The Texas Observer

It’s no secret that the 18-foot steel border wall is devastating the environment and disrupting wildlife corridors along our southern border. Environmentalists and landowners have filed lawsuits in federal court — to no avail — in order to compel the Department of Homeland Security to lessen the destructive impacts of the wall.

The Sierra Club commended 43 congressional members today for sending a letter to DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano. The members ask DHS to work with other agencies to lessen the impacts of the wall, fund efforts to buy comparable land for wildlife and provide environmental training for their employees.

In the letter, the congressional members wrote the following to Napolitano:
“As you are aware, hundreds of miles of new border fences and patrol roads have been constructed by DHS along the US/Mexico border in the past several years. This massive federal project has had deleterious consequences upon natural and cultural public resources, and has caused hardship for private land owners, whose lands have been condemned and livelihoods have been disrupted.”

Already $50 million has been allocated to borderlands mitigation, the congressional members note, but far more funding will be necessary to address the extent of the damage done, they wrote.

Besides the damage done there is also the cost of upkeep. We are now the owners of a 670-foot long steel wall which costs anywhere from $2 million to $11 million a mile. Besides the environmental degradation and the destruction of wildlife we will also being paying to keep it upright. The Congressional Research Service estimated it might cost up to $16,000 a mile just to  keep the wall intact.

A federal judge punted border wall construction back to Congress this week. U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton ruled that the Texas Border Coalition did not have any standing to file a lawsuit challenging the construction of a border wall through their cities and counties because they were not property owners.

The Texas Border Coalition is an organization of border mayors, county judges and business leaders from the Texas-Mexico border region. Eagle Pass Mayor Chad Foster, a member of the coalition said they were puzzled by the judge’s ruling.

“I’ve got fence going through my community,” Foster says. “I don’t understand how the judge could rule that I don’t have standing in the lawsuit.” Foster says that coalition members are speaking with their lawyer about whether they can file an appeal.

Judge Walton’s decision is not much of a surprise.  Just about every court that has heard a border fence lawsuit has kicked the can down the road by ruling that it’s up to Congress to stop the construction of the border wall. Despite the obvious violations of constitutional rights –such as seizing property without fair compensation — judges aren’t willing to side with landowners.

The building of 670 miles of 18-foot wall along the border continues under Obama — a disappointment to the hundreds of landowners in Texas who hoped their properties would be saved once Bush left the White House.

The Houston Chronicle is reporting today that President Obama won’t keep shoveling money into the Border Wall boondoggle. Finally some good news out of Washington.  At least taxpayers won’t be spending billions on an 18-foot steel and concrete wall which won’t solve an iota of the United State’s immigration issues.

Border landowners have been praying for this ever since Obama took office. The bad news is the government is going to finish the remaining miles of fence near Brownsville. The Obama Administration is going to fulfill the 670 miles of fence required by Congress under George W.’s reign.  Cameron County gets the tail-end of a raw deal — the poorly crafted and politicized public policies incorporated in the Secure Fence Act and the Real ID Act.

No one feels this more acutely than Brownsville Landowner Eloisa Tamez who has been fighting the Department of Homeland Security for two years over the construction of fence in her backyard. She recently lost her court battle and DHS threw up the wall almost overnight on her land. In a recent conversation with Tamez she said she plans to turn her home into a border and human rights center where academics can study immigration and border policy. What better place than 20 feet from the border wall — one of the worst government experiments in immigration policy to date.

You can’t say that Arizona Democratic Congressman Raul Grijalva is a quitter. He’s been trying to get traction on a sane legislative approach to border security ever since Congress passed legislation in 2006 to construct a 700-mile wall along our southern border. This time around he has filed the Border Security and Responsibility Act of 2009.

Today, the Texas Border Coalition, a group of border mayors, county judges and business leaders sent out their endorsement of the legislation. Sierra Club is also endorsing the bill. The legislation would repeal the Homeland Security Secretary’s authority to waive any law that would slow or impede construction of border fencing. It would also require Homeland  Security to consult with land owners and other local, state and federal agencies before building.

Grijalva’s district is Tucson along the Arizona-Mexico border. The Observer has interviewed the Congressman several times. He seems to be one of the only congressional leaders who listens to border communities. Last year, Grijalva brought his Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands to Brownsville to hear from land owners who were having their land seized by Homeland Security for the construction of the border wall.

