More border fencing could be on the way, warns No Border Wall group

Rio Grande Guardian
July 8, 2009

McALLEN, July 8 - The No Border Wall coalition has warned that an extra 700 miles of border fencing could be built as a result of a Senate amendment to a Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill.

“This is why the fight is not over. Even in places where the wall is ‘finished,’ more will be built if these are signed by President Obama,” said No Border Wall coalition spokesman Scott Nicol.

“Gaps in the walls in Texas will be filled in, vehicle barriers in Arizona will be replaced with 16 foot steel walls, and single layered walls will be doubled.”

The Border Network for Human Rights, a community organization based in El Paso and southern New Mexico, is also upset with the success of the amendment.

“It seems that senators have decided to ignore the basic mandate expressed in the last elections, which was to change ill-conceived immigration policies,” said Fernando Garcia, executive director of Border Network.

“Instead of working hard to find comprehensive, practical and efficient solutions for our broken immigration system, senators have decided to continue with dysfunctional and fiscally irresponsible border enforcement policies.”

Garcia said that when the wall is complete, it will have cost tax-payers more than $9 million dollars per mile.

“A minority of anti-immigrant senators have hijacked national security policy,” Garcia said. “It appears that rhetoric, hate, and fear are still driving the immigration policy and that nothing has changed from the previous administration and Congress that scape-goated border residents and immigrant communities at a huge cost to the American taxpayer.”

The amendment to the Fiscal Year 2010 Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Bill was sponsored by Sen. Jim DeMint, a Republican from South Carolina. The vote was 54 to 44 in favor of the amendment. The amendment calls for another 700 miles of double-layered border fencing to be built by Dec. 31, 2010.

“The American people were promised a secure border fence three years ago and it’s time to make it happen,” DeMint said, after the vote. “Our southern border has become a battleground for illegal immigration, drug trafficking, and human trafficking, and it’s vulnerable to terrorists. Unfortunately, our government has dragged its feet for years and tried to use untested and un-secure ‘virtual’ fencing instead of actual, physical fencing.”

DeMint said the first priority of the nation must be national security. “We can only achieve that goal with secure borders. I’m pleased with the strong bipartisan vote in favor of a finishing a real border fence next year. I will work to ensure no one cuts or weakens this important provision in conference,” he said.

The Fiscal Year 2008 Omnibus spending bill required 700 miles of reinforced double-layer fencing to built along the southern border and set a deadline for 370 miles of the fence to be completed by December 31, 2008, DeMint said. To this date, he said, DHS has only constructed 34.3 miles of double-layer fencing, leaving more than 660 miles of required double-layer fencing remaining to be built.

The DeMint amendment says “ineffective fencing” to restrain pedestrians, such as vehicle barriers and virtual fencing, does not meet the 700 miles required by law. The amendment sets a deadline of December 31, 2010 for completion of the required 700 miles of reinforced double-layer fencing and the installation of related equipment.

The amendment also requires the secretary of DHS to submit a report to Congress by September 30, 2009 on the progress made and her plans for completing the fence by December 31, 2010.

Texas Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Corny, both Republicans, voted for the amendment, Nicol said. Neither senator has sent out a news release about their vote.

Other senators from border states to back the measure, Nicol said, were Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein, both Democrats, of California, and John McCain, and Jon Kyl, both Republicans, of Arizona.

Another amendment has been introduced by Kyl that calls for funds to build “not fewer than 330 miles of at least double layer fencing,” Nicol said. “Hopefully this one will not also pass,” he said.

http://www.riograndeguardian.com/rggnews_story.asp?story_no=18

Senate backs 700 miles of real fencing on border

Associated Press
July 8, 2009
by Andrew Taylor

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate voted Wednesday to require actual fencing along 700 miles of the border with Mexico rather than vehicle barriers and high-tech equipment.

The plan by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., won approval by a 54-44 vote as the Senate began a second day of debate on a $42.9 billion measure to fund the Department of Homeland Security for the budget year beginning Oct. 1.

DeMint said the U.S.-Mexico border "has become a battleground" as drug and weapons traffickers, along with illegal immigrants, move too freely. He said the department is spending too much on "virtual" fencing such as motion detectors. Those barriers, he said, don't work as well as a real fence designed to block people crossing the border on foot.

Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, countered that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency was the best judge of the preferred fencing for various parts of the border. He said some stretches of physical fencing can cost up to $5 million per mile.

Separately, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., pushed through a plan to extend permanently the E-Verify program, which uses the Social Security database to check whether workers are illegal immigrants. His plan also would require companies doing business with the federal government to use the system.

