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

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/

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.

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

Feds: Plants There, Just Look Harder

Voice of San Diego
December 3, 2009
by Rob Davis

The barren, vegetation-free hillsides in Border Field State Park created by a new 3.5-mile section of the U.S.-Mexico border fence are neither barren nor vegetation-free, the federal government claims.

In a recent letter to U.S. Rep. Susan Davis, D-San Diego, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's chief says the denuded hills near the Tijuana Estuary have plants growing on them.

You just can't see them, he wrote.

Because the plants being grown on the new hillsides are native species, wrote Jayson Ahern, the agency's acting chief, "the existing re-vegetated areas are currently dormant and brown ... and, thus, difficult to see from afar."

That does not accurately reflect what I've seen in the park. When I visited in mid-October, I saw a few plants growing on a single hill. Other new hills were barren, save for rows of straw bales.

It was easy to see from afar that no plants were growing. It was even easier to see up close. I stood on the hills. Plants were not growing. Federal contractors working for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had sprayed a wet, pulpy seed mix -- called "hydroseed" -- on the ground, but never irrigated.

I called Clay Phillips, superintendent of Border Field State Park, to check whether plants had suddenly grown in the last month.

"Nothing magical has happened," he said. "There is a native plant seed mix (on the ground), but we've never seen any growth there."

Ahern, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection official, wrote in his letter that "moderate revegetation has actually occurred and is progressing well." He said the federal government purposely didn't water the seeds it spread on the hills so it could mimic normal climatic conditions -- dry summers, wet winters.

I asked Bruce Hanson, a restoration ecologist for Edaw, a local consulting firm, whether that was a good idea. He said it is. Unless a full-fledged irrigation system was installed, Hanson said it's better to wait for natural rainfall, which helps seeds germinate better. The salt content is lower in rain than in water sprayed from trucks, which the government is now using.

But using seeds alone is "window-dressing," Hanson said. The best way to restore degraded habitat is to use a mix of seeds and transplant already-established plants and cactus, he said.

"A lot of species" -- such as the Baja birdbush, a plant whose northern range extends only to the border -- "never come up from seed," he said. Instead, generic shrubs grow, such as purple needlegrass, which is found throughout the state.

"You end up with a different plant community than what should be there," Hanson said. "Hydroseed is not going to be representative of what was out there."

http://voiceofsandiego.org/environment/muck/article_f7c322e6-e070-11de-91d3-001cc4c03286.html

A Barren Promise at the Border

Voice of San Diego
October 21, 2009
by Rob Davis

Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2009 Had anyone else built this hillside near the U.S.-Mexico border, it would look nothing like it does. The barren hill would be alive with native plants, the earth would be solidly rooted and not a threat to tumble down into the Tijuana Estuary, a lush, 2,500-acre salt marsh that starts 600 feet away.

But along the newly constructed border fence near the Pacific Ocean in Border Field State Park, inch-thick tan clumps of seeds and mulch still blanket the ground. They haven't been watered, so no plants have grown.

Were it anyone else's project, state regulators would've required irrigation to ensure that plants grew. But the federal government is responsible for the $59 million effort to complete and reinforce 3.5 miles of border fence separating San Diego and Tijuana. The Department of Homeland Security exempted itself from eight federal laws and any related state laws that would have regulated the project's environmental impacts.

Because the project is exempt from the federal Clean Water Act, state water regulators have no jurisdiction.Homeland Security officials sought the waiver power in 2005 to accelerate fence construction in San Diego and across the Southwest, saying that national security needs trumped environmental concerns. That power has accelerated construction from San Diego to Brownsville, as the agency has waived laws across 550 miles of the border. To date, 633 miles of fence have been built at a cost of $2.4 billion.

The department made the same promise each time it waived laws like the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act: Though we're now exempt from federal and state environmental regulation, we're still committed to the environment.

But as construction continues across the Southwest, the project's impacts in Border Field State Park and in another federal reserve further east raise questions about the sincerity of the government's commitment.Clay Phillips, the California State Parks superintendent who oversees Border Field and the estuary, said that promise hasn't been fulfilled there. Mitigation of the fence's environmental impacts has "failed miserably," Phillips said.

Phillips worries that winter rains will wash soil off the hills into the nearby estuary he oversees, which is home to several sensitive species and already filling with sediment swept in from Tijuana. Sediment raises the level of the ground, stopping the twice-daily tidal flushing that keeps the wetlands wet.

Army Corps of Engineers contractors completed the fence separating San Diego and Tijuana in July.

They filled in the notorious cross-border canyon known as Smuggler's Gulch, added a second layer of steel fencing and built a road for Border Patrol vehicles running parallel to the fence. The gulch, once a deep canyon, is now filled with an earthen berm more than 100 feet tall.

Though native plant seeds were sprayed across the berm and other newly created hillsides in Border Field State Park, Phillips said the federal government never irrigated them. Only a handful of plants grew. Other hills have none.

"They sprayed it (with seed) and hoped for the best," Phillips said. "It was a waste. A token gesture."

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman, Jenny Burke, said the project was built to Caltrans' erosion standards. The agency will "monitor the situation and is considering other actions as required."

John Robertus, executive officer of the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board, the local water pollution police, said the project doesn't have all the safeguards his agency would've required. He said if the board had jurisdiction, it would've required temporary irrigation to ensure plants grew. Robertus said he, too, is concerned about the project's potential impacts on the estuary.

Fence construction has left a mark on other areas in San Diego County greater than what would've been allowed without the waiver. Further east in the federally protected Otay Mountain Wilderness, a road built along a new four-mile section of fence also left barren hills, said Joyce Schlachter, a wildlife biologist with the federal Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the area.

"When we get any rain, it's going to be an erosion nightmare," Schlachter said. Seeds have been sprayed there, too, but not watered, she said. No plants have grown.

The impacts on Otay Mountain stretch beyond possible erosion. Phalanxes of dump trucks going to work on the fence have rumbled up and down a dirt road, spreading clouds of dust as far as 30 feet away, blanketing Tecate cypress, a rare tree found only on three peaks in San Diego County. (Its range extends into Mexico.) The tree, a bushy evergreen, provides food for the Thorne's hairstreak butterfly, a rare thumbnail-sized insect that feeds only on the cypress and that has been suffering from too-frequent fires on the mountain.

Construction crews cut down more than 100 cypress that survived a massive 2003 wildfire to widen an existing road for construction vehicles, Schlachter said.If laws hadn't been waived, the Bureau would have required construction crews to minimize their impact on the trees, she said.

Homeland Security officials consulted with the Bureau, Schlachter said, then didn't follow all of its advice."When it came right down to it, they did what they wanted to do," Schlachter said. "And they knew they couldn't be stopped. We did not have control over it."

Kathy Williams, a San Diego State biology professor studying the butterfly, said the dust poses "potentially a really serious problem" for the Thorne's hairstreak and the cypress.Williams has reared a small number of Thorne's caterpillars on both dusty and clean leaves in her laboratory.

Results from the on-going experiment so far indicate that more caterpillars survived on clean leaves, she said.Before construction began last year, Williams said the roadside habitat looked much healthier. She saw more butterflies last year than she did this year, though she noted that population sizes vary annually.

"Now it's obviously degraded habitat," she said, noting that rainfall may help clean the leaves. "The appearance of the quality of the site is strikingly different."

Burke, the Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman, said the agency consulted with U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials about the Otay project and routinely wets the road to keep dust down. She said Customs and Border Protection will monitor the dust and maintain the roads "to their construction standard," and could periodically apply "dust-control agents," which include sap.

Those efforts haven't always worked well. Sap was sprayed on trees beyond the road's edge, Schlachter said. Dust stuck on top of the sap, she said, making the trees' survival questionable. "They're creating more risk to the plants," she said. "That's an issue."

On at least one occasion, crews didn't water the road -- even though they had the necessary equipment on hand. One morning in June, a water truck escorted dump trucks to the work site but didn't spray any water. As the trucks wound through the wilderness past Tecate cypress, choking clouds of dust followed.

