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
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Lucio to Hold Public Meeting to Discuss Impact of Border Wall
Rio Grande Guardian
September 14, 2011
by Steve Taylor
BROWNSVILLE, Sept. 14 - State Sen. Eddie Lucio is to hold a public meeting on Saturday to discuss the Border Wall.
The meeting takes place from 11 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. on Saturday at the Fort Brown Memorial Golf Course Clubhouse at 300 River Levee Road in Brownsville.
“We need to know more, much more, about the federal border wall,” said Lucio, D-Brownsville. “At the meeting, we will be hearing from our law enforcement agencies, sharing our personnel stories about the wall and discussing potential solutions.”
Lucio said he sincerely hopes citizens affected by the wall will join him at the meeting.
“In order for our communities to respond to federal policy, we need to have facts, figures and analysis. Saturday's meeting is a step in the right direction,” he said.
Brownsville residents were in the forefront of the opposition groups that sprang up in 2006 and 2007 in opposition to the border wall. They held rallies on the international bridges and organized public meetings. It was to no avail. The Department of Homeland Security built the border wall in the city and on University of Texas at Brownsville land.
Lucio explained why more needs to be learned about the border wall and its impact.
“Since Congress passed the Secure Fence Act in 2006, 70 miles of fencing - 20 feet high - has been built in the Rio Grande Valley. But because the river is the true boundary between Texas and Mexico, the wall actually lies north of the border, dividing residential and commercial properties that run to the river edge,” he said.
Lucio pointed out that during this year’s regular 82nd legislative session he filed a bill that dealt with the federal border wall.
“My bill, Senate Bill 1809, would have required the state government to study the economic impact that the border wall is having on homes, properties, and businesses. The reason is simple. We need to know how many homes are caught in the no man's land between the wall and the river. We need to know how many citrus groves and other agricultural businesses the wall slices through,” he said.
Lucio said he worked hard on this issue and was pleased to see his bill pass the Senate with bipartisan support. “Unfortunately, the bill died when it went to the Texas House of Representatives. To be honest, I was both surprised and disappointed that it did not pass,” Lucio said.
Lucio said it is clear to anyone living in the Lone Star state that Texans value property rights very highly. “With this in mind, you would expect politicians in Texas to be enthusiastic about passing my border wall bill. After all, it would ensure that Texans have accurate information about a controversial federal program that encroaches on local rights,” he said.
“My personal conviction is that border Texans should have the same rights as other Americans when it comes to property rights and freedom of information,” Lucio argued. “Unfortunately, we currently have limited information about the border wall's impact. That is not good enough for the Valley or Texas.”
Lucio said that while Saturday’s public meeting will be a step in the right direction, more needs to be done.
“We need the state government to do its part as well. That is why I plan to file my border wall bill again during the 83rd legislative session in 2013,” Lucio said, assuming he is re-elected.
http://www.riograndeguardian.com/rggnews_story.asp?story_no=24
September 14, 2011
by Steve Taylor
BROWNSVILLE, Sept. 14 - State Sen. Eddie Lucio is to hold a public meeting on Saturday to discuss the Border Wall.
The meeting takes place from 11 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. on Saturday at the Fort Brown Memorial Golf Course Clubhouse at 300 River Levee Road in Brownsville.
“We need to know more, much more, about the federal border wall,” said Lucio, D-Brownsville. “At the meeting, we will be hearing from our law enforcement agencies, sharing our personnel stories about the wall and discussing potential solutions.”
Lucio said he sincerely hopes citizens affected by the wall will join him at the meeting.
“In order for our communities to respond to federal policy, we need to have facts, figures and analysis. Saturday's meeting is a step in the right direction,” he said.
Brownsville residents were in the forefront of the opposition groups that sprang up in 2006 and 2007 in opposition to the border wall. They held rallies on the international bridges and organized public meetings. It was to no avail. The Department of Homeland Security built the border wall in the city and on University of Texas at Brownsville land.
Lucio explained why more needs to be learned about the border wall and its impact.
“Since Congress passed the Secure Fence Act in 2006, 70 miles of fencing - 20 feet high - has been built in the Rio Grande Valley. But because the river is the true boundary between Texas and Mexico, the wall actually lies north of the border, dividing residential and commercial properties that run to the river edge,” he said.
Lucio pointed out that during this year’s regular 82nd legislative session he filed a bill that dealt with the federal border wall.
“My bill, Senate Bill 1809, would have required the state government to study the economic impact that the border wall is having on homes, properties, and businesses. The reason is simple. We need to know how many homes are caught in the no man's land between the wall and the river. We need to know how many citrus groves and other agricultural businesses the wall slices through,” he said.
Lucio said he worked hard on this issue and was pleased to see his bill pass the Senate with bipartisan support. “Unfortunately, the bill died when it went to the Texas House of Representatives. To be honest, I was both surprised and disappointed that it did not pass,” Lucio said.
Lucio said it is clear to anyone living in the Lone Star state that Texans value property rights very highly. “With this in mind, you would expect politicians in Texas to be enthusiastic about passing my border wall bill. After all, it would ensure that Texans have accurate information about a controversial federal program that encroaches on local rights,” he said.
“My personal conviction is that border Texans should have the same rights as other Americans when it comes to property rights and freedom of information,” Lucio argued. “Unfortunately, we currently have limited information about the border wall's impact. That is not good enough for the Valley or Texas.”
Lucio said that while Saturday’s public meeting will be a step in the right direction, more needs to be done.
“We need the state government to do its part as well. That is why I plan to file my border wall bill again during the 83rd legislative session in 2013,” Lucio said, assuming he is re-elected.
http://www.riograndeguardian.com/rggnews_story.asp?story_no=24
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Gates to Be Added to Border Wall
KRGV
September 13, 2011
by Farrah Fazal
PROGRESO - All along the border wall are openings that smugglers use. Illegals also go through them. Smugglers see an opportunity in the openings, but not for much longer.
“The bad guys like to use the access points,” says Border Patrol spokesman Dan Milian. “Once we put the gates, it’s going to increase security for the residents and push the activity out to the underdeveloped remote areas.”
Milian says the holes in the wall will start going away in the Valley next month. Eighty gates on the 95 miles of fence will cover the openings. Milian says land owners and law enforcement will unlock the gates two different ways.
