BBC News
July 28, 2010
by Katie Connolly
Once upon a time, Spanish settlers named the crossing El Paso Del Norte - the pass to the north.
The border city of El Paso, Texas, lies along the Rio Grande, in the chasm between two inhospitable mountains.
Each day, thousands of people in cars, buses and on foot cross the short bridge that connects El Paso with its Mexican sister city, Juarez, one of the world's most dangerous places.
In the past two years, more than 5,000 people have been murdered in Juarez as drug-related crime has soared.
Politicians, including Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, tend to portray border towns as being pushed to crisis point.
"We see this crime on a daily basis. The federal government must respond more effectively, step up their enforcement and protection of the border before more American blood is shed," Mr Abbott told Fox News.
"It is more dangerous to walk the streets of Juarez, a few blocks from El Paso, than it is to walk the streets of Baghdad. There is a very serious problem that is beginning to bulge at our borders and put American lives at risk."
In mid-July, President Barack Obama ordered 1,200 National Guard troops to patrol the border, just days after a car bomb exploded in northern Juarez, very near El Paso.
Texas Governor Rick Perry called that deployment "grossly insufficient". Many politicians are calling for even more troops.
But the mayor of El Paso, John Cook, isn't one of them.
Second safest city
"The reality is we really don't need the help on this side of the border. We probably have every kind of federal law enforcement agency that you can think of. We're an extremely safe community," Mr Cook says.
Despite Juarez's murder toll, in El Paso, local authorities have recorded just two murders this year. In 2009 there were 11.
"Logically it would seem that if you have violence on one side of the border then you're going to have spillover on the other side," says Mr Cook. "But the reality is that we don't."
According to FBI crime statistics, El Paso is the second safest city in America. Crime rates there have dropped 36% over the past 10 years.
Other cities close to the border, including San Diego in California and Phoenix in Arizona, have similarly experienced declines in violent crime.
Over the same period, federal agencies have beefed up their presence along the border, and a 2,000-mile fence is slowly being constructed.
The fence near El Paso is 16-18 feet (4.9-5.5m) high, made of rust-coloured steel mesh. There are 2,700 border police in this sector, monitoring the border day and night, and a raft of FBI, CIA and drug enforcement agents.
Mr Cook questions the need for more troops, given that current border security levels appear to have been effective at containing drug violence south of the border.
Additionally, both he and local border enforcement officials believe that the leaders of drug cartels do not believe it is in their interest to bring the violence north.
Drug barons know that the response from the US government would be swift and heavy, and further hinder their ability to smuggle drugs into the lucrative American market.
Locals worry that with an even heavier security presence in town, El Paso risks becoming like Cold War Berlin, a riven city, its character disrupted by an imposing divider wall.
They believe politicians who don't live on the border fail to appreciate the deep interconnectedness of cities like Juarez and El Paso, which Mr Cook describes as "one city joined by a border".
So with crime rates declining and the border stable, how has this relatively safe Texan city found itself in the centre of a political firestorm over border violence, and the Obama administration's plans to deal with it?
Politics and fear
Border historian David Romo says it is a pattern. He's seen politicians fanning fears about the border before.
The first calls to build a border fence in El Paso to secure the city came in 1908. Back then, the fear was Chinese immigrants. In World War II, politicians worried about Germans streaming across.
These days, it's Mexicans who fuel unease. Mr Romo says that during times of economic distress, the border and the immigrants who cross it are used as scapegoats. He believes history is repeating itself, and politicians are using the same rhetoric they have for decades.
"It happens that every time an election year comes up, they know that creating fear and hysteria about the border will drive a wedge," Mr Romo says.
"In some ways it's cheap vote-getting. There is this cycle of kind of nativist hysteria that is very profitable for politicians. Nothing gets votes like the politics of fear."
Mr Romo says he's not seen evidence of violence infiltrating the El Paso community. He argues that the immigrants who make a new life across the border are motivated to act within the law because they fear being deported.
While Arizona Governor Jan Brewer blames immigrants, illegal and otherwise, for violent crimes and burglaries, Mr Romo says that, ironically, those immigrants have the most incentive to be law-abiding. They don't want to draw attention.
Bleak outlook
Although fears of spillover violence aren't substantiated by crime data, they are having a real impact on the economy of El Paso.
"From an economic development perspective, it's been very negative for us," Mr Cook said.
He has difficulty convincing new businesses to set up in El Paso because of the violence in Juarez. The first question he gets asked in business meetings is usually "is it safe?"
"They don't pay attention to the fact that we are the second safest large city in the United States," he says.
"We've had people who have looked to locating here with their companies and we have to convince them that it's a safe place. They almost don't believe you."
The longer the violence continues in Juarez, the bleaker the outlook becomes for El Paso, despite its impressive safety record.
For now, there's little more Mayor Cook can do but wait.