U.S. Rep. Susan Davis, D-San Diego, whose district includes Border Field State Park, said in a statement that she wants more done immediately to address the fence's environmental impacts."Many people, including myself, expressed strong concerns about the border fence and the implications of exempting the construction of the fence from environmental laws," Davis said.

"Unfortunately, those concerns are becoming a reality. I hope the Department of Homeland Security will continue to work with Congress and local officials in finding an immediate solution and work toward a permanent one."

A representative of an environmental group that opposed the fence because of concerns about erosion said its construction reinforced the reasons for his opposition. Jim Peugh, conservation chairman of the San Diego Audubon Society, said he hopes the fence serves as an example of why environmental laws should never be waived.

"The idea of building something without seeing how you're going to maintain it -- it's just going to fail," Peugh said. "That's an insane thing to do. And this project proves that beyond a doubt."

http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/articles/2009/10/22/environment/835borderfence102109.txt

Bare Dirt Along New Border Fence A Flood Worry

KPBS San Diego
October 13, 2009
by Amy Isackson

State parks officials are worried the federal government's failure to grow plants on slopes where it built new sections of the border fence could mean floods on both sides of the US Mexico border this rainy season. Smuggler's Gulch is a major area of concern.

About four years ago, the US federal government waived all environmental laws along the US Mexico border in order to build the border fence. The head of the Department of Homeland Security promised, even so, the government would control erosion to protect the Tijuana River Valley and estuary.

Clay Phillips is with the California Parks Department and manages the estuary reserve. He says the bare slopes that run the length of the new fence construction are a stark contrast to the promise.

"You wouldn't find a Jack In the Box where they're adding a parking lot that would be left in this condition."

The federal government has tried to grow plants on the slopes to control erosion without success. Phillips says moderate rain will erode the bare dirt. That could clog the Tijuana Estuary and cause floods in Tijuana and San Diego.

http://www.kpbs.org/news/2009/oct/13/bare-dirt-along-new-border-fence-flood-worry/

Beloved parts of border changed almost overnight

February 19, 2009
Associated Press / MSNBC
by Elliot Spagat

IMPERIAL SAND DUNES, Calif. - Every weekend he can, Gene Elwell heads to the desert and races his buggy over the largest sand dunes in the U.S. Nearly 200 miles west, on California's Pacific shores, the Rev. John Fanestil spends every Sunday at Friendship Park, where people on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border touch hands and talk through holes in a chain-link fence.

For decades, the dunes and Friendship Park were virtually unchanged. But in its final months, as the Bush administration raced to fulfill a pledge to erect 670 miles of fencing and vehicle barriers on the border, they were transformed almost overnight.

A fence now slices through the Imperial Sand Dunes, preventing recreational riders from veering into Mexican sands. Before, drug smugglers easily blended in with riders to reach Interstate 8, less than a half-mile from the border at one point.

Friendship Park, opened in 1971 to promote ties between the U.S. and Mexico, is closing. Crews have torn up a parking lot and removed trees and picnic benches to make way for two tall fences, ending years of cross-border food sales and family reunions.

It's similar elsewhere on the 1,954-mile border. In Eagle Pass, Texas, a golf course is sandwiched between the Rio Grande and a new fence. In Columbus, N.M., visitors see the fence from the high ground at Pancho Villa State Park, named for the Mexican general who led an attack there in 1916.

The Bush administration built 224 miles of barriers during its last 2 1/2 months, bringing the total to 602 miles. The Border Patrol plans to hit 670 miles this year, spokesman Lloyd Easterling said, but what happens after that is anyone's guess.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said at her Senate confirmation hearing that fences can help in border cities but that it makes little sense to fence the entire border.

Whatever happens, the border landscape already has indelibly changed.

___

The southern tip of the Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area, a film location for "Star Wars: Return of the Jedi," resembles the Sahara. Its slopes draw families because they are lower and more gradual than the desert playground's northern reaches, which attract rowdier crowds.

Elwell, 54, a San Diego-area native who sells office equipment, belongs to a close-knit but fast-growing group of families from Southern California and Arizona.

They ride the dunes day and night, sleeping in trailers parked around a campfire. They liken the thrill to a never-ending roller coaster.

"There's no particular trail, like you would up in the mountains or some places even out here in the desert," Elwell said. "Out here you find your own way, you find your own world."

___

Border Field State Park separates San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico, which together make up the largest metropolitan area along the border. It has a beautiful beach and abundant trails, but one of its biggest draws is Friendship Park, a half-acre cement plaza on a bluff overlooking the Pacific.

When then-first lady Pat Nixon opened the plaza 38 years ago, she declared, "I hate to see a fence anywhere."

On the beach, the countries are separated by steel poles spaced far enough apart at one point for an adult to squeeze through. Vendors in Mexico hawk corn-on-the-cob and tamales to customers on the U.S. side as Border Patrol agents keep watch.

Fanestil, 47, visited Friendship Park every Christmas to sing with revelers. The United Methodist minister was incensed in June when a Border Patrol agent said he no longer could pass food across the border. Fanestil responded by holding cross-border services every Sunday.

"People have been passing things through the fence here for generations — tamales, candies, bracelets," the San Diego native said.

___

In California's southeast corner, the dunes are about 40 miles long and an average of five miles wide. Trailers crowd campgrounds on holiday weekends. The sand buggies range from lightweight speedsters with V-8 engines to lumbering vehicles that could pass for golf carts.

The sands extend about five miles into Mexico. Until last year, the border was almost invisible, marked by 15-foot concrete obelisks spaced far apart.

In the 1980s Elwell drove his buggy straight into the town of Algodones for tacos, and even in recent years he regularly drifted into Mexico. Agents chased wayward riders and ordered them back to the U.S.

Smugglers decorated their marijuana-laden vehicles with decals and flags to mix in. Last year, a suspected smuggler killed a Border Patrol agent by running over him in a Hummer, then fled to Mexico.

Border Patrol officials say private contractors were initially stumped when asked to design a 13-mile fence for the shifting sands. The answer was what the agency calls a "floating fence."

The $6 million-a-mile barrier completed in December consists of 16-foot-tall steel tubes filled with concrete and spaced tightly together. Triangular mounts aren't bolted to the ground, allowing them to rock back and forth with the wind. Small panels are chained together, twisting in different directions.

The Border Patrol says arrests of suspected smugglers plummeted after construction began last summer.

Elwell and his friends marveled as they stood on a ridge one recent Saturday and stared at the fence, stretching like a dark ribbon over the sand.

As the number of riders grows — the dunes records about 1.2 million visits from October to March — their playground is shrinking. In 2000, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management made about half the park off-limits to vehicles to protect the endangered Peirson's milk-vetch, a tiny perennial with purple blooms.

Some visitors feel the dunes are dangerously crowded, with up to 200,000 people some weekends. Steve Razo, a BLM spokesman, said seven to 10 people die each year in traffic accidents.

Elwell and his friends bemoan the tighter quarters but generally agree the fence will make the dunes safer.

"It makes you feel a little crammed in, like 'This is your playground, and you can't go over there,'" said Tom Holdenried, 59, a woodworker from Ramona.

___

At Friendship Park, the Border Patrol is building 3 1/2 miles of fence to the ocean, a project delayed for 12 years by lawsuits and environmental reviews. In 2005, the Bush administration exercised new authority to override those challenges; it later used the same powers on vast swaths of the border.

Work began in August and is expected to finish by May at a cost of about $16 million a mile.

The area is much quieter than it was in the 1990s, when the Border Patrol was badly overmatched by illegal immigrants who swarmed across the porous border. But Mike Fisher, the San Diego sector chief, said people still make holes in the fence and slip children between poles on the beach.

"I want people to be able to go to the park with their kids and not worry about smugglers operating in that area," he said.