“It’s going to be a keypad entry; every person will have access to the code,” says Milian. “Within each unit, they have the radio system. When they hit the mike, it will have a frequency which will communicate with the receiver and open the gate.”
Milian says the gate could be open for periods of time if farmers need more access to their land.
“If it will stop the traffic on our property, we welcome that,” says Othal Brand, general manager and president of Water District No. 3 in McAllen.
Brand says if you're going to build a fence, you need to build the gates. Not all farmers feel the way he does. Only a handful showed up to hear the Border Patrol's plans during a recent public meeting.
CHANNEL 5 NEWS asked a Border Patrol spokesman what happens if a smuggler decides to hold a gun to a farmer's head to get him to open the door. He said it's a tough situation. He also says agents plan on patrolling the gates 24/7, 365 days a year.
http://www.krgv.com/news/local/story/Gates-to-Be-Added-to-Border-Wall/jP0juewnaE6oWKRPriBTkg.cspx
September 13, 2011
by Farrah Fazal
PROGRESO - All along the border wall are openings that smugglers use. Illegals also go through them. Smugglers see an opportunity in the openings, but not for much longer.
“The bad guys like to use the access points,” says Border Patrol spokesman Dan Milian. “Once we put the gates, it’s going to increase security for the residents and push the activity out to the underdeveloped remote areas.”
Milian says the holes in the wall will start going away in the Valley next month. Eighty gates on the 95 miles of fence will cover the openings. Milian says land owners and law enforcement will unlock the gates two different ways.
“It’s going to be a keypad entry; every person will have access to the code,” says Milian. “Within each unit, they have the radio system. When they hit the mike, it will have a frequency which will communicate with the receiver and open the gate.”
Milian says the gate could be open for periods of time if farmers need more access to their land.
“If it will stop the traffic on our property, we welcome that,” says Othal Brand, general manager and president of Water District No. 3 in McAllen.
Brand says if you're going to build a fence, you need to build the gates. Not all farmers feel the way he does. Only a handful showed up to hear the Border Patrol's plans during a recent public meeting.
CHANNEL 5 NEWS asked a Border Patrol spokesman what happens if a smuggler decides to hold a gun to a farmer's head to get him to open the door. He said it's a tough situation. He also says agents plan on patrolling the gates 24/7, 365 days a year.
http://www.krgv.com/news/local/story/Gates-to-Be-Added-to-Border-Wall/jP0juewnaE6oWKRPriBTkg.cspx
Saturday, September 10, 2011
For U.S.-Mexico border town, September 11 brought high wall
Reuters
September 10, 2011
by Tim Gaynor
When news broke of the airliners striking the twin towers in New York 10 years ago, Mexican bookkeeper Jose Manuel Madrid was readying for work in his tiny hometown on the Arizona border.
Watching the tragedy unfold on television, he had no inkling of how it would transform the lives of residents in the remote community of Naco straddling the international border.
"Nobody imagined the repercussions ... that these events would have" for us, said Madrid, now the mayor of Naco, a dusty ranching town of 6,000 residents in Mexico's northern Sonora State.
The September 11 attacks, orchestrated by al Qaeda militants, led to the largest shake-up of the U.S. federal government since the Cold War, with the founding of the Department of Homeland Security in 2003.
As part of its core mission of preventing "terrorists and terrorist weapons from entering the United States," the new Customs and Border Protection agency has since sharply boosted security on the nation's borders
The surge more than doubled the number of Border Patrol agents to 20,000. Infrastructure added to secure the Mexico border includes nearly 700 miles of additional fences as well as lights, sensors, cameras, ground radar and even unmanned surveillance drones.
The changes transformed the lives of residents in Naco, Mexico, and its namesake twin in Arizona -- which have strong community and family ties dating to before the Mexican Revolution more than a century ago.
As a mark of a sometimes quirky relationship, firefighters from the Arizona side used to race south to help their less well equipped colleagues put out fires in Mexico, and residents would hold a joint fiesta with a volleyball game over the waist high border fence. Those things no longer happen.
"We had to adapt to a new situation and get used to the changes," said Madrid, sitting in his office a couple of blocks south of the tall, steel border fence that now marks the international border.
TIGHTER SECURITY
On September 11, 2001, locals recall how Border Patrol agents armed with assault rifles immediately took up guard at the Naco station, although the larger changes to security have been incremental over the past decade.
Most noticeable is the new border wall. Whereas it once extended about a mile either side of Naco, a curtain of steel up to 15-foot (4.5-meter) tall now carves across 20 miles of the high grassland valley, lit at night by stadium-style lights, and monitored by video cameras.
The number of agents at the local U.S. Border Patrol station, meanwhile, has quadrupled to around 400. The station itself is being rebuilt at a reported cost of $40 million to include a new helipad, stabling for more than two dozen horses, as well as a gym, indoor shooting range and offices for agents.
As a measure of its success, the Tucson sector Border Patrol notes that drug seizures in the stretch of border including Naco have risen over the decade, while illegal immigrant arrests have plunged to 212,000 last year from highs of 616,000 in 2000.
"I believe, as an agent, we are more effective than we were 10 years ago, no doubt about it," said Tony Dominguez, a supervisory Border Patrol agent who has worked at the Naco station since before the attacks on New York and Washington.
"All the new infrastructure, the technology, the manpower increase -- it's given us an advantage to basically interdict anything that comes north," he added.
While the security surge has ended the volleyball match over the fence, it is welcomed by some on the Arizona side concerned about Mexican drug traffickers and even bandits slipping over the border.
"It feels a bit safer because of the wall," said local fire district chief Jesus Morales, who is the only elected official in the tiny, unincorporated Arizona town.
"It's ... a bit harder for people coming in to do bad stuff over here," he added.
'NOTHING'S CHANGED'
But other residents in the high desert valley are not persuaded that the buildup has been a benefit to the local community.
"With the wall, and the lights and the Border Patrol hovering over my house at five o'clock in the morning, I'm a lot less happy on the border now than I was," said Diane Daniel, who made soap and goats' cheese at her home near Naco at the time of the attacks.
Daniel is also skeptical that the surge at the border would prevent future attacks like those in 2001, carried out by 19 hijackers from several Arab countries who entered the United States legally.
"I think that the terrorists are either going to be domestic -- that would be my first concern -- or they are going to fly in First Class just like they did the last time," she said.
Local rancher John Ladd says some things have not changed since the attacks.
