigrants and drug traffickers will simply go around, reasons Zuniga, an engineer at a plant that builds Mossberg shotguns.
"I don't know why they did it," Zuniga says in Spanish as he watches his two sons practice under the lengthening shadows of the international bridge. "Imagine, all that money for nothing."
As construction of 670 miles of fencing along the Southwest border nears completion, at a cost of at least $2.4 billion, border communities like Eagle Pass are struggling to come to terms with their new reality. Is the barrier an effective way to stem the flow of illegal immigrants and drugs across what was an inadequately protected border? Or is it, as Zuniga contends, the physical symbol of a misguided — and expensive — policy that ignores the unique dynamics of the border?
Local Border Patrol agents say the fence plays a vital role in driving immigrant and drug smugglers to the city's edges, where agents have more time to catch them out in the brush — people crossing near downtown can quickly vanish into crowds.
Cesar Cantu, the patrol agent in charge of the Eagle Pass Border Patrol station, says they need one-third fewer agents in downtown now — allowing them to concentrate more on the drug traffickers who prefer to move their product on the outskirts of the city.
Border Patrol agents are quick to point out that the value of drug seizures has gone up — from $41.4 million in 2008 to $76.5 million last year — and apprehensions of illegal immigrants in the Eagle Pass area have steadily decreased over the past five years, as they have throughout the Texas-Mexico border area.
"This is what we need," Cantu says. "Now we have time to do our job and patrol instead of processing aliens."
City officials aren't so sure. Mayor Chad Foster says the border fence hasn't had any "significant impact" on border security since it was built and worries that it will become an eyesore in future years if the federal government later decides not to spend the billions of dollars that maintenance is estimated to cost.
And though many Eagle Pass residents say the fence doesn't interfere with daily life, they resent its presence in their city.
"We feel like we are living with this stigma," Foster said. "My opinion is, this gives a false sense of security. It gives Middle America, which has an embellished idea of the border, the sense that they can sleep at night."
Routed through towns
The erecting of new border barriers, which began in 2006, has been particularly divisive in Texas, which, unlike the rest of the border, already had a physical barrier — the Rio Grande. Because of that, the 110 planned miles of Texas border fence — covering about one-tenth of the state's 1,254-mile border with Mexico — don't straddle the border as the fence does in places like the Arizona desert. Instead, the Texas fence meanders through cities and towns, often sparking protests from residents.
The Eagle Pass portion of the fence begins under the city's second international bridge, where it envelops the municipal golf course, which now lies between the river and the fence. It then jogs across Shelby Park, along the northern edges of soccer and baseball fields, before heading out to the city's less accessible western edge, where high bluffs loom above the river.
In Shelby Park, which sits a few hundred feet from downtown, large gaps in the fencing remain to be filled in with a series of gates that Border Patrol officials say will stay open except during national emergencies. Border officials say the gates will ensure public access to the park; they say they doubt many illegal crossers will make a run for the openings.
The fencing in Eagle Pass is one of several varieties that have been built along the border. The so-called "picket fence" style, featuring tall, thin metal slats a few inches apart, stands in contrast to the more imposing wall-like structures found in parts of the California and Arizona desert and in the Rio Grande Valley. When fully completed, the Eagle Pass section will measure 1.8 miles — about half of the four miles originally planned, but ultimately reduced, by the federal government.
It's just a tiny part of the 110 miles of new fencing that's nearly complete along the Texas border — larger stretches of fencing, measuring more than 50 miles, have gone up in El Paso and in the Rio Grande Valley, and smaller pieces, just a few miles long, have been built in Del Rio and Laredo.
After the U.S. Congress passed the 2006 Secure Fence Act, which mandated the construction of 670 miles of fencing, Foster and other border mayors argued that the barrier was unnecessary, given that apprehensions along the border were already in decline, and could harm relations with Mexico. Foster was worried about the reaction by Eagle Pass' sister city of Piedras Negras. In many ways, Eagle Pass depends on Piedras Negras for survival, as Mexican shoppers have helped fuel the city's economic boom over the past decade. And many families are divided between the two cities, adding to the ties between them.
Foster and other city leaders, hoping to avoid alienating neighbors to the south, tried to deny federal officials access to city land where the fence would be built. After a heated dispute in which the U.S. government successfully sued Eagle Pass in federal court for possession of the land, construction began in 2008.
Eagle Pass was the target of the federal government's first lawsuit against recalcitrant landowners along the border; Foster said city and federal appraisers are negotiating compensation for the land.
The project is nearly finished in Texas, except for a half-mile stretch in Eagle Pass and several miles in the Rio Grande Valley, where city leaders, ranchers, the University of Texas-Brownsville and environmentalists have wrangled with federal officials over where the fence should go.
Miguel Diaz-Barriga, an anthropology professor at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania who is writing a book about the border wall in Texas, said most border residents oppose the wall but want more border security. A recent survey he conducted found that just 16 percent of respondents in Hidalgo County favored a border wall while 80 percent wanted the number of Border Patrol agents to stay the same or increase. "One should not interpret opposition to the border wall to mean (support for) open borders," he said. "In fact, the opposite is true."
Effectiveness disputed
It's unclear whether the fence is accomplishing what the U.S. Congress originally hoped for along the 2,000-mile Southwest border.