Hilda Olivares drove from Los Angeles on one recent Sunday to talk through the fence with her mother, sister and brother-in-law. She could have seen them in Tijuana but wanted to avoid the long lines at the border. Her husband, Paul, passed them a wad of cash wrapped in a $20 bill.

Carlos Perez, who lives in Tijuana, cried when he saw his 5-year-old daughter, Caszandra, for the first time in three years. She slipped through the fence and embraced him, also in tears.

"A fence makes things more difficult," Perez said. "It divides us even further."

Added Sandra Castillo Vasquez, the girl's mother and a U.S. citizen who lives in San Diego: "At least we had this connection. We could touch each other."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29284412/

Border Fence Yields Showdown At Smuggler's Gulch

NPR All Things Considered
February 6, 2009
by Jason Beaubien

As the Department of Homeland Security finishes installing more than 600 miles of new fence along the southern border with Mexico, one of the final stretches has been the most controversial and most expensive.

Federal contractors have filled Smuggler's Gulch — a canyon about two miles from the Pacific Ocean between Tijuana, Mexico, and San Diego — with almost 2 million cubic yards of dirt.

Environmentalists call the project a disaster. Federal officials say it's necessary to eliminate a notorious smuggling route into the United States.

At the site on a recent day, bulldozers marched up and down the steep slopes of what looks like a huge, earthen dam.

In the past six months, crews have built a half-mile-long berm across the gulch. The pile of dirt is about 180 feet high and almost 800 feet wide at its base.

When the berm is finished, a Border Patrol road will run across the top of it. At night, stadium lights will flood the area. And instead of one rickety old barrier, there will be three lines of new fence.

Smuggler's Gulch got its name decades ago, as every type of contraband imaginable from cattle to moonshine to cocaine flowed through here.

In the 1990s, this rugged canyon became a symbol of an out-of-control border. Nightly, dozens of illegal immigrants would duck in and out of the steep slopes to skirt a few outnumbered Border Patrol agents.

Weighing Environmental Concerns

Jim Peugh of the San Diego Audubon Society, which has vigorously opposed this project, acknowledges that the government faced huge challenges in patrolling Smuggler's Gulch. But he says filling it with dirt was overkill.

"The big threat to the environment that I see is the erosion from that berm and the slopes they've cut to borrow soil for that berm," he explains.

This project was originally proposed 12 years ago. Opponents held it up for years. Eventually, the Bush administration granted the Department of Homeland Security authority to override all local and environmental regulations to move forward with building the border fence.

Historically, Smuggler's Gulch has been a major problem for the Border Patrol, says Mike Fisher, the agency's chief agent for San Diego.

"We did not have easy access into that area, nor did we have easy access across that gulch," Fisher says.

"As a matter of fact, unfortunately we lost a Border Patrol agent in that area on patrol one night because of the rough terrain. And the smugglers were exploiting that vulnerability," he says.

Despite the waiver of environmental regulations, Fisher says environmental concerns are being addressed at the berm. A huge culvert is being installed, and the slopes are being seeded for erosion control.

Border Threats Persist

In addition to the new triple fencing, the federal government is also deploying remote sensors, new cameras and hundreds of additional officers along this section of the boundary.

Many human smugglers have given up trying to cross here and moved west into remote parts of the Arizona desert.

But Fisher says the threats here remain real.

"Every day, there are people who wake up and think about nothing else [other] than to do harm to this country," he says. "We are talking about narcotics smugglers; we are talking about potential terrorists whether they be operatives, financiers or facilitators. ... Our job — that one of border security — is as real, and those threats are as real, today as they were five years ago."

Fence To Change Landscape

The filling of Smuggler's Gulch is part of a $60 million project to install triple fencing along the final 3 1/2 miles of the San Diego-Tijuana border. The new barrier will extend all the way into the Pacific, and it's changing the landscape of the border.

Mike McCoy, of the Southwest Wetlands Interpretive Association, started lobbying to get this area set aside as a wildlife refuge back in 1971. Looking out over an expanse of bulldozed earth and half-finished fence at Smuggler's Gulch, McCoy says this project is destroying a fragile coastal ecosystem.

"At first, I didn't want to come back here again. Now, I sort of come back, but I don't really see it the same as it was," he says.

For decades, McCoy has worked to clean up and restore the Tijuana River estuary.

"We are seeing a lot of erosion right here … and that adds up to disaster when you start transporting that down into a river system," he says.

The river carries sediment to the estuary, and if that tidal coastal zone fills with sediment, McCoy says native plants and animals won't be able to survive.

McCoy seems most irked at the heavy-handedness of the federal government in overriding all environmental rules to push forward with the fortification of the border. The Department of Homeland Security argued that those rules could have blocked the new fence indefinitely.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100336089

Border Plan Will Address Harm Done at Fence Site

New York Times
January 16, 2009

LOS ANGELES — The federal government has pledged millions of dollars to make up for the environmental damage from building hundreds of miles of fences along the Mexican border through wilderness and protected lands.

But environmental groups who have fought the fence called it too little, too late.

In an announcement on Thursday, federal officials said the new spending was intended to resolve any conflict in the missions of the Departments of Homeland Security and Interior. The former is building nearly 670 miles of fences and other security equipment along the border, while the latter is charged with protecting and maintaining several hundred miles of public lands along the fence.

The officials said the Homeland Security Department would devote up to $50 million in the next year for “reasonable mitigation measures” to compensate for the damage or loss of animal and plant habitat and cultural areas like American Indian religious sites.

That compensation could include modifying the fence to curb flooding and to accommodate threatened and endangered species or restoring their habitats, but officials have not worked out those details and it will vary depending on the area.

The Interior Department will draft a list of priorities by June.

The agreement between the two departments has been in the works since April, when the homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, to the dismay of environmentalists and some scientists in the Interior Department, used his Congressionally authorized power to waive environmental laws to speed access to broad swaths of land.

At the time, in the face of an outcry from critics, Mr. Chertoff said the fence construction would proceed but with sensitivity to the environment and in coordination with the Interior Department.

Homeland security officials said the department had spent about $40 million in the past two years to address environmental problems associated with the border security project.

The fence construction and related roads and equipment for detecting illegal border crossers directly affect 200 to 300 miles of Interior Department land along the fence route and some of the most environmentally sensitive sites in the region.

With the promise of new spending coming just days before President-elect Barack Obama takes office on Tuesday, it was unclear on Friday to what extent the agreement would stick.

Gov. Janet Napolitano of Arizona, a Democrat whom Mr. Obama has chosen to head the Homeland Security Department, has not publicly taken a position on Mr. Chertoff’s use of the waivers, a spokeswoman said.

But Ms. Napolitano has expressed skepticism about the effectiveness of the fence. On Thursday, she told a Senate committee considering her nomination that she planned a broad and thorough review of the department’s policies.

Nick Shapiro, a spokesman for the Obama transition office, said, “President-elect Obama will review all 11th-hour regulations and will address them once he is president.”

Lloyd Easterling, a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection, the agency within the Homeland Security Department that will decide how to spend the $50 million, said transition officials were consulted on the agreement and took no position. But Mr. Easterling expressed optimism that it would go forward.

“Good environmental stewardship,” he said, “is transcendental of administrations.”

Environmental groups who challenged the fence construction, including an effort to have the Supreme Court block it, said dozens of species had suffered lost or damaged habitat. Among them, they say, are jaguars, ocelots, deer, javelinas and owls.

The environmental groups said that although steps to minimize the environmental harm of the fence were welcome, they would press the new administration to halt further fence building and reassess what had been done.

“We heard in Janet Napolitano’s remarks this week interest in evaluating this project, and that certainly is what the Sierra Club is asking for,” said Oliver Bernstein, a spokesman for that group in Texas. “This $50 million is too little, too late, but it is recognition that the border wall project is having tremendous environmental consequences.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/17/us/17border.html

Aide: Border Patrol to build border fence at park

Associated Press / Mercury News
January 7, 2008

SAN DIEGO—The Border Patrol will close a popular park on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean to make way for a triple fence along the Mexican border, a legislative aide and activists said Wednesday.