America's safest cities, 2009
1.Honolulu, Hawaii
2.El Paso, Texas
3.New York City, New York
4.San Jose, California
5.Austin, Texas
6.San Diego, California
7.Seattle, Washington
8.Portland, Oregon
9.Denver, Colorado
10.Los Angeles, California
Source: CQ Press City Crime Rankings 2009-2010
Cities with highest crime, 2009
1.Detroit, Michigan
2.Memphis, Tennessee
3.Baltimore, Maryland
4.Washington, DC
5.Atlanta, Georgia
6.Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
7.Indianapolis, Indiana
8.Columbus, Ohio
9.Milwaukee, Wisconsin
10.Dallas, Texas
Source: CQ Press City Crime Rankings 2009-2010
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10779151
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Agaves restored to stretch damaged by US fence work
Arizona Daily Star
July 27, 2010
by Tony Davis
Volunteers planted 1,300 baby agaves near the Mexican border over the weekend where 4,000 agaves were torn out two years ago to build the border fence.
The plantings at Coronado National Memorial represent the first major effort in Arizona, and among the first in the Southwest, to start compensating for the environmental effects of the fence lining parts of the Mexican border.
Over the next three years, the $275,000 project will plant about 4,500 agaves at Coronado.
More restoration money could arrive soon. Officials of the Interior Department and the Department of Homeland Security expect to sign an agreement by the end of August to send $6.8 million in federal money to the Southwest for a half-dozen such projects in Arizona and more in other states, said Jenny Burke, a Homeland Security spokeswoman. That will be the first installment of $50 million, already appropriated but not yet released, to do more borderlands restoration work in future years.
The projects will be geared toward protecting imperiled species, said Susan Sferra, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist. At Coro-nado, the endangered lesser long-nosed bat would benefit from agave plantings. At Organ Pipe National Monument, the endangered Sonoran pronghorn would gain from a restoration project that's expected to get money. From Naco to Sasabe, a third project will use remote cameras to try to photograph endangered jaguars, Sferra said.
In Arizona, the federal government has built 124 miles of fences and 183 miles of vehicle barriers along the state's 378 miles of Mexican border. Along the entire, 2,000-mile, U.S.-Mexico border, the feds have built about 646 miles of fences, walls and vehicle barriers.
Last Saturday, about 100 volunteers showed up at Coronado, about 25 miles south of Sierra Vista, to plant the 3-inch-long by 3-inch-wide Palmer's agaves. The plants, which bloom once every 15 to 20 years, replace destroyed agaves of up to 20 years old and up to 3 feet long by 3 feet wide, said Chris Roberts, a National Park Service biologist at the memorial.
The agaves are the main food source at the memorial for the lesser long-nosed bat, which lives there in large numbers, including 20,000 in an abandoned gold mine. The National Park Service has financed this project out of its own budget.
"This sort of restoration is unfortunately pretty rare - a lot more needs to be done," said Dan Millis, an activist who works for the Sierra Club's Borderlands Campaign in Tucson. "I'm happy to see this restoration moving forward, but it's a drop in the bucket, if you look at the entire impacts along the border wall."
At Organ Pipe, authorities plan to install temporary plastic or steel tanks to provide water to pronghorns. That would be to compensate for the border fence's having severed the animal's north-south migration route and other activities along the border including those of illegal immigrants, said Mark Sturm, the monument's resource-management chief. The most recent survey in 2008 found 68 pronghorns in the wild; the number is probably larger today because fawns have been born and some adults released from captivity since then, says the Arizona Game and Fish Department.
Organ Pipe officials will also try to restore 84 acres affected by fence construction, by planting palo verde, creosote, ironwood and other desert vegetation. They will transplant saguaros, organ pipe cacti and other plants that were moved from the fence area to nurseries at the time the land was cleared, Sturm said.
"This is a very rural environment, and the effects of all these things are poorly understood at this time," Sturm said of the border fence and other immigration- and border security-related activities. "We're trying to help the species get through at this difficult time, during a prolonged drought. Having the water available hedges our bets to be able to allow them to survive."
Overall, it's hard to say how far the new restoration projects will go toward compensating for the effects of all the various activities along the border, he said, adding, "It's a lot more than doing nothing."
http://azstarnet.com/news/science/environment/article_07e2d3fa-e4fb-5c64-8dad-0725c2c6555c.html
July 27, 2010
by Tony Davis
Volunteers planted 1,300 baby agaves near the Mexican border over the weekend where 4,000 agaves were torn out two years ago to build the border fence.
The plantings at Coronado National Memorial represent the first major effort in Arizona, and among the first in the Southwest, to start compensating for the environmental effects of the fence lining parts of the Mexican border.
Over the next three years, the $275,000 project will plant about 4,500 agaves at Coronado.
More restoration money could arrive soon. Officials of the Interior Department and the Department of Homeland Security expect to sign an agreement by the end of August to send $6.8 million in federal money to the Southwest for a half-dozen such projects in Arizona and more in other states, said Jenny Burke, a Homeland Security spokeswoman. That will be the first installment of $50 million, already appropriated but not yet released, to do more borderlands restoration work in future years.
The projects will be geared toward protecting imperiled species, said Susan Sferra, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist. At Coro-nado, the endangered lesser long-nosed bat would benefit from agave plantings. At Organ Pipe National Monument, the endangered Sonoran pronghorn would gain from a restoration project that's expected to get money. From Naco to Sasabe, a third project will use remote cameras to try to photograph endangered jaguars, Sferra said.
In Arizona, the federal government has built 124 miles of fences and 183 miles of vehicle barriers along the state's 378 miles of Mexican border. Along the entire, 2,000-mile, U.S.-Mexico border, the feds have built about 646 miles of fences, walls and vehicle barriers.