The two developments demonstrated the extent to which spending bills can serve as vehicles for policy debates.

On Tuesday night, for example, the House Appropriations Committee approved an amendment that effectively would force General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC to restore franchise agreements with dealers as a condition of partial government ownership. That development came as the committee approved a spending bill to fund the Treasury Department, White House operations and other programs.

"It would force them to honor their franchise agreements and not use the excuse of bankruptcy to do what they couldn't have done under state franchise law," said Rep. Steve LaTourette, R-Ohio. "There are horror stories all over the country."

LaTourette's amendment is vulnerable to a procedural challenge in the full House next week. But the committee chairman, Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., said he would fight to save the amendment.

Other budget work kept Congress busy Wednesday.

A Senate panel approved a $34.3 billion measure for the Energy Department and Army Corps of Engineers' water projects. A second was set to OK a $24.4 billion proposal for the Treasury Department, the White House and the federal contribution to the District of Columbia.

Later, the House planned to consider a measure covering farm and nutrition programs.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gBPaHA8wyvhZsKWPW8Uxp30QpfqgD99ADH200

(Here is the roll call for the amendment sponsored by Senator DeMint, best known for renaming French Fries "Freedom Fries")

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=111&session=1&vote=00220

YEAs ---54
Alexander (R-TN)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Baucus (D-MT)
Bayh (D-IN)
Bennett (R-UT)
Bond (R-MO)
Boxer (D-CA)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burr (R-NC)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Conrad (D-ND)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Enzi (R-WY)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Graham (R-SC)
Grassley (R-IA)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hatch (R-UT)
Hutchison (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Johanns (R-NE)
Klobuchar (D-MN)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lincoln (D-AR)
McCain (R-AZ)
McCaskill (D-MO)
McConnell (R-KY)
Merkley (D-OR)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Pryor (D-AR)
Risch (R-ID)
Roberts (R-KS)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Schumer (D-NY)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Snowe (R-ME)
Specter (D-PA)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Tester (D-MT)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)
Webb (D-VA)
Wicker (R-MS)
Wyden (D-OR)

NAYs ---44
Akaka (D-HI)
Begich (D-AK)
Bennet (D-CO)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Brown (D-OH)
Burris (D-IL)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Cardin (D-MD)
Carper (D-DE)
Casey (D-PA)
Cochran (R-MS)
Collins (R-ME)
Dodd (D-CT)
Durbin (D-IL)
Ensign (R-NV)
Feingold (D-WI)
Franken (D-MN)
Gillibrand (D-NY)
Hagan (D-NC)
Harkin (D-IA)
Inouye (D-HI)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kaufman (D-DE)
Kerry (D-MA)
Kohl (D-WI)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Lieberman (ID-CT)
Lugar (R-IN)
Martinez (R-FL)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Murray (D-WA)
Reed (D-RI)
Reid (D-NV)
Sanders (I-VT)
Shaheen (D-NH)
Udall (D-CO)
Udall (D-NM)
Voinovich (R-OH)
Warner (D-VA)
Whitehouse (D-RI)

Not Voting - 2
Byrd (D-WV)
Kennedy (D-MA)

U.S.-Mexico Border Fence May Snag Wildlife

Discovery News
July 8, 2009
by Jessica Marshall

July 8, 2009 -- The United States-Mexico border fence may block more wildlife border crossings than people crossings. The already limited populations of pygmy owls and bighorn sheep will likely be among those further threatened by the fence, says a new study.

"In some respects, it's as obvious as the nose on your face: If you put up a 20-foot chunk of steel, things probably aren't going to move across it, but we have to show it," said Paul Beier of Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, who was not a part of the study. "It's kind of a shame that we need to prove the obvious, but we do. So this is an important paper in that regard."

Since the U.S. government authorized construction of a fence along 700 miles of the border between the U.S. and Mexico in 2006, scientists have raised concerns that a person-tight fence would also exclude many species that rely on habitat on either side of the border. The new research suggests such concerns are valid.

"Borders are only political boundaries," said the study’s lead author Aaron Flesch of the University of Montana in Missoula. "They're not biological boundaries." The study, published recently in Conservation Biology, focused on desert bighorn sheep and ferruginous pygmy owls.

By combining information about bighorn populations along the Arizona-Mexico border with computer models, the study's coauthor Clinton Epps of Oregon State University were able to predict the effect of the fence on how sheep move from one group to another.

Epps found nine populations within his study area that would become isolated from populations across the border. What's more, two populations on the U.S. side of the fence rely on a path that dips through Mexico, so they would become isolated from one another, despite both being "American" bighorn.