Illegal crossings in Eagle Pass reached their height in 2005, when Border Patrol agents in the sector containing Eagle Pass made 68,483 apprehensions, many of them at the golf course. That number has plummeted since then; last year agents made just 17,079 apprehensions — a statistic that is considered the best measure of illegal crossings.
Today, agents say illegal crossings downtown have slowed to a trickle.
Cantu said his agents — who patrol half of Eagle Pass and parts of surrounding Maverick County — process five or six illegal immigrants per day, compared with as many as 300 during the 2005 heyday. Borderwide, apprehensions have fallen dramatically over the past five years, from 1.2 million in 2005 to 556,000 last year.
Much of the immigrant traffic in Eagle Pass declined after local Border Patrol officials instituted a "zero tolerance" policy for immigrants from Central America. Before the 2006 change, "other than Mexican" detainees were simply released and ordered to appear before an immigration judge. Few appeared for their court date, and agents say Central American immigrants began seeking to be caught, viewing the policy as a free pass across the border. Under the new policy, each illegal immigrant was sent before a judge immediately, often doing jail time before being deported back to the immigrant's home country.
The new policy flooded local court dockets, spurred the creation of large detention facilities and deterred large numbers of immigrants from the Eagle Pass area, experts say. The year after the change, apprehensions fell to 23,000 in the Eagle Pass area.
More recently, the recession has helped tamp down the numbers of immigrants seeking work across the border, many experts agree. But Border Patrol officials say that without a fence, there is no guarantee that large flows of illegal immigrants would not have returned to Eagle Pass. "With the fence, it's less likely that (Eagle Pass) would return to the time of mass crossings," said Dennis Smith, Border Patrol spokesman for the area.
The Government Accountability Office, noting that apprehensions along the Southwest border were already declining by 2007, before most of the fencing was built, stated in a November report that the Border Patrol has yet to conduct a systematic evaluation of the fence's effectiveness borderwide.
The report also found that costs soared during the course of the project — the cost of fencing like what was built in Eagle Pass jumped from $3.9 million per mile to $6.5 million. Among the reasons cited in the report was a labor shortage in Texas, the result of a pre-recession construction boom.
GAO investigators said maintenance costs are estimated to reach $6.5 billion over the next 20 years.
Diverting traffic
At the Eagle Pass Municipal Golf Course, retiree Bruce Thompson hits some practice putts as he gets ready to play a round with some friends. The course hugs the Rio Grande, and from the first tee, you can see the cars and trucks lined up on the overhead bridges waiting to cross into the United States. Thompson, a retired special agent with the Department of Justice who has lived in Eagle Pass for more than two decades, remembers the chaos that golfers used to endure: great bunches of immigrants making mad dashes across the expansive greens with Border Patrol agents in hot pursuit. Worse, he said, bandits used to hide in the tall cane along the river, only to jump out at unsuspecting golfers, mugging them for their clubs and cell phones.
"In my opinion, the fence is a good thing," he said. "We used to have them coming across here by the horde. Granted, they are (crossing) somewhere else, but at least not here. It will keep them out of the downtown area. It will make them go to the outskirts."
Thompson also believes the border wall in downtown will clean up the dangerous neighborhoods just across the river in Piedras Negras, which officials say house gangs and stash houses born out of the illicit border crossing business. "I think in the long run, it will be better for the city because it will be safer," he said.
At Eagle Pass's biweekly flea market, held on the edge of Shelby Park, anger toward the border wall is palpable. The fence stands just a few feet from vendors selling everything from old washing machines to used power tools.
"Before it was very beautiful, very nice around here," said Reyes Medina, who has been selling used baseball equipment at the flea market for 15 years. "Now we feel like a catastrophe has hit us. We feel like we are in prison; it's like they have us locked up here."
"This is a wall of shame," fumed vendor Jose de Jesus Hernandez. "I can't look at it any other way."
Reyes said that in the first weeks after the wall was built, business was decimated. Customers, about 90 percent of whom cross the bridge from Mexico, were spooked, he said. Since then, business has slowly improved as customers became more used to the fencing but still hasn't reached pre-fence levels.
In Piedras Negras, where resentment toward the wall runs high — and where Coahuila's governor is building a "green wall" of trees along the Rio Grande as a response — the indignation hasn't translated into boycotts of American stores.
Fernando Estrada, whose family owns a Piedras Negras jewelry store, said that despite his opposition he still crosses the bridge almost weekly to take advantage of sales and specials at American stores like H\u2011E\u2011B. "It feels weird to see the wall when you cross," he said. "You can see it as a symbol of division, and that's why a lot of people don't like it, because it separates communities even more."
After two years, the fence is becoming part of Eagle Pass' psyche. On a recent afternoon at the municipal golf course, students Kimberley Rodriguez and Jennifer Zavala, both members of the CC Winn High School golf club, played in the shadow of the fence.
"It's a little strange," said Rodriguez, 17. "It feels like they are trying to keep us from our families (on the Mexican side of the river) in a way. "
For Zavala, 15, the fence is simply a part of her world. "I can't even remember when the wall was not here," she said. "I never really noticed, because it's part of the landscape."
http://www.statesman.com/news/texas/in-eagle-pass-divided-view-of-border-fence-326471.html
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