A decade on, a daily game of cat and mouse between the Border Patrol, smugglers and illegal immigrants continues to play out across his family's 14,000-acre (5,666-hectare) spread outside Naco, damaging fences and gates and letting livestock onto the highway.
"We've got cameras, we've got radar, we've got street lights, we've got more agents, we've got a wall," he said with a weary smile. "Nothing's changed."
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/10/us-sept11-border-mexico-idUSTRE7891QH20110910
September 10, 2011
by Tim Gaynor
When news broke of the airliners striking the twin towers in New York 10 years ago, Mexican bookkeeper Jose Manuel Madrid was readying for work in his tiny hometown on the Arizona border.
Watching the tragedy unfold on television, he had no inkling of how it would transform the lives of residents in the remote community of Naco straddling the international border.
"Nobody imagined the repercussions ... that these events would have" for us, said Madrid, now the mayor of Naco, a dusty ranching town of 6,000 residents in Mexico's northern Sonora State.
The September 11 attacks, orchestrated by al Qaeda militants, led to the largest shake-up of the U.S. federal government since the Cold War, with the founding of the Department of Homeland Security in 2003.
As part of its core mission of preventing "terrorists and terrorist weapons from entering the United States," the new Customs and Border Protection agency has since sharply boosted security on the nation's borders
The surge more than doubled the number of Border Patrol agents to 20,000. Infrastructure added to secure the Mexico border includes nearly 700 miles of additional fences as well as lights, sensors, cameras, ground radar and even unmanned surveillance drones.
The changes transformed the lives of residents in Naco, Mexico, and its namesake twin in Arizona -- which have strong community and family ties dating to before the Mexican Revolution more than a century ago.
As a mark of a sometimes quirky relationship, firefighters from the Arizona side used to race south to help their less well equipped colleagues put out fires in Mexico, and residents would hold a joint fiesta with a volleyball game over the waist high border fence. Those things no longer happen.
"We had to adapt to a new situation and get used to the changes," said Madrid, sitting in his office a couple of blocks south of the tall, steel border fence that now marks the international border.
TIGHTER SECURITY
On September 11, 2001, locals recall how Border Patrol agents armed with assault rifles immediately took up guard at the Naco station, although the larger changes to security have been incremental over the past decade.
Most noticeable is the new border wall. Whereas it once extended about a mile either side of Naco, a curtain of steel up to 15-foot (4.5-meter) tall now carves across 20 miles of the high grassland valley, lit at night by stadium-style lights, and monitored by video cameras.
The number of agents at the local U.S. Border Patrol station, meanwhile, has quadrupled to around 400. The station itself is being rebuilt at a reported cost of $40 million to include a new helipad, stabling for more than two dozen horses, as well as a gym, indoor shooting range and offices for agents.
As a measure of its success, the Tucson sector Border Patrol notes that drug seizures in the stretch of border including Naco have risen over the decade, while illegal immigrant arrests have plunged to 212,000 last year from highs of 616,000 in 2000.
"I believe, as an agent, we are more effective than we were 10 years ago, no doubt about it," said Tony Dominguez, a supervisory Border Patrol agent who has worked at the Naco station since before the attacks on New York and Washington.
"All the new infrastructure, the technology, the manpower increase -- it's given us an advantage to basically interdict anything that comes north," he added.
While the security surge has ended the volleyball match over the fence, it is welcomed by some on the Arizona side concerned about Mexican drug traffickers and even bandits slipping over the border.
"It feels a bit safer because of the wall," said local fire district chief Jesus Morales, who is the only elected official in the tiny, unincorporated Arizona town.
"It's ... a bit harder for people coming in to do bad stuff over here," he added.
'NOTHING'S CHANGED'
But other residents in the high desert valley are not persuaded that the buildup has been a benefit to the local community.
"With the wall, and the lights and the Border Patrol hovering over my house at five o'clock in the morning, I'm a lot less happy on the border now than I was," said Diane Daniel, who made soap and goats' cheese at her home near Naco at the time of the attacks.
Daniel is also skeptical that the surge at the border would prevent future attacks like those in 2001, carried out by 19 hijackers from several Arab countries who entered the United States legally.
"I think that the terrorists are either going to be domestic -- that would be my first concern -- or they are going to fly in First Class just like they did the last time," she said.
Local rancher John Ladd says some things have not changed since the attacks.
A decade on, a daily game of cat and mouse between the Border Patrol, smugglers and illegal immigrants continues to play out across his family's 14,000-acre (5,666-hectare) spread outside Naco, damaging fences and gates and letting livestock onto the highway.
"We've got cameras, we've got radar, we've got street lights, we've got more agents, we've got a wall," he said with a weary smile. "Nothing's changed."
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/10/us-sept11-border-mexico-idUSTRE7891QH20110910
Friday, September 9, 2011
10 years of increased border security
San Antonio Express News
September 9, 2011
By Jason Buch and Lynn Brezosky
LAREDO — In the decade since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, property owners along the Rio Grande have lost land to the border fence and those who live near gaps in the unfinished structure are in the mouth of a funnel for illegal immigration and smuggling.
Travelers can no longer gain entry into the U.S. simply by declaring “American citizen.” Instead, they're met with long lines, rifle-toting customs officers and an array of electronics to scan documents and vehicles.
Cross-border communities in West Texas have withered and died when the unofficial crossings they relied upon were closed. A privately run detention center holding thousands of immigrants went up in a flash near the border.
RFID scanners, X-ray and Gamma-ray machines, SENTRI passes and FAST lanes have become part of the border lexicon, the response to the terrorist attack that cost thousands of U.S. lives and the effort to prevent it from happening again.
“It changed the way we live in this country, and rightfully so,” said Gene Garza, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection field office director who oversees eight ports of entry from Brownsville to Del Rio. “I think we were too relaxed. I think it raised the level of security in this country.”
Overseeing the changes for the last eight years is the Department of Homeland Security with its 200,000 employees and $50 billion annual budget. Often derided as a behemoth bureaucracy, officials defend it as a way to bring the nearly two dozen agencies tasked with protecting the country under one roof.
“I can tell you that our ability to investigate customs related crimes or to investigate immigration related crime would be enhanced by bringing it all under one agent,” said Jerry Robinette, the special agent in charge of the San Antonio office for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which covers much of South Texas.
