tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-59239784474931888692024-03-13T14:15:27.700-05:00No Border WallThe No Border Wall group opposes the border wall mandated by the Secure Fence Act. The border wall will do tremendous damage to border communities, economies, and the environmentNO BORDER WALLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16705064894973061623noreply@blogger.comBlogger121125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5923978447493188869.post-70782456335349372262014-07-06T23:26:00.000-05:002014-07-06T23:26:51.190-05:00Suffer the Children
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">By Scott
Nicol<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">We are
confronted with a refugee crisis, as thousands of children, mostly from
Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, run for their lives, coming to the United
States in the hope of finding safe haven. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Children
have been crossing the southern border for years, skirting $3 billion worth of
border walls and dodging the Border Patrol, but as violence in these three
countries has reached epidemic levels the number of refugee children has
overwhelmed federal agencies and become impossible for the press or the public
to continue to ignore.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVwRs9FQgOGcTZiI95KjElDYsHjHFwn2WvL_HmKnwoUYJ02MId_SXLh-7Xuc3wkt20ukSXx2zi6tNRzFFROuDjXyS_U4vg8mh9ZnqhhtXGXkjM3IG6QMQwGo9lyf_HnCs9yXQvQC2psHtk/s1600/rainbow+over+the+Columbus+border+wall+June+2014+-+Scott+Nicol.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVwRs9FQgOGcTZiI95KjElDYsHjHFwn2WvL_HmKnwoUYJ02MId_SXLh-7Xuc3wkt20ukSXx2zi6tNRzFFROuDjXyS_U4vg8mh9ZnqhhtXGXkjM3IG6QMQwGo9lyf_HnCs9yXQvQC2psHtk/s1600/rainbow+over+the+Columbus+border+wall+June+2014+-+Scott+Nicol.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Honduras has
the </span><a href="http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?order=wbapi_data_value_2011+wbapi_data_value+wbapi_data_value-last&sort=desc"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">world’s
highest murder rate</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">: in 2011, 92 people out of every thousand residents
were murdered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>El Salvador ranked
second, with 70 murders per 1,000 people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Guatemala came in fifth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For
comparison, the U.S. murder rate that year was 5 per 1,000.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Last March
the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) released a report,
titled “</span><a href="http://www.unhcr.org/53206a3d9.html"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">Children on the Run</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">,”
on the underage refugees streaming out of Central America.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>UNHCR interviewed 404 children who had been
apprehended at the U.S. border, and most said that they were fleeing gang
violence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">A seventeen
year old boy from Honduras said that, “My grandmother is the one who told me to
leave. She said: ‘If you don’t join, the gang will shoot you. If you do, the
rival gang or the cops will shoot you. But if you leave, no one will shoot
you.’”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">A fifteen
year old girl from El Salvador told the UNHCR, “I am here because I was
threatened by the gang. One of them “liked” me. Another gang member told my
uncle that he should get me out of there because the guy who liked me was going
to do me harm. In El Salvador they take young girls, rape them and throw them
in plastic bags. My uncle told me it wasn’t safe for me to stay there and I
should go to the United States.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The Department
of Homeland Security (DHS) recently </span><a href="http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2014/06/map-unaccompanied-child-migrants-central-america-honduras"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">released
a map</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> that shows the point of origin for Central American kids who arrived
at the border in the first few months of this year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By far the largest number, more than 2,500,
came from San Pedro Sula, the most violent city in the most violent country on
the planet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span></o:p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZvXosNgA5t8mbvs0N_0Utv9uoNSb7Cl026gnzN8zvbKbwCnAqhKkpsjSN3iKJ_637Ly_XteugAtzTyXOc29NFjBhbNyJoNXAXDGJxfz6nrr93yVgUd3TjRtL87MR0TtznjBesj6i2_XN-/s1600/dhsuacmap.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZvXosNgA5t8mbvs0N_0Utv9uoNSb7Cl026gnzN8zvbKbwCnAqhKkpsjSN3iKJ_637Ly_XteugAtzTyXOc29NFjBhbNyJoNXAXDGJxfz6nrr93yVgUd3TjRtL87MR0TtznjBesj6i2_XN-/s1600/dhsuacmap.jpg" height="204" width="320" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The text on
the DHS map says, "We analyzed these locations to determine the factors
pushing child migration to the US Southwest Border. […] Salvadoran and Honduran
children… come from extremely violent regions where they probably perceive the
risk of traveling alone to the US preferable to remaining at home."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Notably
absent from both the DHS document and the UNHCR report is a false belief on the
part of these kids that United States laws had changed to allow them to stay
here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Republicans have made this a key
talking point, a way to blame President Obama for the current crisis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">In a recent
FOX news op-ed, for example, Senator </span><a href="http://www.cornyn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=InNews&ContentRecord_id=a2382f0a-5d4d-4eeb-8bdf-5741ed502165"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">John
Cornyn wrote</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">, “Two years ago, the president stood in the Rose Garden and
announced a unilateral change to U.S. immigration policy regarding children.
Between that policy change and his broader refusal to uphold our immigration
laws, he created a powerful incentive for children to cross into the United
States illegally.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Like the
false idea that border walls stop desperate migrants in their tracks, it may
sound plausible, but there is nothing to back Cornyn’s claim up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The children interviewed by the United
Nations described fleeing for their lives, not responding to a rumor that the
United States’ convoluted immigration laws had become more favorable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">What’s more,
nearby countries other than the United States – Mexico, Belize, Nicaragua,
Costa Rica, and Panama – have seen a 432% increase in </span><a href="http://www.unhcr.org/53206a3d9.html"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">applications for asylum</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> from
Hondurans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans over the last five years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nothing that President Obama may or may not
have said caused that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The
politicization of this crisis that Senator Cornyn’s statement epitomizes may
doom these children.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While both parties
call the situation a “crisis,” Republicans shy away from using the word
“refugee” to describe children fleeing violence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their knee-jerk response to any situation on
the border is to call for more militarization, starting with the mobilization
of the National Guard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Governor
Perry has announced that </span><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/18/justice/texas-border-security/"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">$1.3
million per week</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> will be spent to send in the Department of Public Safety.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The DPS sniper that shot and killed Central
American migrants from a helicopter, and the Highway Patrol speedboats with
machine guns mounted on their prows that prowl the Rio Grande, have had no discernible
impact on the number of people who come across the border, but in Perry’s mind it
is important to look tough when faced with an influx of desperate children.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Democrats,
from </span><a href="http://riograndeguardian.com/bordernews_story.asp?story_no=27"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">Representative
Pelosi</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> to border Representative Filemon Vela, have been more willing to
face the fact that the children fleeing violence in Honduras, El Salvador and
Guatemala are refugees who deserve better than being locked in a bus garage or being
forced to sleep on a concrete slab. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">B</span>ut
President Obama seems unclear on the idea of refugees.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One the one hand, the President has pledged
millions to assist these countries in shoring up their courts and combating
gangs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the same time he is asking
Congress for greater authority to </span><a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-immigration-obama-20140628-story.html"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">speed
up deportations</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Far from
compassionate, making it harder for a child to plead his or her case before an
immigration judge would inevitably cause many to suffer and die as they are
thrown back into the grip of their persecutors, their tormentors, and
ultimately their murderers.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">On Thursday
members of the U.S. House of Representatives will hold a field hearing in
McAllen to discuss the refugees who are coming across our southern border.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hopefully the assembled members will set
aside the election year desire to blame the other political party and score
political points, and will instead focus on the suffering of children who have
traveled more than a thousand miles, and who have endured unspeakable abuse
during their journeys, in a desperate effort to simply survive. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">These
children are not aliens, they are not invaders, they are refugees.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">If we reject them, if we deport them, if we put
them on planes and send them back to the countries that they fled, or if the
only response that we can muster is to line the border with more “boots on the
ground” and machine guns pointing south, we will show ourselves to be no more
humane than the gangs whose brutality prompted their flight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
NO BORDER WALLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16705064894973061623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5923978447493188869.post-68712401735614646972014-04-01T21:05:00.000-05:002014-04-01T21:05:08.712-05:00Arresting Babies on the Borderby Scott Nicol<br />
<br />
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“They’re
arresting babies.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The thought
struck hard, and it kept echoing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had
come to the border wall with a correspondent from <a href="http://www.npr.org/2014/03/21/292225742/for-illegal-immigrants-journey-to-u-s-soil-cut-short" target="_blank">National Public Radio</a> to see
its impact on the environment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We had also
seen evidence of the apprehensions that occur there daily.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Piles of shoelaces and belts that immigrants
were forced to abandon before being taken into custody, and even a pair of
plastic toy helicopters, littered the ground. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy2OU-4W4mlcBPujTa87GPHv8m_ltWtrHO4HXX2ggHqBhSwIGsfttdEDYyucSEvJfHsNBvv7PSzFdiRcLPK_cGIFa-GWpv4xfELgAUIBU4QiXtNXrQGPq41L-d9gqd8rQtPr0r7JWBj4Ka/s1600/toy+helicopters+at+the+Hidalgo+border+wall+-+March+2014+-+Scott+NIcol.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy2OU-4W4mlcBPujTa87GPHv8m_ltWtrHO4HXX2ggHqBhSwIGsfttdEDYyucSEvJfHsNBvv7PSzFdiRcLPK_cGIFa-GWpv4xfELgAUIBU4QiXtNXrQGPq41L-d9gqd8rQtPr0r7JWBj4Ka/s1600/toy+helicopters+at+the+Hidalgo+border+wall+-+March+2014+-+Scott+NIcol.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The Border
Patrol agent said that they had captured eighteen people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most sat in a line in the dirt beside the
rusting wall as agents took their names and bagged their possessions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only three or four were adults.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Inside a
Border Patrol van, escaping the heat, were two mothers, each with an infant in
her arms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the seats beside them were
a pair of toddlers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The Border
Patrol would probably prefer not to use the term “arrest,” but the children
were taken into custody along with the rest of their family.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All eighteen will be included in the sector’s
apprehension statistics. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">In 2013 the
Border Patrol </span><a href="http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/border_security/border_patrol/usbp_statistics/usbp_fy13_stats/"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">apprehended</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
26,027 juveniles in its Rio Grande Valley sector, 21,553 of whom were
unaccompanied.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Border-wide 38,833 out of
the 47,238 minors who were captured were traveling without an adult.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At least these children were not on their
own.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Call it an
apprehension, call it an arrest, for a child too young to walk or talk the terminology
does not matter.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The United
States of America, through elected Representatives who are meant to express the
will of its citizens, spent $18 billion last year to keep these families
out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A few years back taxpayers spent
$12 million per mile to build the border wall that stood nearby, and more than
$3 billion was spent to wall off 652 miles of the southern border.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From 1995 to 2003 we doubled the size of the
Border Patrol, then over the last decade we doubled their ranks again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They carry out the mission that we have given
them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">We are
arresting babies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">And
toddlers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And teenagers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And adolescents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And their parents.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">We have
decided that the people I saw lined up beside the wall, parents who traveled
hundreds of miles from Guatemala looking for work with children in tow,
threaten us. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Like most
who walk or swim across the border they are not terrorists, they are not
smugglers, they simply want a better life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They are parents struggling to feed their families.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are children hoping to escape violence,
go to school, live the American Dream.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So
long as that desperation and desire remains people will keep coming.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">This is not
a challenge to our nation’s defenses, it is a test of our conscience.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">When the
Senate took up immigration reform they failed to grasp this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They made a “border surge,” with hundreds of
miles of new border wall, a further ballooning of the Border Patrol, and tens
of billions of dollars of new military hardware, a “trigger” that must be
completed before anyone currently in the country could start on a
thirteen-year-long pathway to citizenship. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The irrational fears of middle American voters
who only see the border when they watch FOX News or Border Wars on TV had to be
appeased. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheefhXLKUraRONkE2FnmmsutVgpj3nULqG_3dlPfxEkE7c_z2ekWr9vrIJ8VLwxmZ1UUnz-2if1W5ChcXdxuI56waJawrgYoGHcmpc3k9aIKkJmoaT0BiUuUqwajvcFohNXvncDgY0x1c8/s1600/gate+and+ladders+at+the+Hidalgo+border+wall+-+March+2014+-+Scott+Nicol.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheefhXLKUraRONkE2FnmmsutVgpj3nULqG_3dlPfxEkE7c_z2ekWr9vrIJ8VLwxmZ1UUnz-2if1W5ChcXdxuI56waJawrgYoGHcmpc3k9aIKkJmoaT0BiUuUqwajvcFohNXvncDgY0x1c8/s1600/gate+and+ladders+at+the+Hidalgo+border+wall+-+March+2014+-+Scott+Nicol.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Even with
the “surge” Republicans in the U.S. House refuse to even debate immigration
reform.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are far less concerned with
the children sitting in a line on the dirt beside the wall than they are about
a Tea Party challenge in the next primary election.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The Border
Patrol agents called headquarters to have child car seats sent out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Older kids shuffled back into the green and
white van, now lacking belts and laces for their sneakers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">After they
drove off we began to walk back along the top of the levee.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Through the border wall’s rusting bollards we
could see another mother being marched out of the brush, clutching an infant to
her chest.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">As the sun
settled into the treetops the wind carried the baby’s cries.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
NO BORDER WALLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16705064894973061623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5923978447493188869.post-16533988038733764552013-12-02T21:44:00.000-06:002013-12-02T21:44:15.400-06:00A New Wall Through El Paso’s Historic Heart
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">By Scott
Nicol</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The
condemnation suit has been filed and construction crews are staging.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Another section of border wall will soon
stand beside the Rio Grande.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">El Paso’s
new border wall will tear through the city’s historic heart.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The new El
Paso wall will be added to the patchwork of barriers called for by the Secure
Fence Act.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those walls have proved to be
largely ineffective at stopping either drug smugglers or migrants looking for
work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">But efficacy
is not the point, and never has been.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Border walls are nothing more than symbols, props for politicians to use
as a backdrop in political ads.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whether
or not they actually stop anyone is irrelevant –appearance is all that
matters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">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. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">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.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">There is no
reason to think that this time Customs and Border Protection will act
responsibly.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">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.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it has
been 7 years since the Secure Fence Act was passed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Construction was not delayed by lawsuits;
Customs and Border Protection simply did not think that this section was a
priority.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">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.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">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.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">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.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They have a long track record of condemning the property of local
landowners and municipalities and erecting walls in the face of local protests.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Customs and
Border Protection should commit to upholding all of our nation’s laws, not just
those that it finds convenient.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">If it is impossible to erect border walls without violating
36 federal laws those walls should not be built.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<em></em><br />
<em>This article originally ran in the Rio Grande Guardian on November 30, 2013.</em><br />
<a href="http://www.riograndeguardian.com/">www.riograndeguardian.com</a>NO BORDER WALLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16705064894973061623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5923978447493188869.post-62923574379123073062013-04-24T23:07:00.000-05:002013-05-21T10:35:57.143-05:00Another Round of South Texas Border Wall Condemnations is about to Begin<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">By Scott Nicol<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">If the Border Patrol knocks on your door you might want to have a lawyer present when you answer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">That is because Customs and Border Protection is gearing up for a fresh round of land condemnations to build border walls in Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">According to documents obtained by the Sierra Club through a Freedom of Information Act request the new walls won’t just slice through farmland and wildlife refuges.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Roma “</span><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/137081991/draft-Army-Corps-report-on-border-walls-30-November-2012"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">up to 25 residences could be impacted</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Rio Grande City the wall’s route will take it through a nursing home, and “</span><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/137081991/draft-Army-Corps-report-on-border-walls-30-November-2012"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">If the decision is made to buy the tract out in its entirety, the business will need to be relocated along with 64 residents, potentially up to 90 residents if at 100% capacity.</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Los Ebanos landowners who went through condemnation three years ago will be hauled into court again to have more of their property snatched away.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">This new assault on border communities is the result of the US section of the International Boundary Water Commission’s (US IBWC) decision to allow border walls to go up in the Rio Grande floodplain.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">When they were first proposed, along with the rest of South Texas’ border walls, US IBWC stated categorically that walls could not be erected in the floodplain because they posed an unacceptable flood risk to communities on both sides of the river.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Walls north of the river might deflect rising flood waters, worsening the damage to Mexican cities and possibly even pushing the river into a new channel, thereby changing the location of the international border.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For this reason walls in Cameron County were erected north of the flood control levees, and in Hidalgo County there were inserted into them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnpmXowZ1uhzlXB3izBa6KKhDJ65O5L5OvHU2e6kdFGPddZbzl80LTmjlT3jdlPnqEgegBrtMaU-3HgMLNxVRoQt0f_rbLFwhIC24jo5d2xL2rKeyUSef-BJXGw_7DEaJEMsZaVDzOOg4o/s1600/Border+wall+construction+north+of+levee+blocking+Sabal+Palms+Audubon+Sanctuary+-+1-10-2010+-+Scott+Nicol.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnpmXowZ1uhzlXB3izBa6KKhDJ65O5L5OvHU2e6kdFGPddZbzl80LTmjlT3jdlPnqEgegBrtMaU-3HgMLNxVRoQt0f_rbLFwhIC24jo5d2xL2rKeyUSef-BJXGw_7DEaJEMsZaVDzOOg4o/s320/Border+wall+construction+north+of+levee+blocking+Sabal+Palms+Audubon+Sanctuary+-+1-10-2010+-+Scott+Nicol.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The new walls will be identical to those built in Cameron County, using six inch wide steel posts that stand eighteen feet tall with four inch spaces in between.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 2008 Baker Engineering </span><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/104742442/Email-IBWC-to-CBP-O-1-Thru-O-3-border-wall-Modeling-2010-IBWC-Says-Solid-Wall-Due-to-Debris"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">looked at the impacts</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> of this design placed in these locations, and estimated that during a flood the walls would clog with debris, limiting the ability of water to pass between the pillars.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Roma they estimated an 85% blockage where the walls paralleled the river’s flow; in Rio Grande City a 67% blockage; and in Los Ebanos a 36% blockage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Where the walls would be erected perpendicular to the flow Baker said CBP should assume that debris would cause the walls to be completely blocked.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">In 2011 Customs and Border Protection paid Baker to look at the same wall design placed in the same location, and with no new evidence or explanation they came to a radically different conclusion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now <span style="color: white; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">“</span></span><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/68844504/June-2011-CBP-Hydrology-Report-for-Border-Wall-Sections-O-1-O-2-O-3"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">A debris blockage of 10% was adopted where the fence is aligned parallel to the flow and 25% at locations where the fence is aligned perpendicular to the flow</span></span></a><span style="color: white; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not surprisingly the model that this new estimate was plugged into concluded that walls in the floodplain would not deflect or dam flood water, since 75 -90% of the water would supposedly pass right through. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiib2dbQ3iKjSBKZpv8Cmz0slVkCkS7BZ-a3bakY_d_nEPisRO3wsEspqZXzAK9znX3y5g1PPeJVK8tkuSeAMrfLZBbqfRMozhk93cBPPWbKU7h6Qh6YiMJajP9-7G8YnyWcVYkmCezG7f9/s1600/8-21-2007+Bureau+of+Land+Management+photo+of+debris+lodged+in+border+wall.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiib2dbQ3iKjSBKZpv8Cmz0slVkCkS7BZ-a3bakY_d_nEPisRO3wsEspqZXzAK9znX3y5g1PPeJVK8tkuSeAMrfLZBbqfRMozhk93cBPPWbKU7h6Qh6YiMJajP9-7G8YnyWcVYkmCezG7f9/s320/8-21-2007+Bureau+of+Land+Management+photo+of+debris+lodged+in+border+wall.bmp" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: white; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The US section of IBWC accepted this without question.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Mexican section categorically rejected it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">One would think that a bi-national organization would require agreement before permitting potentially dangerous projects.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead, the new border walls are going up.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In a presentation dated March 1, 2013, Customs and Border Protection </span></span><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/137082724/March-1-2013-Customs-and-Border-Protection-presentation-on-new-border-walls"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">laid out a timeline</span></span></a><span style="color: white; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> for the construction of these new walls:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Funds: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>already received.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Achieve right of entry to survey property for wall construction:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>60 days.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Initiate new acquisitions of property, through purchase or condemnation:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>180 days.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">So if you have property in the path of these walls, now is the time to call a lawyer.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">And those lawyers are going to be very busy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The “gang of eight” immigration bill includes $1.5 billion for new border walls.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">When Congress passed the Secure Fence Act in 2006 Customs and Border Protection walled off big portions of California, Arizona, and New Mexico.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There aren’t too many places outside of inaccessible mountains without walls up there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What’s left is Texas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Unless the bill is changed and the walls are taken out Customs and Border Protection will start filling in the unwalled spaces between South Texas’ existing border walls.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, and the endangered species that it protects, will be utterly decimated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And every other landowner with property along the Rio Grande from Roma to Boca Chica will stand in turn before a federal judge, before watching construction crews wall off their land from the river.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Some, like the 25 households in Roma or the senior citizens in Rio Grande City, may even see the their homes fall to these new border walls.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