"The ability to move between mountain ranges is pretty important to maintain genetic diversity," Epps said, "But probably more importantly, the populations are so small, that they can just wink out." Without cross border connections, the habitats couldn't be repopulated by sheep in nearby groups.

The pygmy owl seems an unlikely species to be blocked by a border fence, given that it can fly. But the team found that 80 percent of the owls' flights are less than 13 feet above the ground, with most of those less than 3 feet above the ground. What's more, the owl tends to make short, direct flights, avoiding stretches across open areas such as the zones of cleared vegetation on either side of the fence.

"Their survival in Arizona is probably dependent on movement from Mexico into the U.S.," said Flesch, who conducted the owl study. "That's why a 700-mile-long border fence is so relevant to their recovery and the recovery of so many other animals."

Jaguars, desert tortoise, wild turkeys, bears, and Sonoran pronghorn are among other species that may be affected by the border fence.

Flesch and others support using virtual fences instead of physical barriers along the border, especially in critical habitat areas. Surveillance technology could allow wildlife to pass freely, while still catching illegal traffic across the border, they propose.

Some vehicle barriers -- vertical posts close enough together to stop cars or trucks, but not so close as to block people or wildlife -- could also be used with less obstruction of wildlife movement.

The border fence is all the more significant in today's warming climate, Flesch noted. The border happens to fall at a boundary between two climates, so many species will tend to nudge their range north as climate warms. If they are blocked by the fence, their habitat may leave them behind.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/07/08/border-fence-wildlife.html

San Diego officials mark completion of border berm

San Jose Mercury News
July 6, 2009
by Thomas Watkins

SAN DIEGO—A scrub-filled gorge historically used as a staging area for immigrants to gather by the hundred before dashing illegally into the U.S. has been all but sealed off by a massive berm topped with a steel-meshed fence and bright lighting.

The finished Smuggler's Gulch project was unveiled Monday. It involved moving 1.3 million cubic yards of dirt to fill in part of the canyon, which straddles the border just inland from the Pacific Ocean and alongside the Tijuana River estuary.

At a cost of about $59 million, and 12 years of planning, environmental reviews and legal challenges, the project has transformed the look of the westernmost edge of the border, an environmentally sensitive area that is a key stopover for migratory birds.

Gone are the precarious switchback roads that once zigzagged up either side of the canyon. It now is filled in with dirt and spanned by the light-brown berm that has a smooth asphalt road running along its top.

Gone too are the crowds of would-be immigrants and the vendors that catered to them on the Mexican side of the gorge.

"This is night and day compared to what it used to be," U.S. Border Patrol supervisory agent Daryl Reed said, recalling a period in the '90s when an agent could arrest dozens of people in a single shift.

The project is part of an older plan dating back to 1996, when Congress approved a 14-mile stretch of fence inland from the ocean. Filling in the gorge and work on the surrounding area proved highly contentious as environmentalists worried about potential damage to sensitive habitats in the estuary.

The Border Patrol says changes in the area will actually help the environment, because fewer people will be trampling on sensitive habitat and the asphalt roads have reduced the amount of dust in the air.

Border Patrol agents said the fencing means they now have full "operational control" of the area. In 1986, there were 600,000 apprehensions of immigrants along San Diego County's border with Mexico, Border Patrol spokesman Jerry Conlin said. The number has dropped dramatically since then, with 162,000 arrests last year.

But critics say people are simply being forced farther east into more treacherous conditions in the desert.

Conlin said the Smuggler's Gulch project means agents can now safely zip across the rolling terrain in minutes, whereas it would perviously have taken up to an hour.

Local lore says the gulch got its name from bootleggers bringing alcohol into the U.S. during Prohibition.

The project has spelled the end for a transnational park on a bluff overlooking the Pacific. Friendship Park drew crowds from both sides, and people would chat through a chain-link fence separating Imperial Beach and Tijuana. Now it lies abandoned behind a towering new fence.

http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_12764623?source=email&nclick_check=1

Light in Tunnel but Agents See Couch Cushion at End

KPBS San Diego
July 2, 2009
by Amy Isackson

US federal officials say the cross-border tunnel they found earlier this week was on its way to becoming a sophisticated underground passageway. Though, they say it would have been a tight squeeze to get through it.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Lauren Mack says the diggers pried off a manhole cover a few feet from the border fence in Tijuana. They dropped down into the sewer pipe, followed it underneath the border fence, and 680 feet into San Diego.

She says the diggers then punched through one side of the pipe and started boring through the earth for another 50 feet.