Let’s hope Grijalva’s bill fares better under the Obama Administration than it did under George W’s reign.

Some sad news today coming out of Brownsville. U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen ruled in favor of Homeland Security. Eloisa Tamez and several other landowners who were fighting the construction of an 18-foot border wall on their land must allow the government to start building.

Tamez, 73, has been one of the most spirited and outspoken opponents of the border wall. Her legal battle with DHS galvanized many other border residents to stand up for their Constitutional rights. The Observer has chronicled her struggle over the past year with the bureaucratic nightmare that is Homeland Security.

Tamez’ land which ranges north from the Rio Grande for about 3 acres has been in her family’s possession since the King of Spain granted it to them centuries ago. Now it will be marred by an unsightly 18-foot concrete and steel wall. A wall that will serve as nothing more than a symbol of ignorance and Washington D.C. political pandering. At an approximate price of $3 million up to $12 million a mile it will also continue to bleed the U.S. treasury dry.

Tamez was not at court today in Brownsville. She is in Albuquerque attending a conference with other concerned landowners and lawyers who are strategizing on how to fight the border wall’s construction. No word yet on what she plans to do next and whether Hanen’s ruling can be challenged in court.

Some U.S. Senators (Lieberman) and Texas’ own Governor Goodhair say that President Obama is not doing enough to fight drug cartels with the border security plan he announced yesterday. It should be noted, however, that his plan at least acknowledges that Mexico’s drug problem is our drug problem too. And it emphasizes (gasp) communication with our neighbor to the south which is something our leadership has not engaged in, oh, eight years. Obama’s plan quadruples the number of U.S. liaisons working with Mexico in a binational effort to fight the drug cartels. This is a much needed and — dare I say it — logical step in coordination and communication between the two countries.

The word logical never entered the Bush Administration lexicon which focused on building border walls that cost $12 million a mile.

Obama does two things in his plan that Mexico has been asking for for years: a focus on the reduction in drug use in the United States and a crackdown on guns flowing south into Mexico. It’s not easy living next door to the world’s largest arms dealer. Mexico has often requested help from the U.S. Congress in reducing the number of guns funneled into Mexico. Obama’s plan relocates 100 ATF officers to the border in the next 45 days to fortify ATF’s Project Gunrunner aimed at disrupting arms trafficking between the United States and Mexico.

Finally, it is good to see that the plan focuses on the treatment and prevention of drug addiction.  Several decades of fighting the war on drugs has done little to stem drug use in the United States. It’s time to focus on prevention and treatment rather than building more prison complexes — sorry Geo Group.

And while the border wall boondoggle is not mentioned in Obama’s security plan, there is $100 million set aside for fences and virtual technology along the border in the economic stimulus bill. In a story yesterday by the Rio Grande Guardian, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was quoted as saying that her agency would finish the existing tracts of fencing — bad news for many Brownsville residents. With regards to new areas of fencing she said it would be in combination with technology and manpower. Napolitano seems to be de-emphasizing the use of border fences — another logical step . I’m getting nervous. I’ve used the word logical three times when talking about the federal government.

It is about time someone sued the Department of Homeland Security over breaking the law. The agency acts as if the Freedom of Information Act didn’t exist.  The non-profit consumer advocate group Public Citizen is suing the DHS on behalf of Denise Gilman, a clinical law professor at the University of Texas.

Gilman requested documents from DHS last April showing where the border fence would be built. She requested maps, surveys and appraisals of affected properties along the border. She is also seeking information about the criteria used to determine where the fence will be built. After a year, she’s only received a small portion of the documents she requested and they have been heavily redacted.

Public Citizen claims in the lawsuit that DHS’ delays and denials violate the Freedom of Information Act. Gilman is part of the UT Working Group on Human Rights and the Border Wall which was formed to look at the impact of the border wall on communities and the environment.

I filed similar Freedom of Information Act requests in February 2008 and have been through at least four Freedom of Information Act officers at DHS who were supposedly processing the paperwork. In January, I finally received one of the documents I had requested a year ago. The document was heavily redacted.

It’s unfair that the federal government can seize a person’s home and property to build an eighteen-foot fence, but U.S. citizens are not allowed to see DHS’ decision-making process. I plan to keep calling DHS. If we keep pushing for the information, someday (I hope) the law will make them provide it.