NO BORDER WALLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16705064894973061623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5923978447493188869.post-85494802547699546212013-04-08T10:00:00.000-05:002013-04-08T10:00:02.114-05:00Border Residents Kept in the Dark about New Border Wallsby Scott Nicol<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Four members of the Senate’s “Gang of Eight,” the group
charged with crafting comprehensive immigration reform legislation, recently
paid a </span><a href="http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/03/senate-border-trip-immigration.php"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">visit
to the border wall</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> that separates Nogales, Arizona from Nogales, Sonora.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The trip was little more than a photo-op.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The senators did not meet with locals or hear
from others who live on the border, who experience border security daily and
will be directly impacted by any border security measures in the coming bill.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But their pilgrimage to the wall did send a
message that their bill is likely to be heavy on enforcement, possibly
including hundreds of miles of new border walls.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Senator McCain (R-AZ) led the tour, and he chose a striking
location to give Senator Schumer (D-NY) his first glimpse of the border
wall.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Maybe he just wanted to show off the nearby section of wall
that he used as a backdrop for his “</span><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0lwusMxiHc"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">Complete the Danged Fence</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">”
campaign ad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">It is a safe bet that he did not take his colleagues to the
spot, a few hundred yards from where they posed for the press, where last
October a Border Patrol agent reached through the wall to </span><a href="http://www.nogalesinternational.com/news/autopsy-in-border-patrol-shooting-suggests-trajectory-from-back-and/article_34219a52-6fa6-11e2-bf9e-001a4bcf887a.html"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">shoot
an unarmed teenager</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> in Mexico 11 times in the back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He probably also failed to point out the high
water mark left on Mexican buildings when, in 2008, the Nogales border wall
dammed floodwaters, causing millions of dollars in property damage and the
drowning of two men.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span> </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh0wvnW6ktyiRRWnwxPd3IJ9PPSQq53o_g_h-LDq5Kn0V0Ya_qFfj1VgXnmOJApAbTCjsDy8Vg6VXt8BpwQE_00-e-0nvppeASB7EoZoA2h3rT6V3iuWTkVF9m24gn1BUgjYr7F3ewwXcM/s1600/border+wall+damming+floodwaters+in+Nogales+Mexico+-+2008+-+CBP+photo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh0wvnW6ktyiRRWnwxPd3IJ9PPSQq53o_g_h-LDq5Kn0V0Ya_qFfj1VgXnmOJApAbTCjsDy8Vg6VXt8BpwQE_00-e-0nvppeASB7EoZoA2h3rT6V3iuWTkVF9m24gn1BUgjYr7F3ewwXcM/s320/border+wall+damming+floodwaters+in+Nogales+Mexico+-+2008+-+CBP+photo.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Of course those events don’t fit the simple narrative of
McCain’s “perfect plan” for border security that he outlined in his TV ad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Better to stare into the camera and ignore
inconvenient facts, then and now.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Senator Schumer likely sees more “danged fence” as the cost
of immigration reform, the burden that border communities will have to bear to
bring undocumented immigrants out of the shadows.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That was also the idea in 2006, when the
Congressional push for immigration reform fell apart and all we were left with
was the Secure Fence Act and hundreds of miles of border wall.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">As the “Gang of Eight” has been horse-trading behind closed
doors Customs and Border Protection has been quietly laying the groundwork for
the last of the Secure Fence Act’s walls to go up in Roma, Rio Grande City, and
Los Ebanos, along with neighboring farms and the Lower Rio Grande Valley
National Wildlife Refuge.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Customs and Border Protection wants to build these walls in
the floodplain, but over the years the International Boundary and Water
Commission repeatedly rejected them, citing “</span><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/37594959/USIBWC-Disapproval-Letter-January-2010-Docx-1"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">substantial
increases in water surface elevations and deflections of flow at several points
of all three projects</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Were the Rio
Grande to flood after a hurricane or tropical depression, as it did in 2010,
walls in the floodplain would deflect water into Mexican cities like Ciudad
Aleman, and would stop water from draining out of communities such as Rio
Grande City.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9HrO2mzj0QA9iAKSw7kuJCAa38QA20boqrlVpXQ6R9dW5a6CYdQ5dw2VGDeNbT86YNmy5-xBNgLetgxCjHfIn7UjkczlWk4S6WP-TyHqCwPeZqVGVY87OEWgvQEWlz6yykUMEvVWPsUeM/s1600/debris+on+border+wall+-+id_presentation+mcallen+contractor+presentation+2009.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9HrO2mzj0QA9iAKSw7kuJCAa38QA20boqrlVpXQ6R9dW5a6CYdQ5dw2VGDeNbT86YNmy5-xBNgLetgxCjHfIn7UjkczlWk4S6WP-TyHqCwPeZqVGVY87OEWgvQEWlz6yykUMEvVWPsUeM/s320/debris+on+border+wall+-+id_presentation+mcallen+contractor+presentation+2009.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
</div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Last year, after sustained pressure </span><a href="http://notexasborderwall.blogspot.com/2012_07_01_archive.html"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">from
Customs and Border Protection</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">, the US section of the International Boundary
and Water Commission reversed its decision, rejecting the Mexican section’s
objections and allowing these dangerous walls to go forward.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They now officially accept the claim that the
border wall will allow flood water to pass harmlessly through, even though in
2008 they forced Customs and Border Protection to build walls in Cameron County
of the exact same design north of the levees so that they would be out of the
floodplain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Homes and businesses, farms and wildlife refuges, could be
washed away or inundated by floodwaters as a direct result of these walls.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Customs and Border Protection says that everything will be
fine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course they also said that they
would pay to mitigate the damage that previous wall construction inflicted upon
the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife refuge, but after </span><a href="http://www.notexasborderwall.blogspot.com/2013/01/broken-promises-and-border-walls-push_13.html"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">years
of promises</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> not a penny has been provided.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Just like the “Gang of Eight” on their trip to Nogales,
Customs and Border Protection has made no attempt to talk to residents or local
officials in the </span><a href="http://www.theworld.org/2013/03/texas-border-security/"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">Texas communities</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
that the new walls will tear through.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I contacted Customs and Border Protection last week and
asked for an update regarding the Starr county walls.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Daniel Tirado, with the RGV Sector Public
Affairs Office, responded that, "the Office of Border Patrol identified these segments as
highest operational priorities in Texas. Though construction of these segments
has been delayed, Border Patrol’s requirement remains.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The assertion that these walls, or any border
walls for that matter, are a high operational priority is absurd.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Customs and Border Protection knows better
than to think that border walls stop anyone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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While the Senators were doing their press
junket in Nogales they watched as a woman laid a ladder against the 18-foot
wall and quickly climbed over.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Senator
McCain even tweeted about it as it happened.<br />
<o:p></o:p> </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_7zZ7hEq6GFu-bIP33-IUvnPMfWlGtaxAL-m8YaWdhsdDkx_wD07GFT7aPF2yxPwlSZ0SK586h-fiCA7yXxgNoH2dmiaJttAbqiAiklcVOPSnHFkD-QRTbDplRD9UIF8t8oCzT8FYeT1D/s1600/Hidalgo+pumphouse+world+birding+center+and+LRGV+national+wildlife+refuge+wall+with+ladder+pile+-+May+20+2012.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_7zZ7hEq6GFu-bIP33-IUvnPMfWlGtaxAL-m8YaWdhsdDkx_wD07GFT7aPF2yxPwlSZ0SK586h-fiCA7yXxgNoH2dmiaJttAbqiAiklcVOPSnHFkD-QRTbDplRD9UIF8t8oCzT8FYeT1D/s320/Hidalgo+pumphouse+world+birding+center+and+LRGV+national+wildlife+refuge+wall+with+ladder+pile+-+May+20+2012.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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Visiting Arizona last summer <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hd6vDu_RIbQ"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">I easily climbed the border wall</span></span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> in the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation
Area.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was wearing sandals and didn’t
have a ladder, but it only took a few seconds to reach the top.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The San Pedro wall is identical to the ones
planned for Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos.<o:p></o:p></span>
<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">These new walls will go up in Representative
Cuellar’s district, and his silence regarding them has been even more striking,
and surprising, than Customs and Border Protection’s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He has not held any town hall meetings to get
feedback from, or provide information to, effected communities, and he has not
publicly criticized Customs and Border Protection’s plans or their refusal to
speak with local residents.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">When I asked his office if he had taken any
action on behalf of his constituents, he responded, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I initiated a formal inquiry with CBP as a follow up and update on the
status of the proposed fence. CBP has advised that there are no plans for
building additional fences in FY 2013 due to the lack of funding.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Customs and
Border Protection also told me that, “Construction activities will commence at such time as funds become
available.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
Which sounds good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Until Congress provides funds for border
walls maybe residents can relax.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One
might expect that with the sequester gutting the budgets of federal agencies
and forcing furloughs from the Environmental Protection Agency to air traffic
controllers money for border walls won’t come any time soon.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
But tucked into the spending bill that
Congress just passed to keep the government running is a provision that says,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: DeVinne-Italic; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">“For
expenses for border security fencing, infrastructure, and technology,
$324,099,000, to remain available</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times-Roman;">
</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: DeVinne-Italic; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">until September 30, 2015.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: DeVinne-Italic; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Existing
border walls are very expensive to maintain, so not all of that money is
available to build new ones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Customs
and Border Protection condemned the land and bought the steel for these walls
years ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All that is left is to hire
the crews, gas up the bulldozers, and start tearing up the land.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: DeVinne-Italic; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">And if
the “Gang of Eight” includes hundreds of miles of new border walls in comprehensive
immigration reform, instead of passing a clean bill that focuses strictly on
immigration instead of multi-million dollar handouts to </span></span><a href="http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/southern-arizona-in-the-crosshairs/Content?oid=3668058"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: DeVinne-Italic; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">government
contractors</span></span></a><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: DeVinne-Italic; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">, the rest of the border landowners and wildlife
refuge tracts in Congressman Cuellar’s district will likely suffer the same
fate as Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
NO BORDER WALLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16705064894973061623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5923978447493188869.post-39786467740631385212013-03-28T09:29:00.000-05:002013-03-28T09:29:51.799-05:00UN CERD Expresses Concern over US-Texas Border Wall Discriminatory Impact on Indigenous Peoples<div>
<div class="yiv696380576MsoNormal">
<span _yuid="yui_3_1_1_2_136448026962984" lang="EN-CA">Press Release – For Immediate
Release</span></div>
</div>
<br />
<div>
<div class="yiv696380576MsoNormal">
<b><span _yuid="yui_3_1_1_2_136448026962978" lang="EN-CA">UN CERD Expresses Concern over US-Texas
Border Wall Discriminatory Impact on Indigenous Peoples;</span></b></div>
</div>
<b><span lang="EN-CA">Addresses US Government and
Need to Comply with Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Racial
Discrimination</span></b><br />
<br />
<div>
<div class="yiv696380576MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">Brownsville, Texas – March 25,
2013 – The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD),
Early Warning and Urgent Action Procedures has expressed “concern regarding the
potentially discriminatory impact that the construction of a border wall might
have on the Kikapoo, Ysleta del Sur Pueblo and Lipan Apache indigenous
communities,” in response to a petition from the Texas-Mexico Border Wall region
which was under review during it’s 82nd session.</span></div>
</div>
<br />
<div>
<div class="yiv696380576MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">In a <span style="color: #1f497d;"><a _yuid="yui_3_1_1_2_136448026962981" href="http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cerd/docs/early_warning/USA1March2013.pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">letter</a></span>
March 1, 2013 to Betty E. King, U.S. Permanent Ambassador to the United Nations,
UN CERD Chair Alexei Avtonomov stated, “In particular, the Committee is
concerned by the situation of the Lipan Apache, a tribe which reportedly remains
Federally unrecognized, given the information received that the construction of
the wall through its land has allegedly damaged ancestral burial sites, reduced
the tribe’s access to elders and other knowledge keepers, led to severe decline
in biodiversity, and may lead to the disappearance of the tribal identity
altogether as the community may be forced to leave the land.</span></div>
</div>
<br />
<div>
<div class="yiv696380576MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">“Moreover, the Committee is
concerned that... the border wall has been constructed without the free, prior
and informed consent of the affected communities, and that no effective judicial
remedies or compensation have been provided to date.” The letter continues on to
request that the U.S. provides updated and detailed information with regard to
the impact of the Texas-Mexico border wall on the rights of indigenous
communities, and any measures envisaged to reverse the negative impact of the
construction of the the border wall.</span></div>
</div>
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA">Says petition co-author Dr.
Margo Tamez, citizen of the Lipan Apache Band of Texas, and Faculty of
Indigenous Studies at the University of British Columbia Okanagan, “As an
Indigenous scholar working on this effort to raise critical awareness, and as a
first-hand witness to the suffering of Indigenous elders, families and
communities in the path of the border wall, the CERD's request to the U.S.
government is an affirmation of the importance of Indigenous peoples' efforts to
promote paths and transitional spaces of inquiry for truth and justice.
Meaningful partnerships of trust and respect are crucial in order for this
process to address Indigenous peoples' core concerns and to halt the
inter-generational harms they have endured.”</span><br />
<br />
<div>
<div class="yiv696380576MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">Petition co-author Ariel
Dulitzky, Clinical Professor at the University of Texas School of Law, and
Director of the Human Rights Clinic of the University of Texas at Austin, says,
“CERD has made a clear demand for proper consultation and consideration of the
indigenous communities in the border area. We call upon the U.S. Government to
pay close attention to CERD’s request in terms of reversing the negative impact
of the border wall and securing the rights of indigenous peoples to access their
lands, resources and holy sites, to be properly consulted, and to receive
compensation.”</span></div>
</div>
<br />
<div>
<div class="yiv696380576MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">A statement issued by Daniel
Romero, General Council Chairman for the The Lipan Apache Band of Texas (Ndé)
states, “We ask that the Obama Administration and Congress to incorporate CERD’s
demands for proper consultation and consideration of the indigenous peoples and
communities of the borderlands region. We request that the U.S. Government be
inclusive of Ndés’ request in current immigration reform and proposal of the
border lands policies that have negatively influenced the Ndé way of
life.”</span></div>
</div>
<br />
<div>
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<span lang="EN-CA"> </span><span lang="EN-CA">###</span></div>
</div>
<br />
<div>
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<span lang="EN-CA"> </span></div>
</div>
<br />
<div>
<div class="yiv696380576MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">Lipan Apache Women Defense <a href="http://lipancommunitydefense.wordpress.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://lipancommunitydefense.wordpress.com/</a></span></div>
</div>
<br />
<div>
<div class="yiv696380576MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<span lang="EN-CA">Lipan Apache Band of Texas <a href="http://www.lipanapachebandoftexas.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.lipanapachebandoftexas.com/</a></span><b><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-size: 24pt;"><br />Spanish</span></b><span lang="EN-CA"></span></div>
<div class="yiv696380576MsoNormal">
<span lang="ES-TRAD"></span><span lang="EN-CA"></span> </div>
<div class="yiv696380576MsoNormal">
<span lang="ES-TRAD"> Comunicado de prensa - Para
publicación inmediata</span><span lang="ES-MX"></span></div>
<div class="yiv696380576MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="yiv696380576MsoNormal">
<span lang="ES-TRAD"> </span><b><span lang="ES-MX">Comité para la Eliminación de la Discriminación Racial (CERD) de las
Naciones Unidas </span></b><span lang="ES-TRAD">expresa preocupación por el
impacto discriminatorio del muro fronterizo de Estados Unidos-Texas sobre los
Pueblos Indígenas de esa region.</span><span lang="ES-MX"></span></div>
<div class="yiv696380576MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="yiv696380576MsoNormal">
<span lang="ES-TRAD">El Gobierno de los Estados
Unidos deberá cumplir con el Convenio sobre la Eliminación de todas las Formas
de Discriminación Racial</span><span lang="EN-CA"></span></div>
<div class="yiv696380576MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="yiv696380576MsoNormal">
<span lang="ES-MX"> </span><span lang="ES-TRAD">Brownsville, Texas - 25 de marzo de 2013 - El Comité para la
Eliminación de la Discriminación Racial (CERD) de las Naciones Unidas, Alerta
Temprana y Procedimientos de Acción Urgente ha expresado su "preocupación por el
impacto potencialmente discriminatorio que la construcción del muro fronterizo
podría tener en las comunidades indígenas Kikapoo, Ysleta del Sur Pueblo y Lipan
Apache ", en respuesta a una petición de la región del muro entre
Texas-Mexico que fue objeto de examen en su 82 ª reunión.</span><span lang="ES-MX"></span></div>
<div class="yiv696380576MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="yiv696380576MsoNormal">
<span lang="ES-TRAD"> En una carta el 01 de marzo
2013 a Betty E. King, Embajadora Permanente de EE.UU. ante las Naciones Unidas,
ONU CERD Presidente Alexei Avtonomov declaró: "En particular, el Comité está
preocupado por la situación de los Lipa Apache, una tribu que al parecer sigue
siendo no reconocida por el gobierno federal, dada la información recibida de
que la construcción del muro a través de su tierras ancestrales aparentemente a
destruido lugares ancestrales de entierro, a reducido el acceso de la tribu a
sus ancianos y cuidadores de conocimiento, y a encaminado a la disminución
severa en la biodiversidad, y pude llevar a la desaparición de una identidad
tribal como una comunidad que puede ser sujeta abandonar sus
tierras.</span><span lang="ES-MX"></span></div>
<div class="yiv696380576MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="yiv696380576MsoNormal">
<span lang="ES-TRAD"> "Además, al Comité le
preocupa que ... el muro se ha construido sin el consentimiento libre, previo e
informado de las comunidades afectadas, y que no existen recursos judiciales
efectivos o compensación se han proporcionado hasta la fecha.” La carta continúa
peticiona que los EE.UU. proporcione información actualizada y detallada en lo
que respecta al impacto del muro fronterizo entre Texas y México sobre los
derechos de las comunidades indígenas, y todas las medidas previstas para
revertir el impacto negativo de la construcción del muro de la
frontera.</span><span lang="EN-CA"></span></div>
<div class="yiv696380576MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="yiv696380576MsoNormal">
<span _yuid="yui_3_1_1_2_136448026962986" lang="ES-TRAD"> Dice la Dr. Margo Tamez, co-autora de la
petición, ciudadana de la Banda de Lipan Apache de Texas, y Facultad de Estudios
Indígenas de la Universidad de British Columbia Okanagan, "Como académica
indígena trabajando en este esfuerzo por crear conciencia crítica, y como
testigo a primera mano del sufrimiento de los ancianos, las familias y las
comunidades en el camino del muro fronterizo, la petición del CERD ante el
gobierno de los EE.UU. es una afirmación de la importancia de los esfuerzos de
los pueblos indígenas en promover los espacios de transición para la
investigación de la verdad y justicia. La creación de redes significativas que
creen confianza y respeto son fundamentales para que este proceso pueda abordar
las preocupaciones fundamentales de los pueblos indígenas y para detener los
daños intergeneracionales que se han sufrido. "</span><span lang="EN-CA"></span></div>
<div class="yiv696380576MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="yiv696380576MsoNormal">
<span lang="ES-TRAD"> Petición co-autor Ariel
Dulitzky, Profesor Clínico de la Universidad de Texas Escuela de Derecho, y
Director de la Clínica de Derechos Humanos de la Universidad de Texas en Austin,
dice: "El Comité ha hecho una clara demanda de consulta y consideración de las
comunidades indígenas de la zona fronteriza. Hacemos un llamamiento al Gobierno
de EE.UU. que preste mucha atención a la solicitud de CERD en términos de
revertir el impacto negativo del muro fronterizo y así asegurar los derechos de
los pueblos indígenas al acceder sus tierras, recursos y sitios sagrados, para
ser debidamente consultado y recibir una compensación . "</span></div>
<div class="yiv696380576MsoNormal">
<span lang="ES-TRAD"></span><span lang="EN-CA"></span> </div>
<div class="yiv696380576MsoNormal">
<span lang="ES-TRAD"> Un comunicado emitido por
Daniel Romero, Presidente del Consejo General de la Banda Lipan Apache de Texas
(Ndé), dice: "Pedimos que el gobierno de Obama y el Congreso pudea incorporar
las demandas de CERD sobre consulta y consideración de los pueblos indígenas y
las comunidades de la zona fronteriza región. Pedimos que el gobierno de EE.UU.