But the increased security has divided communities, separated families, and, according to Cynta De Narvaez, a West Texas activist who lives in Terlingua, weakened cross border communication and made some border communities more susceptible to the corrupting influences of drug traffickers.
“We messed up pretty badly,” said De Narvaez, who's worked with Mexican families in remote towns that were cut off from U.S. grocery stores and medical facilities after 9/11. “We just didn't do our homework. I think we were in a pretty bad situation and everyone drummed up this stuff about border security.”
The wall
Half a continent away from ground zero, on a small plot of land with three white frame houses, Texas border resident Eloisa Tamez sees daily a reminder of the 9/11 attacks — what locals call the muro, or border wall.
“They defaced our community, and no telling the outcome on wildlife,” she said. “We are those unrecognized, invisible victims of 9/11. We should be having a memorial also, because we lost our land.”
Tamez was the poster child of protests against the Secure Fence Act of 2006, a keystone of President Bush's pledge to crack down on illegal immigration and secure the porous southern border.
The tangle was that in Texas, most of the land backing up to the Rio Grande was private, in some cases dating to Spanish land grants predating America's Revolutionary War. A map leaked to the press showed federal engineers had drawn lines for the fence without local input. It cut through a college campus and wildlife preserves and created a “no man's land” south of the fence that would have engulfed much of a small city.
There were bumper stickers and protests. At one, Tamez shouted “ No al muro!” and beat apart a wall-shaped piñata.
In the end, the fence that went up near her wasn't very imposing. It stretches in back of neighborhoods like a long row of toothpicks.
The fence is intermittent, meaning migrants and drug traffickers just come through the gaps. About an hour west in Granjeno, now backed by a reinforced levee-wall, resident Gloria Garza said one such opening funnels migrants through at a rate that has neighbors terrified.
“It used to be those people would come now and then... you'd give them a lunch bag or water,” she said. “We don't do that any more.”
She's seen them hiding in her plants, sitting on her porch. One rang the doorbell to say thanks; the smuggler had told him residents were paid a sort of campsite fee. Another was belligerent and demanded water. The faces are from India and China, not just Mexico and Central America.
Border Patrol spokesman Daniel Milian said the agency recently hosted two open houses to tell residents that punch-code gates were on the way.
“It's a very lengthy process as far as getting all the particulars behind the gates, figuring out what dimensions they needed to be, what type of design they wanted to use,” he said.
The economics
Some of the changes wrought by 9/11 took years to manifest themselves. For almost eight years after the attacks, it was possible to enter the U.S. at the international bridges simply by declaring citizenship.
Travelers are now encouraged to show a passport card, enhanced drivers license, a passport or documents identifying them as part of a trusted traveler program. CBP cannot deny entry to a U.S. citizen, but someone trying to get through without approved documents is likely to face a battery of questions and possibly spend some time in secondary inspection. Short-term visitors from Mexico must cough up $150 for a border crossing card.
That's had an impact on commerce. Les Norton, whose family owns three stores in the downtown Laredo shopping district full of shops that offer “ mayoreo y menudeo” (wholesale and retail) products primarily to Mexican customers who walk across the international bridge, said increased scrutiny makes it harder for shoppers to enter the U.S. and longer lines discourage them.
It wiped out McAllen merchant Monica Weisberg-Stewart's customer base: the maquila workers who'd cross by foot and take a bus to shop for discounted bras and dresses.
“In over 57 years of family business, we've never seen anything like this,” she said. “This was worse than any peso devaluation.”
The long lines are a burden as well to Nuevo Laredo resident Jose Manuel Zamora Diaz, who crosses several times a day to buy goods in Laredo that he ships to Mexico City and sells. When lines reach 1 ½ to two hours, he can sometimes only cross once a day, Zamora Diaz said.
CBP has put in programs intended to make the bridges run more smoothly, most of which involve CBP electronically collecting information about people and goods before they reach the ports of entry. Travelers with a SENTRI pass pay about $125 and undergo a background check to use an expedited lane.
In order to qualify for bringing goods across through expedited commercial lanes, customs broker Daniel B. Hastings Jr. said he's dropped money into heightened security including random drug tests for employees, camera surveillance of trucks as they're loaded and measures that restrict the movement of employees and visitors around company property.
“Our lives have changed in that we have placed security at a paramount of importance,” Hastings said.
Increased security or no, large-scale international commerce continues to thrive. Trade between the U.S. and Mexico is at an all-time high.
Some positive impact
The focus on security has had a positive economic impact as well. The major population centers along the Texas-Mexico border performed well in the recession, in part due to the increased federal spending there.
Since 2004, the number of Border Patrol agents in the country has doubled to more than 20,000 by 2010. In the Laredo Border Patrol sector, the number has increased by more than 800 to 1,858. In the Rio Grande Valley sector, it's increased by about 1,000 to 2,441. An entry-level position with Border Patrol pays about $38,000.
“For every one government employee that comes, like Border Patrol or a customs inspector, the multiplier factor can be 3.1 to 3.7” jobs created, said Hastings, who serves on the board of directors for the International Bank of Commerce in Laredo and is a past member of the board of directors for the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas' San Antonio branch.
Those government employees spend money on things like “housing, retail, electricity, schooling,” Hastings said. “Plus they're paying taxes. So the impact is exponential.”
In addition, the government has spent money on infrastructure and technology. Newfangled scanners grace ports of entry and Border Patrol checkpoints and agents now zoom up and down the river in airboats and overhead in helicopters and airplanes.
Humanitarian costs
Even as Homeland Security finds ways to accommodate border life — Laredo's new port director said he plans to add more pedestrian lanes to the international bridge there and CBP says that next year the famous Boquillas crossing at Big Bend National Park will reopen — there are broader implications.
University of Texas law professor Denise Gilman said the fence is only part of how the Sept. 11 attacks brought a sea change in how the nation viewed the southern border and illegal immigrants.
“I remember President (Vicente) Fox and President Bush meeting and promising that there was going to be reform, that we were going to bring the approximately 11 million undocumented individuals out of the shadows,” she said. “Those negotiations completely fell apart and we went pretty much in the other direction.”
Deportations escalated, she said, as did detentions. There was the round-the-clock construction to erect the “tent city” detention center in Raymondville in time for Bush to announce the end of “catch and release” of non-Mexican illegal immigrants. Allegations of human rights abuses have been rampant.