Last Saturday, about 100 volunteers showed up at Coronado, about 25 miles south of Sierra Vista, to plant the 3-inch-long by 3-inch-wide Palmer's agaves. The plants, which bloom once every 15 to 20 years, replace destroyed agaves of up to 20 years old and up to 3 feet long by 3 feet wide, said Chris Roberts, a National Park Service biologist at the memorial.
The agaves are the main food source at the memorial for the lesser long-nosed bat, which lives there in large numbers, including 20,000 in an abandoned gold mine. The National Park Service has financed this project out of its own budget.
"This sort of restoration is unfortunately pretty rare - a lot more needs to be done," said Dan Millis, an activist who works for the Sierra Club's Borderlands Campaign in Tucson. "I'm happy to see this restoration moving forward, but it's a drop in the bucket, if you look at the entire impacts along the border wall."
At Organ Pipe, authorities plan to install temporary plastic or steel tanks to provide water to pronghorns. That would be to compensate for the border fence's having severed the animal's north-south migration route and other activities along the border including those of illegal immigrants, said Mark Sturm, the monument's resource-management chief. The most recent survey in 2008 found 68 pronghorns in the wild; the number is probably larger today because fawns have been born and some adults released from captivity since then, says the Arizona Game and Fish Department.
Organ Pipe officials will also try to restore 84 acres affected by fence construction, by planting palo verde, creosote, ironwood and other desert vegetation. They will transplant saguaros, organ pipe cacti and other plants that were moved from the fence area to nurseries at the time the land was cleared, Sturm said.
"This is a very rural environment, and the effects of all these things are poorly understood at this time," Sturm said of the border fence and other immigration- and border security-related activities. "We're trying to help the species get through at this difficult time, during a prolonged drought. Having the water available hedges our bets to be able to allow them to survive."
Overall, it's hard to say how far the new restoration projects will go toward compensating for the effects of all the various activities along the border, he said, adding, "It's a lot more than doing nothing."
http://azstarnet.com/news/science/environment/article_07e2d3fa-e4fb-5c64-8dad-0725c2c6555c.html
Friday, July 16, 2010
July migrant deaths could set record
Arizona Daily Star
July 16, 2010
by Brady McCombs
Illegal border crossers are dying at record rates this month.
Since July 1, the Pima County Medical Examiner's Office has handled the bodies of 38 illegal border crossers, said Dr. Bruce Parks, chief medical examiner. That midmonth total puts July on pace to match or break the single-month record of 68 in July 2005.
"I never thought we would see that again," Parks said. "It's scary. Maybe the rain will slow these down."
Parks said his office has been picking up and examining between one and four bodies of illegal immigrants daily since the beginning of the month. Field agents were on their way to pick up four more bodies Thursday, he said. Most of the people are being found recently deceased.
The deadly month puts 2010 even further ahead of the pace from the past three years. From Jan. 1 to July 15, the office has handled 132 bodies of illegal border crossers, up from 93 at the same time last year and 102 in 2008.
It's been a deadly decade for illegal immigrants trying to cross through Arizona. The bodies of more than 1,750 men, women and children have been discovered since 2001 - about 175 a year.
The Pima County Medical Examiner's Office has handled about 1,600 of them.
The fact that the deaths continue at such high numbers despite widespread indications that fewer people are crossing the border has led many experts to conclude that illegal border crossers face a deadlier trek than ever across Arizona's desert.
Apprehensions in the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector have decreased each of the past five years; remittances to Mexico have declined and anecdotal reports show the economic recession has slowed illegal immigration. Yet more people are dying than ever.
Border-county law enforcement, Mexican consular officials, Tohono O'odham tribal officials and humanitarian groups say the buildup of border fencing, technology and agents has caused illegal border crossers to walk longer distances in more treacherous terrain, increasing the likelihood that people will get hurt or fatigued and left behind to die.
The Border Patrol disagrees that it's pushing illegal immigrants into more hazardous terrain and points to its rescue efforts as evidence that its presence prevents deaths rather than causes them.
http://azstarnet.com/article_a9828263-acfd-553c-b247-da12c5ae8d9a.html
July 16, 2010
by Brady McCombs
Illegal border crossers are dying at record rates this month.
Since July 1, the Pima County Medical Examiner's Office has handled the bodies of 38 illegal border crossers, said Dr. Bruce Parks, chief medical examiner. That midmonth total puts July on pace to match or break the single-month record of 68 in July 2005.
"I never thought we would see that again," Parks said. "It's scary. Maybe the rain will slow these down."
Parks said his office has been picking up and examining between one and four bodies of illegal immigrants daily since the beginning of the month. Field agents were on their way to pick up four more bodies Thursday, he said. Most of the people are being found recently deceased.
The deadly month puts 2010 even further ahead of the pace from the past three years. From Jan. 1 to July 15, the office has handled 132 bodies of illegal border crossers, up from 93 at the same time last year and 102 in 2008.
It's been a deadly decade for illegal immigrants trying to cross through Arizona. The bodies of more than 1,750 men, women and children have been discovered since 2001 - about 175 a year.
The Pima County Medical Examiner's Office has handled about 1,600 of them.
