McAllen couple donates ranchland to help ocelots

The Monitor
July 27, 2014
Paula Ann Solis

The border fence running between Mexico and Texas has inadvertently blocked and damaged the Rio Grande Valley range of ocelots.

Urbanization and political boundaries pose a danger to this endangered cat and the future of wildlife. But a McAllen family has breathed new life into their survival by placing part of their land in the hands of an interested party, the United States government.
 Celebrated land stewards Karen and Phil Hunke worked for more than a decade to transform thousands of acres in Hidalgo County, known as Tecolote Ranch, into a sanctuary for endangered plants and animals such as the ocelot.
 In the Valley, where 95 percent of original Texas brush land has been cleared in the name of progress, their efforts are uncommon.
 “Karen and I are just really committed to helping people learn and educating them about how you can conserve land and not over graze,” Hunke said. “You can aid wildlife at the same time and have cattle and make it work together.”
 The Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit environmental group, took note of their commitment and successful maintenance of critical land during land inventories, Hunke said.
 To take their progress one step further, the Hunkes sold 1,119 acres in June to the conservancy at a significantly reduced price, cutting their overall land value. But it was all in the name of nature and charity, Hunke said.
 The land is near the intersection of Willacy, Hidalgo and Kenedy counties.
 The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service acquired the land for $3 million with funds the Department of Homeland Security reserved to combat the negative impacts of the border fence’s construction.

http://m.themonitor.com/news/local/mcallen-couple-donates-ranchland-to-help-ocelots/article_3afde3fa-1525-11e4-8c8c-001a4bcf6878.html?mode=jqm

Border Fence Still Dividing Communities

FOX 29 News
May 5, 2104
by Grace White

It's a controversial part of the border, the section between the fence in America and the Rio Grande bordering Mexico that some call 'No Man's Land.'

"This is home, this is America," said Pamela Taylor, who lives across the fence.

It looks like any other neighborhood.

"We know most of the guys," she said.

There's a sense of pride.

You could call it a gated community, except that this isn't a gate, traffic comes right through.

This isn't the residents' idea of protection, it's the U.S. Government's idea of border security.

"We are the last (house)," said Taylor.

She has lived in her home just outside Brownsville for decades.

"It's been known as no man's land," said Taylor.

There's only a handful of homeowners on the other side of the fence and most have been fighting the government for years.

Some claim they've been cut-off from their country and others say they now have limited access to their homes.

The fence cuts right through Rusty Monsees' property.

"It doesn't work, there's no way it can work," said Monsees, who lives near the fence.

"No matter what happens on this side of the fence we have absolutely no control over it," said Taylor.

Border patrol agents walked us onto the other side to prove they do.

"A lot of people have the misconception that southside of the fence is 'No Man's Land,' but it by no means is that," said Danny Tirado, spokesman for U.S. Border Patrol.

Agents also took us on this ride-a-long to show us why the fence wasn't built on the actual border.

There's simply too many twists and turns on the Rio Grande to justify the cost

Even though the fence in places is a half mile north... "We have detection capabilities out there, between the river and the fence," said Tirado.

"I think they probably see it as the unofficial border," said Chris Cabrera, a spokesman for the Border Patrol Union.

Union representatives say while it does provide protection, the fence also creates challenges.

"In the not to distant past we've had some guys attacked, pretty bad, pretty bloody. Couple of guys reached for guns and tried to disarm our agents," said Cabrera.

The union says there's been talks of requiring agents to work in pairs.

"We have some agents that have been assaulted, it's not uncommon for a border patrol agent to arrest 17-20 people at a time by himself," said Cabrera.

"All this money that they've spent on this could have been better spent to improve and bring more border patrolmen," said Monsees.

Border Patrol is increasing manpower in the Rio Grande Valley because the number of people being caught coming across increased significantly from last year.

"Well they ask, well if it's so dangerous, why don't you move. Well why should I? I haven't done anything wrong," said Taylor.

So, Taylor makes the most of it, leaving sodas and water out for people passing through.

But don't mistake her generosity as an endorsement, she says what's happening on this side of the fence should concern every American.

"Whatever comes over this border they are going up north," said Taylor.

Brownsville Congressman Filemon Vela says, "Simply, I believe the border fence has been a waste of money and needs to be torn down." 

However, some argue the fence works.

The Border Patrol is catching more people as they cross over.

In 2012, the number was around 95,000.

Last year, it was 150,000.Border Fence Still Dividing Communities

http://www.foxsanantonio.com/news/features/top-stories/stories/border-fence-still-dividing-communities-3541.shtml#.U2xeLL4o4kk

Behind border fence, woman deals with rising crime

The Brownsville Herald
May 3, 2014
by Ty Johnson

Among the thick brush on the American bank of the Rio Grande just south of the Santa Rosalia Cemetery, there is a concrete slab clearly visible from the dirt road frequented by U.S. Border Patrol vehicles.

A step toward it is a step toward Mexico.
 From that slab, a well-worn path cuts through the tall grass leading to the water’s edge.

The path leads to a dam made of concrete blocks — there is an irrigation pump nearby — and provides an easy, dry crossing over the river and across the U.S. border, which is, in most places in Texas, the midpoint of the river.

The river is narrow and the water level is low, making an illegal crossing either way a short, dry skip from concrete block to concrete block.

“It’s an obvious place to cross,” says Pamela Taylor, whose house is a short walk to the east.

She’s lived at that house, which today stands between the border fence and the river, since 1946 and remembers a time when workers would cross the border freely, some pitching camp and sharing with her their tortillas. However, she said she’s never seen anything close to the types of illegal crossings she has witnessed recently.

“The situation now is so different,” she said. “They used to come in twos and threes. Now they come in 10s and 20s.”

Shortly after returning from an Easter holiday she learned she had “just missed it” from a neighbor.

“They just got 20 or 30 of them on your back patio,” she remembers him telling her of the apprehended immigrants arrested on her property.

Gone are the days of braceros and tortillas, she noted. Someone told her those arrested had also attempted to break into her home.

“It’s getting worse in this specific area, for some reason,” she said.

And it’s not just her who is noticing the influx.

RISING ACTIVITY

U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions in the Rio Grande Valley this fiscal year are up nearly two-thirds compared to last year, according to the agency’s RGV Sector spokesman Daniel Tirado.

Tirado said Friday that agents in his sector had made in excess of 125,000 such arrests since October.
Those numbers have not gone unheeded, as U.S. Customs and Border Protection has worked over the past two months to shore up its personnel depth in the area, putting more boots on the ground in the region of the country with the most illegal crossings.

A personnel shift announced a little more than a month ago brought more than 100 Border Patrol agents from Arizona and California, and another 54 agents arrived in McAllen last week to help combat the growing number of people crossing illegally into United States in South Texas.

While Border Patrol sectors farther west have seen declines in the number of apprehensions, the Valley has seen such statistics skyrocket, likely due to an increase in the number of undocumented immigrants from Central and South America who cross in the Valley.

“The Rio Grande Valley is the shortest point of travel from South and Central Mexico to the United States,” Tirado said, volunteering that as one of many factors in the regional spike. “Most of the detainees are from South and Central America.”

As the bulk of illegal crossings has shifted eastward over the past two years, Border Patrol has begun concentrating its agents in the Valley, as well.

But if the higher number of agents leads to even higher levels of apprehensions — as it has appeared to so far — it could signal that immigrants are so intent on crossing in the Valley that they’ll attempt it despite the increased Border Patrol presence.

That new collective resolve may be what makes the situation seem so different for Taylor, but she also has tangible evidence that things have changed.

CLOSE ENCOUNTER

Taylor had been planting cacti along the dirt road that runs in front of her house when she heard it coming. She gave the path a wide berth and figured it was someone smuggling drugs.

She saw an SUV barreling down the road at a high rate of speed being chased by Border Patrol.
“I thought he was running dope,” she said.

It’s the third high-speed chase she’s seen in the past month.

Before that she had witnessed none in nearly seven decades.

“We had never had a high-speed chase,” she said.

Taylor is sure this new breed of activity is due to the increased number of immigrants trying to cross in the Valley.

“It’s unbelievable the amount of people that come across,” she said.

Taylor wants the fence gone and she wants more agents, but she said government representatives haven’t responded to her letters detailing what it’s like living in the no-man’s land the United States created by putting up the fence.

She continues to advocate for the end of the fence project, but she is clearly skeptical that anyone will listen.

“They have no idea what’s going on down here,” she said of the politicians in Washington.

http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/local/article_aa94c2d4-d339-11e3-a0b7-001a4bcf6878.html

Local professor uses settlement for scholarships

Brownsville Herald
April 10, 2014
by Melissa Montoya

A battle waged against the federal government has paid off for Eloisa G. Tamez, a professor at the University of Texas at Brownsville.

One of Brownsville’s most vocal opponents to the border fence, Tamez took the federal government to task when it tried to condemn her land to build a swath of border fence there.
The federal government is expected to pay Tamez $56,000 for the land it took from her, according to court documents. Tamez said she will be establishing a scholarship for students at the university with a portion of her settlement.

The scholarship fund launches on May 3, her parent’s 80th wedding anniversary. Her parents are deceased, but Tamez said she wanted to honor them this way because, even though they left school at an early age, they were strong proponents of education.