University of Texas-El Paso economist Thomas Fullerton published a study on how the attacks impacted border trade.
“Even while El Paso wasn't hit by any of the planes, it was clear that regulatory practices at the airport and the international bridges were disrupting travel and commuting patterns,” he said.
It was a multi-year effect, he said, that started with three-hour wait times on the Mexican side of international bridges in the months after the attacks.
“The geographic proximity of Ciudad Juarez was dealt a blow by 9-11,” he said. “It was as if Ciudad Juarez all of a sudden was three hours south in the interior of Mexico.”
Laredo resident Roberto Sanchez said he crosses to Nuevo Laredo occasionally to buy medicine. The longer wait times are a hassle, Sanchez said, but he's more concerned about the lack of bathrooms on the bridge than the increased scrutiny.
“They check every card from everybody,” he said. “But that's OK, because it's more secure.”
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/10-years-of-increased-border-security-2163562.php#page-1
September 9, 2011
By Jason Buch and Lynn Brezosky
LAREDO — In the decade since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, property owners along the Rio Grande have lost land to the border fence and those who live near gaps in the unfinished structure are in the mouth of a funnel for illegal immigration and smuggling.
Travelers can no longer gain entry into the U.S. simply by declaring “American citizen.” Instead, they're met with long lines, rifle-toting customs officers and an array of electronics to scan documents and vehicles.
Cross-border communities in West Texas have withered and died when the unofficial crossings they relied upon were closed. A privately run detention center holding thousands of immigrants went up in a flash near the border.
RFID scanners, X-ray and Gamma-ray machines, SENTRI passes and FAST lanes have become part of the border lexicon, the response to the terrorist attack that cost thousands of U.S. lives and the effort to prevent it from happening again.
“It changed the way we live in this country, and rightfully so,” said Gene Garza, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection field office director who oversees eight ports of entry from Brownsville to Del Rio. “I think we were too relaxed. I think it raised the level of security in this country.”
Overseeing the changes for the last eight years is the Department of Homeland Security with its 200,000 employees and $50 billion annual budget. Often derided as a behemoth bureaucracy, officials defend it as a way to bring the nearly two dozen agencies tasked with protecting the country under one roof.
“I can tell you that our ability to investigate customs related crimes or to investigate immigration related crime would be enhanced by bringing it all under one agent,” said Jerry Robinette, the special agent in charge of the San Antonio office for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which covers much of South Texas.
But the increased security has divided communities, separated families, and, according to Cynta De Narvaez, a West Texas activist who lives in Terlingua, weakened cross border communication and made some border communities more susceptible to the corrupting influences of drug traffickers.
“We messed up pretty badly,” said De Narvaez, who's worked with Mexican families in remote towns that were cut off from U.S. grocery stores and medical facilities after 9/11. “We just didn't do our homework. I think we were in a pretty bad situation and everyone drummed up this stuff about border security.”
The wall
Half a continent away from ground zero, on a small plot of land with three white frame houses, Texas border resident Eloisa Tamez sees daily a reminder of the 9/11 attacks — what locals call the muro, or border wall.
“They defaced our community, and no telling the outcome on wildlife,” she said. “We are those unrecognized, invisible victims of 9/11. We should be having a memorial also, because we lost our land.”
Tamez was the poster child of protests against the Secure Fence Act of 2006, a keystone of President Bush's pledge to crack down on illegal immigration and secure the porous southern border.
The tangle was that in Texas, most of the land backing up to the Rio Grande was private, in some cases dating to Spanish land grants predating America's Revolutionary War. A map leaked to the press showed federal engineers had drawn lines for the fence without local input. It cut through a college campus and wildlife preserves and created a “no man's land” south of the fence that would have engulfed much of a small city.
There were bumper stickers and protests. At one, Tamez shouted “ No al muro!” and beat apart a wall-shaped piñata.
In the end, the fence that went up near her wasn't very imposing. It stretches in back of neighborhoods like a long row of toothpicks.
The fence is intermittent, meaning migrants and drug traffickers just come through the gaps. About an hour west in Granjeno, now backed by a reinforced levee-wall, resident Gloria Garza said one such opening funnels migrants through at a rate that has neighbors terrified.
“It used to be those people would come now and then... you'd give them a lunch bag or water,” she said. “We don't do that any more.”
She's seen them hiding in her plants, sitting on her porch. One rang the doorbell to say thanks; the smuggler had told him residents were paid a sort of campsite fee. Another was belligerent and demanded water. The faces are from India and China, not just Mexico and Central America.
Border Patrol spokesman Daniel Milian said the agency recently hosted two open houses to tell residents that punch-code gates were on the way.
“It's a very lengthy process as far as getting all the particulars behind the gates, figuring out what dimensions they needed to be, what type of design they wanted to use,” he said.
The economics
Some of the changes wrought by 9/11 took years to manifest themselves. For almost eight years after the attacks, it was possible to enter the U.S. at the international bridges simply by declaring citizenship.
Travelers are now encouraged to show a passport card, enhanced drivers license, a passport or documents identifying them as part of a trusted traveler program. CBP cannot deny entry to a U.S. citizen, but someone trying to get through without approved documents is likely to face a battery of questions and possibly spend some time in secondary inspection. Short-term visitors from Mexico must cough up $150 for a border crossing card.
That's had an impact on commerce. Les Norton, whose family owns three stores in the downtown Laredo shopping district full of shops that offer “ mayoreo y menudeo” (wholesale and retail) products primarily to Mexican customers who walk across the international bridge, said increased scrutiny makes it harder for shoppers to enter the U.S. and longer lines discourage them.
It wiped out McAllen merchant Monica Weisberg-Stewart's customer base: the maquila workers who'd cross by foot and take a bus to shop for discounted bras and dresses.
“In over 57 years of family business, we've never seen anything like this,” she said. “This was worse than any peso devaluation.”
The long lines are a burden as well to Nuevo Laredo resident Jose Manuel Zamora Diaz, who crosses several times a day to buy goods in Laredo that he ships to Mexico City and sells. When lines reach 1 ½ to two hours, he can sometimes only cross once a day, Zamora Diaz said.
CBP has put in programs intended to make the bridges run more smoothly, most of which involve CBP electronically collecting information about people and goods before they reach the ports of entry. Travelers with a SENTRI pass pay about $125 and undergo a background check to use an expedited lane.