incluya a solicitud de Ndés las en la reforma de la inmigración actual y
propuesta de las políticas de tierras fronterizas que han influido negativamente
la forma de vida Ndé."</span><span lang="EN-CA"></span></div>
<div class="yiv696380576MsoNormal">
<span lang="ES-TRAD"> </span><span lang="EN-CA"></span></div>
<div class="yiv696380576MsoNormal">
<span lang="ES-TRAD"># # #</span><span lang="EN-CA"></span></div>
<div class="yiv696380576MsoNormal">
<span lang="ES-TRAD"> </span><span lang="EN-CA"></span></div>
<div class="yiv696380576MsoNormal">
<span lang="ES-TRAD">Lipan Apache Defensa de la
Mujer <a href="http://lipancommunitydefense.wordpress.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://lipancommunitydefense.wordpress.com/</a></span><span lang="EN-CA"></span></div>
<div class="yiv696380576MsoNormal">
<span lang="ES-TRAD">Lipan Apache Band de <a href="http://www.lipanapachebandoftexas.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.lipanapachebandoftexas.com/</a> de Texas</span><span lang="EN-CA"></span></div>
</div>
NO BORDER WALLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16705064894973061623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5923978447493188869.post-79487794848923630882013-02-19T10:00:00.000-06:002013-02-19T10:00:08.623-06:00Security First?by Scott Nicol<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The “gang of eight” U.S. Senators, four Democrats and four
Republicans, have released a set of principles that they see as the basis for
comprehensive immigration reform legislation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The fact that they are trying to resolve this issue is a positive step,
and has the potential to allow millions of people to finally live normal lives,
free of fear and exploitation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But a key
component of their plan calls into question whether that promise will ever be
realized.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Immigrants’ advocates have long held that a “pathway to
citizenship” must be part of any immigration reform plan, allowing those
currently in the United States without papers to earn U.S. citizenship.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Conservative icon Ronald Reagan agreed with this, saying, "</span><a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128303672"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">I believe
in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and lived here, even
though sometime back they may have entered illegally</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Today
anti-immigrant groups spit out the term “amnesty” as a curse, and many in the
current crop of Republican politicians (Texas’ U.S. Senators prominent among
them) use it to slander the very idea of allowing the undocumented to become
citizens.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Though Cornyn and Cruz present the rejection of earned
citizenship as a principled ideological stance, many conservative pundits have
pointed out that Hispanics tend to vote for Democrats – </span><a href="http://www.pewhispanic.org/2012/11/07/latino-voters-in-the-2012-election/"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">71%
voted for Barack Obama</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> – so allowing the 11 million or so mostly, but not
entirely, Hispanic undocumented immigrants currently in the U.S. to vote might hurt
Republicans in future elections.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Alienating Hispanic voters is costing Republicans elections
now, but adding more Hispanic voters could hurt Republicans in the future. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What are they to do?</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The answer lies in the “gang of eight” </span><a href="http://www.c-span.org/uploadedFiles/Content/Documents/Bipartisan-Framework-For-Immigration-Reform.pdf"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">principles</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The recently unveiled framework makes border security a
prerequisite for the issuance of green cards to undocumented immigrants.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After that they could apply for full
citizenship, going to the “back of the line.” </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Of course the length of that line depends on what country
they come from since each nation is assigned a quota; whether they are related
by blood or marriage to U.S. citizens; and their income and skills.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For a Mexican national with no family in the
United States, no money or special skills, the line that they will be going to
the back of is <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/02/15/172108399/episode-436-if-economists-controlled-the-borders">over a century long</a>.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">But until the border is declared secure, that
hundred-plus-year clock will not start ticking.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The principles released by the “gang of eight” do not define
a secure border, so it is impossible to know how many years, how many new
Border Patrol agents, how many more drones, how many miles of new border wall,
it might take to get there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The Senate
plan calls for a commission made up of “</span><a href="http://www.c-span.org/uploadedFiles/Content/Documents/Bipartisan-Framework-For-Immigration-Reform.pdf"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="color: blue;">governors, attorneys general, and
community leaders living along the Southwest border</span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">“ to determine when the border
has been secured.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Immigrants’ advocates cried foul at the notion that Texas
governor Rick Perry and Arizona’s Jan Brewer could hold the citizenship of
millions hostage indefinitely by refusing to declare the border secure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Perry manages to find money for
Highway Patrol speedboats with machine guns mounted on the front to patrol the
Rio Grande at the same time as he cuts $4.5 billion from Texas’ schools.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Brewer has committed Arizona’s scarce financial
resources to defending SB 1070, the state law intended to make immigrants’
lives so hellish that they “self-deport.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Neither are particularly objective in their assessment of
the border.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The gang seems to have viewed sacrificing the border to get
a bill as a given, and they sold us out so quickly that it never occurred to them
that making border security a prerequisite could put citizenship in permanent
limbo.</span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Democratic gang members have responded to the criticism with
assurances that the Department of Homeland Security would develop a new,
workable definition of a secure border tied to concrete metrics rather than the
delusions of Perry and Brewer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They now
say the commission will be strictly advisory.</span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is certainly
further form the lunatic fringe than the governors of Texas and Arizona, but
the Department of Homeland Security has a terrible record on the border.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Upon taking office Napolitano refused to halt the
condemnation of land and construction of border walls in South Texas and
elsewhere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Early last year her
underlings finally succeeded in pressuring the US section of the International
Boundary and Water Commission to approve walls in the floodplain at Roma, Rio
Grande City, and Los Ebanos, despite the risk to residents on both sides of the
river and the damage that the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge
and Roma Bluffs World Birding Center will suffer.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Last week Secretary Napolitano spoke in El Paso, ranked the
safest big city in the United States for the third year running, and declared
that the border is more secure than ever, and that the idea that immigration
reform should be held hostage to border security “</span><a href="http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_22523320/secretary-homeland-security-janet-napolitano-el-paso-today"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">suffers
from a fundamental flaw</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Her argument is backed by the numbers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Border Patrol apprehensions are at a forty
year low, and the </span><a href="http://www.pewhispanic.org/2012/04/23/net-migration-from-mexico-falls-to-zero-and-perhaps-less/"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">Pew
Research Center</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> has found that net migration from Mexico is effectively at
zero, with as many people heading south as north.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">So why has her agency continued to push for border
walls?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Politics, of course.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">At the beginning of her tenure halting border wall
construction would have opened up the newly elected President Obama to attacks
in the press.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The “gang of eight”
likewise assume that throwing the border under the bus is a political necessity
to get a bill through Congress, so they do it without hesitation.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Immigration reform should not be held hostage to “border
security”, whether it is Perry and Brewer or Napolitano who decide on what that
means.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There will always be conflicting
political needs that will prevent the honest assessment and agreement that
would allow reform to move forward.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">When the Senators draft their bill in the coming weeks
border security must not be a prerequisite for anything else.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Otherwise real reform will always be just
over the horizon, one more agent, one more drone, one more wall away.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Politics is an abstraction, but the actual border consists
of real lives and real landscapes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We
are not a bargaining chip for politicians who have never dipped a toe in the
Rio Grande, walked a trail in the LRGV National Wildlife Refuge, or looked a
South Texas citrus grower in the eye.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
NO BORDER WALLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16705064894973061623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5923978447493188869.post-64140561960823375922013-01-28T23:14:00.002-06:002013-01-28T23:14:46.848-06:00Don't Throw the Border Under the Busby Scott Nicol<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Congress will
soon take up Comprehensive Immigration Reform.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That could be a good thing, if it normalizes the status of millions who
are now forced to live in the shadows; reduces the number of immigrants who
cross, and sometimes die, in the desert; and allows some of the $18 billion
that is spent annually on immigration enforcement to be used for other
things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">But if
history is any guide it could also mean a ramping up of border enforcement, with
billions more wasted on border walls.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">In 2006, the last time
Congress made a serious attempt at Comprehensive Immigration Reform, hundreds
of miles of border wall were included in competing House and Senate bills.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The two bills were never reconciled and
therefore never made it to the President’s desk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Instead the provisions
calling for walls along the southern border were passed by both houses as a
stand-alone bill - the Secure Fence Act.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>650 miles of border wall were eventually built, tearing through
communities from San Diego to Brownsville and ecosystems from the Otay Mountain
Wilderness Area to the Sabal Palms Audubon Sanctuary.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">The idea that walls would
halt potential crossers in their tracks proved to be more fantasy than
reality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Congressional Research
Service reported that walls near San Diego had “</span><a href="http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/homesec/RL33659.pdf"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="color: blue;">little impact on overall apprehensions</span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even the Border Patrol said that “</span><a href="http://borderwallinthenews.blogspot.com/2008/11/longer-taller-fencing-gives-illegal.html"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="color: blue;">The border fence is a speed bump in
the desert.</span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">While walls have not
reduced the number of immigrants who enter the U.S., they have caused the
number of border crossers who perish in southern deserts each year to more than
double.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is because border walls </span><a href="http://www.no-border-wall.com/walls-do-not-work.php"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="color: blue;">do not stop people</span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> from entering the United
States, they only reroute them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Confronted with an 18 foot
high wall near San Diego or El Paso or Brownsville desperate immigrants do not
turn around and go home, they go around it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Rather than crossing in safer urban areas thousands come through rugged mountains
and deserts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a result more than 5,000
have died from dehydration and exposure, and it is estimated that thousands of
bodies lie undiscovered.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Walls
and other enforcement measures have also taken a heavy toll on the
environment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">California’s
Otay Mountain Wilderness Area saw 530,000 cubic yards of rock blasted from the
mountainsides tumble into the Tijuana River.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In Arizona the border walls that cross washes and streams in the Organ
Pipe Cactus National Monument have caused severe erosion and flooding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Walls built in New Mexico’s Playas Valley
block the movement of one of the last wild herds of bison, whose range
straddles the U.S. – Mexico border.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
in Texas the walls that slice through the Lower Rio Grande Valley National
Wildlife Refuge have fragmented habitat that is critical for the survival of
endangered ocelots.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Following the
recent election, in which some (but unfortunately not all) of the loudest
immigrant-bashers suffered defeat and more than 70% of Hispanic voters rejected
Mitt Romney, many politicians have decided that it is in their best interest to
pass some version of immigration reform.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">The big concern
is that we could see history repeat itself.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Press reports
describe the coming bill as mirroring past legislation, pairing work visas and
a pathway to citizenship with more border enforcement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Once again
the border may be sacrificed in a doomed attempt to get conservatives to accept
comprehensive legislation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">The idea that
members of Congress who have called for making the lives of immigrants so
hellish that they “self-deport”, or who voted just last summer to waive federal
laws within 100 miles of both borders for all Border Patrol activities, will now
support humane immigration legislation is unrealistic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sticking walls in the bill will not change
that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Instead, if
walls and further border enforcement are allowed in this year’s legislation we
run the risk of a repeat of 2006, when hundreds of miles of border walls were
the only part of the immigration bill to make it to the president’s desk.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Those of us
who live on the border have already seen too much of the enforcement side of
that equation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Last year the federal
government </span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/08/us/huge-amounts-spent-on-immigration-study-finds.html?hp&_r=3&"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="color: blue;">spent more on immigration enforcement</span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> than the budgets of the <span style="mso-themecolor: text1;">FBI, Secret Service, Drug Enforcement
Administration, U.S. Marshal Service, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms and Explosives</span> combined<span style="mso-themecolor: text1;">.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Enough.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Members of
Congress who were sent to DC to represent the border need to fight for their
constituents, but so far they have been silent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>With much of Arizona and California already walled off, Representatives Vela,
Hinojosa, Cuellar, Gallego, and O’Rourke could all see new walls tear through
their districts if they don’t make sure that border walls are kept out of the
bill, but none have told us what (if anything) they plan to do about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">This is a
critically important piece of legislation for border communities, and border
legislators should take the lead in writing it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That is their job, after all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Sitting silently in the back of the room and hoping for the best is not
going to cut it this time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Congress
needs to come up with a clean bill, dealing with immigration without further
militarizing the borderlands.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No new
border walls, no more pork for military contractors; instead we as a nation
must address our dysfunctional immigration system in a way that is both
effective and humane.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">We need immigration
reform that doesn’t throw the border under the bus.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
NO BORDER WALLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16705064894973061623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5923978447493188869.post-5203184310379678472013-01-13T23:32:00.000-06:002013-01-13T23:36:43.922-06:00Broken Promises and Border Walls Push Jaguarundi to the Brink<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">by Scott Nicol</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">The long, low body moves in a
permanent crouch as the lithe cat glides through the shaded underbrush.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not much larger than a house cat, but with a
lean, dark body more closely resembling a weasel’s than a tabby’s, the
jaguarundi stalks small prey, birds and rodents mostly, in the thornscrub where
the Gulf Coast meets the Rio Grande.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Even before farms, towns, and
homes devoured 95% of the Lower Rio Grande Valley’s native habitat the jaguarundi’s
secretive habits meant it was rarely seen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Now there is scant evidence as to how many cats remain, though they are
occasionally spotted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 2009 there were two sightings by Texas
Parks and Wildlife game wardens, though they were officially classified as
unconfirmed in the absence of a photograph or carcass. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Loss of habitat and the
fragmentation of what forested areas remain is the biggest obstacle to
jaguarundi maintaining a healthy population, according to a draft recovery plan
recently prepared by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If a patch of forest is too small, it may not
contain enough food, and if patches are too far apart or split by roads or
other barriers jaguarundi may not have sufficient territory to survive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Isolated animals may also be cut off from
potential mates, which can lead to inbreeding within a small population.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Ocelots, a slightly larger wild
cat whose markings resemble a jaguar’s, inhabit the same South Texas territory
and face the same problems as the jaguarundi.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Ocelots are better studied, with radio collared individuals in Laguna
Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They
regularly pause in front of motion-activated cameras there and in the nearby
Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their total population in the United States
is certainly less than 100, and possibly much lower.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even fewer jaguarundi remain, which has led
to both being listed under the Endangered Species Act.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">The best way to save both
species, according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife, is to provide them with enough
habitat to forage and find mates.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
draft recovery plan calls for the purchase of land to replace and reconnect the
native forest that they need, creating the wildlife corridor that the
river-hugging refuge was originally meant to be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But with the never-ending “fiscal cliff”
crisis and calls to butcher the budgets of federal agencies like U.S. Fish and
Wildlife they will be hard pressed to find the necessary funds.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">When border walls were erected in
South Texas, they repeatedly sliced through the Lower Rio Grande Valley
National Wildlife refuge, fragmenting habitat that had been purchased
specifically for ocelots and jaguarundi.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Humans have had no problem climbing border walls, with or without a
homemade ladder, but for a small cat that has not evolved thumbs an 18 foot high
steel wall is insurmountable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">In 2008, after the Department of
Homeland Security waived the Endangered Species Act and more than thirty other
laws so that Customs and Border Protection could build border walls they
prepared a so-called “Environmental Stewardship Plan” meant, they said, to
demonstrate their continued commitment to the environment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To address the fragmentation of the Lower Rio
Grande National Wildlife Refuge and the loss of endangered species habitat the plan
stated that Customs and Border Protection would provide U.S. Fish and Wildlife
with the means to purchase 4,600 acres of land to reconnect sections of the
refuge that were separated by walls.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>These properties would be purchased from willing sellers, because the
South Texas refuge complex refuses to condemn land and earn the enmity of its
neighbors, in contrast to Customs and Border Protection, who ultimately carried
out more than 400 condemnations to build border walls.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">In the nearly five years since
Customs and Border Protection made that promise how much have they
delivered?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">None.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Not one acre, not one foot, not
one inch.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">It is not as though Customs and
Border Protection is strapped for cash.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A report issued this month found that the federal government throws more
money at immigration enforcement than it provides to the FBI, Secret Service,
Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Marshal Service, and the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives combined. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Somewhere in the $18 billion pot of cash that
immigration enforcement agencies, Customs and Border Protection prominent among
them, were swimming in in 2012 surely they could find a few dollars to buy a
few acres and fulfill their overdue commitment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Now Customs and Border Protection
wants to build more miles of border wall in South Texas, tearing through Roma,
Rio Grande City and Los Ebanos as well as further stretches of the Lower Rio
Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In addition to the further fragmentation of ocelot and jaguarundi
habitat that this would bring, these walls would stand in the Rio Grande
floodplain, putting communities on both sides of the river at risk from dammed
or deflected water during a major flood.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Last summer they assured
landowners and mayors that the new border walls would not pose a flood hazard, and
that despite the obvious fact that a wall in a river is by definition a dam
these walls would be just fine.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">But as their unmet commitment to
be good environmental stewards has shown, a Customs and Border Protection
promise is not worth the paper it is written on. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
NO BORDER WALLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16705064894973061623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5923978447493188869.post-85418796236731163722012-12-14T15:59:00.000-06:002012-12-14T16:03:07.429-06:00Border Wall Imperils Southern Arizona Pronghorn HerdsStatement from the Sierra Club's Borderlands Team<br />
<a href="http://www.sierraclub.org/borderlands">www.sierraclub.org/borderlands</a><br />
<br />
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TUCSON, AZ – Arizona Game and Fish is planning to relocate
pronghorn from central Arizona to replenish herds in southeastern Arizona where
the number of animals has been decimated by recently-constructed walls along
the U.S.-Mexico border.</div>
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Arizona Public Media and the <a href="http://azstarnet.com/news/local/pronghorns-might-be-moved-from-prescott-to-sonoita-area/article_e53a8e86-b5f8-5937-957a-4759f1b6b9ce.html"><span style="color: blue;">Arizona
Daily Star</span></a> report that these drastic measures are intended to avoid a total
die-off of pronghorn herds in the vicinity of Sonoita and the San Rafael
Valley.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Sonoita herd has only about
18 animals remaining, and the 7 animals of the San Rafael herd rely on only one
buck who is too old to breed.</div>
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These two herds are victims of habitat fragmentation caused
by environmentally reckless border policies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Hundreds of miles of border barriers and roads were hastily built in
Arizona from 2006 to 2009, many of them without regard for vital environmental
safeguards and federal protections such as the Endangered Species Act and
National Environmental Policy Act.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These
laws, and dozens more, were waived along most of Arizona’s border with Mexico
by the Bush Administration.</div>
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"Habitat
fragmentation, whether caused by urban sprawl, highways, or, in this case,
border walls, cuts species off from the terrain they need to find food, water
and mates,” says Dan Millis of Sierra Club Borderlands in Tucson. “People climb
the wall all the time. Instead of serving its intended purpose – to deter
people, the wall is stopping wildlife and endangering their survival, as is the
case with these pronghorn.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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“It is
going to cost a lot of money to capture and relocate pronghorn from central
Arizona and move them in with the struggling herds,” continues Millis. “The
federal government wasted billions on useless border walls to the detriment of
the border environment, and now Arizonans are stuck with the costs of cleaning
up the mess.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #272627; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">#####<o:p></o:p></i><br />
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<o:p> </o:p></div>
<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: center;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Sierra Club is America's ol<st1:personname w:st="on">d</st1:personname>est,
largest an<st1:personname w:st="on">d</st1:personname> most influential
grassroots environmental <st1:personname w:st="on">or</st1:personname>ganization.