The Border Patrol had been mum on whether Friendship Park would be affected by plans to erect more than 670 miles of barriers along the southern U.S. border. The park draws big crowds from both sides, where people chat through a chain-link fence separating Imperial Beach, Calif., and Tijuana, Mexico. They exchange kisses, tamales, even communion wafers.

By May, the half-acre plaza inside Border Field State Park is expected to be gone, replaced by three fences separated by about 125 feet, according to Jonathan Hardy, an aide to state Sen. Denise Ducheny, D-San Diego.

Hardy said he attended a meeting on Tuesday in which Border Patrol agents, led by the San Diego sector chief Mike Fisher, told legislative aides and community activists that the agency will build the fence at the plaza, which was dedicated in 1971 by then-first lady Patricia Nixon.

He said officials showed them backhoes that had already begun breaking up the cement plaza to make way for a dirt patrol road that will be sandwiched between the fences.

A Border Patrol spokesman, Mark Endicott, said he was unaware of any decision on the park's fate. He said Fisher was unavailable to comment.

The fence will extend to the beach, where the border is now marked by tall poles with spaces big enough for adults to slip their arms through, said the Rev. John Fanestil, a United Methodist pastor who was also at the meeting.

"There will be no public access, it could not have been more absolute," said Fanestil, who has offered weekly communion through the chain-link fence. "Their language was that they were demolishing the plaza and then they'll reconstruct it with a road."

In November, U.S. Reps. Susan Davis and Bob Filner, both San Diego Democrats, and seven state and local elected officials wrote President-elect Barack Obama's transition team to urge that the park be kept open, calling it a powerful symbol of goodwill between the U.S. and Mexico. They are awaiting a response.

A spokesman for Davis, Aaron Hunter, said the Border Patrol's decision to close the park was disappointing.

"We have a new administration. This decision was made by an administration that's on its way out," he said.

On the park's Mexican side, there is also a cement plaza, which sits next to a bullring. One group holds cross-border yoga classes.

Parts of the 800-acre Border Field State Park will remain open, including equestrian trails, according to those who attended the meeting.

The park is next to "Smuggler's Gulch," a gorge that is being filled with nearly 1.9 million tons of dirt to make way for fencing. The area was overrun by illegal immigrants until U.S. authorities launched a crackdown in the 1990s that pushed people to remote mountains and deserts.

Border Patrol officials told the group Tuesday that drugs have been passed through the fence at Friendship Park and that the agency lacked resources to patrol the crowds, said Hardy, the legislative aide.

"In their mind, it's supposed to be a controlled, secure area," Hardy said. "They feel they don't have the manpower to allow large groups."

http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_11401124

Friendship Park in dispute over border fence

North Country Times
December 31, 2008

Border Field State Park in Imperial Beach has long been a meeting place for people separated by the nation's immigration laws, but a new fence being built on the U.S.-Mexico border site threatens to end that tradition, local human rights advocates say.

A group of elected officials recently joined an effort by those advocates to halt construction of the fence in that area.But immigration officials and other local lawmakers say the new barrier is needed to keep smugglers from exploiting the aging and deteriorating steel fence.

"Halting the construction of infrastructure at the park would only make the area more difficult to manage," said Joe Kasper, a spokesman for Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-El Cajon. "This project ... is an important part of our efforts to control the border."

The plaza and an obelisk monument on the border were dedicated in 1971 by then-first lady Patricia Nixon as a symbol of friendship between the two countries. The plaza sits on a mesa overlooking the beach, called Monument Mesa, which is the southwestern most part of the U.S.-Mexico border.

On the Mexican side of the border, there is a bullring called Plaza Monumental de Toros and a lighthouse.Within the park there is a half-acre plaza called "Friendship Park" where family and friends who are unable to travel across the border meet to talk and visit. They often exchange caresses and kisses through holes cut in the steel-mesh and chain-link fence.

For some people, it is the only safe and legal way to see and touch their loved ones. A secondary fence will create an empty space between the two barriers that could prevent those exchanges in the future, human rights activists say.

U.S. Border Patrol officials say they plan to build a gate on the second fence that would allow people to continue meeting each other. The gate would be open and watched by Border Patrol agents during the day and closed at night, but the design has not been finalized.The secondary fence will create a no-man's land between the two barriers that immigration authorities say is intended to prevent or slow illegal crossings.

In April, the Bush administration waived more than 30 environmental laws and regulations to finish building 670 miles of fence along the Southwest U.S. border, including the segment at Friendship Park and another a few miles east in an area called Smuggler's Gulch.

Michael Fisher, chief of the Border Patrol's San Diego sector, said in an interview last month that the department is looking at various designs for a gate that would allow people to continue visiting each other across the border at Friendship Park during certain times of the day.

But some critics said the agency should allow people to participate in the design process.

"We need to ensure Friendship Park lives up to its name, a place that fosters human relations in spite of fences, where families can share meals and greet each other," said John Fanestil, executive director of the Foundation for Change, a San Diego-based activist group that promotes human rights.

Human and immigrant rights groups, including the American Friends Service Committee and the Border Angels, have organized several protests in recent months at the park calling attention to the new fence.

Last month, a group of local elected officials joined them, co-signing a letter to Barack Obama's presidential transition team asking for construction to stop.The group included Reps. Bob Filner, D-San Diego, and Susan Davis, D-San Diego; state Sens. Denise Ducheny, D-San Diego, and Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego; San Diego City Councilwoman Donna Frye; and Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, among others.

"Direction to DHS (Department of Homeland Security) contractors halting all border fence construction on (Friendship Park) would send a powerful message to the peoples of the U.S.-Mexico border region," according to the letter. "It would also give new staff at DHS time to solicit new proposals for the redesign of security measures that will ensure continued public access to Friendship Park."

Border Patrol officials, who have a station near the park and watch the park on a regular basis, said that while much of what happens there are innocent family gatherings, there are those who try to take advantage of the gaps in the border.

In some segments of the fence, the barrier has been cut and repaired so many times that it has become ineffective at stopping illegal activity, including smuggling drugs, officials say.

"I fully respect what goes on in that park. It's unique because it is somewhat open," Fisher said. "Unfortunately, the smugglers exploit that as well. We have documented cases where people are selling false documents through the fence. They are selling drugs through the fence. They are smuggling people and babies through the area."

A spokesman for Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Solana Beach, said the new fence is needed and should not be stopped. Bilbray, who served as mayor of Imperial Beach in the 1980s, has been a long-standing advocate for building a border fence in San Diego County.

"Seems like everyone is looking for an excuse not to build the (new) fence," Bilbray spokesman Kurt Bardella said. "National security is something that should never be compromised."

William Gheen, president of Americans for Legal Immigration, a North Carolina-based group that advocates for stricter immigration controls, said critics of the border fence simply do not want immigration enforcement.

"They don't want borders," Gheen said. "That's why we call them the open-border lobby."

http://www.northcountytimes.com/articles/2008/12/31/news/sandiego/z73edd918dfd554538825752f00708d56.txt

Border fence construction halted for hours due to protest

El Paso Times
December 17, 2008

EL PASO - A lone protester at the Rio Bosque Wetlands Park temporarily halted construction of the border fence Wednesday, setting up a standoff with the Border Patrol.

Bill Addington, another activist at the site in the Lower Valley, identified the protester as Judy Ackerman of Northeast El Paso.

"There's a group of us of about 25 out here, but she's the only one on the construction site itself," Addington, who also served as Ackerman's spokesman. "We believe the Border Patrol is going to seek an arrest warrant to have her removed."

El Paso Border Patrol spokesman Doug Mosier said it was likely an arrest warrant will be sought through the U.S. attorney's office and federal courts. Ackerman was a founding member of Friends of the Rio Bosque and a member of the Sierra Club.