“The reason this is important to me and for the community to know and everyone else to know, including the federal government, is that land was taken from me by the government — land that had been part of the outcome of how my mother and my father and grandparents before them carved a life for us because they were farmers,” Tamez said.

The scholarship fund ensures her parents will be remembered and makes a good situation out of a bad one. The scholarships are for graduate nursing students where Tamez teaches as an associate professor in the College of Nursing.

Tamez is one of a group of people who fought the seizure of their land for the fence. She said the government was reluctant to give information on why the border fence needed to be built.

“It was almost like we weren’t worth receiving an explanation,” Tamez said. “We are supposed to be quiet about it. I wanted to know why... That’s what education does for you; it helps you to verbalize.”

The land in dispute was .026 acres along the Rio Grande Valley. Tamez and her family have lived on the land since 1767 when a Spanish land grant gifted them the property. The litigation had been pending since 2008.

The protracted legal battle was worth it, Tamez said.

“I told them you can take my land, you can build a walk across it, but you’re not going to take my voice,” Tamez said.

Tamez is still uncertain how much money will go into the scholarship fund, but it needs to reach $20,000 in order for it to be ready for distribution. She said she hopes students will benefit from what was a bad situation.

“This converts something negative into a positive outcome for this community,” Tamez said.

http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/local/article_ce9ac5f0-c120-11e3-a221-001a4bcf6878.html

U.S. Ordered to Disclose Border Fence Landowners

Courthouse News Service
March 14, 2014
by Jamie Ross

WASHINGTON (CN) - A professor won her bid for government records revealing the names and addresses of landowners whose properties might be affected by the Texas-Mexico border fence.

     "Revealing the identities of landowners in the wall's planned construction site may shed light on the impact on indigenous communities, the disparate impact on lower-income minority communities, and the practices of private contractors," U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ruled Friday.

     The information was requested by Denise Gilman, a clinical professor at the University of Texas-Austin School of Law researching the human-rights impact of the border fence.

     A federal law passed in 2006 ordered the construction of a fence or wall along portions of the U.S.-Mexico border. It mandated reinforced fencing along at least 700 miles of the southwest border, but left the specific location up to the Department of Homeland Security.

     In 2009, Gilman filed a Freedom of Information Act request for records detailing where the government planned to build parts of the wall and what information it was using to decide where to build.

     The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released thousands of documents, but redacted certain information, including the names and addresses of landowners.

     Gilman challenged the government's redactions, arguing that the public interest in how the wall would impact landowners outweighed any privacy concerns of private landowners.

     She said the information would help the public understand the size of the wall and the agency's decisions about where to place it, including whether U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) was treating property owners fairly.

     The CBP insisted that disclosure put the landowners' privacy rights at risk, and they faced unwanted contact from "the media, other members of the public, including other landowners involved in a similar process, and potential harassment."

     Howell agreed with Gilman that "the public interest in learning how CBP negotiated with private citizens regarding the planning and construction of the border wall is significant."

     "This public interest outweighs the privacy interest in landowners' names and addresses in CBP emails," she wrote.

     However, she said the agency doesn't have to disclose emails relating to its assessment of the need for fencing, as information in the emails reveals areas that are patrolled by fewer Border Patrol agents due to their difficulty to patrol.
"Such information discloses the CBP's operations and vulnerabilities, which are not readily-accessible public information, the disclosure of which could risk appropriation to circumvent the law," Howell wrote.

     Also, if Gilman seeks email attachments excluded from the records she received, she must file a new Freedom of Information Act request to receive them, the judge concluded.

     "The schedule on which CBP was required to release records to the plaintiff is set out in the second clause and was thus a separate requirement from the scope of the responsive records set out in the first clause," Howell wrote.

http://www.courthousenews.com/2014/03/17/66225.htm

Ownership questions arise in 21 border fence cases

Brownsville Herald
September 30, 2013
by Mark Reagan

Five years after the U.S. government seized land along the U.S.-Mexico border between Los Indios and Brownsville for the border fence, it still isn’t sure who all the landowners were and who needs to be compensated.

Last Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen had 21 border fence condemnation cases on his docket after the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of Texas, requested a status conference hearing to try to sift through some confusion in the cases.
 The land involved in the cases is within Section 0-14 of the border fence, immediately to the east of the Los Indios Port of Entry, court documents show.

“The United States requests this status conference with the Court for the purpose of presenting its proposal to 1) identify the actual owners of the condemned tracts and the yet to be filed tracts in 0-14; 2) consolidate the tracts so that the entirety of the condemned land in question is in one case; and 3) sever the tracts from the consolidated case based on ownership boundaries in order to resolve title issues, just compensation and close the 0-14 cases on the Court’s docket,” court documents indicate.
Hanen ordered the USAO to draft a proposed order and have landowners and attorneys review it before presenting it to the court, according to docket text.

An attorney for one of the parties named in three of the suits agreed to speak to The Brownsville Herald about the hearing.

Lance Alan Kirby, who represents Robert B. Duncan in three of the cases, said the USAO used the status conference to explain to Hanen why the cases, most of which originated in 2008, were taking so long to resolve.

“His (USAO attorney E. Paxton Warner) explanation was that originally they were going to put the fence in a different place, but the berm wouldn’t support concrete so instead they had to use irrigation district property, which they purchased from the district but it turns out they didn’t own the property,” Kirby said of the irrigation district. “It was owned by landowners adjacent to it.”

Kirby said the Cameron County Irrigation District only had an easement, which was recently discovered and resulted in a title mess that the USAO is trying to clear up so it can proceed with condemnation actions and just compensation.

A spokeswoman with the USAO confirmed what Kirby told The Brownsville Herald.

“The judge’s take is he is ready to see this move and the landowners need to be paid for the condemnation since it’s been five years since the government has taken the property,” Kirby said. “The fence is there.”

He said that basically the USAO has to figure out who owns what and how much to compensate the landowners.

“They filed all these condemnation cases in 2008 because Paxton said they had a mandate to complete the border wall by 2008, and so they used appraisal district records to file condemnation actions instead of having the actual title work,” Kirby said. “Now they are getting title work and some people alleged to be owners are not owners and some of them, you know, there are new people still being added to the suit that they didn’t know about. So really what they have is a title mess that they are trying to clear up.”

The docket text also indicates that the court “has given the parties in the land condemnation cases, where the City of Brownsville is named, two weeks to write a letter if they intend to seek his (Hanen) recusal.”

The Brownsville Herald reached out to the city attorney’s office to request comment and was directed to file a public information request via the city secretary, Estela Von Hatten.

In an email responding to The Herald’s request for comment, Von Hatten replied: “In response to your public information request received on Sept. 24, 2013, the City has filed no motions to recuse the Honorable United States District Court Judge. Consequently, there is no document that would be responsive to your request.”

The Herald did not request documents so it’s not clear whether the city will seek to recuse Hanen.
As for the USAO’s pending proposed order on the 21 cases, Kirby said he wasn’t sure when it will be filed.

“They didn’t state when they are expected to get it,” he said of the proposed order. “So that’s something we’re curious as to when they are going to get it.”

http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/local/article_c024de7a-28af-11e3-bd3a-0019bb30f31a.html

Border fence gap to close

El Paso Inc.
October 21, 2012
by David Crowder

The 18-foot-high border fence intended to seal the U.S.-Mexican border from San Diego to Brownsville will soon close a half-mile gap just west of Downtown El Paso.

The new section will run right through the spot where many historians believe Spanish explorer Don Juan de Oñate crossed the Rio Grande in 1598.
 Rancher Chip Johns, who owns the property, recognizes the inevitability of the fence. But he doesn't like much about it - not the damage that will be done, not the presence of the heavy-gauge steel barrier and not the price the government is offering.

"They're trying to put that ugly fence right through the property," said Johns. The land on West Paisano Drive near the Yandell Drive overpass includes historic monuments, the former La Hacienda Restaurant and several buildings from the 1890s that were the first Fort Bliss. The fence picks up again near the site of the former Asarco smelter.

Just when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will start construction to fill the gap is uncertain, said Ramiro Cordero, a Border Patrol special operations supervisor.

"There's still a lot of things that need to happen with the property owners and right of entry before they give us the green light to do it," Cordero said.

Documents Johns provided El Paso Inc. indicate he is being offered $22,300 for 19,608 square feet, or about half an acre, along the southern property line parallel to the American Canal.

"I understand that we need a fence and all that, but I'm not going to accept the high-handedness of what they're trying to do to us," he said. "We need something that is more esthetically pleasing than that damn ugly fence, otherwise I'm going to have to get kinda Western with them."

Johns, who runs the 250,000-acre JCJ Ranch along the border in New Mexico, thinks having the fence across the back of the Hacienda property will diminish its possibilities for redevelopment.

The property should be a tourist attraction, he said, given the history of the old Hacienda Restaurant building. Built in the 1850s by pioneer El Pasoan Simeon Hart, it was described by a traveler of the time as a large and luxurious residence built in the Mexican style.

But the restaurant has been closed for years, the Fort Bliss buildings are now low-income apartments and the historical monuments have been vandalized.

"I still feel that between Old Fort Bliss and the Hacienda and the Oñate crossing site, there's a viable attraction that needs to be developed by the city, the city or somebody," he said. "But I'm 68, and I'm tired of it."
Johns said he is haggling with the government over the price of the land it intends to buy with his agreement, or condemn without it.