The fact that the deaths continue at such high numbers despite widespread indications that fewer people are crossing the border has led many experts to conclude that illegal border crossers face a deadlier trek than ever across Arizona's desert.
Apprehensions in the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector have decreased each of the past five years; remittances to Mexico have declined and anecdotal reports show the economic recession has slowed illegal immigration. Yet more people are dying than ever.
Border-county law enforcement, Mexican consular officials, Tohono O'odham tribal officials and humanitarian groups say the buildup of border fencing, technology and agents has caused illegal border crossers to walk longer distances in more treacherous terrain, increasing the likelihood that people will get hurt or fatigued and left behind to die.
The Border Patrol disagrees that it's pushing illegal immigrants into more hazardous terrain and points to its rescue efforts as evidence that its presence prevents deaths rather than causes them.
http://azstarnet.com/article_a9828263-acfd-553c-b247-da12c5ae8d9a.html
Fox News played by the Center for Immigration Studies
Media Matters for America
July 16, 2010
by Jocelyn Fong
When a news outlet doesn't do their research, it's easy to get duped. And that's just what happened yesterday, when the Center for Immigration Studies got Fox News to repeatedly promote its "mini-documentary," "Hidden Cameras on the Arizona Border 2: Drugs, Guns, and 850 Illegal Aliens."
The video features footage from hidden cameras placed in the Tucson sector of Arizona, along trails frequently used by people who entered the country illegally. According to the video, the cameras captured "about 850 illegal aliens" in "60 days between February and March 2010." CIS says of its production: "At minimum, the inescapable conclusion is that hidden cameras reveal a reality that illegal-alien activity is escalating."
Well if CIS says such a conclusion is, "at minimum," "inescapable," Fox News shouldn't waste their time verifying the claim, right? How I wish it weren't so.
Over the course of three of Fox News' "straight news" programs, the hosts and correspondents channeled CIS's claims, treating the 10-minute documentary as groundbreaking. Bill Hemmer described the video as "shocking," Megyn Kelly called it "stunning," correspondent Molly Hennenberg uncritically reported that CIS "says these videos show the escalating illegal alien activity," and Bret Baier said the film "shows the situation along the border getting worse." Trace Gallagher further suggested that the video is evidence that "the feds" are not protecting the lands that appear in the video.
While Fox made a lot of conclusions, they certainly didn't provide a lot of facts. To a real news organization, it might have been a red flag that part of the evidence CIS provides for the claim that "illegal-alien activity is escalating" is a Power Point presentation about environmental damage that is six years old.
More notably, Fox News didn't even try to provide context for the number of undocumented immigrants that appear in the video. "850 illegal aliens" over "60 days" sure sounds like a lot. But in the Tucson Sector, where the hidden cameras were placed, Border Patrol apprehended 449,654 illegal immigrants in fiscal year 2001, the year Bush took office [Associated Press 10/01/02]. That's 1,232 people every day. In 2006, there were 1,074 apprehensions per day in the Tucson sector.
By fiscal year 2009, the number of Tucson sector apprehensions was down to 241,600, or 662 per day, reflecting a drop in the number of illegal immigrants attempting to enter the United States, due to the recession and increased enforcement. (The Southwest border and the Tucson sector are now policed by more Border Patrol agents than ever before.)
The number of illegal immigrants apprehended in the Tucson sector in 2009 was a 10-year-low and still 47 times the number of people who appear in the CIS video.
In short, the "mini-documentary" tells us nothing.
And yet Fox News says we should be shocked. What's truly shocking is that Fox has no understanding of what's been happening along the Arizona border for the past decade. And that instead of tracking down the relevant information, the network instead reproduces the claims of the Center for Immigration Studies, a group with a clear agenda, without blinking an eye (or asking question).
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201007160029
July 16, 2010
by Jocelyn Fong
When a news outlet doesn't do their research, it's easy to get duped. And that's just what happened yesterday, when the Center for Immigration Studies got Fox News to repeatedly promote its "mini-documentary," "Hidden Cameras on the Arizona Border 2: Drugs, Guns, and 850 Illegal Aliens."
The video features footage from hidden cameras placed in the Tucson sector of Arizona, along trails frequently used by people who entered the country illegally. According to the video, the cameras captured "about 850 illegal aliens" in "60 days between February and March 2010." CIS says of its production: "At minimum, the inescapable conclusion is that hidden cameras reveal a reality that illegal-alien activity is escalating."
Well if CIS says such a conclusion is, "at minimum," "inescapable," Fox News shouldn't waste their time verifying the claim, right? How I wish it weren't so.
Over the course of three of Fox News' "straight news" programs, the hosts and correspondents channeled CIS's claims, treating the 10-minute documentary as groundbreaking. Bill Hemmer described the video as "shocking," Megyn Kelly called it "stunning," correspondent Molly Hennenberg uncritically reported that CIS "says these videos show the escalating illegal alien activity," and Bret Baier said the film "shows the situation along the border getting worse." Trace Gallagher further suggested that the video is evidence that "the feds" are not protecting the lands that appear in the video.
While Fox made a lot of conclusions, they certainly didn't provide a lot of facts. To a real news organization, it might have been a red flag that part of the evidence CIS provides for the claim that "illegal-alien activity is escalating" is a Power Point presentation about environmental damage that is six years old.