More information on borderlands protection can be found at </i><a href="http://www.sierraclub.org/borderlands"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: blue;">www.sierraclub.org/borderlands</span></i></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> <o:p></o:p></i></div>
NO BORDER WALLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16705064894973061623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5923978447493188869.post-55445633824373797092012-09-09T17:35:00.001-05:002012-09-09T17:50:04.646-05:00Will Walls Worsen Rio Grande Flooding? U.S. IBWC Can’t Give a Straight Answer<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">By Scott
Nicol</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The United
States section of the International Boundary and Water Commission (US IBWC)
recently hosted a meeting in Rio Grande City to explain their decision to allow
Customs and Border Protection to build new border walls in the Rio Grande
floodplain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While they should be
commended for reaching out to local residents, they seemed completely
unprepared, unable to answer the most basic questions about their decision or
the new walls.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">When, for example, landowners asked whether there had
been any on-the-ground surveys, and what the wall would mean for access and
impacts to their property, they got no response.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The manager for Rio Grande City’s international bridge
and port of entry asked how they would be able to access the riverbank to carry
out ongoing erosion control efforts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>US
IBWC did not know.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Residents asked whether walls crossing the washes that
feed into the Rio Grande might become blocked with debris, preventing normal
drainage and causing flooding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At that
point US IBWC admitted that even though they approved these new walls months
ago, Customs and Border Protection still has not provided them with the walls’
design specifications, so they could not answer that question either.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3jhsqGIlTiQTksOLcEFtQ2zn3WOyABRIojjNUD2TSbh_Ucl7xdKakLhWdSIYCs9IlqWYkwaVbqCVEw13sMYjS8Yi-ZHTDmGZ1l_NEOCQFRoG9cDI1PgH17CQxzVwmVrBU7rD4xZjeViuj/s1600/8-21-2007+Bureau+of+Land+Management+photo+of+debris+lodged+in+border+wall.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3jhsqGIlTiQTksOLcEFtQ2zn3WOyABRIojjNUD2TSbh_Ucl7xdKakLhWdSIYCs9IlqWYkwaVbqCVEw13sMYjS8Yi-ZHTDmGZ1l_NEOCQFRoG9cDI1PgH17CQxzVwmVrBU7rD4xZjeViuj/s320/8-21-2007+Bureau+of+Land+Management+photo+of+debris+lodged+in+border+wall.bmp" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">2007 Bureau of Land Management photo of debris in the Arizona wall</span></div>
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</div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">US IBWC was also unable, or unwilling, to answer a key question
about the flood model that they are using to justify their approval of border
walls in the floodplain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Using the Freedom of Information Act the </span><a href="http://www.sierraclub.org/borderlands"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">Sierra Club</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> has gotten a copy
of the flood model, as well as a number of related documents.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In 2011 Customs and Border Protection paid Baker
Engineering to produce a model that claimed that flood water would pass
harmlessly through the 4-inch wide spaces between the border wall’s six-inch
wide bollard posts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Baker’s accompanying
report stated that, “</span></span><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/68844504/June-2011-CBP-Hydrology-Report-for-Border-Wall-Sections-O-1-O-2-O-3"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">A debris blockage of 10% was adopted where the fence is aligned
parallel to the flow and 25% at locations where the fence is aligned
perpendicular to the flow</span></span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The model’s computer program cannot add to this number, cannot
decide that it is too low and that in reality more debris will clog the spaces
between bollards.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By telling the
computer that 75% to 90% of floodwater will pass through the wall, Baker effectively
predetermined the model’s end result.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">At the meeting in Rio Grande City, surrounded by
residents whose lands and lives will depend on whether or not these walls will actually
let water pass through or will dam it up, US IBWC could not explain where the
suspiciously round and suspiciously low estimate of 10% - 25% debris blockage
came from.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In earlier reports Baker Engineering came to a very
different conclusion about how much debris border walls were likely to catch.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">After
border walls in Arizona became clogged with debris and acted as dams in 2008,
inflicting millions of dollars of damage on both sides of the border and
causing two deaths, Baker Engineering was hired to follow the wall from El Paso
to San Diego and report back to Customs and Border Protection.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Baker found that, </span><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-themecolor: text1;">“</span></span><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/41500057/Customs-and-Border-Protection-report-on-border-walls-crossing-washes-and-streams"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">PF 225 fencing obstructs
drainage flow every time a wash is crossed. With additional debris build-up,
the International Boundary Water Commission’s (IBWC’s) criteria for rise in
water surface elevations (set at 6” in rural areas and 3” in urban areas) can
quickly be exceeded</span></span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">.”
</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">The </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">report included photographs of
bollard-style walls nearly identical to those planned for the Rio Grande
floodplain filled with debris, and</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"> documented “</span></span><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/41500057/Customs-and-Border-Protection-report-on-border-walls-crossing-washes-and-streams"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">debris build-up which sometimes reached a
height of 6 feet</span></span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">.<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJf-SeFHurj_esUXep7ZUK3AdRmImsHkPlIRRbLL19h4q-1Iu7qzeC6Xaaf8rTFe2P04TJx48_VY_Dy6py9780WSuOlqGllnihyphenhyphenMyUMBzL1vpp1pYlecu3h4VKHwKy26oLaHLF_HLuP-pn/s1600/page+620+of+2009+Baker+report+walls+in+washes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJf-SeFHurj_esUXep7ZUK3AdRmImsHkPlIRRbLL19h4q-1Iu7qzeC6Xaaf8rTFe2P04TJx48_VY_Dy6py9780WSuOlqGllnihyphenhyphenMyUMBzL1vpp1pYlecu3h4VKHwKy26oLaHLF_HLuP-pn/s320/page+620+of+2009+Baker+report+walls+in+washes.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> <span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;">Photo from the 2009 Baker report showing debris in the Arizona border wall</span></span></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In examining on-the-ground evidence of debris clogging
border walls, it bolstered a 2008 Baker Engineering white paper that looked at
the likely impacts of the walls planned for Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los
Ebanos.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In discussing the wall’s
transfer capacity - the ability of water to pass between the bollards - it
stated that,<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;">
<a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/104742442/Email-IBWC-to-CBP-O-1-Thru-O-3-border-wall-Modeling-2010-IBWC-Says-Solid-Wall-Due-to-Debris"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">“The
transfer capacity estimate has been shown to include a significant allowance
for “clogging” due to the accumulation of debris.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the case of fence segments O-1 [Roma] and
O-2 [Rio Grande City], the transfer capacity was estimated to allow for a
minimum of 85% and 67% clogging, respectively.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>For fence segment O-3 [Los Ebanos], a minimum allowance of 36% was estimated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is important to keep in mind that these
estimates apply to portions of the fence that are generally parallel to the
direction of flow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Areas that are
oriented generally perpendicular to the direction of flow should (for reasons
of prudence) be modeled as completely blocked, primarily due to the hydraulic
effects of bollards themselves.</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">”</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicfS86ytGlXHwb7lubHp7MUcJ5Vjqz1Ye5BQrrARvR9PrEAGlttZc37kOhKKDvg4MkBJqO99KH2maiWgIyzbn34Sj8lbD4PpCQHUgYUuYLt1wPbg3nIX3D6HwiWW7ey-jSz1RyAhkoAMUh/s1600/map+of+O-1+O-2+O-3+from+June+2011+flood+model.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="207" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicfS86ytGlXHwb7lubHp7MUcJ5Vjqz1Ye5BQrrARvR9PrEAGlttZc37kOhKKDvg4MkBJqO99KH2maiWgIyzbn34Sj8lbD4PpCQHUgYUuYLt1wPbg3nIX3D6HwiWW7ey-jSz1RyAhkoAMUh/s320/map+of+O-1+O-2+O-3+from+June+2011+flood+model.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div align="center">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Map of the three new border walls from the 2011 Baker flood model</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
</div>
<div align="center">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">So how did Baker’s
estimates of clogging drop from 85%, 67%, and 36% down to 10% where the wall is
parallel to the Rio Grande, and from 100% down to 25% where it is
perpendicular?</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The US IBWC has yet to give
the public an answer to that question.</span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The new flood model,
with its low debris estimate, is cited by the US section of the International
Boundary and Water Commission as the basis for its decision to allow these
border walls.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Mexican section has
rejected the model’s assumptions, countering in late 2011 that these walls
would likely </span><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/98818275/December-13-2011-Mexico-IBWC-rejects-border-walls-in-the-Rio-Grande-flood-plain"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">obstruct
60% - 70% of flood flows</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> even before the clogging effect of debris is
factored in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">On February 9, 2012 the
two sections of the bi-national organization met to discuss their
disagreement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Meeting notes written by
the same US IBWC engineer who was unable to answer questions about the model’s
assumptions at the Rio Grande City public meeting say that,</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;">
<a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/104742125/February-9-2012-US-and-Mexican-IBWC-meeting-notes-re-Rio-Grande-border-wall"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">“It
was recognized that the Mexican Section may prefer a higher percent debris
blockage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was explained that the U.S.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) wanted minimum debris blockage and a
percentage that was felt to be reasonable was agreed upon in the meeting on
February 23, 2011, during which the modeling methodology was finalized between
USIBWC, DHS, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Michael Baker Jr., Inc.”</span></a><span style="color: #2a2a2a; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">So even when they met with their Mexican counterparts, US
IBWC gave no concrete evidence that the lower estimate was more accurate than
the earlier, much higher one. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The nice,
round, low number was \simply “felt to be reasonable”, despite conflicting with
empirical evidence from Arizona, and was adopted because it matched up with the
Department of Homeland Security’s desire for a model showing a “minimum debris
blockage.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Not only was Mexico’s estimate ignored, they were not
even invited to participate in the 2011 modeling methodology meeting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And six days after the 2012 meeting the US
section, flouting its treaty obligations, unilaterally approved Customs and
Border Protection’s request to build walls in the floodplain.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid3khtc0M-hGYZLikeNHVroN4SDsKKZU5Zl8aSOynuTRa1V0D8Z3a1mfMYKQ9MNgcCxGXMo4piICqnbbxPntMOKmdgPmkYAkchLd51J8dNmiqnN2Vpnj1tDJXeYzJxrU42o9vActMhvkkD/s1600/id_presentation+mcallen+contractor+presentation+2009.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid3khtc0M-hGYZLikeNHVroN4SDsKKZU5Zl8aSOynuTRa1V0D8Z3a1mfMYKQ9MNgcCxGXMo4piICqnbbxPntMOKmdgPmkYAkchLd51J8dNmiqnN2Vpnj1tDJXeYzJxrU42o9vActMhvkkD/s320/id_presentation+mcallen+contractor+presentation+2009.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Customs and Border Protection photo of debris backed up behind the border wall</span> </span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has not hosted a
public meeting on border walls in South Texas since 2007, but they did send a
representative to the recent Rio Grande City meeting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He declined to present</span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
any information, and remained silent unless he was asked a direct
question.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">When asked when CBP would begin construction he said that
at this time they do not have the funds to build these walls.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He failed to mention that CBP bought the
steel years ago and currently has it in storage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>More importantly, he failed to mention that
the new fiscal year for federal agencies begins on October 1, at which time
their bank accounts will be refilled.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">If border residents want answers, we need to demand them
now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Representative Cuellar and Senators Hutchison and Cornyn
need to pressure the US IBWC to reverse its bad decision, and direct Customs
and Border Protection to finally give up on these dangerous walls.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They need to take concrete action, and they
need to do it now.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">But of course they won’t, unless we, their constituents
and voters, tell them to.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">October is only three weeks away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The clock is ticking.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
NO BORDER WALLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16705064894973061623noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5923978447493188869.post-14646905700128138212012-07-21T09:00:00.000-05:002012-07-21T09:00:07.783-05:00IBWC Approves New Border Walls Despite Flood DangerBy Scott Nicol<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The U.S.
half of the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) has finally caved
under pressure from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and approved border
walls in the Rio Grande floodplain adjacent to Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los
Ebanos.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5Ypi7RDEfYQKJDsPjrl-ZIgpYM8rL0wTloyUoE11lk_hKToi9LShpRZ6a-Ex_se7CZGMtcZ5z4BrYXYRWkcF2Q-CLih-L36TW1LuSgoNUN0NgR5JKcB5seRb8uqxx1KfjuSUkwqcnBLZV/s1600/map+o1+o2+o3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="264" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5Ypi7RDEfYQKJDsPjrl-ZIgpYM8rL0wTloyUoE11lk_hKToi9LShpRZ6a-Ex_se7CZGMtcZ5z4BrYXYRWkcF2Q-CLih-L36TW1LuSgoNUN0NgR5JKcB5seRb8uqxx1KfjuSUkwqcnBLZV/s320/map+o1+o2+o3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Customs and Border Protection maps of the three new Rio Grande border wall sections</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">These three border wall
sections, totaling 14 miles, were not built when other parts of the Rio Grande
Valley were walled off because of the serious danger they pose to communities
on both sides of the river.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the U.S.
side they could block the exit of flood water into the Rio Grande, bottling it
up in towns and farm land and exacerbating the damage that they suffer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">They could also deflect flood waters towards Mexico, worsening
flooding in Mexican communities. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Deflection might even cause the river to
settle into a new channel farther to the south, which would effectively change
the location of the border. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">In an attempt to lessen the amount of water that these
walls will deflect into Mexican cities CBP </span><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/37657904/O1-O2-O3-Drainage-Report-Final-245"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">designed
them to channel flood waters north</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> into the U.S. cities that they abut.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The walls will begin close to the Rio Grande, where during a flood water
would be split off from the main channel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As the river bends the mostly straight walls get farther from them,
meaning that floodwater, along with all of the debris and garbage it carries,
will be channeled into properties in the United States that might otherwise be
spared from flooding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">To make certain that water is channeled into the U.S.