In order to qualify for bringing goods across through expedited commercial lanes, customs broker Daniel B. Hastings Jr. said he's dropped money into heightened security including random drug tests for employees, camera surveillance of trucks as they're loaded and measures that restrict the movement of employees and visitors around company property.
“Our lives have changed in that we have placed security at a paramount of importance,” Hastings said.
Increased security or no, large-scale international commerce continues to thrive. Trade between the U.S. and Mexico is at an all-time high.
Some positive impact
The focus on security has had a positive economic impact as well. The major population centers along the Texas-Mexico border performed well in the recession, in part due to the increased federal spending there.
Since 2004, the number of Border Patrol agents in the country has doubled to more than 20,000 by 2010. In the Laredo Border Patrol sector, the number has increased by more than 800 to 1,858. In the Rio Grande Valley sector, it's increased by about 1,000 to 2,441. An entry-level position with Border Patrol pays about $38,000.
“For every one government employee that comes, like Border Patrol or a customs inspector, the multiplier factor can be 3.1 to 3.7” jobs created, said Hastings, who serves on the board of directors for the International Bank of Commerce in Laredo and is a past member of the board of directors for the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas' San Antonio branch.
Those government employees spend money on things like “housing, retail, electricity, schooling,” Hastings said. “Plus they're paying taxes. So the impact is exponential.”
In addition, the government has spent money on infrastructure and technology. Newfangled scanners grace ports of entry and Border Patrol checkpoints and agents now zoom up and down the river in airboats and overhead in helicopters and airplanes.
Humanitarian costs
Even as Homeland Security finds ways to accommodate border life — Laredo's new port director said he plans to add more pedestrian lanes to the international bridge there and CBP says that next year the famous Boquillas crossing at Big Bend National Park will reopen — there are broader implications.
University of Texas law professor Denise Gilman said the fence is only part of how the Sept. 11 attacks brought a sea change in how the nation viewed the southern border and illegal immigrants.
“I remember President (Vicente) Fox and President Bush meeting and promising that there was going to be reform, that we were going to bring the approximately 11 million undocumented individuals out of the shadows,” she said. “Those negotiations completely fell apart and we went pretty much in the other direction.”
Deportations escalated, she said, as did detentions. There was the round-the-clock construction to erect the “tent city” detention center in Raymondville in time for Bush to announce the end of “catch and release” of non-Mexican illegal immigrants. Allegations of human rights abuses have been rampant.
University of Texas-El Paso economist Thomas Fullerton published a study on how the attacks impacted border trade.
“Even while El Paso wasn't hit by any of the planes, it was clear that regulatory practices at the airport and the international bridges were disrupting travel and commuting patterns,” he said.
It was a multi-year effect, he said, that started with three-hour wait times on the Mexican side of international bridges in the months after the attacks.
“The geographic proximity of Ciudad Juarez was dealt a blow by 9-11,” he said. “It was as if Ciudad Juarez all of a sudden was three hours south in the interior of Mexico.”
Laredo resident Roberto Sanchez said he crosses to Nuevo Laredo occasionally to buy medicine. The longer wait times are a hassle, Sanchez said, but he's more concerned about the lack of bathrooms on the bridge than the increased scrutiny.
“They check every card from everybody,” he said. “But that's OK, because it's more secure.”
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/10-years-of-increased-border-security-2163562.php#page-1
Ex-Border Security Chief Calls Fence a Dumb Idea
US News and World Reports
September 9, 2011
by Mallie Jane Kim
Fencing off the entire U.S.-Mexico border was one of the "dumbest" ideas former Customs and Border Protection Commissioner W. Ralph Basham was presented with during his tenure, he said Friday. The comments, given at an event on border security since 9/11 at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, fly in the face of claims by 2012 GOP candidates Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann, who have both emphasized their support for a border fence, and lend credence to candidates Rick Perry and Ron Paul, who both oppose it.
"You can't just pick up the phone and call Long Fence," Basham joked, pointing out a 10-foot fence would inspire would-be border crossers to get an 11-foot ladder. When he became commissioner in 2006 under President Bush, the fence idea was all the rage, and he said congressional mandates from lawmakers who didn't understand the challenges had CBP "chasing our tail" trying to keep up. "We all knew that [the fence] wasn't the answer. That wasn't the solution."
On a tour of the Southwest border, Basham says, then House Speaker Dennis Hastert continually insisted the fence was the only way to seal it. The tour passed a penitentiary surrounded by a chain-link fence with barbed wire. "He said, 'That's what we need right there,'" Basham remembers of Hastert. "And I said, 'With all due respect, no.'"
After three days of briefings and a tour of the harsh border terrain, though, Hastert changed his tune. At a press conference in Nogales, Ariz., the speaker stood up and endorsed Basham's three-pronged approach: some infrastructure (like a fence), better technology, and the right level of staffing.
Current CBP Commissioner Alan Bersin, who was also at Friday's event, chimed in, diplomatically assuring the crowd he didn't blame Congress, but adding, "I'm still waiting for that call from Long Fence."
The commissioners expressed frustration that some members of Congress and others continue to say the border region is insecure and crime-riddled. The fight against organized crime in Mexico is seeing little seepage over the border, they said, and Bersin pointed out that the border is the safest it has been in 30 years. Though border patrol agents do put their lives at risk in their line of work, crime rates in El Paso and San Diego are far lower than those of Detroit or Philadelphia. "Part of the aftermath of 9/11," Bersin said, is that "the vulnerability we felt that day in regards to our borders is taken advantage of by those who would exploit fear."
To those people, Bersin says he offers two bits of wisdom: To paraphrase Mark Twain, "First, let's get our facts straight. Then you can distort them as much as you like"; and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, "The only thing the American people have to fear is fear itself."
http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2011/09/09/ex-border-security-chief-calls-fence-a-dumb-idea
September 9, 2011
by Mallie Jane Kim
Fencing off the entire U.S.-Mexico border was one of the "dumbest" ideas former Customs and Border Protection Commissioner W. Ralph Basham was presented with during his tenure, he said Friday. The comments, given at an event on border security since 9/11 at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, fly in the face of claims by 2012 GOP candidates Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann, who have both emphasized their support for a border fence, and lend credence to candidates Rick Perry and Ron Paul, who both oppose it.