More notably, Fox News didn't even try to provide context for the number of undocumented immigrants that appear in the video. "850 illegal aliens" over "60 days" sure sounds like a lot. But in the Tucson Sector, where the hidden cameras were placed, Border Patrol apprehended 449,654 illegal immigrants in fiscal year 2001, the year Bush took office [Associated Press 10/01/02]. That's 1,232 people every day. In 2006, there were 1,074 apprehensions per day in the Tucson sector.
By fiscal year 2009, the number of Tucson sector apprehensions was down to 241,600, or 662 per day, reflecting a drop in the number of illegal immigrants attempting to enter the United States, due to the recession and increased enforcement. (The Southwest border and the Tucson sector are now policed by more Border Patrol agents than ever before.)
The number of illegal immigrants apprehended in the Tucson sector in 2009 was a 10-year-low and still 47 times the number of people who appear in the CIS video.
In short, the "mini-documentary" tells us nothing.
And yet Fox News says we should be shocked. What's truly shocking is that Fox has no understanding of what's been happening along the Arizona border for the past decade. And that instead of tracking down the relevant information, the network instead reproduces the claims of the Center for Immigration Studies, a group with a clear agenda, without blinking an eye (or asking question).
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201007160029
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Border Patrol agents seize 53 bundles of marijuana
Yuma Sun
July 13, 2010
by James Gilbert
Yuma Sector Border Patrol agents seized more than $800,000 of marijuana on Saturday morning from a vehicle that had illegally entered the country.
Agent Shaun Kuzia, a spokesman for the Yuma Sector, said agents assigned to the Yuma Station detected the illegal entry of a 1991 GMC Yukon sport utility vehicle just before 5 a.m. about 30 miles east of the San Luis Port of Entry.
Kuzia said the suspected smugglers drove the SUV into the country after damaging and removing a portion of the vehicle barriers in the area.
Agents responding to the area reported that the occupants abandoned the SUV just north of the border fence and fled back into Mexico on foot to avoid arrest.
Kuzia said the vehicle contained 53 plastic-wrapped bundles of marijuana that weighed 1,117 pounds, with an estimated street value of $885,800.
The SUV was seized by the Border Patrol and the bundles of marijuana were turned over to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
http://www.yumasun.com/news/border-62367-marijuana-patrol.html
July 13, 2010
by James Gilbert
Yuma Sector Border Patrol agents seized more than $800,000 of marijuana on Saturday morning from a vehicle that had illegally entered the country.
Agent Shaun Kuzia, a spokesman for the Yuma Sector, said agents assigned to the Yuma Station detected the illegal entry of a 1991 GMC Yukon sport utility vehicle just before 5 a.m. about 30 miles east of the San Luis Port of Entry.
Kuzia said the suspected smugglers drove the SUV into the country after damaging and removing a portion of the vehicle barriers in the area.
Agents responding to the area reported that the occupants abandoned the SUV just north of the border fence and fled back into Mexico on foot to avoid arrest.
Kuzia said the vehicle contained 53 plastic-wrapped bundles of marijuana that weighed 1,117 pounds, with an estimated street value of $885,800.
The SUV was seized by the Border Patrol and the bundles of marijuana were turned over to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
http://www.yumasun.com/news/border-62367-marijuana-patrol.html
Friday, July 9, 2010
Rio Grande communities brace for floodwaters
Associated Press
July 9, 2010
by Christopher Sherman and Michelle Roberts
RIO GRANDE CITY, Texas — As a strong storm dumped rain on the already high Rio Grande, those living downstream braced for a torrent of water that has led to the closure of two international bridges and evacuations on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border further up the river.
Residents of some neighborhoods in the downstream towns of Roma and La Grulla were being evacuated in anticipation of floodwaters. Shelters were readied for residents of low-lying neighborhoods in several communities. And the last hand-drawn ferry on the U.S.-Mexico border was hauled out of the Rio Grande's swift and rising waters for the second time this week.
A tropical depression that came ashore just north of the mouth of the Rio Grande on Thursday was expected to add 6 inches to 8 inches of rain to rivers and reservoirs in south Texas and northern Mexico already swollen from the heavy rains dropped by Hurricane Alex last week.
In Rio Grande City in Starr County, the river reached 52 1/2 feet, just over flood stage early Friday. A flash flood warning was scheduled to remain in effect for the lower Rio Grande Valley until Friday night.
Starr County Emergency Operations Director Gene Falcon said flooding from the river likely would effect farmland in the area, but the larger problem would be what the river did to a local tributary, the Arroyo Los Olmos along the east side of town.
"The river level will be so high that it will start backing up (the creek)," Falcon said.
It already was starting to happen late Thursday as water in the creek appeared stagnant and possibly even moving slightly upstream, away from the Rio Grande. Some residents in neighborhoods along the scrub-choked creek were beginning to move valuables to higher ground.
At the Retama Manor nursing home, administrators waited for local emergency officials to advise them of any risk posed by the Rio Grande. The facility sits next to an international bridge on the banks of the river, just feet from the swift-moving water.
Nan Impink, a spokeswoman for the facility, said a plan is in place to move residents if there is a danger of flooding.