"I have been told if I do not acquiesce to their demands, they will put a condemnation suit on me," he said. "So that is a done deal."

Changing attitudes

The border fence was greeted with opposition and protests when work began in El Paso County in 2007. The county challenged the fence all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and lost in 2009.
The controversy has died down since, and some attitudes about the fence have changed.

In El Paso County, the biggest disputes with Homeland Security involved area farmers and the El Paso County Water Improvement District No. 1, better known as the irrigation district.

Jesus "Chuy" Reyes, general manager of the district headquartered in Clint, said one battle focused on Johns' property and plans to leave an important irrigation head gate on the south side of the barrier.

"That head gate is very important to the irrigation district's movement of water," Reyes said. "Any failure of those gates could potentially flood downtown El Paso in a crisis like the one we had in 2006."

That was the year a major storm flooded many areas of the city.

Another problem, Reyes said, would have been the theft of vital irrigation works.

"We're always battling thievery by people coming across the river and stealing parts," Reyes said. "There are some scary aspects about leaving the American Canal on the south side of that fence."

But Reyes' brother, U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-El Paso, was able to procure $16 million that will be spent to put the American Canal works and part of the canal itself underground.

"That would let Homeland Security route their fence so they could leave those structures on the north side," Chuy Reyes said. "We're happy now."

Some area farmers have also changed their opinions about the fence.

"Our farmers down here on the river are happy because they no longer have that illegal traffic coming through their fields," Reyes said. "They no longer have the danger of the drug smugglers because it's really curtailed now.

"It is working. We hear of drug smugglers coming over the fence, and Border Patrol is always dealing with cuts in the fence, but the community that lives along the border is very happy that the fence is there now. I get those comments all the time."

Huge disparities

There's a new controversy over the border fence in the Brownsville area. Recent reports show huge disparities in the prices property owners have been getting from Homeland Security.

"Since 2008, hundreds of land owners on the border have sought fair prices for property that was condemned to make way for the fence," the Associated Press reported last week after conducting an investigation. "But many of them received initial offers that were far below market value.

"And dozens accepted those amounts without seeking any legal help, only to discover neighbors had won far larger settlements after hiring attorneys."

In one case, a south Texas farmer accepted the government's offer of $1,650 for a slice of his back yard and then learned that one neighbor was paid more than $65,000 for a similar lot while another got $1 million, according to the AP.

http://www.elpasoinc.com/news/local_news/article_eab8ab70-1b7d-11e2-87ab-0019bb30f31a.html

Landowners say they were shortchanged in deals to make way for US-Mexico border fence

Associated Press / Washington Post
October 15, 2012
by Ramit Plushnick-Masti and Christopher Sherman

BROWNSVILLE, Texas — When the federal government began seizing private land along the U.S.-Mexico border to build a towering fence, Teofilo Flores was offered $1,650 for a slice of his backyard.

At first, it seemed like a square deal. But then the cotton grower learned that his neighbor had received 40 times more for a similar piece of land. And another nearby farmer pocketed $1 million in exchange for his cooperation.

Since 2008, hundreds of landowners on the border have sought fair prices for property that was condemned to make way for the fence. But many of them received initial offers that were far below market value. And dozens accepted those amounts without seeking any legal help, only to discover neighbors had won far larger settlements after hiring attorneys.

“You get angry. But that’s the way of life, I guess,” Flores said of the bigger payouts won by other landowners. “You know, people that got more money can afford to do more things.”

The disparities raise questions about the Justice Department’s treatment of hundreds of landowners from Texas to California who couldn’t afford lawyers and must now live with a massive steel barrier running through their farms, ranches and yards.

The wide variation in price “underscores how unfair these original offers were,” said attorney Corinna Spencer-Scheurich, who represented poor and middle-class landowners when the seizures began.

The federal government “is using its power, its clout, to try to take land from people at a price that is unfair. I think that is clear based on the settlements,” she said.

Federal attorneys say the initial offers represented only a starting amount that would permit the seizures to begin and could be adjusted later.

In 2006, Congress ordered construction of 670 miles of heavy metal fence to help curb illegal immigration. The project required landowners on the border to give up property that ranged from the size of a driveway to much larger farms and commercial lots.

The Constitution requires the government to provide compensation whenever it takes property for a public project using a process known as eminent domain.

About 400 landowners have been affected. Most are in Texas, because that state has more private property along the border than do New Mexico, Arizona or California, where much of the border land is already in federal hands.

An Associated Press analysis of nearly 300 Texas land cases found that most of the settlement money went to a small group of owners, all of whom had attorneys. The legal help appeared to pay off: Of nearly $15 million that has been paid out, 85 percent has been awarded to just a third of the property holders.

There are other reasons for the larger settlements beyond the advantage of legal representation. Many of the best-compensated landowners oversee large citrus groves or other commercial operations on land that is inherently more valuable.

They also stand to lose more from the rows of 18-foot rust-colored steel posts that now divide their land. Farmers, for instance, have complained that the fence slows down their work because large agricultural machines now have to drive around the bulky barriers.

Most of the fence construction was completed two years ago, but the government is still negotiating for land surrounding the project.

One recent case involved 8 acres at the entrance to a sable palm grove managed by The Nature Conservancy. The government initially offered $114,000, but in August the matter was settled for nearly $1 million.

Most of the fence construction was completed two years ago, but the government is still negotiating for land surrounding the project.

One recent case involved 8 acres at the entrance to a sable palm grove managed by The Nature Conservancy. The government initially offered $114,000, but in August the matter was settled for nearly $1 million.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/landowners-say-they-were-shortchanged-in-deals-to-make-way-for-us-mexico-border-fence/2012/10/15/84de16fe-16a1-11e2-a346-f24efc680b8d_story.html

After test, feds fortify border fence with gates

The Monitor
July 21, 2012
by Dave Hendricks

HIDALGO — The rust-red border fence that snakes through Hidalgo County includes more than a dozen small gaps wide enough for a truck to drive through.

And, sure enough, smugglers have driven right through them — north carrying drugs and illegal immigrants, and south running from the law.

The gaps are beginning to close as the federal government installs imposing metal gates that open only for Border Patrol agents, farmers and other people with legitimate business along the Rio Grande. In the project’s first phase, the government plans to install 44 gates across Hidalgo and Cameron counties.

At first, Border Patrol tested farm and vehicle gates across the Rio Grande Valley. While Border Patrol has been tight-lipped about the test gates, calling the project “operational and law enforcement sensitive,” some details have trickled out.

At least one test gate appears to have been installed just west of International Boulevard near the Hidalgo County Water Improvement District 3 pump station in Hidalgo. The nearby border fence, just yards from International Boulevard, includes two small gaps that briefly had different gates.

“I guess they were trying to find out which one was most reliable, which one worked best,” said district President and General Manager Othal E. Brand Jr. “They did that for four or five months.”

One gate mechanism appeared to be hydraulic. Another used a gear-and-chain system. The test appears to have finished and both gates now appear identical.

Asked about the test at District 3, Border Patrol requested questions in writing. Border Patrol confirmed testing “vehicle and farm gates at selected existing fence gaps in Cameron and Hidalgo counties” but wouldn’t provide locations.

“Specific details regarding the gates design and mechanisms are law enforcement sensitive,” according to information provided by Supervisory Agent Dan Milian, a Border Patrol spokesman.

After installing the first 44 gates, 32 in Cameron County and 12 in Hidalgo County, the government may build up to 34 more, according to Border Patrol. As of Jan. 12, the project had cost “approximately $10 million.”

Farmers and others with business along the Rio Grande use keypads to open the gates. If the power goes out, a backup system powers the gate’s lock but the gate must be opened manually.

“If (the) power outage lasts longer than 12 hours, gates will automatically unlock and will remain unlocked until power is restored,” according to information provided by Border Patrol. The gates are designed so that an adult can manually open an unlocked gate.

http://www.themonitor.com/news/gates-62447-hidalgo-border.html

Texans on wrong side of border fence grow anxious

CBS News / Associated Press
February 11, 2012
by Christopher Sherman

(AP) BROWNSVILLE, Texas — Max Pons is already anticipating the anxiety he'll feel when the heavy steel gate shuts behind him, leaving his home isolated on a strip of land between America's border fence and the violence raging across the Rio Grande in Mexico.

For the past year, the manager of a sprawling preserve on the southern tip of Texas has been comforted by a gap in the rust-colored fence that gave him a quick escape route north in case of emergency. Now the U.S. government is installing the first gates to fill in this part of the fence along the Southwest border, and Pons admits he's pondering drastic scenarios.

"I think in my head I'm going to feel trapped," said Pons, who lives on the 1,000-acre property of sabal palms, oxbow lakes and citrus groves he manages for the Nature Conservancy's Southmost Preserve. "I need to have something that is much easier for me to have to ram to get through" if necessary.

Pons' concerns illustrate one of the complications in the government's 5-year-old effort to build a secure barrier along the border that would keep out illegal activity from Mexico without causing worse problems for the people living in the region.

In this lush area, the Rio Grande's wide floodplain precluded building the fence right on the border so it was set back more than a mile in places, running behind the levees. The result is a no-man's-land of hundreds of properties, and the people who work on them, on the wrong side of the divide.