"You can't just pick up the phone and call Long Fence," Basham joked, pointing out a 10-foot fence would inspire would-be border crossers to get an 11-foot ladder. When he became commissioner in 2006 under President Bush, the fence idea was all the rage, and he said congressional mandates from lawmakers who didn't understand the challenges had CBP "chasing our tail" trying to keep up. "We all knew that [the fence] wasn't the answer. That wasn't the solution."
On a tour of the Southwest border, Basham says, then House Speaker Dennis Hastert continually insisted the fence was the only way to seal it. The tour passed a penitentiary surrounded by a chain-link fence with barbed wire. "He said, 'That's what we need right there,'" Basham remembers of Hastert. "And I said, 'With all due respect, no.'"
After three days of briefings and a tour of the harsh border terrain, though, Hastert changed his tune. At a press conference in Nogales, Ariz., the speaker stood up and endorsed Basham's three-pronged approach: some infrastructure (like a fence), better technology, and the right level of staffing.
Current CBP Commissioner Alan Bersin, who was also at Friday's event, chimed in, diplomatically assuring the crowd he didn't blame Congress, but adding, "I'm still waiting for that call from Long Fence."
The commissioners expressed frustration that some members of Congress and others continue to say the border region is insecure and crime-riddled. The fight against organized crime in Mexico is seeing little seepage over the border, they said, and Bersin pointed out that the border is the safest it has been in 30 years. Though border patrol agents do put their lives at risk in their line of work, crime rates in El Paso and San Diego are far lower than those of Detroit or Philadelphia. "Part of the aftermath of 9/11," Bersin said, is that "the vulnerability we felt that day in regards to our borders is taken advantage of by those who would exploit fear."
To those people, Bersin says he offers two bits of wisdom: To paraphrase Mark Twain, "First, let's get our facts straight. Then you can distort them as much as you like"; and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, "The only thing the American people have to fear is fear itself."
http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2011/09/09/ex-border-security-chief-calls-fence-a-dumb-idea
DHS Pushes for Border Fence in Floodplain
Texas Observer
September 7, 2011
by Melissa del Bosque
The Department of Homeland Security is pushing for 14 miles of border wall to be built through Hidalgo and Starr counties even though it could flood U.S. towns and violate a treaty with Mexico.
In 2006, Congress passed its Secure Fence Act mandating the construction of 700 miles of fence along the U.S.-Mexico border. Hundreds of Texas landowners were sued and their land seized by the Department of Homeland Security.
Residents in the communities of Roma, Los Ebanos and Rio Grande City got a reprieve from construction, however, because of “engineering and hydraulic problems,” according to U.S. Congressman Henry Cuellar, who said in a 2008 McAllen Monitor story: "Realistically and practically, they're basically passing this decision (on the border fence) to the next administration. Certainly, for my constituents, we have a victory."
The “engineering and hydraulic problems” the Congressman alluded to was the fact that the 18-foot impermeable fence would have to be constructed in a floodplain to fulfill the congressional mandate. Building a fence that costs approximately $4.5 million a mile in a floodplain sounds like a joke. And it would be if taxpayers weren’t paying for it, and if it weren’t common practice for the Department of Homeland Security to build fences in washes, floodplains and riverbeds along the border.
Recently, 40 feet of steel border fence washed away during a flash flood in the Arizona desert. This was after the U.S. Border Patrol had been warned by Arizona park officials that the fence would be washed away during the summer monsoon season. Despite their warnings, Border Patrol issued an environmental assessment saying that the fence “would not impede the natural flow of water or cause flooding.”
The destroyed fence constructed by Kiewit Western Co. cost taxpayers $21.3 million to build, according to the Arizona Daily Star.
When it comes to the border wall, the Department of Homeland Security has a history of avoiding scientific data and environmental impacts when it stands in the way of constructing border fence.
The 14-mile section of border fence through Roma, Los Ebanos and Rio Grande City is no different. Several hydrological studies conducted by a private firm Baker Engineering hired by U.S. Customs and Border Protection have shown that an 18-foot impermeable fence in a floodplain will either push floodwaters into Mexico – violating a 1970 international treaty or it will worsen flooding on the U.S. side of the border.
Despite the findings, government documents reveal that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (the DHS agency) which oversees construction of the fence is pushing the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC), which has jurisdiction over the Rio Grande to sign off on building the 14-mile fence in the floodplain.
In a February 2010 letter, David Aguilar, CBP’s deputy commissioner applied pressure to IBWC’s Commissioner Ed Drusina to approve the project despite his agency and Mexico’s opposition to constructing the fence.
“Because the Mexican Section of the IBWC has opposed all proposed border fencing
within the Rio Grande and Colorado Rivers’ floodplains since the enactment of the
Secure Fence Act (regardless of the expected floodplain impacts), Commissioner Ruth
was not optimistic that the Mexican Commissioner would agree to support the proposed
fencing and indicated during the January 6th meeting that an unilateral decision would
likely be needed to construct the fence segments. We understand that the Mexican
Commissioner did in fact recently inform Commissioner Ruth that Mexico would oppose
the fence segments if formally submitted to them for consideration.
For the numerous reasons stated above, we respectfully request that the USIBWC and
Department of State reconsider your position and approve a unilateral decision to allow
us to proceed with the design and construction of the O-1, O-2 and O-3 fence segments.”
The IBWC was not persuaded, however. “Until other analysis can demonstrate that the fence will not deflect flows or increase water elevation above our criteria we must again deny our support for the proposed alignment of the fence…” wrote Commissioner Drusina to Alan Bersin, commissioner of Customs and Border Protection.
Bersin wrote back asking for a meeting with high level officials from the State Department, the IBWC and USCBP to talk about “challenges” to building the border fence segments “which are urgently needed to secure this area of the border.” One challenge Bersin listed was “Mexico’s recent opposition to border fencing regardless of hydraulic modeling results.”
IBWC met with U.S. Customs and Border Protection two more times. The end result was that CBP paid Baker Engineering to create yet another flood model, to try and prove that a wall in a floodplain was a good idea, says border resident Scott Nicol, a Sierra Club volunteer and author of the No Border Wall blog. Nicol learned of this during a conference call with IBWC officials. He also learned that the Baker Engineering report will be turned over to IBWC any day. If the agency signs off on it CBP could begin construction of the fence. The Department of Homeland Security has already seized several properties in these cities and is making an effort to speed up lawsuit settlements with landowners.
