A Foundation of Lawlessness
September 26th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Even with Congress embroiled in the country’s financial meltdown this week, the Department of Homeland Security managed to get its $400 million to keep building the border wall.
This week, the department also awarded three contractors $37 million in contracts to build border fence in Cameron County. The three companies chosen were the Texas-based Jaco Construction, Colorado-based MCC Construction and the Omaha-based Kiewit Corp.
Now the question is: when might construction begin? And can DHS build a fence on property whose owners have filed lawsuits against the department? As is its custom, the department didn’t respond to emails from the Observer seeking comment.
A phone call to Peter Schey, the lawyer representing Dr. Eloisa Tamez and the Benavidez Family in El Calaboz, helped answer some of the questions. Schey said that DHS could not build on his clients properties because they had filed a formal discovery document in federal court in Brownsville in early September.
In layman’s terms, this means that Schey has asked Homeland Security to specifically explain to Dr. Tamez and the Benavidez Family what the department plans to do with their property. He’s also asked the court not to act until DHS responds. The agency has until October 5th to respond to the court on what it plans to do regarding Schey’s filing.
To date, Homeland Security has never specifically explained to landowners what it has in store for their land. Or whether the department could alter their properties in the future. The agency has also never explained how it came up with the monetary amounts it’s offering for landowners’ properties.
“Property owners are blindfolded. DHS won’t tell them the rules of negotiation and won’t tell them the extent of the use of the land. Are they going to build one road or two roads? Are they going to put in guard towers with machine guns? Landowners have no idea,” Schey said.
Schey said he had no doubt that the department had properties where it could start building.
He said that DHS’ negotiations were built on a foundation of lawlessness. “All these agreements they got, DHS never told landowners they had the right to negotiate a reasonable price under the law,” he said. “Most people are unaware of their rights.”
He also said that in most pending cases, judges haven’t issued orders that would prevent DHS from building. Schey said he plans to share his motion for discovery with other lawyers representing landowners in court. “To my knowledge I am the first one to do this,” he said.
Schey’s client, Dr. Eloisa Tamez will be honored in Austin on October 3rd by the Texas Civil Rights Project for her courage in fighting the building of a border wall through her community. In 2007, Tamez was the first landowner to stand up to the plan to build an 18-foot wall through her backyard.
It also appears that Congress may have put in some hurdles to building the border wall. In the spending package passed by the House, U.S. Customs and Border Protection received $775 million to spend on fencing. The text of the spending package, however, requires Chertoff to consult with communities , federal agencies and other stakeholders before building. It also requires the agency to seek approval by congressional committees and a review by the Government Accountabilty Office before it can spend its $400 million on the border wall.
It would seem that DHS has its own wall to overcome before it can start building one in Brownsville. Of course, these days anything can happen. But given these new hurdles, it seems the border wall issue will be left for the next president to resolve.
September 30th, 2008 at 9:48 am
[…] DHS, Landowners Wrangle over Border Fence - Melissa Del Bosque, Texas Observer […]