The arrival of the gates will reveal whether the government's solution for this border fence problem will work. Can sliding panels in the fence controlled by passcodes allow isolated workers to cross when they need to while keeping intruders out?

Pons hopes the gates will open fast. "Because when is reinforcement going to show up?"

Some landowners also worry they'll become kidnapping targets for smugglers seeking passage through the 18-foot-tall metal fence.

Violence has surged in Tamaulipas, the Mexican state bordering this part of Texas, in the past two years. This week the State Department issued a new travel warning urging U.S. citizens again to avoid traveling there.

Residents in this rural area often see groups of illegal immigrants passing through or smugglers toting bundles. In October, the Border Patrol caught a high-ranking member of the Gulf cartel's Matamoros operations who had crossed about a half-hour upriver.

Gates will roll open on a metal track after a passcode is punched into a panel on or near the fence. Landowners would have permanent codes and could request temporary ones for visitors. Customs and Border Protection has begun testing its first two gates and plans to install 42 more in South Texas this year at a cost of $10 million.

For more than a year the tall steel bars and panels erected in segments on this stretch of the 1,954-mile U.S.-Mexico border created an effect that was more gap-toothed grin than impenetrable obstacle.

When the gates are closed, the Texans on the other side won't be completely isolated, agency officials say. Border Patrol agents will continue to work both sides of the fence and can assist property owners. Many of the areas also are monitored by cameras and sensors.

But farmers point out that there is a lot the agents can't stop. They point out dusty footprints scaling the columns and say illegal immigrants can climb the barrier in seconds flat.

"It's the biggest waste of taxpayer money," said Leonard Loop at his produce stand east of Brownsville, where his family farms and some relatives' homes are in an area between the fence and the river.

Loop's nephew Paul said he was not looking forward to the delay the gates will add to the countless trips he and his brother make between fields and the barn with their equipment. He also worried about becoming a target for smugglers eager to use the gates for large shipments. They are wide enough for farm equipment.

"Any drug dealer is going to know anyone on this side has a way out," Paul Loop said, while crews harvested cabbage in a nearby field.

Othal Brand Jr., chairman and general manager of the Hidalgo County Water Improvement District No. 3, said he welcomes the completion of the fence even though the district's headquarters is between the barrier and the river.

He said he's optimistic it will help deflect illegal crossings and other illegal activity as intended.

"It's like building a car and only putting three tires on it," he said. "Finish it. Get it done."

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501363_162-57375981/texans-on-wrong-side-of-border-fence-grow-anxious/

The Texans who live on the ‘Mexican side’ of the border fence: ‘Technically, we’re in the United States’

Yahoo News
December 21, 2011
by Liz Goodwin

BROWNSVILLE, Texas—Pamela Taylor's living room has a Santa-hat-wearing stuffed dog atop a red doily on her coffee table, poinsettias near the couch, and, in the center of the room, an angel-topped Christmas tree with a few wrapped presents underneath.

Outside, the Christmas spirit is less visible, amid repeated warnings to KEEP OUT—though a "Merry Christmas!" sign hangs next to a warning to would-be trespassers that they're being filmed by a surveillance system. Written outside the front gate is the message: "Don't even think about parking here."

This will be Taylor's fourth Christmas living on what some Texans call the "Mexican side" of the U.S. border fence. Although she lives in Texas, her home is south of the 18-feet steel-and-concrete border wall erected by the American government. Taylor, who is 84, can see it from her front porch.

The wall was built to satisfy a law, passed in 2006 and 2008, that authorized 700 miles of fence on the southern border, 315 miles of it in Texas. President Bush said the fence would make the border safer and was "an important step toward immigration reform." Many of the 2012 Republican presidential candidates, with the exception of Texas Gov. Rick Perry, say they want to build a fence that spans the entire U.S. border. The Brownsville area shows just how complicated that project would be.

Because of a decades-old treaty with Mexico prohibiting building in the Rio Grande floodplain, the government built its border fence more than a mile north of the snaky river, trapping tens of thousands of acres of Texas--land in Cameron and Hidalgo counties--on the wrong side of the fence. The border wall is also riddled with miles-long gaps, seemingly placed at random. The U.S. Border Patrol says that illegal crossers are pushed to these gaps, where they are more easily apprehended.

Some Texans, like Taylor, live completely on the other side of the $6.2 million-a-mile wall. Others had their property split in half by the fence, after the government seized portions of their land. At least 200 people in Cameron County had some of their land seized for the fence.

'It's really done nothing for us'

Ten years ago, Taylor found a stranger sitting in her living room. "He had used my bathroom, he had shaved and cleaned himself off and he was watching the border patrol go by, sitting in that rocking chair," she said in an interview with Yahoo News. A few years later, she found 40 kilos of marijuana hidden in her bougainvilleas.

Taylor says she had to work hard to get her citizenship when she married an American soldier and moved to Texas from England after World War II. She doesn't think illegal immigrants should get a chance to become citizens. "If anything comes really easy, it's not appreciated," she said.

But the government's solution to the problem strikes her as ridiculous. "It's really done nothing for us because they're still coming across," Taylor says. Earlier this year, teenage illegal immigrants pounded on her front door in the middle of the night. She called the Border Patrol, which arrested them and a group of Hondurans they were trafficking, according to Taylor. She keeps a gun and a taser in her house, just in case.

'This is our property'

A few miles east of Taylor's house, Tim Loop's green two-story home, where he lives with his wife and two daughters, is also stuck behind the border wall. He agrees that the fence is not solving anything. Driving in his truck along the fence this week, he pointed out several places where scuffmarks suggested that people had recently climbed over. On one part of the fence not too far from his house, a torn shirt hung from the top of a pole.

Loop worries that the government will close the gaps in the fence. A complete wall wouldn't let him get to his house from the road, which is on the "American" side. The road also provides access to his farm, which grows sugar cane, grapefruit, corn, and other crops, for his eight employees.

Earlier this year, Homeland Security told landowners that it planned to close the gaps with 15-feet-wide gates that would have keypads on them. Each landowner would get a personal code to open the gate, and the government would be in charge of who else might be allowed to use each code.

"This is our property behind here," Loop said in an interview with Yahoo News. "We don't want somebody else to be the boss of our gate."

Taylor worries about a proposed highway whose path would require the government to move the fence closer to her house. "We will be more shut in than ever before," she said.

'We're in the United States'

Bob Lucio, the owner of a 165-acre golf course that lies entirely on the "Mexican" side of the fence, says the thought of Homeland Security using a secured gate to close the one entrance to the course keeps him up at night.

"If that happens, I don't think we can survive," he told Yahoo News during an interview in his office.

Lucio worked with Homeland Security to beautify the fence. Near the course, the wall is several feet shorter than elsewhere and is painted green. The wall is so subtle that some putters, many of them "winter Texans" from Canada and the Midwest, don't realize they're on the south side of the border wall, he says. A gate would change that.

"Technically, we're in the United States," Lucio said. But during a drug-cartel gun battle in June just across the Mexican border from his property, several Border Patrol agents lined up on the north side of the fence and didn't venture beyond it, he said. It gave him the impression that the Border Patrol was securing the fence line in times of trouble, instead of the actual border.

"The whole situation left me kind of numb," he said. "It's kind of like, 'You're on your own, buddy.'"

Rosalinda Huey, a spokeswoman for the Customs and Border Patrol, declined to comment on that episode but said agents patrol both sides of the fence.

'I couldn't sell my house now'

The landowners on the other side of the fence in Brownsville know their property isn't as valuable as it once was. "Would you want to buy a house behind the border wall?" Loop asked dryly.

The government didn't offer to buy the land it walled off from the rest of Texas, or to compensate people for the subsequent devaluation. It offered only to pay for the strips of land that were seized for the fence's path.

Eloisa Tamez, a nursing professor at the University of Texas at Brownsville and an outspoken opponent of the fence, refused to sell the government a quarter of an acre of her three-acre plot. She was initially offered $100 for the patch of land, which was used for the fence that now bisects her property.

Tamez's family has lived on her land since the 1700s. The family traditionally held an Easter party near the river, which is now on the other side of the wall. The only way Tamez can access the other part of her land is through a gap 1,200 feet away, which she can reach only by trespassing on her neighbors' land.

The government's offer eventually went up to $13,000, but she still didn't accept. She refused to sign the papers and is locked in a court battle with the government over the quarter acre it took from her.

"I couldn't sell my house now," she says.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/texas-americans-live-wrong-side-border-fence-christmas-183312787.html

Border Fence Upends a Valley Farmer’s Life

Texas Monthly / New York Times
November 26, 2011
by Oscar Casares

BROWNSVILLE — One of the obvious advantages of living within a gated community is the sense of security. But what if you live on the wrong side of the gate?

Consider the plight of Tim Loop, 47, who lives on his family farm in Brownsville, at the southernmost point along the United States-Mexico border.

Not so long ago, the Loop farm was a pastoral vision, with its bountiful mesquite and cotton fields and orange groves. Today, imposing sections of 15- to-18-foot-high rust-colored steel bars, some less than 400 feet from Mr. Loop’s front porch, are more likely to catch the eye.