Conservationists have argued the 15-foot, steel-mesh border fence, will upset the park's ecological balance.

Department of Homeland Security officials said the federal government is constructing the fence along 670 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border to deter illegal immigration and drug smuggling.

http://www.elpasotimes.com/newupdated/ci_11253293

Flooded with questions

San Diego Union-Tribune
December 2, 2008

SOUTH COUNTY – In the Tijuana River Valley, horses are standing in mud up to their ankles and fields of watermelons are submerged under muck. Local farmers and ranchers blame the federal government – which is moving massive amounts of earth to accommodate a second border fence – for the mess.

But Border Patrol Agent Mark Endicott said the flooding at Monument Road and Hollister Street near the U.S.-Mexico border is not unusual after large storms.

“Every time we get heavy rain in that area, it floods, even before the construction project,” Endicott said.

The water flows from the high mesas that line the border toward about five large properties that sit in the valley below. A number of those properties host multiple families, individual ranches and numerous horse stables. Those who live there say last week's rains – about 1.14 inches over three days – brought more flooding and trouble than normal.

And they don't just blame the federal government. They say local agencies have failed to clean up debris-filled channels that carry the runoff.

After spending the long holiday weekend raking and clearing mud and debris from their land, property and business owners want answers.

Some locals, as well as environmentalists, are blaming the heavy flooding on an earth-moving project that began in August at a canyon known as Smuggler's Gulch. The canyon is being filled in with dirt cut from surrounding hills to create a 150-foot-tall earthen berm that will eventually allow a second border fence and patrol roads.

“You always get sediment coming off the hills, but this was different,” said Dick Tynan, who owns about 20 acres on Monument Road and Hollister Street. He said a lot more flooding occurred this time with just a small amount of rain.

The fill project is near complete, with more than 1.2 million cubic yards of earth in the canyon. Another half-million cubic yards will soon be added to finish the berm.

The $48.6 million project is due for completion in May, and though erosion-control measures have been taken near the top of the canyon, the sides of the berm have yet to be reseeded with vegetation to prevent sediment runoff.

Oscar Romo, a professor of urban studies and planning at the University of California San Diego, is tracking the construction's environmental effects on both sides of the border. He visited the site Wednesday and Thursday after the heavy rainfall. Already, Romo said, substantial erosion had occurred along the sides of the berm.

Some river valley residents also blame the flooding on San Diego officials for not cleaning out a flood-control channel coming out of Smuggler's Gulch. It is designed to carry runoff but is filled in some areas with at least 10 feet of plastic bottles, as well as debris and trash, including a refrigerator.

Darren Pudgil, a spokesman for the Mayor's Office, could not confirm yesterday whether the problem was the city's.

Tynan's neighbor Jesse Garcia, who owns J&K Earthworks off Monument Road, said Wednesday's rain flooded many of his fields that run along the flood-control channel. Runoff up to 15-feet high breached one side of the channel when three openings under a dirt bridge were clogged.

“I had the bulldozer out here, and I was trying to build up the wall of the channel with topsoil,” Garcia said. “This is the first time this has happened.”

Garcia, who has been farming there 11 years, estimated he lost $10,000 of watermelons because of the flooding.

Romo said he also noticed mud at the bottom of a sediment basin near Goat Canyon, a smaller fence-construction site nearby.

“It was designed to catch only sediment from Mexico,” Romo said. “It is now experiencing a lot more sediment than it used to.”

Environmental advocate Mike McCoy of the Southwest Wetlands Interpretive Association, who was part of a 2004 lawsuit to stop the Smuggler's Gulch project, said he was alarmed by the reports of flooding.

“It's coming down off that bare construction area. Wait for another rain or so, and it could really become a problem,” he said. “We'll just have to track it closely.”

Tynan, who has owned his property since 1978, had to pump water off his property, where horses and goats in rented stables stood in wall-to-wall mud.

“I haven't seen it like this since 2005,” Tynan said.

Yesterday, Monument Road was still muddy, especially near Smuggler's Gulch and other canyons. Forecasters say they are 90 percent certain San Diego County will stay dry for the next week or so. However, National Weather Service forecaster Mark Moede said a 10 percent chance exists that rain expected to develop far off the coast might head toward land by Sunday.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20081202-9999-1m2smuggle.html

Border gulch fill-in faces the wet test

San Diego Union-Tribune
November 27, 2008

Three months after border fence construction began in a coastal canyon known as Smuggler's Gulch, crews have all but filled in the once-deep breach.

Since mid-August, contractors have cut more than 1.2 million cubic yards of dirt from surrounding hills and deposited it into the canyon, creating a 140-foot-tall earthen berm that vehicles can now drive across.

While the fence has yet to be built, Border Patrol officials estimate the controversial fill-in is about a week from completion.

The project was for years contested by environmentalists who feared sediment runoff could damage the Tijuana River estuary, a claim countered by federal officials who promised to re-seed and stabilize the site to prevent erosion.

Now, with start of the winter rains this week and more rain expected, observers on both sides will get to see how well the massive project holds up.

“This is the first test,” said Oscar Romo, a professor of urban studies and planning at the University of California San Diego who is tracking environmental impacts of the construction on both sides of the border.

While there has been some seeding and other erosion-control measures at the top of the canyon, the sides of the berm have yet to be replanted with vegetation that can slow runoff.

The fence project, which the fill-in is part of, is not due to be completed until May.

Romo, who spent yesterday afternoon checking the site and a nearby sediment channel for erosion following the previous night's rainstorm, isn't optimistic.

“I saw what I had expected to see,” he said. “Everywhere you look at the berm, there is erosion going on.”

Romo said future rainfall could create enough runoff to reach the estuary unless steps are taken to halt erosion.

On Tuesday, before the rain began, Border Patrol special operations supervisor Jim Swanson stood at the edge of the canyon and pointed out nearby coastal sage scrub and other native plants that will eventually be replanted at the site.

“The people opposed to this don't like to hear this, but it's actually adding acreage of coastal vegetation,” he said.

A planned freeway-style retaining wall will also help, he said. By the time it is finished, the berm will be 150 feet tall and made from about 1.7 million cubic yards of earth.

Swanson, a 22-year veteran of the agency in San Diego, said Smuggler's Gulch has been a particularly dangerous place to patrol, especially in fog, with narrow dirt roads clinging to the sides of the canyon. An agent was killed in a rollover accident there in 2002.

Once the new fence is in, paved roads on either side will allow agents to zip across in seconds.
“This area needed something like this,” Swanson said.

The Smuggler's Gulch fence project is part of a federal plan dating to the mid-1990s that calls for 14 miles of contiguous secondary fencing running inland from the ocean.

The federal government is spending $60 million to complete approximately 3½ miles of secondary fencing that had yet to be built across the canyon, in Border Field State Park and in surrounding areas.

At a cost of $48.6 million, Smuggler's Gulch is by far the most expensive, and controversial, part of the project. Plans for the massive fill-in led to a February 2004 lawsuit against the federal government by environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club and the San Diego Audubon Society.

That same month, the California Coastal Commission stalled construction after concluding it would cause environmental damage to the estuary, which had cost millions in state and federal tax dollars to restore.

The next year, however, Congress passed legislation that enabled the Department of Homeland Security to waive all laws standing in the way of building the fence. The environmental lawsuit was dismissed in December 2005.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/tijuana/20081127-9999-1m27gulch.html

U.S.-MEXICO: Fence to Carve Up Fragile Border Preserve

Inter Press Service
November 19, 2008

SAN DIEGO, California, Nov 19 (IPS) - Another chapter in U.S.-Mexico border relations is about to close. In the waning days of the George W. Bush administration, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is completing construction of a 22-kilometre triple fence along the San Diego-Tijuana border.

It is being done over the objections of environmental activists living near the border, who are worried both about the toll on wildlife and those seeking entry into the United States.

A patch of green encircled by two cities, the Tijuana estuary lacks the grandeur of a mountain range but to biologists and conservationists it's an invaluable piece of real estate.