Mack says that stretch was shored up with two-by-fours and had a plywood roof. She says there were battery powered lights and fans. And it looked like a ventilation system was underway. However, she says in places, the passageway was only about two feet high and 15 inches wide.

Mack says that passageway didn’t have an exit. But, she says agents did find a US exit from the sewer pipe. She suspects the diggers may have become disoriented and surfaced to see where they were. She says the exit was in the middle of a field on Southbay International Wastewater Treatment Plant property. Mack says the hole was covered with an old couch cushion.

http://www.kpbs.org/news/2009/jul/02/tunnel-update-lights-tunnel-agents-see-couch-cushi/

Valley Woman Uses Words To Battle Border Wall

KVEO Channel 5
July 2, 2009
by Cristina Rendon

BROWNSVILLE - One woman is hoping a popular slogan can be turned into a message for others.

Pamela Taylor has adopted the state slogan for fighting litter on highways, "Don't Mess With Texas" to forward her battle.

She's had a big sign built, and staked it outside her home near Monsees and Old Nogales Road.

"These signs are like a silent war for my family and myself, because we know we're going outside of the fence." says Taylor.

The sign says "Please don't mess with Texas, with an unecessary border fence". She hopes it sends a message to the contractors putting up the steel poles.

Taylor says she will keep the sign up, even when her home is on the other side of the 18 foot tall fence.

http://www.krgv.com/content/news/story/Valley-Woman-Uses-Words-To-Battle-Border-Wall/h0BPnalkWE6l8jcScizJSg.cspx

Drug cartel tunnelers target U.S. border town

Reuters
July 1, 2009
by Tim Gaynor

NOGALES, Arizona (Reuters) - A resident walking near the rusted boundary fence in this Arizona border city last month reported suspicious knocking coming from an abandoned warehouse to the Border Patrol.

The agents found two men constructing the exit for a sophisticated but unfinished tunnel from Mexico. The discovery was no great surprise because authorities have been finding tunnels every two or three weeks all year.

As security tightens along the Mexico border, the twin cities of Nogales -- where stores, homes and warehouses in Mexico and Arizona lie just a few yards (meters) either side of the fence -- are in the grip of a tunneling boom.

The cities straddle a key drug trafficking route controlled on the south side by the powerful Sinaloa cartel, which smuggles billions of dollars worth of drugs including marijuana, cocaine and heroin to cities across the United States.

Border police have found 16 completed or partially completed tunnels here since October 1 last year -- a record for the city that has a checkered history of smuggling reaching back to the era of Prohibition in the 1920s and 1930s.

"Tunnels have been around since the bootlegging era but what we're seeing now is something new for everyone here," said Mike Scioli, a spokesman for the Border Patrol's Tucson sector, which hunts for the tunnels. "It's extremely challenging."

Police say most are short, shallow shafts punched into the interconnected drainage system that runs beneath the streets of the two cities, flushing storm runoff into two huge tunnels large enough to drive a truck through.

The extensive network provides a vast network of possible exit and entry points through culverts.

Less common are sophisticated galleries like the one discovered by agents in early June. It had lighting, a ventilation hose and was fitted with wooden stud walls. It extended for 48 feet on the U.S. side, and 35 feet into Mexico.

TUNNELING EXPERTISE

Earlier this year, U.S. President Barack Obama pledged support to the Mexican government in its battle to curb warring drug cartels, who have killed some 2,500 people south of the border since January.

Since then, U.S. authorities have ratcheted up security along the border and at the ports of entry to target cartels hauling drugs to the United States and bulk cash proceeds and firearms headed south to Mexico.

Investigators say the digging beneath Nogales is being financed by a Sinaloa cartel offshoot run by kingpin Arturo Beltran Leyva, although the passageways themselves are built by experienced local "gateway organizations."

"Just like there's ships that smuggle in the ocean that have ship's captains who know how to do that ... (they) have an expertise in tunneling," said Anthony Coulson, the assistant special agent in charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's Tucson Office.

The tunnelers have a knowledge of the drainage networks, as well as the unmapped infrastructure including gas and water mains that lie in their way, Coulson said.

U.S. border police work closely with Mexican authorities to beat them. They rely on tips and other intelligence, as well as constant patrols of the streets and the network of drains by Border Patrol tunnel teams.

While they are finding ever more tunnels, neither police nor weary residents in Nogales have any illusion that they will stamp out the activity any time soon.

"Tunnels will be here as long as Americans have this tremendous appetite for drugs," said Ernesto Chavez, 74, who runs a stationery shop close to the downtown warehouse where the last tunnel was found.

"It's just supply and demand."

http://www.reuters.com/article/email/idUSTRE5603R420090701?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0