In 2009 the Department of Homeland Security informed Mr. Loop and other landowners along the northern bank of the Rio Grande that the new border fence, which in some areas stands more than a mile from the river, would be cutting through their properties. (A water treaty with Mexico that restricts building within the flood plain prevented the department from simply hugging the north bank.) The three-bedroom home where Mr. Loop lives with his wife and two children ended up on the south side of the fence, inside what essentially became a no-man’s land.

Many gaps remain along the fence line. But now, to seal off these openings, the Homeland Security Department plans to install motorized gates and keypads. Like a handful of other border dwellers in the same situation, Mr. Loop and his family will be required to use a secret code to reach their home — and to re-enter the rest of his country.

“I’ll have to ask permission from the government to live my life,” Mr. Loop said.

It’s an awkward situation that Mr. Loop’s forebears could never have imagined. His grandfather settled this tract of land in the early 1900s, part of the southern migration of farmers who followed the expanding railway and the promise of an Edenic life to the Rio Grande Valley. Since then, the family has grown cotton, soybeans, wheat, cabbage, corn, sorghum and sugar cane. They have endured the merciless heat, the yearly threat of hurricane season and the occasional hard freeze that can easily wipe out a citrus crop.

But although life along the Rio Grande has always demanded ingenuity and resilience, it is doubtful that Mr. Loop’s grandfather ever figured on an enormous steel fence slicing through his land.

In fact, most local residents in this remote, rural and poor corner of the country are accustomed to being virtually forgotten by Washington. That, however, has changed dramatically in the past 10 years. Today the area seems like a cauldron of the nation’s deepest anxieties, a place where concerns about illegal immigration, fears of terrorism and, more recently, nervousness about spillover violence from Mexico’s drug war have boiled into repeated calls for a more secure border.

Mr. Loop seems to consider this a mixed blessing. He credits the initial boots-on-the-ground strategy with a decrease in the number of illegal crossings, but this only makes him question the need for more sections of fence.

“The fence is not doing what it’s supposed to be doing,” he said.

There is no doubt that the new gates and the keypads, the first round of which is scheduled to be completed by spring, will complicate his life. Mr. Loop will be issued a personal pass code, but he will have to provide the Homeland Security Department with the names of everyone who has regular access to it.

According to the “Landowner Reference Guide,” a pamphlet distributed by the Border Patrol, the gates will stay open for a certain part of every day, though the Border Patrol will have discretion over this. Emergency personnel will have access through the gates (which are designed to unlock in the event of a power failure), but the possibility of being caught on the wrong side of the fence weighs heavily on families like the Loops.

There are other worries, too. Mr. Loop wonders if possessing a secret pass code could make him a target for anyone desperate to gain access to the other side. This is, after all, a familiar area to desperate travelers.

The gates and keypads will affect a handful of other properties in the area. Ultimately, that list may include the Lennox Foundation Southmost Preserve, a large tract belonging to the Nature Conservancy, which fought the border fence.

Maxwell Pons, an irascible preserve manager who, like Mr. Loop, lives in a house south of the border fence, has little faith that the government will handle the gate and keypad project any better than the fence.

“They tore down hundred-year-old trees to put up a fence,” Mr. Pons said. “You think they care about how using a keypad is going to affect us?”

Then there is the question of whether motorized gates controlled by secret pass codes will be able to secure a fence that was not all that secure to begin with.

Recently, Mr. Loop noticed what from a distance might have looked like dozens of ants scampering up the south side of the 18-foot-high steel bars. Getting closer, he realized that these were scuff marks — from shoes, boots, sneakers, bare feet; there was no telling for sure — and that whoever left the marks had made it to the top, and over, undeterred.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/us/border-fence-upends-a-rio-grande-valley-farmers-life.html

County Residents Still have Questions About Border Wall

KRGV
September 23, 2011
by Camaron Abundes


LOS EBANOS - People living near the Rio Grande in northern Hidalgo and Starr counties still have many questions about the border wall. The federal government has yet to figure out where it plans to build 14 more miles of border fence.

Ignacio Gutierrez has lived in Los Ebanos for 34 years in the home he built. Over the last six years, he has heard a lot about changes coming, changes-in the shape of a border fence.

"The way of life we live is the way of life. If you put a wall, the problem won't be for us but for the people who want to come here," says Gutierrez.

Gutierrez says he's not sure the wall - and the multi-millions of dollars it will cost to build it - in this region is worth the money. He says he does feel the impact of Border Patrol agents constantly keeping watch on this sleepy little town.

Fourteen miles of required fencing is expected to go up in Starr County, but that won't happen until there's an agreement between the International Boundary and Water Commission and the Department of Homeland Security.

A spokesperson for DHS says the IBWC has already completed a hydrology study of the land. The study was to help experts understand the impact of the wall on the flood plain. They have yet to sign off on any final plans. That means just about everything about the construction remains in limbo.

Gutierrez doesn't know if the wall will ever come or on which side of the fence he'll find his beloved home. There's just one thing he's certain about.

"Bad people that want to do bad will find a way to keep doing it," says Gutierrez.

He says people who want to enter the United States and move drugs and illegal immigrants will keep looking for ways to do it.

Another thing still up in the air is if the federal government will step in to buy additional lands to build the wall in those areas.

http://www.krgv.com/news/local/story/County-Residents-Still-have-Questions-About/_2H9FQI4kUGROMmz4-oi8g.cspx

Lucio: I Plan to See Border Wall Torn Down in My Lifetime

Rio Grande Guardian
September 17, 2011
by Steve Taylor


BROWNSVILLE, Sept. 17 - State Sen. Eddie Lucio says if Rio Grande Valley residents keep up the pressure, they will succeed in tearing down the border wall.


“I was born and reared here and I have never seen anything like this monstrosity,” Lucio said, referring to the border wall. “In my lifetime I want to see the border wall come down, just like I saw the Berlin Wall come down. Even if I am 85 or 90 years old, I want to be there when the wall comes down.”


Lucio said he also wants to see, in his lifetime, the appropriate level of compensation paid to those whose homes and land have been disfigured by the border wall. “We give big corporations on Wall Street billions of dollars of tax relief. Why can’t we give the little people, people I consider great Americans and great Texans, some relief? We should not turn our backs on those in need,” he said.


Lucio, D-Brownsville, made his comments in an exclusive interview with the Guardian immediately following a town hall meeting he held to discuss to the impact the border wall has had on landowners who live between the wall and the Rio Grande.


Lucio said all the evidence suggests the border wall has not been an effective method in deterring undocumented immigration. He said it was only erected “to satisfy the appetite of immigrant-bashing politicians in other parts of America.”


A much better method of deterring undocumented immigration, Lucio said, would be to set up a four-state immigrant employment zone where Mexican residents could come in and work under a guest worker program. He said he is confident that if such a program were in operation, Mexican nationals would return to their homeland once their work is done.


“If we want to do something about illegal immigration we should create an immigrant employment zone and have guest workers come in. We would know who they are and where they live. At the moment people get in illegally and they spread out. They are in hiding,” Lucio said.


“I want to see the federal government pass legislation to allow the four Border States – Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California - to address this issue at the state level. We know better than the federal government how to set up this program. We need bricklayers, we need roofers; we need dishwashers, we need agricultural workers. Let us as Border States hire workers from Mexico to do the jobs our people are unwilling to do.”


Lucio said if the federal government allowed the Border States to create an immigrant employment zone for Mexican workers, the four states would be a lot cleaner. “These people are workers. They have an incredible work ethic. They would keep our state clean. All they want to do is make a little bit of money to maintain their families. They want to eat. They want to live. Who can blame them? It is all about if we are going to be humanitarians or not,” he said.

Lucio said the U.S. should also be doing more to help Mexico.


“The way you curb illegal immigration from Mexico is to create an economy there that is robust. The Mexican government needs to establish a national minimum wage. You get a $5 dollar minimum wage and these workers will not be coming here. They will stay in Mexico. Lift their economy and you keep these people in their homeland,” he said.


Lucio concluded his interview with the Guardian by casting doubt on the usefulness of a congressional hearing being staged at the University of Texas at Brownsville on Monday by U.S. Rep. Ted Poe, R-Humble. The hearing is slated to focus on border violence.


“My staff has been told only invited guests will be allowed to speak at this hearing and that the people of my community, the people who attended this town hall meeting, will not be allowed to testify. That is un-American,” Lucio said.


“Why bother to hold a hearing if you are not going to hear from the public? Why waste taxpayers’ money? Send us the money for public education or healthcare. Don’t spend all this money on a joyride. As far as I am concerned these members of Congress could have stayed back home and done a teleconference. I am extremely disappointed our residents will not get to speak.”


Poe is a big backer of the border wall. Last March he co-authored the Unlawful Border Entry Prevention Act, which would require construction of an additional 350 miles of border wall.


Despite not being allowed to testify at Poe’s hearing, Lucio said he will try to get all the comments made by those at his town hall meeting entered into the congressional record. “I am going to see if they make these comments part of the record or chuck them away,” Lucio said. He said he would also be sending the comments of those who attended the town hall meeting to President Obama.


Lucio’s town hall meeting was held at the Fort Brown Memorial Golf Course, adjacent to the Rio Grande.