"For us that's an option of last choice because it's very disruptive to patients," she said.
The International Boundary and Water Commission, which operates dams, reservoirs and levees along the Rio Grande, increased the amount of water released from Falcon Dam, just west of Roma, on Thursday, while also diverting part of the river's flow into a wide floodway near Mission.
Roma's police chief, Jose Garcia, said the water was expected to rise 4 feet to 6 feet overnight, prompting the decision to require about 30 families to evacuate from small subdivisions near the river.
"We just want to make sure we don't get caught by surprise," Garcia said.
Even as the remains of the tropical depression moved west through northern Mexico, heavy rains were forecast for south Texas, said meteorologist Joseph Tomaselli of the National Weather Service in Brownsville.
"We won't begin to dry out until Saturday," he said.
In Los Ebanos, home to the only hand-pulled ferry on a U.S. international border, ferry operator Mark Alvarez was directing Sullivan City firefighters as they attached tow lines and began dragging the ferry toward dry land. Just across the fast-moving river in Mexico, teenagers dove head first into the river from the roof of a submerged building along the water's edge.
"We want to pull it up because we don't want the current to take it," Alvarez said. "We're going to dry dock it as much as possible."
Upstream, authorities in Laredo evacuated several neighborhoods close to the river and a 16-story hotel on the banks Thursday as the river grew to 42-feet deep and water began to creep into some homes. Officials had no tally of flooded homes, but up to 2 feet of water flooded at least a few streets.
The river crested in downtown Laredo overnight but was expected to remain high for the next several days, forcing evacuated residents to stay out and limiting traffic on the city's international bridges.
Tens of thousands of people were forced from their homes in Mexican towns earlier in the week as dam releases dumped torrents of water into flood-swollen rivers to avoid the risk of out-of-control releases following Hurricane Alex.
Humberto Moreira, the governor of the border state of Coahuila, said that more than 20,000 homes had been flooded in his state alone, and about 80,000 people had "lost all of their furniture." A similar number of people had their homes damaged in Nuevo Leon, said that state's Gov. Rodrigo Medina.
Gov. Eugenio Hernandez of the border state of Tamaulipas reported the first fatality there; telling an emergency evaluation meeting attended by President Felipe Calderon in the border city of Matamoros that the victim tried to cross a flooded road.
Access to Sabinas, Mexico in the state of Coahuila was largely blocked Thursday after several bridges on two main highways collapsed after the Rio Sabinas overflowed, said Coahuila state interior minister Armando Luna.
"This has made it difficult to get help to the area," Luna said.
In Laredo, where roughly half of all U.S.-Mexico trade crosses, authorities on Friday reopened one of the international bridges on the northwestern edge of the city, but one downtown bridge remained closed and a second was severely restricted. The vehicle inspection station on the Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, side was under several feet of water.
Traffic was also restricted on the World Trade International Bridge — a route that moves roughly 8,000 tractor trailers a day between the two countries — but it remains open.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gVWjsPEiqe1tEu2mhBIRaxxGi8owD9GRIKH81
July 9, 2010
by Christopher Sherman and Michelle Roberts
RIO GRANDE CITY, Texas — As a strong storm dumped rain on the already high Rio Grande, those living downstream braced for a torrent of water that has led to the closure of two international bridges and evacuations on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border further up the river.
Residents of some neighborhoods in the downstream towns of Roma and La Grulla were being evacuated in anticipation of floodwaters. Shelters were readied for residents of low-lying neighborhoods in several communities. And the last hand-drawn ferry on the U.S.-Mexico border was hauled out of the Rio Grande's swift and rising waters for the second time this week.
A tropical depression that came ashore just north of the mouth of the Rio Grande on Thursday was expected to add 6 inches to 8 inches of rain to rivers and reservoirs in south Texas and northern Mexico already swollen from the heavy rains dropped by Hurricane Alex last week.
In Rio Grande City in Starr County, the river reached 52 1/2 feet, just over flood stage early Friday. A flash flood warning was scheduled to remain in effect for the lower Rio Grande Valley until Friday night.
Starr County Emergency Operations Director Gene Falcon said flooding from the river likely would effect farmland in the area, but the larger problem would be what the river did to a local tributary, the Arroyo Los Olmos along the east side of town.
"The river level will be so high that it will start backing up (the creek)," Falcon said.
It already was starting to happen late Thursday as water in the creek appeared stagnant and possibly even moving slightly upstream, away from the Rio Grande. Some residents in neighborhoods along the scrub-choked creek were beginning to move valuables to higher ground.
At the Retama Manor nursing home, administrators waited for local emergency officials to advise them of any risk posed by the Rio Grande. The facility sits next to an international bridge on the banks of the river, just feet from the swift-moving water.
Nan Impink, a spokeswoman for the facility, said a plan is in place to move residents if there is a danger of flooding.
"For us that's an option of last choice because it's very disruptive to patients," she said.
The International Boundary and Water Commission, which operates dams, reservoirs and levees along the Rio Grande, increased the amount of water released from Falcon Dam, just west of Roma, on Thursday, while also diverting part of the river's flow into a wide floodway near Mission.
Roma's police chief, Jose Garcia, said the water was expected to rise 4 feet to 6 feet overnight, prompting the decision to require about 30 families to evacuate from small subdivisions near the river.