Created in 1981, the Tijuana River Research Reserve is an island of relative calm at the centre of a political maelstrom that pits conservations against advocates that promote tighter border controls. Nesting amid coastal sage and tall grass, 400 species of birds inhabit the wetlands. Thousands more birds return each year to one of the last vestiges of salt marsh existing in Southern California, where 90 percent have been lost to development.

"The estuary is one of the few remaining in Southern California without heavy human intrusion," said Mike McCoy, president of the South West Wetlands Interpretive Association.

However, the estuary has been part of contested territory for generations. The land was granted to the United States after the Treaty of Hidalgo in 1848, which ceded much of what is now southwest Arizona, Texas, New Mexico and California to the United States in the aftermath of the U.S-Mexican War.

The estuary has also been labeled a haven for drug-running and illegal border crossings, according to border officials, making it a flash point for U.S. immigration policy and government agencies entrusted with protecting rare and endangered species living in the estuary. The nearby Otay Mesa border crossing is the most active border crossing in the world.

On average, more than 31 billion dollars worth of products cross through the checkpoint each day, nearly all of it related to the regional maquiladora/manufacturing and agricultural industries. Others seek entry through different methods. "The immigration problem is overblown," remarked a docent on a recent trip to the Tijuana River Research Reserve.

The border, however, does have a dark side. According to U.S. border officials, the region is a magnet for illegal activity -- 162,000 arrests have been made, and 49,000 pounds of marijuana and 699 pounds of cocaine intercepted since November 2007. Drug cartels waging war on the streets of Tijuana also add an element of fear and apprehension. Here the border is tangible.

After 3,200 kilometres, the line tumbles into the Pacific Ocean, and a steel fence divides the United States from Mexico.

During the 1980s, the estuary was in danger of being overrun. Social trails scarred the land. Migrants seeking entry into the United States used the estuary as a crossing point, prompting local politicos to take action.

Also known as Operation Gatekeeper, the 60-million-dollar construction project comprises the western portion of the San Diego Border Infrastructure System. A federally funded programme put in place by Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, it dates back to 1996.

In the coming weeks, two fences will flank the existing one, leaving a gap wide enough to provide access to patrol vehicles, along the westernmost 5.6 kilometres of the U.S.-Mexico border. It will enable agents to monitor a border that marches across the edge of Tijuana's city limits, stretching into the arroyos and mesas beyond.

The plan calls for infilling Smugglers Gulch, a steep canyon through which contraband and people pass. It requires the movement of 2 million cubic yards of earth and calls for building a culvert to divert rainfall that flows down denuded hillsides during storms.

According to local legend, Smugglers Gulch earned its reputation during the Prohibition era of the 1920s and early 1930s, when Tijuana became a destination for U.S. servicemen and thrill seekers. In Mexico, it is known as Canon de Matador, or Slaughter House Canyon, supposedly because goats were slaughtered in the area.

The tops of mesas will be graded down and sections of canyons filled to accommodate an extensive defensive infrastructure that in all likelihood will add to the menace that pervades the border.

According to environmentalists, 100 acres of existing habitat will be compromised within the estuary, placing additional stress on the remaining habitat. "The long-term consequences are unknown," said David Massey, director of education at the San Diego Natural History, when speaking of the triple border fence.

The initial plan met with fierce opposition from environmental groups, who cite concerns that fill from Smugglers Gulch would ultimately choke the wetlands with sedimentation. This would violate federal laws that set aside the estuary as a wildlife refuge and water quality standards. The coastal commission agreed that the project would cause environmental harm and blocked construction.

In September 2005, Michael Chertoff, secretary of Homeland Security, trumped all legal challengers by citing the National ID Act, giving him the authority to waive any regulation that impeded construction of the fence in the name of national security.

A local federal district court judge then dismissed all cases that impeded the construction of the fence on the grounds that the intent of Congress was clear in terms of completing its construction.

Construction will move along as the DHS attempts to meet its stated goal of building 225 miles of pedestrian fencing and 362 kilometres of vehicle barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border -- plans likely to meet with additional legal challenges in the months and years to come as advocates on both sides of the fence continue to debate border policy over a landscape where cowboys and coyotes fear to go.

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=44774

A brief in opposition to the Border Wall

Newspaper Tree
November 14, 2008

El Paso County Attorney José R. Rodríguez was invited to testify last week before the Mexican-American Legislative Caucus (MALC) of the Texas House of Representatives in relation to the federal lawsuit the County and the City of El Paso filed this summer challenging Congress’ delegation of authority that allowed Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff to waive more than 30 federal, state, and local laws, in order to accelerate the construction of the border wall. You can view the testimony, with attachments, via the link below this article.
Rodriguez's argument was:

-- The number of undocumented immigrants apprehended by the Border Patrol dropped 60 percent in relation to the previous year.

-- That the billions of dollars that the federal government will spend building the border wall would be better invested in providing more resources to the federal agents that patrol the border.

-- That the border wall will negatively impact the water supply to many farmers in the Lower Valley and potentially affect the ability of the El Paso County Improvement District #1 to supply water to 50 percent of El Paso residents, as well as hinder bi-national efforts to re-introduce endangered species.

-- Harm conservation efforts that are underway to protect the Rio Bosque Wetlands Park, in El Paso’s lower valley, and affect the cultural history of the region, as the border wall cuts through sacred ceremonial land used for centuries by the Ysleta Pueblo del Sur Tribe (Tigua).

***

José R. Rodríguez El Paso County Attorney Testimony to the Mexican American Legislative Caucus On the Border Wall November 13, 2008

I am El Paso County Attorney José R. Rodríguez. Thank you for the opportunity to submit testimony to the Mexican American Legislative Caucus regarding the challenges and consequences El Paso County faces as a result of the construction of the Border Wall. The Texas/Mexico border and particularly my jurisdiction in El Paso, Texas is a unique bi-national community. An aerial view of our border community captures the seamless span of our metropolitan area that comprises well over 2 million people within the cities of El Paso and Juarez. El Paso and Juarez share more than just a physical barrier; they share a common identity and culture, and even history, that forms a unique demographic in our region. As such, El Paso’s ethnic, cultural, and linguistically distinct characteristics require a deeper understanding by lawmakers on the needs of this region. A multi-billion dollar Border Wall will serve no purpose other than to avoid the real issue that lawmakers must address- comprehension immigration reform. In fact, if the purpose of the Border Wall is to stop illegal immigration, data proves otherwise, instead showing that illegal immigrant apprehensions have decreased significantly in recent years. For El Paso County, a Border Wall represents not only a waste of time, money, and resources, but also a disruption of crucial waterways, desert ecosystems, sacred Native American land, and long-standing relations between the El Paso and Juarez communities.