Among those who spoke at the event were state Rep. René Oliveira, D-Brownsville, landowner Michelle Taylor Moncivaiz, whose home lies between the border wall and the Rio Grande, Equal Voice for America’s Families leader Mike Seifert, La Unión del Pueblo Entero Director Juanita Valdez Cox, Sierra Club Borderlands Team Co-Chair and No Border Wall Coalition Co-Founder Scott Nicol, UT-Brownsville professors Jeff Wilson and Jude Benavides, Hidalgo County Democratic Party activist Aaron Peña III, Texas Rangers Liaison Art Barrera, and Rick Perez, a member of the special investigations unit set up by Cameron County Sheriff Omar Lucio. The only person at the hearing to speak in favor of the border wall was Brownsville resident Dagberto Barrera.

http://www.riograndeguardian.com/rggnews_story.asp?story_no=26

Impact of border wall discussed at meeting

Brownsville Herald / The Monitor
September 17, 2011
by Jacqueline Armendariz

BROWNSVILLE -- Drug trafficking from Mexico into Cameron County has increased, not decreased, since the border fence was built, a sheriff’s lieutenant said Saturday at a public meeting.

It was one of many points discussed at the “Border Wall Impact” meeting hosted by State Senator Eddie Lucio Jr. at the Fort Brown Memorial Golf Course. The event brought together legislators, city representatives, state and county law enforcement and private citizens to air concerns about the fence.

“Is the fence keeping drugs from coming in? No,” Lieutenant Rick Perez said responding to a question. “We have more drugs now than before.”

Perez is part of the special investigations unit of the Cameron County Sheriff’s Department.

A disconnect between U.S. border communities and the federal government, and the perceived ineffectiveness of the border fence, emerged as the major themes at Saturday’s gathering.

One property owner shared stories about finding drugs near her home and also being the victim of a home burglary.

Among people who spoke, some supported the fence while most did not.

“This is terrorism from the United States to other countries,” Yolanda Garza Birdwell said of the fence and its environmental impact. She described herself as a dual citizen of the U.S. and Mexico and a Laguna Vista resident for a year.

Dagoberto Berrera was at the opposite end of the spectrum. He said he supported the fence, and he spoke disparagingly of undocumented immigrants.

‘Better than nothing’

“The wall is better than nothing,” he said. “Sure, it costs a lot of money, but it also costs us by just letting everybody in here. We are a land of law and order. You’ve got to obey the laws.”

The audience, which included District 4 City Commissioner John Villarreal, numbered a little more than 20 people.

Lucio said he has been disappointed by the lack of information about the impact of the border fence, and said he hoped to use what he learned Saturday to be an advocate for the region in Austin.

“I truly hope that today’s meeting will be the first true step in understanding the real impacts of the border wall on our region with the information that you share, being armed with facts, figures and knowledge,” Lucio told those in attendance.

Lobbying for property owners

Lucio’s brother, Bob Lucio, is the manager of the border golf course that hosted the meeting and said his hope is to get more support for his group called the No Man’s Land Association.

With power in numbers, he said he wants to lobby to help for property owners or businesses like himself whose land has ended up between the Rio Grande River and the border fence.

At the meeting, several audience members brought up concerns about being able to communicate with law enforcement and the environmental impact of the fence, while others spoke to decreased property values and alleged that the federal government has abused its power of eminent domain.

Still others spoke to serious safety concerns, while another audience member raised concerns about the potential psychological effects the border wall has created for communities on both sides. There was also discussion of a University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College study that found the fence effects minorities disproportionately.

Fears for safety

Michelle Moncivaiz identified herself as a property owner living just a short distance from the border fence, but she said she feared for the safety of her family. She pleaded to the law enforcement representatives and legislators present for “more boots on the ground” to help.

“Washington doesn’t understand what this fence has created,” she said. “Where is our Homeland Security? ... Where is America helping us on the border?”

No one at the meeting disputed the assertion that more law enforcement officers are needed along the border. Perez said at the end of this year the Sheriff’s Department will lose 12 deputies who were temporarily staffed through a $2.2 million grant from the Department of Justice.

He read a statement on behalf of Cameron County Sheriff Omar Lucio saying that he never supported the fence. The sheriff was not present at the meeting.

“The sheriff suggests that instead of building the fence, take into consideration giving him the $10 million and you can hire 12 deputies for several years and they would do a better job than the fence,” Perez said. Still, the statement discussed a high-traffic drug smuggling area along Highway 4, where there is no fence.

Sharing information

Texas Ranger Staff Lieutenant Art Barrera said he is the liaison between local, state and federal law enforcement in Operation Border Star, and he reports information to Austin. He and Perez said the entities they work for have not conducted studies on the impact of the fence.

“It’s getting better,” Barrera said of sharing knowledge. “I’m not saying we’re there yet, but information sharing between federal, state and local is on the right track.”

Hearing Monday

A federal hearing on border security is scheduled for Monday. Lucio said state legislators were not invited and that testimony would not be taken from the public. He invited people to attend and submit written testimony with him.

“Only those that have been invited will be able to testify,” he said. “That’s not the practice we’re used to in Austin, and it bothers me.”

On Saturday, Lucio said he had just found out about the federal forum that day, but earlier in the week his spokesman told The Herald that the timing of Saturday’s meeting and Monday’s hearing was coincidental.

The “Secure our Texas Border Forum,” headed by House Representative Ted Poe, R-Humble, and other members of the House Committee on the Judiciary, was rescheduled at least once already this summer. The forum will be at the UTB-TSC Arts Center at 10 a.m. Prominent figures related to border security are scheduled to testify as witnesses.

Too expensive

Lucio said he introduced Senate Bill 1809 this past legislative session in an effort to secure an economic impact study of the border fence in this area. It failed in the House, he said.

He said the state comptroller told him such a study would likely be too expensive to undertake, but he hoped legislation for it could be pushed for in the future.

State Representative Rene Oliveira said the issue of security and immigration were two different things, though they are often connected when discussing the desirability of the border fence.

“I don’t want cartels in the Valley or Texas,” he said. “I don’t want those people to flourish in our country.”

But, he said, learning the impact of the border fence, and how to mitigate any negative effects, is now the necessary focus.

“The wall is here whether we like it or not,” he said. “I don’t think anybody is going to tear it down. The political will is clearly nonexistent for that.”

http://www.themonitor.com/news/border-54855-fence-cameron.html

Public meeting will address border fence

Brownsville Herald
September 15, 2011
by Jacqueline Armandariz

State Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. is hosting a “Border Wall Impact” public meeting on Saturday, just two days before a federal committee hearing in Brownsville is set to address border security.

Saturday’s meeting will be at the Fort Brown Memorial Golf Course Clubhouse, 300 River Levee Road, from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

“In order for Texans to respond to federal policy, we need to have facts, figures and analysis,” Lucio said in a press release. “However, when it comes to the federal border wall, there exists very little centralized information. This public meeting represents an opportunity for Valley residents to unite and study the impact that the border wall is having on us.”

Immediately before that gathering, a group calling itself the No Man’s Land Association will hold its first meeting at the same place.

The local start-up group aims to discuss the effects of the border wall on property owners whose land is fenced off from other U.S. lands, and to lobby for a tax-free zone or enterprise zone to help them, according to organizer Bob Lucio. He is the state senator’s brother and runs the Fort Brown Memorial Golf Course Clubhouse.

Worry of spillover violence and the death of some Americans in circumstances related to the Mexican drug war have attracted attention to the U.S.-Mexico border. A national debate that connects border security and immigration policy has continuously brewed, while the miles of border wall for residents along the banks of the Rio Grande is a fact of life.

Through a spokesman, Lucio said the timing with the federal event on Monday is coincidental.

That hearing, the “Secure our Texas Border” forum, will be hosted by U.S. Rep. Ted Poe, R-Humble, and other members of the House Committee on the Judiciary. It begins at 10 a.m. at the UTB-TSC Arts Center. Prominent figures related to border security are scheduled to testify as witnesses.

At the Saturday event, there will be presentations from various law enforcement agencies, and the public is asked to provide input and discuss the impact of the fence on businesses, the environment, property values and border security.

While Sen. Lucio said there is little data on the effects of the border fence, in March two faculty members from the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College discussed their study that found the fence negatively affects minorities disproportionately.

Jude Benavides and Jeff Wilson conducted the study that found Cameron County had one-third of the proposed fence gaps, more than any other Texas county.

With the combination of the Secure Border Fence Act of 2006 and another 2008 appropriations bill, the federal government was set to construct about 700 miles of barrier, about 315 miles of which is in Texas. Much of it is on private land, the study said.

Wilson, an environmental science professor, said: “We do not want to speculate as to the intent of the government on where it was placed but the results are clear: The wall is in the backyard of those who would be least equipped to negotiate.”

The findings were published in the 2010 edition of the annual journal “The Southwestern Geographer.”

UTB-TSC itself filed a civil lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security when it was proposed that the fence run through university property. The two entities reached a compromise in August 2008.

Today, No Man’s Land Association organizer Bob Lucio said it’s no longer an issue of debating the construction of the fence. It’s here, and now it’s time to deal with the effects, he said.

“What I’m trying to do is create an association that will give us numbers,” he said. “I do not want to fight battles that we fought five years ago when they were putting up the fence. ... We’ve got to go forward. ... We need to start asking questions.”