holes were planned for the middle of two of these wall sections – a 100 foot
wide gap in the Roma wall, and a 275 foot wide gap in the Rio Grande City wall
– explicitly intended to direct more water into these communities during a
flood.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZMzQoAh3LObEAIJTim4_q08qMeOWqNbbXbRXfo6sEi_XZ9v3OZyHq1987in3bUZ7W-2WTyEFK8guw7K5Tdo96dw1u3-JToymr0hhECTzqOKnmu-N-xx4bZ_At2aSEfGMQo-ye_U06KQ7s/s1600/LRGV+Nat+Wildlife+Refuge+-+USFW+refuge+tract+and+levee+border+wall+-+photo+Scott+Nicol.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="201" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZMzQoAh3LObEAIJTim4_q08qMeOWqNbbXbRXfo6sEi_XZ9v3OZyHq1987in3bUZ7W-2WTyEFK8guw7K5Tdo96dw1u3-JToymr0hhECTzqOKnmu-N-xx4bZ_At2aSEfGMQo-ye_U06KQ7s/s320/LRGV+Nat+Wildlife+Refuge+-+USFW+refuge+tract+and+levee+border+wall+-+photo+Scott+Nicol.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Existing border wall slicing through the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">All three of the new border
wall sections would also slice through the Lower Rio Grande Valley National
Wildlife Refuge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Established to create a
wildlife corridor along the Rio Grande, the refuge provides habitat for
critically endangered ocelot and jaguarundi.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Walls that have already been erected downriver repeatedly bisect and
fragment the refuge, putting the future of the terrestrial species that it
harbors in doubt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The new walls would
further fragment the refuge and cut off animals from the only reliable source
of water in what US Fish and Wildlife has described as “</span><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/99869902/LRGV-NWR-Tracts-and-Associated-Impacts-Due-to-Border-Fence-Construction-U-S-Fish-and-Wildlife-Service-Undated-Memo"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">some
of the best habitat(s) in the U.S. along the final portion of the Rio Grande.</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">”<span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">In a February 15, 2012
letter John Merino, Principal Engineer for the US section of the International
Boundary and Water Commission gave CBP the green light, saying, “</span><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/98819733/USIBWC-February-15-2012-unilateral-approval-for-border-walls-in-Rio-Grande-floodplain"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">the USIBWC has no objection to
the erection of the fence segments within the limits of the Rio Grande
floodplain</span></span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Merino
dismissed the possibility that walls would deflect or obstruct flood waters,
and stated flatly that USIBWC did not examine potential environmental
impacts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He also failed to mention the
fact that for the previous five years both the U.S. and Mexican halves of the
bi-national International Boundary and Water Commission had rejected the idea
of placing border walls in the floodplain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Throughout 2007 and 2008 CBP tried without success to come
up with a wall design for these last three sections that would not impact
flooding, and that the IBWC would therefore approve.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unable to convince the IBWC that walls in the
floodplain would not act like dams, a DHS briefing from October 2, 2008, said
of these three, “</span><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/99638100/Oct-2-2008-Mtg-CBP-IBWC-Likely-to-Drop-O-1-O-2-0-3"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">DHS likely to drop fence segments.</span></span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-themecolor: text1;">” </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When CBP informed Representative Henry Cuellar
a few days after the 2008 election that these border wall sections were “on
hold,” Cuellar called it</span><a href="http://borderwallinthenews.blogspot.com/2008/11/cuellar-cbp-halts-border-fence.html"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">
“a big victory” </span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">for his
district. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">It would have made sense for Customs and Border
Protection to decide that the Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos walls were
not worth risking lives and property to build.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Or, if bureaucracy outweighed humanity in their thinking, they might
have called off wall construction in order to comply with the international treaty.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">They also could have based a decision to spare them on a
June 2008 internal Customs and Border Protection document that stated that </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">“</span><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/99195860/June-20-2008-Customs-and-Border-Protection-border-wall-Talking-Points"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">The Rio Grande Valley Sector Chief has
determined that operational areas that contain the PF225 fence segments such as
O-1 to O-2, O-12 through O-14, and O-17 through O-21 to be in “effectively
controlled” level at the current time.</span></span></a><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Segments O-1 and O-2 are the
Roma and Rio Grande City walls.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Segments O-12 through O-14 are in Cameron County, near Los Indios.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Segments O-17 through O-21 encompass all of
the wall sections in the vicinity of Brownsville, from the neighborhoods near
the River Bend Golf Course west of town past the Sabal Palms Audubon Sanctuary
and the Loop family orchard to the east.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Those who live in these areas and had their property condemned for
border walls lost their land for nothing, because the local Border Patrol had
determined that the area already under effective control before any walls were
built.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSBT4UwrPv80mBTc3PXhwmaGZbAlByo5F4g9OumAzTEcna9ZKf8og-I4kpQNMZlUw53smxvokOG9kCKGcLCnmU5kfmnIiyP0QCgtuUvsVBZruqz_6Uiir3UnEeLX5oPLGX4sy2f11AeuTF/s1600/Border+wall+construction+north+of+levee+blocking+Sabal+Palms+Audubon+Sanctuary+-+1-10-2010+-+Scott+Nicol.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSBT4UwrPv80mBTc3PXhwmaGZbAlByo5F4g9OumAzTEcna9ZKf8og-I4kpQNMZlUw53smxvokOG9kCKGcLCnmU5kfmnIiyP0QCgtuUvsVBZruqz_6Uiir3UnEeLX5oPLGX4sy2f11AeuTF/s320/Border+wall+construction+north+of+levee+blocking+Sabal+Palms+Audubon+Sanctuary+-+1-10-2010+-+Scott+Nicol.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Border wall segment O-21 under construction with the Sabal Palms Audubon Sanctuary south of it</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Of course decisions about who will get walls and who will be spared are
made in Washington DC, not the Rio Grande Valley.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">That simple fact helps to explain why Customs and Border Protection
continued to push for these walls, shifting tactics from trying to convince
Mexico that walls would not worsen flooding south of the border to pushing the
US section of IBWC to allow for “</span></span><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/59136866/Feb-2-2010-letter-from-CBP-Aguilar-to-IBWC-Drusina-regarding-Texas-border-walls"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">unilateral</span></span></a><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">” action – building walls in the face of Mexican objections, and thereby
violating the international treaty.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">After hurricane Alex roared into the Rio Grande Valley in 2010, followed
by a tropical depression, the flooding Rio Grande forced the mandatory
evacuation of Los Ebanos and parts of Rio Grande City.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With homes underwater and the evacuation
order still in place, CBP hosted a meeting for the USIBWC and the State
Department in Washington DC.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;">
<span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">At the DC meeting Customs and Border Protection did not mention the
ongoing floods that were inundating the sites of the proposed walls, or the
Border Patrol sector chief’s assessment that the area was “effectively
controlled.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead, CBP said that the
three remaining walls were “critical to our Nation’s security,” and since Mexico
continued to insist that they posed a flood hazard “</span></span><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/63899898/July-20-2010-Customs-and-Border-Protection-State-Dept-briefing-on-wall-sections-0-1-through-0-3"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">we need [US]IBWC and Department of State’s
support for an unilateral decision to proceed with the fence construction</span></span></a><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Throughout 2010 USIBWC consistently rejected unilateral action, pointing
out the </span>likelihood of “</span><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/37594959/USIBWC-Disapproval-Letter-January-2010-Docx-1"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">substantial
increases in water surface elevations and deflections of flow at several points
of all three projects</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">.”</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">But in late 2011 USIBWC
reversed itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-size: 11.5pt;">John Merino, the US section’s Principal Engineer, wrote to his Mexican
counterpart to say that US IBWC had “</span></span><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/98817710/September-16-2011-from-USIBWC-to-Mexico-Saying-flood-plain-Walls-Ok"><span style="font-size: 11.5pt;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">concluded that the project will not cause significant
deflection or obstruction of the normal or flood flows of the Rio Grande.</span></span></a><span style="font-size: 11.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The Mexican section of the IBWC
responded in December of 2011, saying,<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/98818275/December-13-2011-Mexico-IBWC-rejects-border-walls-in-the-Rio-Grande-flood-plain"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">"...the
location, alignment and design of the proposed fence represent a clear
obstruction of the Rio Grande hydraulic area, since in the towns of Rio Grande
City and Roma, TX, the fence would occupy nearly all of the hydraulic area on
the U.S. side, causing the deflection of flows towards the Mexican side. If you
consider that, given the design characteristics, the fence obstructs 60-70% of
the hydraulic area in a direction perpendicular to the flow, and if you add to
that the effect of the current retaining trash and debris, the significant
length that is located in the floodplain, and the position of the fence
relative to the direction of flow, the fence constitutes a serious obstruction
and deflection of the Rio Grande flows towards Mexico. […] We reiterate our
opposition to the construction of the proposed fence in the Rio Grande
floodplain given the impacts stated above</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">."</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Because the IBWC is a bi-national body, the rejection of
one party should have brought this project to a halt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead the US half of the IBWC approved the
walls, allowing Customs and Border Protection to undertake the unilateral
action that it had been pushing for.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This is a clear violation of the treaty that created both the IBWC and
the border that Customs and Border Protection is supposed to protect.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">But a treaty is just paper.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The real harm will come after the walls go
up, when the next big storm roars into the Rio Grande Valley and the river
floods.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
NO BORDER WALLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16705064894973061623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5923978447493188869.post-42725853113617189922012-05-20T23:40:00.000-05:002012-05-20T23:50:24.038-05:00The Grand Old Party Pushes for a Lawless Border<span style="font-family: Calibri;">By Scott Nicol</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Last month,
the Pew Hispanic Center reported that net migration from Mexico into the United
States has </span><a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/law/jan-june12/migration_04-24.html"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">dropped
to zero</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">, with roughly the same number of Mexican citizens heading south
across the border as north.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Just a few
days earlier, HR 1505, the misnamed National Security and Federal Lands
Protection Act, was introduced onto the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives
by Representative Rob Bishop (R-Utah).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Aimed at stopping the flood of immigrants that Pew found are, in fact, <u>not</u>
pouring over our borders, this bill waives 36 laws on all federal lands within
100 miles of both the northern and southern U.S. borders for any Border Patrol
activity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Forward operating bases,
roads, and even more border walls could tear through national parks from
Glacier to Olympic to Big Bend, as well as national forests, national
monuments, wildlife refuges, and wilderness areas with no concern for the laws
that protect natural ecosystems or human communities.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEOk7XYkRfdikAUsmpq8Lt3BMsM6VHskaPXaEfF_uV2VyvoxT2l0gTyZj_PTOPfhSHzWpdaUNyI_hQpbqzTfNAQa2I4vPNKY0PGzLWmp9p-p1l8U2l9JF3l16sEb9kVr4ZlLxkvlYl_MiQ/s1600/IMG_2512.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEOk7XYkRfdikAUsmpq8Lt3BMsM6VHskaPXaEfF_uV2VyvoxT2l0gTyZj_PTOPfhSHzWpdaUNyI_hQpbqzTfNAQa2I4vPNKY0PGzLWmp9p-p1l8U2l9JF3l16sEb9kVr4ZlLxkvlYl_MiQ/s320/IMG_2512.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">HR 1505 is a
dramatic expansion of the Real ID Act, which gave the Secretary of Homeland
Security the power to waive laws to build border walls and roads.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 2008 former DHS Secretary Chertoff waived
these same laws, which include the Endangered Species Act, Farmland Policy
Protection Act, and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act
to build walls that would otherwise have been illegal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The
resulting damage has been tremendous.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Walls now carve up the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge,
fragmenting habitat set aside for endangered ocelot and jaguarundi.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Up and down the Rio Grande, farmers and
ranchers, some of whose families have held title to their land since the
1760’s, have had their property condemned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And during border wall construction ancestral remains were unearthed and
left exposed by bulldozers in the Tohono O’Odham reservation.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Now
Representative Bishop, whose Utah district is hundreds of miles away from
either border, wants to see this brutalizing of our borderlands expanded to
cover lands that are nowhere near the border.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He has yet to explain why he believes that the Border Patrol is
incapable of enforcing immigration laws without violating every other law.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">For their
part, the Border Patrol has not asked for the power to ignore our nation’s
laws, and they have told Congressional researchers that “</span><a href="http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-11-38"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">land management laws have had no
effect on Border Patrol’s overall measure of border security.”</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;"></span>The current Secretary of
Homeland Security, former Arizona governor Janet Napolitano, recently called HR
1505 </span><a href="http://missoulian.com/news/local/bill-to-shift-authority-over-federal-land-near-border-nears/article_f25738ca-9715-11e1-99a7-001a4bcf887a.html"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: blue;">“unnecessary”</span><span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"> and </span><span style="color: blue;">“bad policy.</span></span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">One would
assume that those who represent border communities would stand up for the
borderlands.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Representative Francisco Canseco, whose
district already contains more miles of border wall than any other in Texas, is
</span><a href="http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:HR01505:@@@P"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">one of HR
1505’s cosponsors</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The city of Eagle
Pass, whose residents are Rep. Canseco’s constituents, was on the receiving end
of the very first border wall condemnation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Big Bend National Park is also in his district, and HR 1505 would sweep
aside all of the environmental laws that currently protect and maintain it.</span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Some of
Texas’ other border Representatives have taken the opposite position, asserting
that all of our nation’s laws should be enforced on the border, not just those
that pertain to immigration.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Representative Ruben Hinojosa, for example, whose district includes the
Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, criticized HR 1505, saying, <span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">“</span></span><a href="http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Environment-key-in-border-bill-2245425.php"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">I think we can allow the Border Patrol to do
its work and at the same time protect our environment and our rare animals such
as the jaguarundi, the ocelot and our migrating birds in deep South Texas.</span></span></a><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">”<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv_fh78ISMWu6yJW5T6d7g66BSnGqZK5pfvEM3ssf4GiR-0h1_jaCLFdMxl0vN-nuwA-LzrH_YqzzrDTFhpmGI2FnM3vHo88wgnVTsiKWHDJcPHj6O_E3szKyEDlgaajDSKYhmXJKFcxf-/s1600/WillamarOcelot+-+lrgv+nwr.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv_fh78ISMWu6yJW5T6d7g66BSnGqZK5pfvEM3ssf4GiR-0h1_jaCLFdMxl0vN-nuwA-LzrH_YqzzrDTFhpmGI2FnM3vHo88wgnVTsiKWHDJcPHj6O_E3szKyEDlgaajDSKYhmXJKFcxf-/s320/WillamarOcelot+-+lrgv+nwr.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">It may be that the difference between the two
Representatives’ positions comes down to experience:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hinojosa saw first-hand the harm inflicted
upon the border by the waiving of laws, while Canseco did not come to office until
the Tea Party’s surge in 2010.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or
perhaps it is a matter of party affiliation, as Conseco’s Grand Old Party tries
to use immigrant bashing and charges that President Obama has not done enough
to secure the border as a wedge issue in the upcoming election, ignoring the
Pew findings and facts on the ground.</span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Representative Bishop is
currently </span><a href="http://www.borderwallinthenews.blogspot.com/2012/05/panel-chairman-seeks-delay-to-border.html"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="color: blue;">working hard to convince Democrats</span></span></a><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">, particularly those whose
districts are as far from the borders has his own and who he assumes know as
little about the borders as him, to support HR 1505.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bipartisan support would increase the bill’s
chances in the Senate, and make a Presidential veto unlikely.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Whether he comes to his decision
out of ignorance or politics, Representative Canseco needs to think about the
on-the-ground impacts of the </span>National Security and Federal Lands
Protection Act on his constituents and the lands they cherish.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He and other members of Congress need to
decide whether they stand for partisan politics or stand up for the people who
put them in office.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And when the next
election comes around border residents need to think seriously about which side
their Representatives in Washington are on.<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;">
</span><br />
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NO BORDER WALLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16705064894973061623noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5923978447493188869.post-9389424902953378622012-04-18T23:09:00.004-05:002012-04-18T23:19:51.375-05:00National Park Service Retirees Oppose HR 1505Yesterday HR 1505, authored by Representative Rob Bishop (R-UT), made it onto the floor of the US House of Representatives. HR 1505 would expand the Real ID Act waiver that former Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff issued in 2008, which allowed for the construction of hundreds of miles of border walls by waiving 36 federal laws that the walls would have otherwise violated. Bishop's bill waives the same laws for any activity undertaken by the Border Patrol on all federal lands within 100 miles of both the northern and southern borders.<br /><br />The Coalition of National Park Service Retirees immediately issued a press release, stating their opposition to a bill that would do tremendous harm to national parks and other protected lands:<br /><br />NPS RETIREES: 54 NATIONAL PARK AREAS JEOPARDIZED UNDER BOGUS “NATIONAL SECURITY” BILL ADVANCING IN U.S. HOUSE<br /><br />Among National Parks Threatened With Unrestricted Construction and Road Building: Olympic, Glacier, Voyageurs, Isle Royale, Big Bend, Joshua Tree, Acadia and Saguaro; Sites in AK, AZ, CA, ME, MI, MN, MT, NM, ND, OH, TX and WA Seen As At Risk.<br /><br />WASHINGTON, D.C. – April 18, 2012 -- Legislation pending in the U.S. House of Representatives that is being falsely touted as improving U.S. border security would instead “have the potential to devastate 54 of America’s national parks, historic sites, national monuments and other popular park icons and negatively impact the nation’s economy,” according to a warning issued today by the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees (CNPSR). H.R. 1505, the mistitled “National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act,” would gut a century’s worth of proven federal lands protection, potentially opening up millions of pristine acres of national parks to off-road vehicle use, road construction, air strips and helipads, fencing, base installations, and other disruptions. <br /> <br />This radical legislation introduced by Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT) would suspend the enforcement of almost all the nation’s environmental laws on all lands under the jurisdiction of the Departments of the Interior and Agriculture within 100 miles of the northern border with Canada and the southern border with Mexico. It would change the targeted national park and other federal areas into security zones and leave priceless resources unprotected. Such dramatic changes to the integrity of our national parks and forests would almost certainly damage local economies, which have evolved to depend on the tourism, jobs, and related economic benefits generated by these national assets. Why would families seeking the natural and cultural wonders and transformative outdoor experiences of our national parks choose to visit such Border Patrol-controlled areas criss-crossed by new roads, penetrated by noisy all-terrain vehicles, and dominated by tactical infrastructure?<br /><br />Among the National Park Service areas that fall within H.R. 1505’s proposed 100-mile zone of potential devastation are Acadia, Big Bend, Carlsbad Caverns, Cuyahoga Valley, Glacier, Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, Guadalupe Mountains, Isle Royale, Joshua Tree, North Cascades, Olympic, Saguaro, Theodore Roosevelt, Voyageurs, and Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve. The combined total acreage of these 15 parks is 21,657,399, nearly 25 percent of the overall footprint U.S. National Park System. They are located within the states of Alaska, Arizona, California, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Texas, and Washington.<br /><br />CNPSR Chair Maureen Finnerty said: “This legislative proposal is perhaps the most direct assault on national parks ever to be advanced at any level in any Congress in U.S. history. It threatens to literally stop all enforcement of several landmark environmental and conservation laws that NPS uses to manage and protect the National Park System and to serve millions of park visitors. The outrage here is that national parks and other U.S. crown jewels could end up being trashed in the name of achieving national security gains that are fictitious.” <br /><br />Among the 36 laws that would be expressly suspended within 100 miles of the borders with Canada and Mexico are virtually all environmental, historic preservation, wildlife, pollution, and tribal protection laws, including the National Park Service Organic Act, 1916 (the act that requires park areas to be managed for conservation and enjoyment so as to leave them unimpaired); the Wilderness Act, 1964; the National Environmental Policy Act, 1969; the National Historic Preservation Act, 1966; the Endangered Species Act, 1973; the Clean Water and Clean Air Acts; the Archeological Resources Protection Act, 1979. All these laws are critically important to maintaining the integrity of America’s national parks.<br /><br />H.R. 1505’s remaining provisions are no less extreme. For example, the bill independently provides “immediate access” to U.S. Customs and Border Patrol for road, equipment, and infrastructure construction and motorized vehicle use on national parks and all the other lands under the jurisdiction of both the Secretary of Agriculture, home of the U.S. Forest Service, and the Secretary of the Interior, home of the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Bureau of Land Management. In addition, the bill prohibits these Secretaries from “impeding, prohibiting or restricting activities of the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol” on national parks or any of the other lands. Thus, even without the cynical waiver of virtually all environmental laws within 100 miles of the northern and southern borders, this bill achieves essentially the same result, and applies throughout the entire United States, through its remaining provisions.<br /><br />Furthermore, in light of the interagency collaboration and achievements made under existing authorities, this harmful legislation is not needed. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano testified on March 8, 2012, that the bill “is unnecessary, and it’s bad policy.” And officials from the U.S. Border Patrol testified against the bill in Congress on July 8, 2011, explaining that “U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) enjoys a close working relationship with the Department of Interior (DOI) and Department of Agriculture (USDA) that allows us to fulfill our border enforcement responsibilities while respecting and enhancing the environment. We respect the missions of these agencies, and we recognize the importance of preserving the American landscape. Our agencies have formed a number of agreements that allow us to carry out both of these missions. CBP believes that efforts to reduce the number of illegal aliens crossing the border have lessened environmental degradation and have assisted with recovery of damaged resources, and we are fully committed to continuing our cooperative relationships with DOI and USDA to further this good work.” See the testimony online at <a href="http://www.dhs.gov/ynews/testimony/20110708-cbp-national-security-federal-lands-protection-act.shtm">http://www.dhs.gov/ynews/testimony/20110708-cbp-national-security-federal-lands-protection-act.shtm</a>. <br /><br />H.R. 1505 is only one of several pending bills that similarly threaten national parks and other park, refuge, and wilderness lands under the jurisdiction of the Secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture in the name of border security. For example, Senators McCain (R-AZ) and Kyl (R-AZ) and Representative Quayle (R-AZ) are sponsoring amendments to the authorization legislation for the Department of Homeland Security that would have also have devastating impacts on national parks and other Federally protected lands and are unwarranted for national security.<br /><br />CNPSR’s Finnerty pointed out that “while the other bills do not have the express waiver of virtually all environmental laws like H.R. 1505, they accomplish essentially the same result by allowing the Border Patrol to make decisions on activities like motorized patrol and construction of roads and infrastructure in national park and other conservation areas. It may be that these bills are too radical for Congress to pass or the President to sign as stand-alone bills, thus making it the far greater danger that Congress will tack the park-wrecking provisions onto another must-sign piece of legislation, like an appropriations bill. All these bills are terrible policy, unnecessary for national security, and must be stopped.” <br /><br />ABOUT CNPSR<br /><br />The more than 800 members of the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees are all former employees of the National Park Service with a combined over 24,000 years of stewardship of America’ most precious natural and cultural resources. In their personal lives, CNPSR members reflect the broad spectrum of political affiliations. CNPSR members now strive to apply their credibility and integrity as they speak out for national park solutions that uphold law and apply sound science. The Coalition counts among its members: former National Park Service leaders at the national, regional, and park levels, park rangers, and other career professionals who devoted an average of nearly 30 years each to protecting and interpreting America’s national parks on behalf of the public. For more information, visit the CNPSR Web site at <a href="http://www.npsretirees.org">http://www.npsretirees.org</a>.NO BORDER WALLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16705064894973061623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5923978447493188869.post-20148252757323621012012-01-30T21:10:00.003-06:002012-01-30T21:25:23.422-06:00Newt Promises New WallsBy Scott Nicol<br /><br />Newt Gingrich surged ahead of the pack in the South Carolina primary, soundly defeating his Republican rivals as the “anybody-but-Romney” contingent of the party appeared, for the moment, to have settled on him.<br /><br />Hoping to show that he is serious about border enforcement, and to attract the voting bloc that abandoned Perry when they found out that he favored allowing undocumented students to pay in-state tuition, last fall Newt followed Michelle Bachmann’s lead and <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-gingrich-fence-20111201%2c0%2c253023.story">signed a pledge</a> to line the southern border with double-layered border walls by 2013.<br /><br />The pledge was written by <a href="http://americansforsecuringtheborder.com/">Americans for Securing the Border</a>, whose national chairman is the former chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party, Van D. Hipp Jr. Mr. Hipp’s push for enforcement of immigration laws is ironic, considering his own legal status. He is a convicted felon, who in 1997 pled guilty to accepting illegal campaign contributions. The Herald-Journal of Spartanburg, South Carolina, reported that, “<a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1876&dat=19970311&id=arceAAAAIBAJ&sjid=hM8EAAAAIBAJ&pg=3150%2c2592058">In return for the guilty plea, the government dismissed a 14-count fraud and money laundering indictment stemming from operation of a phone sex business.” </a><br /><br />Having lost his job with the Republican Party, Van D. Hipp is now a <a href="http://www.americandefense.net/">lobbyist and consultant for defense contractors</a> who want to get work from the Department of Homeland Security. If Newt is elected and follows through on his promise it could mean a lot more business for Hipp’s clients.<br /><br />To date, close to $3 billion has been spent on border walls. A mile of wall <a href="http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/As-Texas-border-fence-lags-costs-controversy-1790517.php">averages $ 7.5 million </a>to build, though some cost much more. Levee-walls in Hidalgo County, Texas, cost $12 million a mile, with the Hidalgo County Drainage District ponying up <a href="http://notexasborderwall.blogspot.com/2009/03/hidalgo-countys-border-wall-is-nothing.html">$44 million</a>, roughly a third of the cost. Walls through the rugged Otay Mountain Wilderness area cost <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/15/local/la-me-fence15-2010feb15">$16 million per mile</a>, and right now in San Diego $4.3 million is being spent to replace a section that runs for just <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2011/nov/25/local/la-me-border-fence-20111124">300 feet across the beach</a> before plunging into the ocean.<br /><br />650 miles, or around 1/3 of the southern border, already has either single-layered pedestrian walls or vehicle barriers. Adding another layer to the existing walls, replacing vehicle barriers with pedestrian walls, and building 1,300 miles of new wall would cost tens, and possibly hundreds, of billions more, at a time when Congress is trying to cut trillions from existing programs.<br /><br />President Bush’s Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, oversaw the construction of most of the walls that now line the southern border. From that vantage he also saw the huge amounts of money that went into them. It is no surprise then that shortly after he left the Department of Homeland Security he founded the <a href="http://publicintelligence.net/the-chertoff-group/">Chertoff Group</a>, which helps big defense companies land Department of Homeland Security contracts. Many other top officials have quit DHS to join the Chertoff Group and cash in on their Homeland Security connections.<br /><br />When the “underwear bomber” attempted to blow up a passenger plane a few months after he left DHS, former Secretary Chertoff granted dozens of interviews in which he gave advice on how the U.S. could prevent similar assaults. Again and again he said that full body scanners were the best solution. The Transportation Safety Administration, which falls under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security, subsequently required that airports install body scanners. Chertoff failed to mention in the first round of interviews that the company that made the body scanners was a <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/31/AR2009123102821.html">client of the Chertoff Group</a>. It is safe to assume that they were pleased with the return on their investment.<br /><br />Hipp apparently hopes to emulate Chertoff and get his slice of the Homeland Security pie. Anything he can do to make that pie fatter, such as convincing the next president to commit to building more border walls, improves his odds of getting a piece. The hundreds of private landowners, and mile after mile of wildlife refuges, that the new walls would harm are of no more concern to Hipp than the <a href="http://www.no-border-wall.com/private-property.php">400 landowners </a>whose property has already been taken or the damage walls have already inflicted on the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge were to Chertoff. In their eyes condemnations and habitat destruction are just the cost of doing business. <br />Of course those are costs paid by someone else; Chertoff and Hipp only reap the profits.<br /><br />For Gingrich, signing Hipp’s border wall pledge is just good politics. On the one hand, it helps him look tough on immigration and border security. And following the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, allowing corporations masquerading as people to spend unlimited sums on elections, cozying up to contractors who have made millions off of border security, and might like to see more contracts come their way, could prove to be quite lucrative.<br /><br />Border walls are all about money and politics, not immigration or drug control. <a href="http://www.notexasborderwall.blogspot.com/2010_04_01_archive.html">Kiewit </a>does not have to refund the millions it was paid to build walls, even though those walls only take a <a href="http://www.notexasborderwall.blogspot.com/2011_01_01_archive.html">couple of minutes to climb</a>. Boeing gets to keep the huge sums that it received to build virtual fences that never worked. Like the phone sex business in the nineties, Homeland Security contracts are a sure-fire way for the unscrupulous to rake in big money, and Newt has pledged that if he is elected president the cash will keep on coming.NO BORDER WALLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16705064894973061623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5923978447493188869.post-56499461176354341632012-01-02T10:17:00.004-06:002012-01-02T10:24:21.827-06:00Frontier Injustice: Not Even the Pacific Ocean is Safe from Our Pernicious Effort to Wall Off the Borderby Char Miller<br /><br /><br />The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has a nasty habit of rubbing salt into wounds, fresh and old.<br /><br />Just ask anyone who lives along the Rio Grande Valley, makes their home in the Sonoran Desert covering large sections of northwest Mexico and southwest Arizona, or inhabits the dense sprawl of those entwined cities, San Diego and Tijuana. Since 2006, wherever DHS has pounded down its infamous Border Wall, it has chopped up habitats human and natural, severing longstanding cultural links and environmental connections between the U.S. and Mexico. It is a haunting reminder that the post-9/11 hunt for national security has generated its own insecurities.<br /><br /><br />The most recent (and stinging) example of this painful paradox came in late November. That's when DHS began construction of the latest segment of the wall, dubbed the Surf Fence Project. This 18-foot-high barrier, hung on six-inch rust-proof steel piping, is being pile-driven out 300 feet into the Pacific Ocean. The goal is fortify Imperial Beach, making it impregnable redoubt, the first line of defense for San Diego.<br /><br />"There is a clear operational need for this development," Michael Hance, field operation supervisor with the U.S. Border Patrol, told the BBC. "The southern side of the border is densely populated and in the past many people found an easy way into the US through these beaches. We need physical infrastructure as well as border agents in the area."<br /><br />As for the urgency to thrust this wall so deep into the pounding surf, local border patrol agents point to the capture in November of several undocumented migrants attempting to swim around the current fencing.<br /><br />At a cost of $4.3 million, this new wall will be a very expensive form of deterrent. But Assistant Chief Patrol Agent Bruce Parks assured the LA Times that the exorbitant price tag (amounting to $143,333.33 per foot!) is worth every penny, for this stretch of beach "still has the potential to be very dangerous, as beautiful as it is."<br /><br />I'd like to think that Parks is just being silly: do we really spend this much money building a wall because of the potential that this stretch of seaside can be a dangerous gateway into the U.S.? But he's not being flippant. After five years of listening to the Border Patrol and its parent department, DHS, say similar things every time they have announced the launch of yet another segment to the 670-mile border wall, it is clear that there is a pattern to their patter.<br /><br />If, as DHS asserts, the land and sea are so threatening; if the people who would cross these stretches of our sovereign territory are judged to be so unsafe, then we must militarize the first while demonizing the second. Every mile of steel pole and three-ply fencing, every searchlight, movement sensor, high-flying drone, and armed guard is a reflection of this American war on nature and the Other. A terrorism that may be as malevolent as the threat this thick bulwark is supposed to repel.<br /><br />This deliberate violence against land and people is underscored in the title of a new and insightful collection of essays on the geopolitics of the borderlands: Wounded Border/Frontera-Herida. The injuries that its ten chapters probe cover a wide range: the deeply flawed law enforcement and judicial systems on both sides of the border; the inequities and humiliations that migrants face in U.S. labor markets desperate for low-wage, expendable workers (pressure that women disproportionately bear); the environmental despoliation that comes from a globalized economy that created maquiladoras in Mexico, industries whose toxic effluent damages ground and surface waters, pollutes the air, and poisons adjacent neighborhoods. The border is a fraught landscape.<br /><br />No shock, this contested physical space is also a social construct. As co-editor Justin Akers Chacón argues: "Since its inception as a boundary imposed by war of expansion, the U.S.-Mexico border has functioned in a dualistic manner. It has served both as a gateway to economic opportunity and as a barrier that creates and maintains unequal power relationships." Out of this duality, he writes, flows "the identities of both people in relationship to each other," becoming a "signifier of status that sustains each population in its own form of isolation." Although the proponents of globalization like to argue that this force is flattening the distinctions between counties and cultures, the U.S. border wall stands in stark refutation, a vertical and visible barrier. Bluntly divisive.<br /><br />Emblematic of the rending of the social fabric that this enforced divide can produce is Friendship Park. Its name once conveyed its binational significance: First Lady Pat Nixon was on site at its ceremonial opening in 1971, there celebrating the site that memorialized the two nation's close relationship. "There should be no more fences," she declared.<br /><br />That amity turned into animosity when, as a result of the 2006 Secure Fence Act that the George W. Bush administration promulgated, DHS built a series of fences that turned the park into a penitentiary. "New rules for public access to the gathering place leave families feeling like they have entered a maximum security prison on visiting day," writes Jill Holslin at her blog At the Edges. Any who would like to enter the park today must "wait outside the border wall 150 feet away from Friendship Park, seek permission to enter a locked gate, then be escorted by a border patrol agent in a 'security zone,' a five-foot tall pedestrian barrier that confines the space of the concrete circle of Friendship Park." Detention, surveillance, enforcement: these are the markers of a "containment society."<br /><br />More egregious still is the latest effort to cordon off the United States, our arrogant ambition to split the Pacific Ocean in two.<br /><br /><br /><em>Char Miller is the Director and W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis at Pomona College, and editor of the just-published "Cities and Nature in the American West." This article originally appeared on <a href="http://www.kcet.org/updaily/the_back_forty/commentary/golden-green/frontier-injustice-our-pernicious-effort-to-wall-off-the-border.html">KCET</a>, and is reproduced with the author's permission.</em>NO BORDER WALLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16705064894973061623noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5923978447493188869.post-48402580583137786612011-10-24T21:16:00.005-05:002011-10-26T09:38:32.590-05:00A Wall in a River is a Damby Scott Nicol<br /><br />In this week’s Republican debate Bachmann, Cain, and Romney each fought to prove that if elected President they would build longer, taller, and more deadly walls than their opponents. In the run up to the event, Representative Bahmann vowed that the length of her wall “<a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bachmann-immigration-20111016,0,6563993.story">will be every mile, it will be every yard, it will be every foot, it will be every inch of that border.” </a>Not to be outdone, Herman Cain said, “<a href="http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/15/cain-proposes-electrified-border-fence/">It’s going to be 20 feet high. It’s going to have barbed wire on the top. It’s going to be electrified. And there’s going to be a sign on the other side saying, ‘It will kill you — Warning.’</a>”<br /><br />In an effort to please politicians by erecting mile after mile of border wall, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) <a href="http://notexasborderwall.blogspot.com/2011/09/cbp-willing-to-risk-flooding-to-erect.html">continues to push for new walls in the floodplain </a>between the Rio Grande and the Texas towns of Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos. To convince the International Boundary Water Commission (IBWC) to go along, CBP has tried to paper over the risk of increased flooding with more than a million dollars worth of reports and flood models. Walls in the floodplain are likely to either deflect water into Mexican cities or bottle it up in U.S. ones, and so far IBWC has rejected CBP’s claims to the contrary.<br /><br />Last June CBP paid Baker Engineering for yet another flood model, which was used over the summer to pressure IBWC to reverse its position. The <a href="http://sierraclub.org/borderlands/">Sierra Club </a>recently received a copy as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request.<br /><br />The <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/68844504/June-2011-CBP-Hydrology-Report-for-Border-Wall-Sections-O-1-O-2-O-3">new flood model </a>makes it clear that no changes in the border walls themselves are being considered. The walls’ locations are the same as those mapped out in a Baker report from 2009. They are still designed to split flood waters, diverting a portion of the flow into these three communities. The only difference is that the newer model uses a different computer program, allowing for more detail.<br /><br />In 2009 CBP did not know what type of border wall they would like to build, so Baker’s model imagined a solid slab. Now CBP says that they plan to use a bollard design, similar to the walls built to the north of the levees in Cameron county. But in Cameron county the levees would keep flood waters away from the border wall, whereas the new walls would be in the floodplain, where there are no levees, and would be inundated if the Rio Grande were swollen by a major flood.<br /><br />For this report, Baker assumed that <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/68844504/June-2011-CBP-Hydrology-Report-for-Border-Wall-Sections-O-1-O-2-O-3">debris in the bollards would block no more than 10% - 25% of the water</a>. That led to the conclusion that walls would have minimal impacts. But the assumption that between 75% and 90% of the water in a major flood would pass harmlessly through the wall seems to be based on wishful thinking at best, or a desire to rig the model’s results at worst.<br /><br />Flooding rivers pick up large amounts of debris, from trash to trees, and carry it along until they encounter an obstruction. Bollards spaced a few inches apart may allow crystal clear water to pass through, but in a flood debris will pile up. As the debris accumulates it blocks more and more water, and the border wall acts more and more like a dam.<br /><br />This should not be news to CBP. The border walls that they have already built in Arizona, and which they promised would have no impact on flooding, have caused tremendous flood damage.<br /><br />On July 12, 2008, seasonal monsoon rains swept through northern Mexico and southern Arizona. In the sister cities of Nogales, Sonora and Nogales, Arizona the <a href="http://borderwallinthenews.blogspot.com/2008/08/mexico-ties-flooding-in-nogales-to-us.html">border wall acted as a dam</a>. In addition to the wall built above ground it was later revealed that <a href="http://borderwallinthenews.blogspot.com/2008/08/us-will-have-to-tear-down-tunnel.html">DHS had constructed a wall in a storm drain</a> that passes beneath both cities without informing local officials or the International Boundary Water Commission. Water in the storm drain backed up and burst through the roof, adding to the flooding in the streets. Two people drowned, and millions of dollars of damage was sustained by Mexican businesses and residents.<br /><br />The same storm caused flooding in <a href="http://borderwallinthenews.blogspot.com/2008/08/faulty-design-turned-border-fence-into.html">Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument</a>. CBP had stated categorically that border walls crossing washes in the monument, using a design similar to that proposed for the new South Texas sections, would be water permeable and therefore would not impact flooding. Grate openings 6 inches high and 24 inches wide that were built into the base of the wall were supposed to allow water to pass through, but they quickly became clogged with debris. The wall then acted as a dam, with water piling up behind it 2 to 7 feet deep. Backed up flood waters then traveled along the wall in search of an outlet, which was found at the Lukeville, Arizona port of entry, causing millions of dollars in damage to private and federal property.<br /><br />Following this event, Baker Engineering was paid to run the length of the border wall from El Paso to San Diego and produce a report on the problems posed by the many walls that cross stream beds and washes. They documented “<a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/41500057/Customs-and-Border-Protection-report-on-border-walls-crossing-washes-and-streams">debris build-up which sometimes reached a height of 6 feet</a>.” Their report concluded that, “<a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/41500057/Customs-and-Border-Protection-report-on-border-walls-crossing-washes-and-streams">fencing obstructs drainage flow every time a wash is crossed. With additional debris build-up, the International Boundary Water Commission’s (IBWC’s) criteria for rise in water surface elevations (set at 6” in rural areas and 3” in urban areas) can quickly be exceeded.”</a><br /><br />Flood gates were installed, at a cost of over $24 million, in an attempt to prevent a repeat of the 2008 flooding. These gates are massive, and to work require Border Patrol agents to predict a flood, drive into a wash ahead of the water, throw a cable over a bar at the top of the wall, hook it to the top of the gate, and use their Jeep’s winch to pull the gate up. Then the agents need to get out of the wash and get to high ground. If they are not quick enough, they could be swept away or slammed into the wall by raging flood waters. If they manage to get out of the way they may be forced to wait on high ground between flooded washes until the waters recede.<br /><br />Last August one of the sections of Arizona border wall that CBP had retrofitted with flood gates was <a href="http://azstarnet.com/article_9eaead31-14eb-5474-a5c5-564a980049b2.html">knocked over and washed away by the force of flood waters </a>after just over two inches of rain fell. Debris build-up had again turned the wall into a dam, just as it had in 2008. In this case, instead of following the wall to the nearest port of entry, the debris piled higher and higher the water poured over the top like a waterfall. The falling water tore away the wall’s foundation at the same time as the weight and pressure of the water pushed against the wall with increasing force. A forty-foot wide section of border wall fell.<br /><br />Border Patrol spokesman <a href="http://azstarnet.com/news/local/border/article_ba9ab87e-f6d0-5949-8a12-f305534e0778.html">Lloyd Easterling blamed the wall’s failure on human error</a>, apparently because agents had not gone into washes ahead of the flash flood to open flood gates.<br /><br />But the problem does not lie with patrol agents who cannot predict the weather, or don’t want to drive into a riverbed during a flood. The problem is higher up CBP’s command structure, with administrators who are so fixated on building walls, and thereby pleasing their superiors, that they overlook a basic fact:<br /><br />A wall in a river is a dam.<br /><br />It is time for Customs and Border Protection to face up to the fact that when they build walls in flood-prone areas, they may be able to ignore the impacts on paper, but not in the real world. The walls that they are pushing in Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos will have a disastrous impact on the very homeland that they are supposed to protect. Customs and Border Protection needs to ignore political pressure and give up on these last sections of border wall, before they do any more damage.<br /><br /><br />The June 2011 flood model for walls in Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos can be downloaded here: <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/68844504/June-2011-CBP-Hydrology-Report-for-Border-Wall-Sections-O-1-O-2-O-3">http://www.scribd.com/doc/68844504/June-2011-CBP-Hydrology-Report-for-Border-Wall-Sections-O-1-O-2-O-3</a>NO BORDER WALLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16705064894973061623noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5923978447493188869.post-42639973298345812332011-10-04T00:02:00.005-05:002011-10-04T12:34:05.877-05:00Assault on Public Lands and Environmental Laws up for a House VoteBy Scott Nicol<br /><br />How does waiving the Endangered Species Act in Hawaii help secure the U.S. – Mexico border?<br /><br />Simple. It doesn’t.<br /><br />But that obvious fact is irrelevant to Representative Rob Bishop of Utah, author of the National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act (HR 1505). Bishop claims that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) cannot enforce immigration laws without violating the rest of our nation’s laws, so his bill waives 36 federal laws within 100 miles of the U.S. – Mexico border, the U.S. – Canada border, and all U.S. coastlines, for anything that DHS may want to do.