El Paso’s Response

In El Paso there is wide spread opposition to the Border Wall. Recognizing that the relationship with its sister city transcends boundaries, El Paso has passed resolutions and filed lawsuits opposing the Border Wall. In 2006, El Paso County Commissioners approved a resolution recognizing the contributions immigrants have made to our communities and condemning efforts by the federal government to erect ineffective physical barriers such as a Border Wall to address illegal immigration. (See Attachment A) In my capacity as El Paso County Attorney, I joined other elected officials in signing a resolution advocating for comprehensive immigration reform legislation. (See Attachment B) El Paso County Commissioners renewed their stance against ineffective policies aimed at curbing illegal immigration by approving a resolution in May 2008 again recognizing immigrants’ contributions to the United States and calling for federal authorities to stop construction of the Border Wall. (See Attachment C) In Summer 2008, El Paso County joined the Texas Border Coalition’s lawsuit against the Wall and, along with the City of El Paso, Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, El Paso County Water Improvement District #1, Hudspeth County Conservation and Reclamation District No. 1, Frontera Audubon Society, Friends of the Wildlife Corridor, and Friends of Laguna Atacosa National Wildlife Refuge filed a separate lawsuit challenging the unconstitutional delegation of authority that allows the Secretary of Homeland Security to waive more than 30 federal laws, as well as state and local laws, in order to accelerate construction of the Border Wall. Waiving these laws poses severe threats to El Paso County’s environment, water resources, Native American religious customs, economic development, and its ability to enforce state and local laws affecting our community. Although the El Paso federal court dismissed the lawsuit, the case is being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The unprecedented waiver authority granted to the Secretary of Homeland Security raises several constitutional issues including whether waiver of state and local laws violates Texas’ sovereignty under the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Questionable Need for a Border Wall

Recent Department of Homeland Security statements claiming the Border Wall is needed in El Paso to obtain operation control of the border are refuted by the government’s success in keeping immigrants out. In 1993, Operation Hold the Line was implemented throughout the Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector. The initiative placed Border Patrol agents in close proximity to one another along a certain area of the border to prevent illegal immigration. In 1992, one year before Operation Hold the Line began, the number of “deportable aliens located by the Border Patrol” was approximately 248,642. In 1994, one year after Operation Hold the Line was implemented, there was an immediate drop in apprehensions to 79,688, a 68 % decrease. Although subsequent years show some fluctuation in the number of arrests, recent years’ data indicate an overwhelmingly decrease in arrests. (See Attachment D) A recent article in the El Paso Times quotes Border Patrol officials as acknowledging that given current resources and zero tolerance policy against illegal immigrants, they “do not anticipate a surge of attempted illegal entries in the coming year”. (See Attachment E) This data clearly indicates that current resources and policies are effective in deterring illegal immigration, thus raising serious questions concerning the federal government’s insistence that a border wall is necessary to stop illegal immigration.

Disruption, Destruction, and Polarization within El Paso County

Impact to El Paso’s Water Supply

Located in El Paso’s lower valley, Water Improvement District #1 (WID) provides water for 69,010 acres of water right lands. According to the WID website, WID contains 156 square miles of water that delivers critical irrigation water to El Paso County residents. As a result of the Border Wall, the WID has been inundated with concerns from area farmers who are worried that the Border Wall would block access to irrigation water provided by the Riverside Canal and prevent them from sustaining their farmlands. Along the canal, the presence of border patrol vehicles is evident by the disintegration of the canal banks. Coupled with the placement of the Border Wall alongside the Riverside Canal, the ability of WID to maintain and control the flow of water that funnels through its canals is in jeopardy. The placement of the Border Wall along an area parallel to the Riverside Canal, along the south bank, poses several threats to El Paso’s water supply including the ability of WID maintenance workers to maintain control gates that direct the flow of water into a canal. Failure to properly maintain the canals could potentially prevent water from reaching the Jonathon Rogers Treatment Plant for processing and distribution to about 50% of El Paso County residents. To date nothing has been memorialized in writing between the WID and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to address WID’s concerns. In recent weeks, discussions have taken place between the two entities with CBP claiming to reduce the impact that the Border Wall will have by proposing to place the Border Wall up on the river’s levee. WID officials continue to warn that this proposal will affect their ability to maintain the canal and will require the WID to heavily invest in herbicides and special equipment.

Environmental Impact

The Border Wall’s anticipated adverse impacts on El Paso County’s desert ecosystem and economic development include serious long term effects to border wildlife and plants, a break in bi-national conservation efforts, and the loss of an emerging eco-tourism market. Although the extent of the long term effects of a Border Wall in the El Paso region is not immediately ascertainable, it is probable that they are irreversible and, over time, can lead to significant loss and even permanent destruction in the ecosystem of the border region. El Paso is a refuge for endangered species including the Mexican gray wolf. Studies indicate that the protection of wolf habitats require open corridors in the border region. Efforts by the United States and Mexico to provide safe habitats and reintroduce the Mexican gray wolf are in direct contrast to the construction of a border wall, which will hinder the free movement of the animal on both sides of the border. Mexico has been vocal in its opposition to the construction of the border wall in large measure because past efforts between the United States and Mexico were underway to protect vital border ecosystems. Decisions made by the United States to place the wall on sensitive environmental lands hinder efforts between the United States and Mexico to collaborate and work on innovative and important environmental issues that are unique to the border region. Rio Bosque Wetlands Park Construction and inevitable maintenance of the Border Wall will harm conservation efforts that are underway to protect the Rio Bosque Wetlands Park. At Rio Bosque, the goal is to re-establish, over time, approximate examples of native plant and animal communities historically found in the river valley. The proposed wall would compromise their ability to achieve this goal which has already received substantial funding from the state and federal government. In a letter to the El Paso Sector Tactical Infrastructure Environmental Assessment (EA), John Sproul, Program Coordinator for Rio Bosque Wetlands Park, raises serious concerns regarding the placement of the wall. Sproul notes the various cumulative effects on Rio Bosque in his comments to the draft EA report: impacts to wildlife, including threatened and endangered species; visual impacts; and, access issues. (See Attachment F) Sproul’s comments regarding efforts by DHS to integrate those proposals were abandoned once the Secretary issued his waiver of all laws that would hinder the Wall from being built. Rio Bosque Wetlands Parks has the potential for becoming a haven for environmental enthusiasts, similar to the Sabal Palm Audubon Center in the Rio Grande Valley. However, the Rio Bosque is likely to fall victim to a similar fate that the Sabal Palm Audubon Center is facing as a result of the Border Wall. Thus, the goal of creating the Rio Bosque into a wetlands sanctuary and possible thriving tourist destination is now in jeopardy.

Cultural Impact to the Ysleta Pueblo del Sur Tribe

The Border Wall will cut through sacred ceremonial land to the Ysleta Pueblo del Sur Tribe (Tigua). This area covers approximately 6-7 miles from the Ysleta Port of Entry to Socorro, Texas. Discussions between the Tigua’s and the CBP were described by Tribal War Captain, Rick Quesada, as minimal at best and plans by Customs and Border Protection to disrupt the ceremonial area are still underway despite protests from the Tiguas.

Polarization between the El Paso and Juarez Communities To many of us, the Border Wall symbolizes a hostile barrier between two communities that have traditionally been closely intertwined. Its construction will impact Mexico’s relationship with the United States on many levels including diplomatic relations and local cooperation. El Paso and Juarez have historically worked close together on important policy issues that affect the community; for example, extending each other assistance during the heavy floods that blanketed the El Paso/Juarez region in 2006. The two communities routinely work jointly on local drug policy, pollution control, and bi-national health initiatives. Instead of bi-national cooperation, the border wall will create distrust and endanger the existing collaborative relationship between the two communities.

Finally, the Border Wall could potentially cause social, cultural, and familial ties in both communities to falter. Both U.S. citizens and Mexican citizens cross the border through the Ports of Entry to shop, visit family, attend schools and recreational events, and obtain medical care. The Border Wall would symbolize a hostile barrier and could potentially affect the cross border services and tourism that both populations take advantage of, causing both communities to suffer economic consequences.

Conclusion

As El Paso County Attorney I have provided testimony to the Texas Senate Committee on International Relations and Trade discussing border security and issues related to local enforcement of immigration law. The current focus on border security again brings to the forefront the need for lawmakers to engage in meaningful discussions regarding comprehensive immigration reform. A multi-billion dollar effort to construct the Border Wall simply does not make sense. At a time when America faces a severe financial crises it is simply irresponsible to pour additional money into a wall that will scar our environmental landscape and damage our relationship with communities across the border. Instead of deterring illegal immigration, the Wall will symbolize not only a failed immigration policy, but also a country barricading itself from the rest of the world. Thank you.

http://newspapertree.com/opinion/3086-a-brief-in-opposition-to-the-border-wall

Border fence in funding limbo

Brownsville Herald
September 21, 2008

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has run out of money to build remaining segments of the U.S.-Mexico border fence in the Rio Grande Valley and elsewhere, and the project already is $400 million over budget.