He said the several years he’s been a business owner dealing with the border fence have been “horrendous” and he believes property values are affected by it. The perception of danger the border fence conveys has also cut the number of memberships bought at his golf course, he said.

He calls the U.S. land between the river and the border fence a “no-man’s land.”

He said he worked with his brother to schedule the Saturday meetings together and brought his concerns as a business owner to the state senator.

“We’re on the border by the sea. That’s our city’s slogan, right?” he said. “Well, I say we’re on the border fence by the sea.”

Lucio said being on the banks of the river could be an asset, but the fence has ended that.

“Our kids don’t even see the river anymore,” he said.

http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/articles/hosting-131258-lucio-address.html

Border wall impact public meeting set

Brownsville Herald
September 14, 2011

A public meeting on the impact of the border wall is set for Saturday, organized by State Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr.

The meeting will take place from 11 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. at the Fort Brown Memorial Golf Course Clubhouse, 300 River Levee Road in Brownsville.

"We will hear presentations from our law enforcement agencies regarding public safety and then open the discussion to the public," Lucio said. "I sincerely hope people will join in and share their stories."

Parts of the border wall have been built in all four southern border states since the passage of the Congressional Secure Fence Act in 2006. A 70-mile-long, 20-foot high section of the wall has been built in the Rio Grande Valley.

Lucio said there has been no firm assessment that quantifies the social, cultural or economic impact of the fence.

The aim of the meeting is to bring together diverse groups, organizations and individuals in order to discuss the impact of the wall on the local community.

“In order for Texans to respond to federal policy, we need to have facts, figures and analysis,” Lucio said. "However, when it comes to the federal border wall, there exists very little centralized information. This public meeting represents an opportunity for Valley residents to unite and study the impact that the border wall is having on us.”

http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/articles/wall-131220-border-impact.html

Security, Wildlife At Stake Behind Brownsville's Border Fence

KSAT 12
July 8, 2011
Jessie Degollado

BROWNSVILLE, Texas -- Pamela Taylor's prediction before the border fence was built near her Brownsville home was correct, she said.

"This is referred to as a funnel," Taylor said because traffic flows toward the openings in the massive metal fence with no gates.

Even before her house just beyond the Rio Grande ended up behind the fence, Taylor said she would find illegal immigrants on her property.

Yet despite the fence and the U.S. Border Patrol agents being on the lookout, "we're not safer," she said.

Taylor described a recent incident involving two people who she said were knocking on her door while her dog had corralled others who she said were trying to steal her car parked in the driveway.

Taylor said the juveniles were "coyotes" bringing illegal immigrants across the river.

"They had people from Honduras with them," she said. The illegal immigrants who were apprehended by Border Patrol.

But Taylor said she is prepared to defend herself if necessary.

"If people come in, they're going to have to suffer the consequences," she said.
Her neighbor down the street even has a sign warning, "Caution. Firearms in Use."

Taylor has her own sign that conveys a different message, "We're part of America. We need representation and protection, not a fence."

On the environmental side, the Nature Conservancy's Southmost Preserve in Brownsville also is now behind the fence.

Since then, Max Ponds, the preserve manager, said it appears little has changed in its operation.

"It may be due to it's not entirely fenced. There are no gates at this point in time," Ponds said.

The preserve's sabal palm forest that once blanketed much of the Rio Grande Valley is often the route taken by a variety of wildlife, like those photographed for El Valle, The Rio Grande Delta, a bilingual book published by the Gorgas Science Foundation that chronicles the region's biodiversity and cultural legacy.

However, once the animals, like endangered ocelots, reach the fence, Ponds said there are openings at its base every 500 feet.

To help creatures find the "notebook paper-sized openings," Ponds said he came up with an idea.

He said he sprays the openings with fox urine, "so they would have a sense of smell they would investigate."

Ponds said he's already seen coyotes come through, although reptiles like the Texas tortoise need larger openings for their hard shells.

Both he and Taylor said although the fence is an unattractive addition to the landscape they appreciate the Border Patrol agents who crisscross back and forth along the fence.

"We have no gripe with Border Patrol. They're here for us," Taylor said.
Ponds said, "I sleep at night knowing someone's out there."

http://www.ksat.com/news/28492473/detail.html

The town on the wrong side of America's drugs war

The Independant
May 16, 2011
by Guy Adams

Like many a proud Texan, Pamela Taylor likes to mark her turf. So on any given day, she makes sure passers-by can see the Stars and Stripes and the Lone Star Flag of her native state fluttering atop the poles that stand in her front garden.


Ms Taylor has lived in the southern-most city of Brownsville, Texas, since just after the Second World War, when she left the UK to join her late husband John, a US soldier who had been based near Birmingham. With that in mind, she also flies a Union Jack. "I hang it lower than the American flags," she says, "because it's a smaller part of my heritage."

Lately, though, there's been a distinctly surreal flavour to Ms Taylor's colourful display of patriotic identity. About 350 metres from her porch, an imposing metal fence looms into view. It is supposed to divide the US from Mexico, but by a cruel twist of fate, the 83-year-old grandmother's family home has ended up on the "wrong" side. Four years ago, amid the seemingly endless hand-wringing over the flow of drugs and illegal migrants across their southern border, Washington politicians voted to erect a tall fence that would stretch thousands of miles from San Diego, on the Pacific coast, to Brownsville, on the Gulf of Mexico. The best-laid political schemes do not always work out as planned, though. When government engineers arrived in Ms Taylor's neighbourhood, their plan hit a snag: the Mexican border follows the meandering Rio Grande in this area. And the river's muddy banks are too soft and too prone to flooding to support a fence.

As a result, this corner of south-eastern Texas had its barrier constructed on a levee that follows a straight line from half a mile to two miles north of the river, leaving Ms Taylor's bungalow – along with the homes and land of dozens of her angry neighbours – marooned on the Mexican side. "My son-in-law likes to say that we live in a gated community," she says, explaining that to even visit the shops she must pass through a gate watched over by border-patrol officers. "We're in a sort of no man's land. I try to laugh, but it's hard: that fence hasn't just spoiled our view, it's spoiled our lives."

Ms Taylor's domestic situation demonstrates – despite sound bites from politicians (Barack Obama last week gave a major speech on the issue) – there are no simple fixes to America's great immigration debate.

In total, roughly 50,000 acres of sovereign US land is now on the wrong side of the fence, most of it in Texas. Lawmakers believe that is a fair price to pay for the political benefits of being seen as "tough" on immigration.

But to many locals, Ms Taylor included, the headline-prone barrier – which cost $7m a mile (£4.3m) – is an expensive white elephant.

"First of all, it doesn't work," she says. "Anyone with a rope and a bucket can just climb on over. Second, they've used it as an excuse to reduce border patrols. Thirdly, it's left people like me unprotected. While the officers are guarding the fence, any drug smugglers can just walk up to my front door."

Like many of her neighbours, Ms Taylor has been forced to turn her home into a mini-fortress, with alarms and motion sensors and a small arsenal of firearms in strategic positions around the house. "We're never safe," she says. "You just try to avoid living in fear."

It was not always like this. For most of the almost 70 years she has lived there, Brownsville has been on the frontline of America's immigration debate. But in the old days, things were less confrontational. Families heading north from Mexico would camp overnight in surrounding cotton fields. "We'd wake up in the morning, and the migrant workers would have built a fire and made tortillas," Ms Taylor says. "On occasion, they'd bring me breakfast."

Ms Taylor once found a woman on her porch in the process of giving birth (she called an ambulance and helped care for the woman until help arrived). Another time, she found an exhausted Hispanic man asleep in her armchair (he apologised, saying he had decided to use her bathroom to shave and brush his teeth).

But from the mid-1990s, with the growth of Mexico's drug trade, security declined. Ms Taylor's car was stolen several times. One morning, she found a package containing 50lbs of marijuana in her flowerbed. "I turned it in to the sheriff," she says. "I'm a cancer patient and when I told my doctor, he said I should have used the stuff."

Since the fence went up, crime has further spiralled. "I'm a gung-ho Texan. I've brought up four kids here and I've made this place my life. But there are times, since the barrier went up, when it hasn't felt like home."

Down the road, she has erected a protest banner. "We're part of America," it says. "We need representation and protection, not a fence."

You hear a similar sentiment across Brownsville. Roughly eight in every 10 of the city's 170,000 inhabitants are Latino and most speak Spanish as a first language. Every street corner seems to have a taco stall and the local economy relies heavily on imports from factories south of the border.

Most locals rue the divisive tone of the current immigration debate. The city's former mayor, an attorney named Eddie Trevino, who describes himself as a "very right-wing Democrat", says the furore over the fence demonstrates the extent to which the US immigration system needs a complete overhaul.

"Nobody's in favour of illegal immigration," Mr Trevino says. "Let me be unequivocal about that. We don't want anybody violating our laws.

"But the reality is that our laws are antiquated and need to be updated to make sense in the world in which we live. It made no sense to build this fence, other than making people in other parts of the country feel better and feel a false sense of safety. It's like the old joke: build a 12ft fence and you'll be having a huge demand for 15ft ladders."

Even the city's white, Republican-leaning minority is opposed to the border fence. The well-mown greens of a local golf course are on land that now sits on the "wrong" side, while fields and orchards farmed by generations of landowners have been sliced in two by the metal barrier.

