By Scott
Nicol
The
condemnation suit has been filed and construction crews are staging. Another section of border wall will soon
stand beside the Rio Grande.
El Paso’s
new border wall will tear through the city’s historic heart. It will stand upon the exact spot where Don
Juan de Oñate first crossed the Rio Grande in 1598, and New Spain established a
road from Mexico City to Santa Fe long before the founding of either Mexico or the
United States. Oñate’s crossing was
called “El Paso del Rio de Norte,” the Pass Across the River of the North, and
over time it grew into the city of El Paso.
The new El Paso wall will be added to the patchwork of barriers called for by the Secure Fence Act. Those walls have proved to be largely ineffective at stopping either drug smugglers or migrants looking for work. Customs and Border Protection spends millions of dollars repairing thousands of breaches each year, and if a crosser forgets to pack a saw the border wall takes less than a minute to climb.
But efficacy
is not the point, and never has been.
Border walls are nothing more than symbols, props for politicians to use
as a backdrop in political ads. Whether
or not they actually stop anyone is irrelevant –appearance is all that
matters.
So far as
Customs and Border Protection is concerned the actual damage that will be
inflicted on a site of tremendous historical significance such as the Oñate
crossing is also irrelevant. Because the
Bush administration used the REAL ID Act to waive 36 laws construction can move
quickly, with no need to protect historic or archaeological features. The Antiquities Act, National Historic
Preservation Act, Archaeological Resources Protection Act, and other laws that
might safeguard our cultural heritage have been swept aside, along with laws that
protect our environment and human health.
Thanks to
the waiver other border walls have caused severe erosion in the Otay Mountain
Wilderness Area, flooding in the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, and the
fragmentation of endangered species habitat in the Lower Rio Grande Valley
National Wildlife Refuge.
There is no
reason to think that this time Customs and Border Protection will act
responsibly.
The stated
intent of the REAL ID Act’s waiver provision was to allow for the “expeditious
construction” of border walls and patrol roads that might otherwise be slowed
down by compliance with laws. But it has
been 7 years since the Secure Fence Act was passed. Construction was not delayed by lawsuits;
Customs and Border Protection simply did not think that this section was a
priority. Now that they have gotten
around to building it there is no rush, they just don’t want to be bothered
with obeying our nation’s laws.
No agency
should be above the rule of law, and it is beyond ridiculous to allow a law
enforcement agency to violate laws with impunity.
El Paso’s
U.S. Representative, Democrat Beto O’rourke, and Republican U.S. Senator John
Cornyn have called upon Customs and Border Protection to rethink this section
of wall, to reach out to El Paso residents and listen to the opinions of those
on the ground as to whether this wall will be of benefit to the community or if
instead it will be, as Brownsville’s Bishop Flores described Texas’ border
walls, another “scar” disfiguring border communities. Customs and Border Protection has refused to
listen to border residents, likely because they know that those who will live
with this scar through the heart of their community would reject it.
Having been
given such tremendous power when Senator Cornyn and his fellow members of
Congress voted for the REAL ID Act (in 2005 O’rourke was not yet a member of
Congress, so could neither support nor oppose the bill), Customs and Border
Protection can ignore the law and lawmakers.
They have a long track record of condemning the property of local
landowners and municipalities and erecting walls in the face of local protests.
Customs and
Border Protection should commit to upholding all of our nation’s laws, not just
those that it finds convenient. If it is impossible to erect border walls without violating
36 federal laws those walls should not be built.
This article originally ran in the Rio Grande Guardian on November 30, 2013.
www.riograndeguardian.com
