A ‘Real’ Battle Over the Border Wall
November 8th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
Michael Chertoff has a heckuva job: With a stroke of his pen last month the Homeland Security chief suspended nineteen laws in Arizona that stood in the way of a two-mile section of border fence slated for the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area.
He’s threatening to do South Texas the same way, unless environmentalists win a recently filed lawsuit.
Chertoff is using a tool granted to him by Congress in 2005 as part of the Real ID Act. In Section 102 of that act, Congress offered Homeland Security the power to waive laws conflicting with border militarization security. Congress also stripped the courts of judicial review except for Constitutional claims.
Chertoff decided to use the law in Arizona after a federal judge blocked further construction on the fence. In October, the judge agreed with environmentalists that the government had failed to address environmental concerns involved in building a massive fence through a wildlife refuge. The judge issued an order halting construction. Two weeks later, Chertoff invoked Section 102. Construction immediately resumed. (Question: if Chertoff gets pulled over for, say, speeding, can he skip out of the ticket by waiving traffic laws?)
On November 1, the Sierra Club and Defenders of Wildlife amended their lawsuit against the government to argue that Section 102 “violates the U.S. Constitution’s fundamental Separation of Powers principles by impermissibly delegating legislative authority to a politically-appointed Executive Branch official.” Read the amended complaint here.
It should make for an interesting fight, and it’s relevant for us Texans because Homeland Security is turning its attention from other parts of the border to the 70 miles of wall it has slated for the Rio Grande Valley. As an Observer story in September detailed residents on both sides of the border as well as environmentalists and birders are enraged over the fence.
The latest map released by the government shows segments of the wall slicing through critical habitat in Texas. The Sabal Palm Audubon Center in Brownsville will be completely walled off, leaving this rare, species-rich palm grove in a sort-of no-man’s-land. Many Texans probably do not know that the Lower Valley is the most biologically diverse region in the nation. Yet it has a global reputation. I’ve met people from as far away as South Africa who have never set foot in Texas but know about the Valley because of its fame as a birding and wildlife paradise.
Chertoff’s response to all this? “I have to say to myself, ‘Yes, I don’t want to disturb the habitat of a lizard, but am I prepared to pay human lives to do that?’,” he told the AP.
November 9th, 2007 at 10:33 am
Chertoff said, “I have to say to myself, ‘Yes, I don’t want to disturb the habitat of a lizard, but am I prepared to pay human lives to do that?’” This dilemma is completely false. More than just the habitat of a lizard, federally endangered species such as the jaguar have been recorded in the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area in recent years. And as for human lives, the border walls built to date have not saved lives; instead, they have cost lives. No terrorist has been apprehended attempting to cross our southern border, and a wall would not stop them if they tried. The Border Patrol has repeatedly stated that border walls only slow crossers down by a few minutes. In its June 5, 2007 report Border Security: Barriers Along the U.S. International Border the Congressional Research Service stated, “The primary fence, by itself, did not have a discernible impact on the influx of unauthorized aliens coming across the border in San Diego.” The only measurable impact that the border walls have had is in the number of people who have died in the desert. In August of 2005 the General Accounting Office issued a report titled Illegal Immigration: Border Crossing Deaths have Doubled Since 1995. Walls do not stop crossers, they redirect them into ever more remote parts of the desert where hundreds die of exposure and dehydration every year. When Chertoff asks himself whether he is “prepared to pay human lives,” he has his answer in the GAO report.
November 10th, 2007 at 6:51 pm
“No terrorist has been apprehended attempting to cross our southern border”
Nope and precious few others. We have no idea who is crossing our borders, what their intent is, or where they are once they are across. 32 terroist’s crossed our border on Friday. Did not, you say? How do you know.
The measurable impact of every life lost trying to cross the border can be laid at the door of every open borders advocate, every illegal immigration advocate and every person who aids and sanctions illegal aliens.
Its time to stop the charade, trying to lay the blame for death’s on of illegal’s crossing our border’s on anyone doing their job or putting them in jail for shooting drug smugglers is absurd.
November 10th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
I forgot to mention the Border Wall is a monument to stupidity. See Molly Ivin’s Immigration 101 I believe it was.
November 18th, 2007 at 9:37 pm
[…] EIS for the Valley can be found here. The site includes a form for public comment. Click here for a post by Forrest Wilder on the liberties the feds want to take in their rush to build a wall […]