"We just want to make sure we don't get caught by surprise," Garcia said.
Even as the remains of the tropical depression moved west through northern Mexico, heavy rains were forecast for south Texas, said meteorologist Joseph Tomaselli of the National Weather Service in Brownsville.
"We won't begin to dry out until Saturday," he said.
In Los Ebanos, home to the only hand-pulled ferry on a U.S. international border, ferry operator Mark Alvarez was directing Sullivan City firefighters as they attached tow lines and began dragging the ferry toward dry land. Just across the fast-moving river in Mexico, teenagers dove head first into the river from the roof of a submerged building along the water's edge.
"We want to pull it up because we don't want the current to take it," Alvarez said. "We're going to dry dock it as much as possible."
Upstream, authorities in Laredo evacuated several neighborhoods close to the river and a 16-story hotel on the banks Thursday as the river grew to 42-feet deep and water began to creep into some homes. Officials had no tally of flooded homes, but up to 2 feet of water flooded at least a few streets.
The river crested in downtown Laredo overnight but was expected to remain high for the next several days, forcing evacuated residents to stay out and limiting traffic on the city's international bridges.
Tens of thousands of people were forced from their homes in Mexican towns earlier in the week as dam releases dumped torrents of water into flood-swollen rivers to avoid the risk of out-of-control releases following Hurricane Alex.
Humberto Moreira, the governor of the border state of Coahuila, said that more than 20,000 homes had been flooded in his state alone, and about 80,000 people had "lost all of their furniture." A similar number of people had their homes damaged in Nuevo Leon, said that state's Gov. Rodrigo Medina.
Gov. Eugenio Hernandez of the border state of Tamaulipas reported the first fatality there; telling an emergency evaluation meeting attended by President Felipe Calderon in the border city of Matamoros that the victim tried to cross a flooded road.
Access to Sabinas, Mexico in the state of Coahuila was largely blocked Thursday after several bridges on two main highways collapsed after the Rio Sabinas overflowed, said Coahuila state interior minister Armando Luna.
"This has made it difficult to get help to the area," Luna said.
In Laredo, where roughly half of all U.S.-Mexico trade crosses, authorities on Friday reopened one of the international bridges on the northwestern edge of the city, but one downtown bridge remained closed and a second was severely restricted. The vehicle inspection station on the Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, side was under several feet of water.
Traffic was also restricted on the World Trade International Bridge — a route that moves roughly 8,000 tractor trailers a day between the two countries — but it remains open.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gVWjsPEiqe1tEu2mhBIRaxxGi8owD9GRIKH81
Sunday, July 4, 2010
A Reagan Legacy: Amnesty For Illegal Immigrants
National Public Radio - All Things Considered
July 4, 2010
As the nation's attention turns back to the fractured debate over immigration, it might be helpful to remember that in 1986, Ronald Reagan signed a sweeping immigration reform bill into law. It was sold as a crackdown: There would be tighter security at the Mexican border, and employers would face strict penalties for hiring undocumented workers.
But the bill also made any immigrant who'd entered the country before 1982 eligible for amnesty — a word not usually associated with the father of modern conservatism.
In his renewed push for an immigration overhaul this week, President Obama called for Republican support for a bill to address the growing population of illegal immigrants in the country. This time, however, Republicans know better than to tread near the politically toxic A-word.
Part of this aversion is due to what is widely seen as the failure of Reagan's 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. However, one of the lead authors of the bill says that unlike most immigration reform efforts of the past 20 years, amnesty wasn't the pitfall.
"We used the word 'legalization,' " former Wyoming Sen. Alan K. Simpson tells NPR's Guy Raz. "And everybody fell asleep lightly for a while, and we were able to do legalization."
The law granted amnesty to nearly 3 million illegal immigrants, yet was largely considered unsuccessful because the strict sanctions on employers were stripped out of the bill for passage.
Simpson says the amnesty provision actually saved the act from being a total loss. "It's not perfect, but 2.9 million people came forward. If you can bring one person out of an exploited relationship, that's good enough for me."
Reagan And Amnesty
Nowadays, conservative commentators like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh often invoke the former president as a champion of the conservative agenda. Sean Hannity of Fox News even has a regular segment called "What Would Reagan Do?"
Simpson, however, sees a different person in the president he called a "dear friend."
Reagan "knew that it was not right for people to be abused," Simpson says. "Anybody who's here illegally is going to be abused in some way, either financially [or] physically. They have no rights."
Peter Robinson, a former Reagan speechwriter, agrees. "It was in Ronald Reagan's bones — it was part of his understanding of America — that the country was fundamentally open to those who wanted to join us here."
Reagan said as much himself in a televised debate with Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale in 1984.
"I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and lived here, even though sometime back they may have entered illegally," he said.
Now, Amnesty Is Out; Border Security Is In
More than 20 years later, the Republican Party has changed its tune. President Obama's call for bipartisanship on the immigration issue was answered by Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell. A bipartisan effort would be possible, he said, if Obama "would take amnesty off the table and make a real commitment to border and interior security."
But Simpson, a fellow Republican who served in the Senate with McConnell from 1986 to 1997, says calling for tighter borders is a tried-and-true tactic of politicians unwilling to confront the realities of a growing illegal population.