<br /><br />Most of the laws that HR 1505 tosses aside, including the Endangered Species Act, Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and Safe Drinking Water Act, protect the environment, but it also waives laws like the Farmland Policy Protection Act and the American Indian Religious Freedom Act. <br /><br />This bill is an expansion of the Real ID Act, which gave the Secretary of Homeland Security the authority to waive local, state, and federal laws to build walls along the southern border. <br /><br />The existing Real ID Act waivers, which HR 1505 expands, have caused tremendous environmental damage. To build border walls 530,000 cubic yards of rock was blasted from mountainsides in the Otay Mountain Wilderness Area; walls have caused serious flooding in the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument; and walls fragment the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, which was established for the preservation of endangered ocelots. Without the waiver, these walls would be illegal.<br /><br />Bishop’s bill would also give DHS the run of all federally owned lands, in all 50 states, with absolutely no restrictions. Has a lack of access to the Everglades, or Hawaii’s Volcanoes National Park, or the lawn around the Statue of Liberty, prevented DHS from securing the southern border?<br /><br />Not according to the Border Patrol.<br /><br />The irony is that the Border Patrol, which operates under DHS’ umbrella, has not asked for the power to overrule land managers or ignore environmental laws. Last spring the Government Accountability Office found that, <a href="http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-11-38">“Most agents reported that land management laws have had no effect on Border Patrol’s overall measure of border security.”</a><br /><br />When Rep. Bishop introduced a similar bill last year Brandon Judd of the National Border Patrol Council said, <a href="http://azstarnet.com/news/local/border/article_fa5c1624-485e-11df-9d8e-001cc4c03286.html">“I would definitely look and see if there are some restrictions that are too restrictive. But to get rid of all restrictions, you would destroy the land.”</a><br /><br />Representative Bishop has a long history of attacking protected lands and environmental regulations. He is currently pushing for a repeal of the Antiquities Act and a ban on new National Monuments. HR 1505 is just more of the same.<br /><br />This Wednesday the National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act will be up for a vote in the House Natural Resources Committee, which Rep. Bishop, in a bit of Orwellian irony, chairs. Packed with Tea Party darlings like Bishop, the bill is almost certain to pass and be sent on to the full House of Representatives. <br /><br />This is the week to contact your representatives and tell them that HR 1505 is not about protecting our nation. It is an assault on federal lands and environmental laws using border security as a convenient cover, nothing more. <br /><br /><br />For more information, visit <a href="www.sierraclub.org/borderlands">www.sierraclub.org/borderlands</a>.NO BORDER WALLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16705064894973061623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5923978447493188869.post-66920650656416537062011-09-16T15:22:00.006-05:002011-09-16T16:02:05.775-05:00CBP Willing to Risk Flooding to Erect New Walls in Roma, Rio Grande City and Los Ebanos<div>By Scott Nicol<br /><br />It was just over a year ago that the rising waters of the Rio Grande prompted the <a href="http://www.themonitor.com/articles/ebanos-53535-flooding-recovering.html">mandatory evacuation of Los Ebanos, Texas</a>. Residents rushed to grab what they could before floodwaters cut off the town.<br /><br />Before the flood, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) was pressuring the U.S. half of the International Boundary Water Commission (USIBWC) to approve the construction of border walls through Los Ebanos, as well as Rio Grande City and Roma, that could have worsened the flooding. CBP had even gone so far as to request that the US half of the International Boundary Water Commission act “unilaterally” and approve walls in the floodplain despite the objections of the Mexican half.<br /><br />The plans for border walls drafted after the passage of the Secure Fence Act showed South Texas on the receiving end of 69 miles of border wall in 21 disconnected sections. The westernmost three sections, designated O-1, O-2, and O-3, were to be through the communities of Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos.<br /><br />In 2008 the US International Boundary Water Commission made it clear that any walls built along the Rio Grande must comply with US-Mexico treaties. The Real ID Act allowed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Customs and Border Protection’s parent agency, to waive all federal, state, and local laws, but not treaties. Walls built in the flood plain adjacent to the Rio Grande might deflect flood waters towards Mexico, causing flood damage to Mexican communities. Deflection might also cause the river to settle into a new channel farther to the south, which would effectively change the location of the US-Mexico boundary. Either of these would be a treaty violation.<br /><br />In Cameron County and most of Hidalgo our treaty obligations meant that border walls could not be built between the existing flood control levees and the river, so walls were constructed on, in, or north of the levees. Those walls are, for the most part, finished. But unlike the downriver sections, Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos do not have USIBWC flood control levees. The border walls in these three communities would therefore be in the flood plain.<br /><br />Because of the wall’s likely flood impacts USIBWC rejected these three sections of border wall.<br /><br />A few days after the 2008 elections CBP informed Representative Cuellar, whose district encompasses these communities, that these border wall sections were “on hold.” At the time Cuellar said, “<a href="http://borderwallinthenews.blogspot.com/2008/11/cuellar-cbp-halts-border-fence.html">This is a big victory.” </a>He went on to tell the Associated Press, “<a href="http://borderwallinthenews.blogspot.com/2008/11/border-patrol-halts-building-of-3.html">We're hoping that this will allow us to work with the next president to find ... alternative methods for security</a>."<br /><br />Representative Cuellar’s constituents also hoped that that would be the last they would hear of plans to wall off their towns from the river, but in a May, 2010 report on the Secure Border Initiative (which includes both solid and “virtual” border walls) the Government Accountability Office stated, “<a href="http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d10651t.pdf">CBP plans to construct an additional 14 miles of pedestrian fencing in the Rio Grande Valley sector</a>.” These 14 miles are the combined Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos sections.<br /><br />Documents uncovered by the Sierra Club through a Freedom of Information Act request over the last year demonstrate that, in fact, the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection continued to push for the construction of these walls, and were willing to disregard our treaty obligations and likely problems with flooding to do so.<br /><br />A Customs and Border Protection “Fence Status Brief” dated April 27, 2009 reveals that to build the previously rejected walls CBP had decided upon a new plan. They would not change the design or location of the walls, or, better yet, give up on them entirely. Instead it says, “<a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/37640650/Fence-Status-Brief-4-27-09KMS-Final-10">the new strategy involves developing a new floodplain model</a>” and that, unlike the old model approved by USIBWC that <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/37640650/Fence-Status-Brief-4-27-09KMS-Final-10">“predicted noteworthy floodplain impacts from the fence,” “this model will demonstrate the impacts of the proposed fence will be minimal.”</a><br /><br />The verb tense - "this model will demonstrate" - is important. It appears that CBP determined the outcome in advance, rather than commissioning an honest, unbiased model that would accurately describe the effects of structures built in the floodplain.<br /><br />The “<a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/37657904/O1-O2-O3-Drainage-Report-Final-245">new flood plain model”, prepared by Baker Engineering</a>, was completed in December 2009. Presented to CBP eight months after their fence status brief forecast its findings, its conclusion fit the earlier prediction precisely. The “noteworthy floodplain impacts” of building border walls in a floodplain that were predicted just a year earlier disappeared; instead, Baker now claimed that walls would have a “minimal effect on the Rio Grande floodplain.”<br /><br />Baker decided this without even knowing what type of border wall design would be used. In 2008, CBP proposed a number of designs that were touted as either allowing floodwaters to pass through without being dammed up, or able to be removed before rising water reached them. USIBWC rejected all of these unrealistic schemes. In their 2009 report Baker modeled the border wall as an 18’ high, impermeable wall, with the specific design, whether concrete or steel, posts or mesh or slabs, to be determined later. Since CBP apparently told Baker what the outcome of their modeling would be before they began, it seems that such details were unimportant.<br /><br />One striking conclusion of Baker’s “new flood plain model” was that in the communities of Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos, border walls would “split” the flooding river. It states that for each wall segment, “Downstream of the flow split location, the flow continues in a north branch and a south branch on either side of the fence. The flow combines downstream of the point where the fence ends.”<br /><br />This splitting is intentional. In the case of Rio Grande City, the wall was modeled with a 500 foot-wide opening in the middle specifically intended to split flood waters and send a portion of them north. Diverting water to the north of the border wall, into property on the US side of the river, means that less is deflected into Mexico. In this way CBP hopes to avoid flooding Mexican communities, and possibly pushing the Rio Grande into a new channel. Walls built in a floodplain will either deflect or divert floodwater, and the only real question is who is going to be on the receiving end.<br /><br />Each of these wall sections begins upstream of a town and ends downstream of it. They begin close to the river, then the river and wall get farther apart before coming back together. So flood water that might not have reached properties where the proposed wall is farthest from the river will, with a wall in place, have “split” floodwaters channeled directly to them.<br /><br />This is particularly striking for the Los Ebanos section. The community of Los Ebanos is nestled at the top of a deep bend in the river. The proposed wall would begin next to the Rio Grande at the top of this bend. While the river turns and heads due south, away from homes and the local school, the wall heads due east, directly towards them. That means that water that might have otherwise followed the river and flowed away from Los Ebanos will be split off by the wall, and be diverted into it. On the other side of town, instead of allowing the split flood waters to pour back into the Rio Grande, the wall makes a ninety degree turn, from east to north. Water that had been split off from the flooded river would therefore be bottled up in Los Ebanos.<br /><br />A Customs and Border Protection Fence Status Brief dated January 20, 2010, written following the presentation of the “new flood plain model” to the Army Corps of Engineers and USIBWC, says that, <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/37640932/01-20-10-Chief-Self-Issues-Brief-V2-Final-13">“[acting USIBWC Commissioner] Ruth agreed no additional modeling is required and to ‘informally’ discuss the fence segments with the new Mexican IBWC Commissioner to determine if he will support</a>.” The brief goes on to state that, “<a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/37640932/01-20-10-Chief-Self-Issues-Brief-V2-Final-13">If it appears Mexico will continue to oppose fencing, CBP/DHS and IBWC/DOS [Department of State] to discuss potential unilateral decision to proceed with construction.”</a><br /><br />A “unilateral decision” regarding the Rio Grande floodplain, taken by the US half of the International Boundary Water Commission in the face of opposition by the Mexican half, would be a serious treaty violation. The United States would essentially be challenging Mexico to try to stop us from building illegal walls.<br /><br />On January 21, 2010, acting USIBWC Commissioner Ruth stepped aside, and Edward Drusina became the new commissioner. On his first day in office Commissioner Drusina wrote a letter to David Aguilar, the acting Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection. He stated that, after examining the model that CBP had commissioned, “<a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/37594959/USIBWC-Disapproval-Letter-January-2010-Docx-1">the USIBWC is not in a position to approve construction of the O-1, O-2 and O-3 fence projects</a>.”<br /><br />Rather than accept the fact that walls built in the Rio Grande floodplain will have unacceptable impacts, CBP repeatedly pressed the USIBWC to reverse its decision. On February 2, 2010, Aguilar responded to Drusina, “<a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/59136866/Feb-2-2010-letter-from-CBP-Aguilar-to-IBWC-Drusina-regarding-Texas-border-walls">we respectfully request that the USIBWC and Department of State reconsider your position and approve a unilateral decision to allow us to proceed with the design and construction of the O-1, O-2 and O-3 fence segments</a>.”<br /><br />On July 20, just one week after the flooding Rio Grande forced the <a href="http://www.themonitor.com/articles/ebanos-53535-flooding-recovering.html">mandatory evacuation of Los Ebanos</a>, CBP presented a briefing to the State Department on these three border wall sections. During the briefing CBP claimed that they had already spent <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/63899898/July-20-2010-Customs-and-Border-Protection-State-Dept-briefing-on-wall-sections-0-1-through-0-3">“+$1M in “design analysis” costs</a>”, and said that, “<a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/63899898/July-20-2010-Customs-and-Border-Protection-State-Dept-briefing-on-wall-sections-0-1-through-0-3">we need IBWC and Department of State’s support for an unilateral decision to proceed with the fence construction.”</a><br /><br />USIBWC stood firm, and on September 17, 2010, <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/59081175/IBWC-Letter-on-border-fence-Segments-O-1-O-2-O-3-Final">Comissioner Drusina again denied CBP permission</a> to build new walls in the Rio Grande flood plain. CBP continued to push back, and a month later the new CBP Commissioner, Alan Bersin, wrote to USIBWC, asking that they reconsider and complaining about “<a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/59080760/October-2010-letter-from-CBP-Bersin-to-IBWC-Drusina-regarding-Texas-border-wall">Mexico’s recent opposition to border fencing regardless of hydraulic modeling results</a>.”<br /><br />Bersin’s October 2010 letter to USIBWC is the most recent document uncovered by the Sierra Club’s Freedom of Information Act request. The Club was told that to obtain newer documents another request would have to be filed. One has, but it may take months for us to begin receiving more documents.<br /><br />We have learned through a recent conversation with representatives of the USIBWC and State Department that following the October 2010 letter Commissioners Bersin and Drusina held at least two meetings to discuss the Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos walls. As a result of those meetings Baker Engineering was commissioned to develop yet another flood model. That model was completed last spring, and was reviewed by the Army Corps. of Engineers and USIBWC over the summer. It has not been released to the public.<br /><br />While we hope that USIBWC continues to act in the best interests of the residents of these three communities and live up to its treaty obligations in the face of pressure from Customs and Border Protection, we have no guarantees. The discussions between these two agencies are being held behind closed doors, with landowners and community leaders kept out of the room. It may be months before we are able to see a copy of the latest flood model, and the only announcement that new border walls have been approved may be the arrival of construction crews.<br /><br />US Representative Henry Cuellar, who represents Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos in Washington, should ensure that his constituents are kept informed and given a seat at the table when walls that could channel flood waters into their homes and property are discussed. As the ranking member of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security, he has the power to demand that CBP hold open public hearings in each of these communities. Customs and Border Protection owes residents the decency of a face to face explanation, before they build new border walls that could put people’s lives and properties at risk.<br /><br /></div>NO BORDER WALLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16705064894973061623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5923978447493188869.post-30694134526682442362011-09-14T15:45:00.004-05:002011-09-14T15:51:16.829-05:00Congressional Push Continues to Gut Environmental Protections Along U.S. Borders<strong>The Center for Biological Diversity has issued the following press release. No Border Wall is in complete agreement, and urges rational members of Congress to reject McCain's amendment to the DHS appropriations bill, along with similar measures in the House, most notably HR 1505.</strong><br /><br />TUCSON, Ariz.— Under the guise of border security, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) offered an amendment to the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill today that would grant border-enforcement agencies free rein on federal lands within 300 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border. After criticism from colleagues in his own party that the 300-mile limit went far beyond the scope of border-enforcement activities, McCain scaled it back to 100 miles, and the amendment was added to the bill.<br /><br />“Politicians are playing games with important border-security legislation at the expense of laws that protect clean air, water and endangered species,” said Randy Serraglio, a conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This amendment is unnecessary, unwanted and threatens significant harm to the wildlife, natural landscapes and people of the border region.”<br /><br />The McCain amendment introduced today, similar to a bill proposed earlier this year by McCain and Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), does not specifically name any laws, but its guarantee of unfettered access for border-enforcement agencies on federal lands effectively neutralizes protections afforded by the Endangered Species Act, Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. Existing law permits essential border-security activities even in designated wilderness areas, and an existing memorandum of understanding between Homeland Security and the Department of the Interior provides for cooperation between land managers and border agencies.<br /><br />“Despite repeated statements and congressional testimony from border-security agencies that they neither want nor need the authority granted in this amendment, radical anti-environment forces in Congress continue to push this hoax on the American people,” said Serraglio. “The losers in this game will be jaguars, ocelots, Sonoran pronghorn and residents of border communities that will no longer benefit from fundamental protections that allow them to live and thrive in a healthy environment.”<br /><br />The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office concluded in a recent report that access to federal lands has not been limited in 22 of 26 sectors along the border, and that the only problems that have occurred in other sectors have been “minor delays.” Meanwhile, between 8,000 and 20,000 miles of wildcat roads have been blazed through a wilderness area in southern Arizona’s Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, a majority of which, in recent years, has been caused by enforcement activities, according to a July report by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.<br /><br />“This amendment pretends to address a problem that does not exist,” said Serraglio. “Clearly, access to federal lands for border-security personnel is not a significant issue in achieving operational control of the border. At best, the McCain amendment is a case of political grandstanding.”<br /><br />“The false premise inherent in this proposal is that border security and a healthy environment are somehow mutually exclusive,” said Serraglio. “The truth is just the opposite. It has been shown time and again that collaboration between land managers and security agencies enhances both border security and protection of the diverse and vibrant landscapes of the borderlands.”<br /><br /><a href="http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2011/border-security-09-14-2011.html">http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2011/border-security-09-14-2011.html</a>NO BORDER WALLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16705064894973061623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5923978447493188869.post-19093100498738831482011-08-29T15:25:00.005-05:002011-08-30T11:38:51.557-05:00New Study: Border Hysteria Imperils Wildlife<div>
<br />by Dan Millis
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<br />In a Congress plagued by immigration hysteria, none is more gravely afflicted than South Carolina’s Republican Senator Jim DeMint. Twice in two weeks he added border pork to Senate bills, both times calling for 300-plus miles of walls to be imposed between the U.S. and Mexico. These are the fourth and fifth times in less than two years that he has made such attempts.
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<br />Delirious and angry lawmakers like DeMint seem oblivious to the 650 miles of barriers and walls that already occupy the Southwest’s borderlands, exacting high costs on taxpayers and public lands. Another side effect these lawmakers suffer is an acute indifference to the impacts caused by their border madness.
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<br />A new study in the Diversity and Distributions journal identifies 49 species put most at risk by border walls and areas of intensive human land use along the U.S.-Mexico border. The study only considers amphibian, reptile, and non-volant (don't fly) mammal species, and identifies California, the Sky Islands, the Gulf Coast as the three regions most heavily impacted.
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<br />One unique aspect of this study is that it doesn’t just look at current impacts wrought by existing border walls and areas with a heavy human footprint. Potential future impacts from border wall expansions such as those proposed by DeMint are also taken into consideration, and the results are sobering:
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<br /><p><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 111px; CURSOR: pointer" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5646378192113377938" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXhVuSjMdjmqb6-holmee0U3NNsj1I92n-fB1RKLAvIF8uijGYwWH7ckXUjsYP1x05O6zM1x9MIHHAzWC6CbPukuunhamd3PFyUylxeVq5HnQydeyiu_mqmTw-ScLsB48N_7Zf7pd8z9iQ/s400/LaskySpeciesChart.jpg" />
<br />This graph from the study shows a horizontal base line representing our 2,000 mile border with Mexico. The three faint vertical lines in the left half of the graph represent the state borders between California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. The fatter horizontal line sitting atop the baseline shows where the taller “pedestrian” (10-25 feet tall) border walls are located along the border.
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<br />Then there is the vertical ‘species’ scale, which includes only species from the sample set that have already been listed as threatened, either binationally or by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. The dashed line represents how many of these already-threatened species are put in grave danger by existing “pedestrian” border walls in each geographic location along the border. You’ll notice that there are few such species, which may be expected when working with such a small sample set of species to begin with.
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<br />However, the solid line is much less benign, with the number of vulnerable species spiking most dramatically here in Arizona (to the right [East] of first faint vertical line [CA-AZ border]). This line represents the number of already threatened species that would be pushed to the brink if proposals like DeMint’s were passed and border walls came to occupy even more precious habitat.</p>
<br /><p><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 267px; CURSOR: pointer" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5646379281848674546" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj9-1lAJDoPPibvVWVFEyWbOff5erov-mNItpaAjoD38tLTx3MWIan_mc6PfekNpiXM4eTHE70fkPyQZ53MmXHA4dLD-vykmj_bBOyUfHuwZvtagYSDiN56j-4K7twc1Pddpmvb7FmfZH4/s400/otay+mountain+wilderness+area+and+border+wall+2010.JPG" /></p>
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<br />A key finding of the study states, "The REAL ID Act should be amended to reinstate environmental regulation of border security efforts." The REAL ID waiver of more than 30 vital federal protection laws along the border allowed walls to be built in violation of the Wilderness Act, the Endangered Species Act, and more.</p>
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<br /><p><em>Dan Millis is a Sierra Club Borderlands campaign organizer. To learn more about the Sierra Club's Borderlands Campaign visit <a href="http://sierraclub.org/borderlands/">http://sierraclub.org/borderlands/</a> </em>
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<br />NO BORDER WALLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16705064894973061623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5923978447493188869.post-79834210332582770642011-08-15T20:59:00.003-05:002011-08-15T21:36:52.516-05:00Our Worst Fears about the Border Wall Come TrueBy Stefanie Herweck
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<br />More human beings would die alone in remote deserts. Endangered species would be pushed to the brink. These were the fears that led humanitarians, environmentalists, and border residents to object to the walls along the U.S.-Mexico border called for by the Secure Fence Act of 2006. With 650 miles built, this summer has brought news that these fears are tragically coming true.
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<br />The journey taken by migrant men, women and children who set out across the U.S.-Mexico border has always been risky. But border walls have rerouted migrants away from the safety of urban areas and forced them to walk for greater distances over treacherous mountains and through searing deserts. All too easily they can become fatigued, dehydrated, and unable to go on. In too many cases, they die alone in remote areas.
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<br />This month an <a href="http://azstarnet.com/news/blogs/border-boletin/article_29360a06-be31-11e0-95cf-001cc4c002e0.html">Arizona Daily Star analysis</a> found that migrants today are almost three times more likely to die on their journey than people who crossed in 2006, the year before the walls began to go up. In fact, the rate of death—the number of deaths per 100,000 Border Patrol apprehensions—continues to increase even as fewer people are making the trek across the border.