Nicol started looking into the new fence construction after he saw a brief mention of it in a government report last spring. “I thought they’d given up,” he says. “But apparently they were really pushing to get it done.”
Nicol worries that the new fence segments will flood the U.S. communities. He's examined the various Baker Engineering flood models and is especially concerned about the Los Ebanos wall.
“It could have serious implications for local residents,” he says. “There at the split point the river takes a sharp southward bend, while the wall runs due east. There could conceivably be a dry space between the community, which would have water sent towards it by the wall, and the river to its south (near the hand-drawn ferry). Even worse, the wall abruptly turns to the north at the end of town. This could bottle up waters that have been split off from the river, trapping flood water in the community.”
The question for these border communities now is will the IBWC be steamrollered by the Department of Homeland Security? It’s happened before and it could happen again. And if it does, once again U.S. taxpayers and border communities will pay the price.
http://www.texasobserver.org/lalinea/dhs-pushes-for-more-border-fence-in-floodplain#
September 7, 2011
by Melissa del Bosque
The Department of Homeland Security is pushing for 14 miles of border wall to be built through Hidalgo and Starr counties even though it could flood U.S. towns and violate a treaty with Mexico.
In 2006, Congress passed its Secure Fence Act mandating the construction of 700 miles of fence along the U.S.-Mexico border. Hundreds of Texas landowners were sued and their land seized by the Department of Homeland Security.
Residents in the communities of Roma, Los Ebanos and Rio Grande City got a reprieve from construction, however, because of “engineering and hydraulic problems,” according to U.S. Congressman Henry Cuellar, who said in a 2008 McAllen Monitor story: "Realistically and practically, they're basically passing this decision (on the border fence) to the next administration. Certainly, for my constituents, we have a victory."
The “engineering and hydraulic problems” the Congressman alluded to was the fact that the 18-foot impermeable fence would have to be constructed in a floodplain to fulfill the congressional mandate. Building a fence that costs approximately $4.5 million a mile in a floodplain sounds like a joke. And it would be if taxpayers weren’t paying for it, and if it weren’t common practice for the Department of Homeland Security to build fences in washes, floodplains and riverbeds along the border.
Recently, 40 feet of steel border fence washed away during a flash flood in the Arizona desert. This was after the U.S. Border Patrol had been warned by Arizona park officials that the fence would be washed away during the summer monsoon season. Despite their warnings, Border Patrol issued an environmental assessment saying that the fence “would not impede the natural flow of water or cause flooding.”
The destroyed fence constructed by Kiewit Western Co. cost taxpayers $21.3 million to build, according to the Arizona Daily Star.
When it comes to the border wall, the Department of Homeland Security has a history of avoiding scientific data and environmental impacts when it stands in the way of constructing border fence.
The 14-mile section of border fence through Roma, Los Ebanos and Rio Grande City is no different. Several hydrological studies conducted by a private firm Baker Engineering hired by U.S. Customs and Border Protection have shown that an 18-foot impermeable fence in a floodplain will either push floodwaters into Mexico – violating a 1970 international treaty or it will worsen flooding on the U.S. side of the border.
Despite the findings, government documents reveal that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (the DHS agency) which oversees construction of the fence is pushing the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC), which has jurisdiction over the Rio Grande to sign off on building the 14-mile fence in the floodplain.
In a February 2010 letter, David Aguilar, CBP’s deputy commissioner applied pressure to IBWC’s Commissioner Ed Drusina to approve the project despite his agency and Mexico’s opposition to constructing the fence.
“Because the Mexican Section of the IBWC has opposed all proposed border fencing
within the Rio Grande and Colorado Rivers’ floodplains since the enactment of the
Secure Fence Act (regardless of the expected floodplain impacts), Commissioner Ruth
was not optimistic that the Mexican Commissioner would agree to support the proposed
fencing and indicated during the January 6th meeting that an unilateral decision would
likely be needed to construct the fence segments. We understand that the Mexican
Commissioner did in fact recently inform Commissioner Ruth that Mexico would oppose
the fence segments if formally submitted to them for consideration.
For the numerous reasons stated above, we respectfully request that the USIBWC and
Department of State reconsider your position and approve a unilateral decision to allow
us to proceed with the design and construction of the O-1, O-2 and O-3 fence segments.”
The IBWC was not persuaded, however. “Until other analysis can demonstrate that the fence will not deflect flows or increase water elevation above our criteria we must again deny our support for the proposed alignment of the fence…” wrote Commissioner Drusina to Alan Bersin, commissioner of Customs and Border Protection.
Bersin wrote back asking for a meeting with high level officials from the State Department, the IBWC and USCBP to talk about “challenges” to building the border fence segments “which are urgently needed to secure this area of the border.” One challenge Bersin listed was “Mexico’s recent opposition to border fencing regardless of hydraulic modeling results.”
IBWC met with U.S. Customs and Border Protection two more times. The end result was that CBP paid Baker Engineering to create yet another flood model, to try and prove that a wall in a floodplain was a good idea, says border resident Scott Nicol, a Sierra Club volunteer and author of the No Border Wall blog. Nicol learned of this during a conference call with IBWC officials. He also learned that the Baker Engineering report will be turned over to IBWC any day. If the agency signs off on it CBP could begin construction of the fence. The Department of Homeland Security has already seized several properties in these cities and is making an effort to speed up lawsuit settlements with landowners.
Nicol started looking into the new fence construction after he saw a brief mention of it in a government report last spring. “I thought they’d given up,” he says. “But apparently they were really pushing to get it done.”
Nicol worries that the new fence segments will flood the U.S. communities. He's examined the various Baker Engineering flood models and is especially concerned about the Los Ebanos wall.
“It could have serious implications for local residents,” he says. “There at the split point the river takes a sharp southward bend, while the wall runs due east. There could conceivably be a dry space between the community, which would have water sent towards it by the wall, and the river to its south (near the hand-drawn ferry). Even worse, the wall abruptly turns to the north at the end of town. This could bottle up waters that have been split off from the river, trapping flood water in the community.”
The question for these border communities now is will the IBWC be steamrollered by the Department of Homeland Security? It’s happened before and it could happen again. And if it does, once again U.S. taxpayers and border communities will pay the price.
http://www.texasobserver.org/lalinea/dhs-pushes-for-more-border-fence-in-floodplain#
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)