Unexpected construction costs and legal holdups have paralyzed construction just weeks after DHS broke ground in the Valley.

A Sept. 10 Government Accountability Office report said the average cost of fencing has increased more than 40 percent this year.

With 17 miles of fencing in Brownsville "on deck," according to DHS officials, the city's fate now could lie in the hands of a single congressman charged with approving a federal funding request.

DHS can redirect some funding without approval, by cutting down other border security expenditures to salvage $238 million for fencing.

But to secure an additional $140 million, DHS will need the approval of U.S. Rep. David Price, D-NC, chairman of the Sub-Committee on Homeland Security.

Without Price's approval, the border fence likely will remain unfinished at the end of 2008.

If Congress does not comply, "We're out of money and operations will stop," Customs and Border Protection Commissioner W. Ralph Basham told the House Homeland Security Committee on Sept. 10.

Price voted against the Secure Fence Act of 2006 and against a 2007 amendment allotting an additional $89 million for border fencing, infrastructure, and technology.

"I am very concerned about the rapidly escalating costs of border fencing and want to be sure that CBP is being a wise steward of taxpayer dollars," Price said in a statement. "Because the reprogramming would reduce non-fencing activities, including the hiring of Border Patrol personnel, I also want to be sure that the agency is not robbing Peter to pay Paul."

Currently, 341 miles of a proposed 670 miles of new fencing are in place along the 2,000-mile border with Mexico.

Regardless of the current funding scenario, DHS spokeswoman Angela Rocha said the department "is planning at this time to build the fence in the Brownsville area."

Bids to build segments of the fence in Cameron County have been received but contracts have not yet been awarded.

Congressmen along the Southwest border are unwilling to accept that fencing is a foregone conclusion in their districts. Last week, U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-El Paso, wrote a letter to Price, urging him to deny DHS' reprogramming request. Five congressmen along the southwest border, including U.S. Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Corpus Christi, signed on.

"We find it irresponsible that the Bush Administration continues to ask Congress for additional funding to finish a fence which will do little to improve the security of our nation," the letter states. "As original opponents of the Secure Fence Act, we ask that your committee block the recent reprogramming request."

Staff at Price's office would not comment on when the reprogramming request will either be approved or denied. But Jean-Louise Beard, Price's chief of staff, denied DHS' assertion that the request was a routine measure.

"This one is out of the ordinary not only because it involves the border fence, which has been very controversial," Beard said, "but also because the request is much larger than the norm and has come very late in the fiscal year."

http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/fence_90201___article.html/border_project.html

Estuary advocate, once a collaborator, now at odds with Hunter

San Diego Union-Tribune

August 25, 2008

SOUTH COUNTY – In the fall of 1990, an environmental activist from Imperial Beach received a presidential award at the behest of his congressman.

Mike McCoy was being honored with a Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Award, at the time presented by Republicans for stewardship of the environment. The congressman who nominated him was Duncan Hunter.

The Democratic veterinarian and the Republican congressman, who at the time represented Imperial Beach, didn't see eye to eye on everything, but they agreed on a surprising number of issues. There was sewage entering the Tijuana River estuary, and McCoy was working with Hunter's staff to clean it up.

A friendship of sorts emerged from their unlikely alliance. Once upon returning from Washington, Hunter gave McCoy, who chaired his environmental committee, a copy of a sketch drawn by Ronald Reagan of one of Hunter's sons.

“Thanks, McCoy,” he dedicated it.

Fast-forward almost two decades, and the one-time collaborators are at opposite ends of a long-running controversy over a new border fence and the eventual fate of the estuary.

Their disagreement is in a sense a conflict of life legacies. McCoy, 66, has dedicated the bulk of his life's work to preserving the estuary. Along with other environmentalists, he led the losing legal battle against a plan to build a double fence across a deep canyon known as Smuggler's Gulch.

The massive project, already under way, requires filling the canyon with so much dirt that the California Coastal Commission ruled four years ago that it could damage the estuary, increasing silt erosion and destroying sensitive wildlife habitat.
Hunter, 60, the former chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, is best known for promoting border security as an antidote to illegal immigration. He has been the project's strongest proponent, introducing legislation three years ago that waived all laws hampering fence construction.

“Mike McCoy is a good guy,” said Hunter, who retires in January. “People of good will can look at exactly the same set of facts and come to opposite conclusions.”

The two maintain a mutual respect from afar, but they haven't spoken in years. McCoy blames their parting of ways chiefly on the fence.

“I think he saw me as an obstacle,” he said recently.

McCoy is familiar with being in this position. In the early 1970s, the then-recent transplant from Colorado got wind that Imperial Beach city leaders planned to develop the wetlands south of town into a marina.

The estuary was by no means pristine, its northern end used as a dumping ground. The City Council argued that a marina would help the cash-poor city.

It was the only sizable estuary on the Southern California coast still untouched by development, and McCoy felt strongly that developing it would cause greater harm than proponents understood.

“The fisheries of the world rely on estuaries,” he said. “In my mind, it was criminal to destroy it.”

For close to a decade, he and others campaigned to block the marina, and in late 1980, the estuary was protected. It is now known as the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve.

Also that year, Hunter won the congressional district seat that included Imperial Beach. Though not what one would call a tree-hugger, Hunter had concerns about raw sewage from Tijuana spilling into the ocean, as did constituents.

“In rainy weather, sewage from Tijuana was getting into the Tijuana River,” he said recently. “It was going into the estuary.”

McCoy was an advocate for cleaning it up, and though he hadn't voted for Hunter, he volunteered to work with him on the sewage issue.

“He was definitely helpful to me,” McCoy said of his association with Hunter. “Until we got into this border fence thing.”


Common ground
At first, the two agreed on the idea of a border fence to stem illegal immigration traffic through Imperial Beach. From Hunter's point of view, the fence would keep undocumented migrants and drug smugglers out of the country. From McCoy's, it would keep the estuary from being hammered by foot traffic.
Starting in the late 1980s, Hunter's staff set about locating used military landing mat for Army welders to fashion into a metal fence.

McCoy said he has since had second thoughts, especially after tighter enforcement policies in 1994 drove migrants east to the desert.

“People died out there,” he said. But at the time, “from our little point of view, it shifted the traffic.”

His support for Hunter's plans had begun to wane by the mid-1990s, after Hunter became a proponent for legislation calling for layers of fence extending 14 miles inland.

Under the new plan, Smugglers' Gulch would be filled with more than 2 million cubic yards of dirt to build a half-mile, 165-foot-tall earthen bridge supporting fencing and roads.

A series of revisions came and went over several years as advocates pushed for a more environmentally sensitive plan, but nothing was agreed upon.

In early 2004, McCoy's organization, Southwest Wetlands Interpretive Association and other groups sued the federal government.

Getting the waiver

For Hunter, the process had been an exercise in frustration.
“It became clear that we would never get permission,” he said. “So we wrote the waiver language into the Real ID Act.”

The purpose of the Real ID Act of 2005 was to impose federal security standards on state identification cards. Hunter added language that would allow the Homeland Security secretary to supersede laws stopping fence construction.

In September 2005, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff set a precedent by waiving the laws on which the San Diego lawsuit was based; the lawsuit later was thrown out of court.

A $48.6 million contract for the project was awarded this year.

For Hunter, who lives in Alpine and leaves Congress after an unsuccessful bid last year for the Republican presidential nomination, it's the achievement of a goal that became a personal crusade.

“The security of the country is the primary interest,” he said. “In carrying out that interest, the environment can be accommodated.”

Hunter said ponds and structures can arrest silt that results from the operation. McCoy hopes there will be such protections but isn't confident.

His best hope, McCoy said, is that if the fence comes down some day, what damage occurs can be repaired. He also has given quite a bit of thought to the fences he once thought were a good idea.

“If people want to come here, they are going to come,” he said. “I see it as a barrier that needs to lead to a solution. That's the only way I can face it.”

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/tijuana/20080825-9999-1m25fence.html