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<br />Before the walls, in 2006, there were just 46 known deaths per 100,000 Border Patrol apprehensions. By 2010 the number had jumped to 118 known deaths per 100,000 apprehensions, and so far 2011 already has a death rate of 129 per 100,000.
<br />These human beings are also dying deeper in the desert and much further from roads than ever before. Because of the remoteness of the areas in which they die, many of the bodies discovered are just skeletal remains. Such are the real and tragic consequences of border walls.
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<br />The same walls that are pushing crossers deeper into deadly terrain slice though nature preserves that were established to protect endangered species. The Otay Mountain Wilderness Area, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, and Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge have seen critical wildlife habitat divided by walls. Environmentalists have argued that vulnerable species like the ocelot, whose U.S. population is less than 100 individuals in South Texas, would be walled off and trapped in small fragments of habitat. Without sufficient food, water, and potential mates, the population would dwindle.
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<br />Now scientists are beginning to uncover just how extensive the wall’s impacts are likely to be on endangered species. A recent article published in the journal <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110802/full/news.2011.452.html">Diversity and Distributions</a> found that border walls impact 23 endangered species border-wide. Some species in California are blocked from as much as 75 percent of their ranges, a circumstance that makes the isolated populations extremely vulnerable to disease or natural disasters. The study also found that in South Texas border walls impact between 60 percent and 70 percent of the habitat set aside for endangered ocelots in the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge.
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<br />In 2008 the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recognized that the border wall had damaged wildlife refuges along the border, and Congress appropriated $50 million to mitigate the effects of the wall border-wide. Money was promised to the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge to purchase land to replace the ocelot habitat that the border walls fragmented. But after DHS withheld the money for years, Congress took back the funds. DHS has no further plans to fix any of the environmental damage that its border walls have caused.
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<br />As predicted, the border wall has exacerbated the ongoing humanitarian crisis of migrant deaths and has devastated the environment. Nevertheless, some in Congress are calling for more walls and looking to strip border communities of their environmental protections under the pretense of border security.
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<br />Dan Millis has witnessed first-hand the human tragedy and environmental devastation unfolding daily along the U.S.-Mexico border. Shortly after finding the lifeless body of a young girl along a migrant trail in Arizona, Dan was convicted of littering for leaving bottles of clean water along trails in the same area. He now works for the Sierra Club in Tucson fighting on behalf of the people and places victimized by border walls and enforcement-only politics.
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<br />Dan will visit Texas' Rio Grande Valley to share his experiences, and discuss the impacts of flawed U.S. border policy and how you can make a difference on Monday evening, August 22nd at 7:00 pm at Galeria 409 in Brownsville and on Tuesday August 23rd at 7:00 pm at St. John the Baptist Parish Hall in San Juan. For more information and directions, visit <a href="http://valleygreenspace.wordpress.com">valleygreenspace.wordpress.com</a>.
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<br />As border residents we need to educate ourselves about the terrible consequences of border walls and enforcement-only policies all along the border, and then inform our elected leaders.
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<br /><em>Stefanie Herweck is chair of the Lower Rio Grande Valley Sierra Club.</em>
<br />NO BORDER WALLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16705064894973061623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5923978447493188869.post-66041806428329755002011-07-29T22:29:00.007-05:002011-08-01T16:22:19.641-05:00New Amendments Threaten Protected LandsUS representative Gosar has introduced two amendments (no. 20 and 55) to the Department of the Interior's annual appropriations bill that would do tremendous damage to our nation's protected federal lands. Representative Gosar’s (R-AZ) amendment No. 20 is an extreme attack on public lands even more overreaching than recent controversial legislation (H.R. 1505). Under this amendment the U.S. Border Patrol would be exempted from any regulation that would “impede or obstruct” patrol activities on every acre of federal land throughout the United States, putting national treasures at risk and throwing away a century of laws designed to protect our natural resources.<br /><br /><strong>What federal lands would be put at risk?</strong><br />• <strong>All of them.</strong> This amendment decimates environmental and other protections on every single acre of federally owned lands, from areas in the southwest already at risk from Border Patrol Activities, like the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge in Arizona, to places far from the border, including the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone National Park, and the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.<br />• This amendment is NOT restricted to areas near the southwest border or even to areas near all borders, as past legislation has proposed.<br /><br /><strong>What laws would be overturned?</strong><br />• <strong>All of them.</strong> This amendment is even more overreaching in its impact on federal lands than the controversial H.R. 1505 because it is not restricted to a long list of environmental regulations, but prevents the enforcement of any regulation, even those put in place for safety and other reasons.<br />• Other regulations that could be completely ignored are those that support economic development, allowing Border Patrol to interfere with grazing, mining, and drilling for oil and gas on public lands.<br /><br /><strong>What Border Patrol activities would be exempted from any oversight?</strong><br />• All of them. The amendment does not clearly define what “impede or obstruct” means or who would decide whether a law or regulation meets this standard and could therefore be ignored.<br />• The amendment is even more overreaching than past bills on the Border Patrol because it does not limit exempted activities to “operational control” – or activities specifically intended to prevent illegal entry into the country. Instead it exempts all “patrol activities” which, without definition, could mean any activity undertaken by the Border Patrol.<br />• This will create conflict between agencies that have begun to work very effectively together to resolve issues surrounding Border Patrol activities.<br /><br /><strong>Is the amendment even needed by the Border Patrol?</strong><br /><br />• <strong>No.</strong> The amendment would override multiagency coordination that has been occurring on Federal lands since a 2006 Memorandum of Agreement between the Departments of Homeland Security, Interior, and Agriculture that has led to increased cooperation and leveraged resources.<br />• 22 out of 26 Border Patrol stations on the southern border with Mexico report that the border security of their area of operation has not been affected by land management laws beyond some minor delays. Instead, factors like rugged terrain—and not access delays or restrictions—have the highest impact on operational control.<br />• Exemptions already exist that allow Border Patrol Officers in pursuit to continue onto any federal land regardless of regulations or laws. Other exemptions have also been established administratively to ensure the Border Patrol has the access necessary to secure the border.<br /><br /><br />In addition, Rep. Gosar has also introduced amendment No. 55, another extreme attack on federal lands. Similar to amendment No. 20, this amendment would exempt the Border Patrol from any environmental review, from protecting clean air and water, from honoring and respecting the history and culture of native people, from preserving biodiversity, and more.<br /><br /><strong>Who isn’t hurt by this amendment?</strong><br />Representative Gosar’s friends in industries like oil and gas drilling, grazing, mining, and logging are taken off the hook in this updated version of amendment No. 20. Amendment No. 20 exempts the Border Patrol from “any regulation” meaning that rules allowing for development and resources extraction could also be trampled by any Border Patrol activities. Amendment No. 55, however, spares these special interests and instead focuses its attack on the environment, biodiversity, and native people.<br /><br /><strong>What environmental and cultural laws would be overturned?</strong><br />A similar list of laws to that found in H.R. 1505 is included in the amendment. These laws represent a century of bipartisan efforts to protect the environment, intelligently manage public lands, and demonstrate respect for historical and cultural sites.<br /><br />The exempted laws include:<br /><br />The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (42 U.S.C. 4321 et seq.)<br />The Endangered Species Act of 1973 (16 U.S.C. 1531 et seq.)<br />The Clean Water Act (33 U.S.C. 1251 et seq.)<br />The National Historic Preservation Act (16 U.S.C. 470 et seq.).<br />The Migratory Bird Treaty Act (16 U.S.C. 703 et seq.)<br />The Clean Air Act (42 U.S.C. 7401 et seq.).<br />The Archeological Resources Protection Act of 1979 (16 U.S.C. 18 470aa et seq.).<br />The Safe Drinking Water Act (42 U.S.C. 300f et seq.).<br />The Noise Control Act of 1972 (42 U.S.C. 4901 et seq.).<br />The Solid Waste Disposal Act (42 U.S.C. 6901 et seq.).<br />The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (42 U.S.C. 9601 et seq.)<br />The Archaeological and Historic Preservation Act' and the Archaeological Recovery Act (16 U.S.C. 469 et seq.).<br />The Antiquities Act (16 U.S.C. 431 et seq.).<br />The Historic Sites, Buildings, and Antiquities Act (16 U.S.C. 461 et seq.)<br />The Farmland Protection Policy Act (7 U.S.C. 4201 et seq.).<br />The Coastal Zone Management Act of 1972 (16 U.S.C. 1451 et seq.).<br />The Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (43 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.).<br />The Wilderness Act (16 U.S.C. 1131 et seq.).<br />The Bald Eagle Protection Act of 1940 (16 U.S.C. 668 et seq.).<br />The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (25 U.S.C. 3001 et seq.).<br />The American Indian Religious Freedom Act (42 U.S.C. 1996 et seq.).<br />The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (42 U.S.C. 2000bb et seq.).<br />The Federal Grant and Cooperative Agreement Act of 1977 (31 U.S.C. 6303 et seq.)<br /><br /><strong>What Species would be impacted?</strong><br />The bill waives compliance with all provisions of the ESA on federal lands. Species throughout the nation that would be impacted include<br /><br />In the Southwest<br />• Mexican spotted owl<br />• Desert tortoise<br />• Jaguar<br />• Ocelot<br />• Sonoran pronghorn<br />• Chiricahua leopard frog<br /><br />Elsewhere in the country<br />• Florida Panther<br />• Canada lynx<br />• Polar bear<br />• Hawaii akepa (honeycreeper)<br />• Leatherback sea turtle<br />• West Indian manateeNO BORDER WALLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16705064894973061623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5923978447493188869.post-43160277824666518012011-07-07T12:16:00.003-05:002011-07-07T17:57:35.981-05:00How much do border walls cost? Just the facts:There is a wide cost range for the construction of pedestrian border walls, resulting from factors which include labor (some sections were built by members of the National Guard, while others were built by private contractors); topography; remote vs. urban locations; land purchases and condemnations; materials (wall sections built in the 1990’s used scrap metal, obtained from the military for free, while more recent sections have required the purchase of concrete, steel, etc.); and the design that is being utilized.<br /><br />In October 2008 the Houston Chronicle reported that “The Army Corps of Engineers estimated that the amount spent for pedestrian fencing has jumped 88 percent since February to $7.5 million per mile. The costs for vehicle barriers have increased 40 percent to $2.8 million per mile, according to the GAO.”<br /><em>“As border fence lags, costs, controversy rise” by Stewart Powell, Houston Chronicle, October 10, 2008</em><br /><a href="http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6052544.html">http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6052544.html</a><br /><br />In January, 2009, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that costs for sections built up to that point ranged from $400,000 to $15.1 million. They also noted that these cost estimates were not independently verified and, “An Independent Auditor's Report on DHS's Fiscal Year 2008 Financial Statements found that CBP did not have adequate policies and procedures in place to properly account for steel purchases and construction of the U.S. border fence in an accurate and timely manner. As a result, for several months throughout the year, CBP’s financial statements did not accurately reflect the construction activity.”<br /><em>Secure Border Initiative Fence Construction Costs, United States Government Accountability Office, January 29, 2009</em><br /><a href="http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d09244r.pdf">http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d09244r.pdf</a><br /><br />The GAO’s January 2009 report only included border wall sections that had been completed, not those which were under construction or in various stages of planning.<br /><br />Sections that were later constructed included the 3.6 miles of pedestrian border wall built through the Otay Mountain Wilderness Area, at a cost of $57.7 million, averaging just over $16 million per mile.<br /><em>“$57.7-million fence added to an already grueling illegal immigration route” by Richard Marosi, Los Angeles Times, February 15, 2010</em><br /><a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/15/local/la-me-fence15-2010feb15">http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/15/local/la-me-fence15-2010feb15</a><br /><br />Also unfinished at the time were the border wall and earthen berm blocking Smuggler’s Gulch, near San Diego, which cost $59 million for 3.5 miles, averaging $16.8 million per mile.<br /><em>“A Barren Promise at the Border” by Rob Davis, Voice of San Diego, October 22, 2009</em><a href="http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/environment/article_13330282-1245-5e49-bd68-5a10237c9f44.html">http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/environment/article_13330282-1245-5e49-bd68-5a10237c9f44.html</a><br /><br />According to the GAO it will cost an estimated $75 million per year to maintain border walls. As of mid-May 2009, the fence had been breached more than 3,300 times, with costs to repair each breach averaging $1,300.<br /><em>Secure Border Initiative: Technology Deployment Delays Persist and the Impact of Border Fencing Has Not Been Assessed, Government Accountability Office, September 2009 </em><br /><a href="http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d09896.pdf">http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d09896.pdf</a><br /><br />In 2011 the GAO stated that “CBP estimated that the border fencing had a life cycle of 20 years and over these years, a total estimated cost of about $6.5 billion to deploy, operate, and maintain the fencing and other infrastructure. According to CBP, during fiscal year 2010, there were 4,037 documented and repaired breaches of the fencing and CBP spent at least $7.2 million to repair the breaches, or an average of about $1,800 per breach.”<br /><em>BORDER SECURITY: DHS Progress and Challenges in Securing the U.S. Southwest and Northern Borders, United States Government Accountability Office, March 30, 2011</em><br /><a href="http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11508t.pdf">http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11508t.pdf</a><br /><br />In the spring and summer of 2011, CBP replaced 2.77 miles of existing “landing mat” fence in Nogales, which had suffered numerous breaches, with “bollard” fencing, at a cost of $11.6 million.<br /><em>“Barrier Rebuilt” by Margaret Regan, Tucson Weekly, June 23, 2011</em><br /><a href="http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/barrier-rebuilt/Content?oid=3028495">http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/barrier-rebuilt/Content?oid=3028495</a><br /><br />In 2010 the GAO reported that “Since fiscal year 2006, DHS has received about $4.4 billion in appropriations for SBI, including about $2.5 billion for physical fencing and related infrastructure, about $1.5 billion for virtual fencing (e.g., surveillance systems) and related infrastructure (e.g., towers), and about $300 million for program management.”<br /><em>SECURE BORDER INITIATIVE: DHS Needs to Strengthen Management and Oversight of Its Prime Contractor, United States Government Accountability Office, October, 2010<br /><a href="http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d116.pdf">http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d116.pdf</a><br /></em><br /><em></em>NO BORDER WALLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16705064894973061623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5923978447493188869.post-76590035195809492202011-06-09T10:18:00.002-05:002011-06-09T15:09:17.677-05:00Border Skirmish: Republicans Are Using Immigrants to Bash Our Wildernessby Char Miller<br /><br />It would be nice if Congress held executive-branch agencies accountable for their actions. Or insisted that they follow federal law. Or fulfill their fiduciary responsibilities to one another.<br /><br />But the Republican-controlled House of Representatives is making a mockery of these basic rules of order and good government.<br /><br />You won't be surprised that the latest bit of GOP chicanery involves its twin obsessions: the U.S-Mexico Border and national environmental regulations. Their hyperventilating defense of the former, as I've noted before, comes with blustery assaults on the latter.<br /><br />Since November, Utah representative Rob Bishop, chair of the House subcommittee on public lands, along with his gal pal, Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), and a host of fellow travelers, have mounted an incessant campaign to allow the U. S. Border Patrol to ignore key provisions of the Wilderness Act, the Endangered Species Act, and other vital environmental laws.<br /><br />Arguing that such legislation impedes the Border Patrol's capacity to defend the nation against undocumented migrants, they have filed amendments and riders to pending legislation, called public hearings to lambaste officials of the Department of Interior, and penned fulminating op-eds to rouse the party's extremist base.<br /><br />Their most recent gambit came late last week in the form of an amendment to the Department of Homeland Security's appropriation. Rep. Lummis proposed, and a lock-step Republican vote secured, a rule prohibiting DHS from transferring funds to the Department of the Interior.<br /><br />These moneys would have been used to mitigate the oft-intense environmental damage resulting from the construction of the infamous border wall across federal wildlife refuges, wildlands, and preserves, in such places as the Rio Grande Valley; Arizona's Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument; and the Otay Wilderness near San Diego. And from the spinning wheels of its high-speed patrols that can tear up wildlife habitat or damage sensitive ecosystems.<br /><br />Such mitigation, required by law, is also sanctioned through longstanding practice among localities, states, and the federal government. It is also a matter of committed environmental stewardship.<br /><br />Neither the precedent nor the principle matters to contemporary Republicans. In a "Dear Colleague" letter that Bishop, Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA), chair of the Natural Resources Committee, and Rep. Peter King (R-NY), chair of the Committee on Homeland Security sent out in support of Lummis' amendment, they thrilled at its anti-environmentalism: "the amendment would strike language in the bill that allows these funds to be used by the Interior Department to purchase even more land. Additional federal land acquisition only exacerbates the problem by limiting access to even more land and further bloating the federal estate--at a time when the government cannot even afford to provide the basic care and maintenance needed for existing national parks and other lands."<br /><br />(Query: why can't the government afford to take care of its treasured public lands? Answer: drastic Republican budget cuts!)<br /><br />Lummis heaps just as much scorn on the legal obligations and moral responsibilities the government has for protecting our public lands: "Every day our nation's border patrol fights to protect our country against increasingly sophisticated criminal networks that produce and smuggle illegal drugs, and people, into America," she fumed. "Unfortunately, DOI policies have tied the hands of Border Patrol agents, who need access to federal lands to carry out their constitutional responsibility to secure the border."<br /><br />Her allegation is bogus. The very same Government Accountability Office report that Lummis and Bishop routinely cite as evidence that environmental regulations have handcuffed the Border Patrol, in fact reached the opposite conclusion. In mid-April, for instance, the GAO found that "22 of the 26 patrol agents-in-charge reported that the overall security status of their jurisdiction had not been affected by land management laws. Instead, factors such as the remoteness and ruggedness of the terrain have had the greatest effect on their ability to achieve operational control in these areas."<br /><br />The report also revealed that the four patrol agents-in-charge who had "reported that delays and restrictions had affected their ability to achieve or maintain operational control," admitted they "either had not requested resources for increased or timelier access or their requests had been denied by senior Border Patrol officials because of higher priority needs of the agency."<br /><br />Moreover, the GAO investigation demonstrated that relevant agencies out in the field and inside the Beltway have developed close working relations. To argue otherwise, as Lummis and Bishop reflexively do, is to perpetuate a fraud.<br /><br />Ah, but why let the facts get in your way when you can wrap yourself in the flag as protective cover? Trumpets Lummis: "our nation's security should be our top priority." Wilderness be damned.<br /><br />Such a blinkered public policy, in point of fact, will lead us into damnation. That's the potent message embedded in Aldo Leopold's private correspondence and his brilliant conservation classic, Sand County Almanac (1948).<br /><br />Arguing that wilderness is an irreplaceable part of our "cultural inheritance," and that even then was in precious, dwindling supply--it is a "resource that can shrink but cannot grow"--Leopold urged his fellow citizens to defend these beleaguered lands against those with a narrowly conceived notion of homeland securityhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif. "If we lose our wilderness, we have nothing left...worth fighting for."<br /><br />Note, please, that Leopold was a Republican.<br /><br />Char Miller is the Director and W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis at Pomona College, and editor of the just-published "Cities and Nature in the American West."<br /><br />Reprinted with the author's permission, this essay was originally posted at KCET:<br /><br /><a href=" http://www.kcet.org/updaily/socal_focus/commentary/border-skirmish-republicans-are-using-immigrants-to-bash-our-wilderness-34146.html">http://www.kcet.org/updaily/socal_focus/commentary/border-skirmish-republicans-are-using-immigrants-to-bash-our-wilderness-34146.html</a>NO BORDER WALLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16705064894973061623noreply@blogger.com0