"I'll say right off the bat that I'm a conservative – I believe in hard work and I believe our border needs to be secure," says Debbie Loop, whose 15-acre citrus farm is on both sides of the fence. "But when they signed this fence into law, nobody stopped to think Texas isn't Arizona or California. Our border does not run dirt to dirt. Any idiot could have told them that. My grandchildren now live on the wrong side. Who is going to protect them? Who protects me when I'm in my orchards after dusk? I just want to work hard and earn a living. But they've changed this place forever."

This week, Mr Obama signalled his intention to bring the immigration debate into play in next year's presidential elections, travelling to El Paso, on the other side of Texas from Brownsville, to unveil plans to create a "path to citizenship" for the roughly 12 million undocumented workers thought to be living illegally in the US.

With his speech – aimed to court the growing Latino demographic that now numbers about 50 million people – he entered into electoral-campaign mode. Mr Obama emphasised that his administration has deported more immigrants than that of any of its predecessors. And he ridiculed Republican lawmakers who have endorsed building ever-larger barriers along the border.

"Now they're going to say that we need to quadruple the border patrol," Mr Obama said, reaching out to the large and growing demographic of Latino voters.

"Or they'll want a higher fence. Maybe they'll say we need a moat. Maybe they'll want alligators in the moat. They'll never be satisfied."

The joke might have played well in the next day's news pages – but in Brownsville, they were not laughing.

"Let him come here and say that," was Ms Loop's response.

"Round these parts, people like alligators a whole lot more than politicians."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/the-town-on-the-wrong-side-of-americas-drugs-war-2284669.html

Texas landowners stuck on wrong side of border fence

Los Angeles Times
February 28, 2011
by Richard Marosi

Reporting from Brownsville, Texas — The Rio Grande once ran wide and deep behind the four-room house that Pamela Taylor and her husband hammered together more than half a century ago. Migrant workers had to take a ferry upriver to get across from Mexico, and a flood once inundated the family's citrus groves.

Over time, the waters receded, the river narrowed and Mexico got closer. Thieves led by a one-legged man stole Taylor's horses from the barn and beans off the stove. Drug smugglers hid marijuana in her bushes. Migrant workers would camp in her front yard and bring her fresh tortillas in the morning.

The once-swift river now could be crossed with little more than a leaky inner tube. Still, there was some comfort in knowing that, on the map anyway, the Rio Grande marked the international boundary. Nowadays, Taylor isn't so sure.

The Homeland Security Department last year put up a tall steel barrier across the fields from Taylor's home. The government calls it the border fence, but it was erected about a quarter-mile north of the Rio Grande, leaving Taylor's home between the fence and the river. Her two acres now lie on a strip of land that isn't Mexico but doesn't really seem like the United States either.

The government doesn't keep count, but Taylor and other residents think there are about eight houses stranded on the other side of the fence.

"It's a no man's land," Taylor said. "They said they were going to build a fence to protect all the people. We were just lost in the draw."

When the Homeland Security Department began its Southwest border buildup four years ago, erecting barriers seemed a straightforward enough proposition. The international boundary is ruler-straight for hundreds of miles from California to New Mexico, and planners laid the fencing down right on the border, traversing deserts, mountains and valleys.

But here, where the border's eastern edge meets the Gulf of Mexico, the urgency of national security met headlong with geographical reality. The Rio Grande twists through Brownsville and surrounding areas, and planners had to avoid building on the flood plain. So the barriers in some places went up more than a mile from the river.

While the border fence almost everywhere else divides Mexico and the U.S., here it divides parts of the city.

Authorities defend the barrier, saying it helps control illegal immigration and drug trafficking. The fencing doesn't stop immigrants, but they say it slows people down and funnels them to areas where U.S. Border Patrol agents can respond quickly.

In and around Brownsville, the fence slices through two-lane roads, backyards, agricultural fields, citrus groves and pastures for more than 21 miles, trapping tens of thousands of acres, according to some property owners' estimates. (The Homeland Security Department did not keep track of the total.) Narrow gaps allow back-and-forth access for cars and tractors, pedestrians and Border Patrol agents, but they are spaced as much as a mile apart.

"My son-in-law tells people we live in a gated community," joked Taylor, 82, who shares her modest home with her daughter's family.

Originally from England, she married her Mexican American husband during World War II, and picked tomatoes and cotton to scrape enough money together in 1948 to build a modest home and raise four adopted children.

She never learned to speak much Spanish and struggled with Mexican food. "My father-in-law told me I was the only person he knew that made square tortillas," Taylor recalled. Hers has been a life defined by adapting, but she said nothing prepared her for America's new border barrier.

"We feel abandoned here," she said. "That's why we refer to it as the Mexican side of the fence."

Planning challenges and fierce opposition held off construction crews for several years, making Brownsville the last border city to get barriers under the Secure Fence Act of 2006.

Tensions escalated in this mostly Latino, working-class city of 172,000 when people realized that large segments of the fence would not sit anywhere near the international boundary.

Some residents got the word by studying maps of the project at public hearings. Others answered knocks on their front doors to find Border Patrol agents bearing clipboards: Would they sign a waiver allowing the government to begin surveying their land?

Landowners were offered compensation, but many were outraged. They protested at public hearings, lobbied politicians in Washington and fought court battles. The government had to start condemnation proceedings against more than 100 residents, some of them poor farmers or senior citizens with centuries-old ties to the community.

Construction crews bulldozed orchards, drained lakes and graded over driveways and roads. The fence towers 18 feet and its steel posts, a few inches apart, whistle like a freight train when northern winds blow.

Eloisa Tamez, 75, who lives on land granted to her ancestors by the king of Spain in 1767, rejected the government's offer of $13,500 for a 50-foot-wide strip across her three acres west of Brownsville. The government seized the land and built the fence anyway. Now, three-quarters of the fallow acreage where her family once grew tomatoes, squash and okra is south of the barrier.

"It represents my heritage. This land here is what gave me life. I didn't have riches or luxuries, but we had food that was good for us," said Tamez, who is in a legal battle with the federal government over the seizure of her land. "I didn't want to let the government have it to build this monstrosity."

Rancher Alberto "Beto" Garza and his father have been cut off from their cattle. Ninfa Young, 56, said she can't stroll over to her neighbor's farm to pick watermelons. Nature Conservancy manager Maxwell B. Pons said the 6,000 feet of fencing on the Southmost Preserve severs an important corridor for coyotes and Texas tortoises.

At the Loop farm on the outskirts of Brownsville, dozens of citrus trees were bulldozed to make way for the fence, which splits the family's 900 acres. On the Brownsville side, Debbie and Leonard Loop tend groves of oranges and grapefruit; on the "Mexican" side, their son, Ray Loop, cultivates soybeans, sunflowers and watermelons.

Things could get more complicated. With the government planning this year to install gates at 40 of the gaps, the family wonders about access. Residents will be provided with access codes, according to border authorities. But they've also heard that the gates would be locked during a high national security alert. Debbie Loop, 69, wonders how her young granddaughters would get through to the Brownsville side of the fence under that scenario.

"It's an eerie feeling crossing that," Loop said, as she drove with her husband through the fence line onto her son's farmland. "In the past, if you needed to get out in a hurry, you could. Now you have to find a gap."

Duncan L. Hunter, the former congressman from San Diego County who co-wrote the fencing legislation before leaving office in 2009, visited Brownsville in 2008 to explain how barriers helped reduce the numbers of undocumented immigrants flooding into California border cities.

Though the Brownsville fence placement sounds "illogical," it is probably necessary if it means cutting off illegal crossings, said Hunter, who expressed surprise that the barrier here was placed so far from the river. Asked about the location, border officials said in a statement that a number of factors were considered, including the flood plain and "historic illegal crossing patterns."

"From time immemorial, the way that you keep people from going into a restricted area is a fence," Hunter said, citing a significant drop in crime in San Diego after the fence there was built in the 1990s. "It brought calm to both sides of the border."

Longtime resident Taylor, however, said the no man's land where her property ended up hardly qualifies as tranquil.

The fence funnels more illegal immigrants than ever through her property, she said, because it is close to an easily breached gap. Taylor is all for bolstering national security, but adding agents, cameras and lighting would have been more effective, she said.

She still opens her house to patrol agents on Thanksgiving and Christmas for turkey dinner. It's the politicians and senior officials who earn her wrath. She attended hearings and sent letters and e-mails to numerous officials, and got few responses.

"It was like talking to a brick wall," she said.

These days, immigrants walk across a small dam that serves as a footbridge, traversing the Rio Grande in minutes. Crossings trigger the immediate appearance of Border Patrol agents on the river side of the fence, but Taylor fears that U.S. Customs and Border Protection could someday reposition its agents behind the barrier, leaving her family more vulnerable.

Heightened U.S. enforcement efforts, Taylor said, have bred a meaner, more desperate class of illegal immigrants. Some banged on her doors and windows last week, possibly seeking help. She can hear the "booms and bangs" from the drug wars in Matamoros, and Mexican military helicopters have strayed over her house, she said.

"We're not afraid, but we do realize that Matamoros could spill over here," said Taylor, who keeps three assault rifles loaded. The guns give her a sense of safety, she said, unlike the fence: "It's not providing security for us, and it's actually shutting us out of America."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-texas-fence-20110228,0,7333306,full.story