"That's always the palliative that makes people feel good," he says. "You just say, 'Well, we're still dinkin' around with immigration, so since we can't seem to get anything done and our constituents are raising hell — how do we get re-elected?' Well, you just put some more money into the border."
Robinson says Reagan's own diaries show the president found the idea of a militantly staffed border fence difficult to take. In a private meeting with then-President Jose Lopez Portillo of Mexico in 1979, Reagan wrote that he hoped to discuss how the United States and Mexico could make the border "something other than the location for a fence."
Fix It Before You Overhaul It
These days, Republicans are also calling for existing laws to be toughened up, which Reagan would have agreed with, Robinson says. In fact, Robinson says, he would have been so upset at the federal government's failure to make good on the 1986 reform that he would have demanded for that law to be fixed first before instituting a new overhaul.
"He, too, would have been right there in saying, 'Fix the borders first.' " Where he would have differed, Robinson says, is his welcoming attitude toward immigrants.
"He was a Californian," Robinson says. "You couldn't live in California ... without encountering over and over and over again good, hard-working, decent people — clearly recent arrivals from Mexico."
That the U.S. failed to regain control of the border — making the 1986 law's amnesty provision an incentive for others to come to America illegally — would have infuriated Reagan, Robinson says.
"But I think he would have felt taking those 3 million people and making them Americans was a success."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128303672
July 4, 2010
As the nation's attention turns back to the fractured debate over immigration, it might be helpful to remember that in 1986, Ronald Reagan signed a sweeping immigration reform bill into law. It was sold as a crackdown: There would be tighter security at the Mexican border, and employers would face strict penalties for hiring undocumented workers.
But the bill also made any immigrant who'd entered the country before 1982 eligible for amnesty — a word not usually associated with the father of modern conservatism.
In his renewed push for an immigration overhaul this week, President Obama called for Republican support for a bill to address the growing population of illegal immigrants in the country. This time, however, Republicans know better than to tread near the politically toxic A-word.
Part of this aversion is due to what is widely seen as the failure of Reagan's 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. However, one of the lead authors of the bill says that unlike most immigration reform efforts of the past 20 years, amnesty wasn't the pitfall.
"We used the word 'legalization,' " former Wyoming Sen. Alan K. Simpson tells NPR's Guy Raz. "And everybody fell asleep lightly for a while, and we were able to do legalization."
The law granted amnesty to nearly 3 million illegal immigrants, yet was largely considered unsuccessful because the strict sanctions on employers were stripped out of the bill for passage.
Simpson says the amnesty provision actually saved the act from being a total loss. "It's not perfect, but 2.9 million people came forward. If you can bring one person out of an exploited relationship, that's good enough for me."
Reagan And Amnesty
Nowadays, conservative commentators like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh often invoke the former president as a champion of the conservative agenda. Sean Hannity of Fox News even has a regular segment called "What Would Reagan Do?"
Simpson, however, sees a different person in the president he called a "dear friend."
Reagan "knew that it was not right for people to be abused," Simpson says. "Anybody who's here illegally is going to be abused in some way, either financially [or] physically. They have no rights."
Peter Robinson, a former Reagan speechwriter, agrees. "It was in Ronald Reagan's bones — it was part of his understanding of America — that the country was fundamentally open to those who wanted to join us here."
Reagan said as much himself in a televised debate with Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale in 1984.
"I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and lived here, even though sometime back they may have entered illegally," he said.
Now, Amnesty Is Out; Border Security Is In
More than 20 years later, the Republican Party has changed its tune. President Obama's call for bipartisanship on the immigration issue was answered by Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell. A bipartisan effort would be possible, he said, if Obama "would take amnesty off the table and make a real commitment to border and interior security."
But Simpson, a fellow Republican who served in the Senate with McConnell from 1986 to 1997, says calling for tighter borders is a tried-and-true tactic of politicians unwilling to confront the realities of a growing illegal population.
"That's always the palliative that makes people feel good," he says. "You just say, 'Well, we're still dinkin' around with immigration, so since we can't seem to get anything done and our constituents are raising hell — how do we get re-elected?' Well, you just put some more money into the border."
Robinson says Reagan's own diaries show the president found the idea of a militantly staffed border fence difficult to take. In a private meeting with then-President Jose Lopez Portillo of Mexico in 1979, Reagan wrote that he hoped to discuss how the United States and Mexico could make the border "something other than the location for a fence."
Fix It Before You Overhaul It
These days, Republicans are also calling for existing laws to be toughened up, which Reagan would have agreed with, Robinson says. In fact, Robinson says, he would have been so upset at the federal government's failure to make good on the 1986 reform that he would have demanded for that law to be fixed first before instituting a new overhaul.
"He, too, would have been right there in saying, 'Fix the borders first.' " Where he would have differed, Robinson says, is his welcoming attitude toward immigrants.
"He was a Californian," Robinson says. "You couldn't live in California ... without encountering over and over and over again good, hard-working, decent people — clearly recent arrivals from Mexico."
That the U.S. failed to regain control of the border — making the 1986 law's amnesty provision an incentive for others to come to America illegally — would have infuriated Reagan, Robinson says.
"But I think he would have felt taking those 3 million people and making them Americans was a success."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128303672
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