Suffer the Children

By Scott Nicol

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.

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.

Honduras has the world’s highest murder rate: in 2011, 92 people out of every thousand residents were murdered.  El Salvador ranked second, with 70 murders per 1,000 people.  Guatemala came in fifth.  For comparison, the U.S. murder rate that year was 5 per 1,000. 

Last March the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) released a report, titled “Children on the Run,” on the underage refugees streaming out of Central America.  UNHCR interviewed 404 children who had been apprehended at the U.S. border, and most said that they were fleeing gang violence.

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.’”

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.”

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently released a map that shows the point of origin for Central American kids who arrived at the border in the first few months of this year.  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. 

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."

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.  Republicans have made this a key talking point, a way to blame President Obama for the current crisis. 

In a recent FOX news op-ed, for example, Senator John Cornyn wrote, “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.”

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.  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. 

What’s more, nearby countries other than the United States – Mexico, Belize, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama – have seen a 432% increase in applications for asylum from Hondurans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans over the last five years.  Nothing that President Obama may or may not have said caused that.

The politicization of this crisis that Senator Cornyn’s statement epitomizes may doom these children.  While both parties call the situation a “crisis,” Republicans shy away from using the word “refugee” to describe children fleeing violence.  Their knee-jerk response to any situation on the border is to call for more militarization, starting with the mobilization of the National Guard. 

Governor Perry has announced that $1.3 million per week will be spent to send in the Department of Public Safety.  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.

Democrats, from Representative Pelosi 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.

But President Obama seems unclear on the idea of refugees.  One the one hand, the President has pledged millions to assist these countries in shoring up their courts and combating gangs.  At the same time he is asking Congress for greater authority to speed up deportations.  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.

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.  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.

These children are not aliens, they are not invaders, they are refugees. 

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. 

Security First?

by Scott Nicol

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.  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.  But a key component of their plan calls into question whether that promise will ever be realized.

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. 

Conservative icon Ronald Reagan agreed with this, saying, "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."   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.

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 – 71% voted for Barack Obama – 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.

Alienating Hispanic voters is costing Republicans elections now, but adding more Hispanic voters could hurt Republicans in the future.  What are they to do?

The answer lies in the “gang of eight” principles. 

The recently unveiled framework makes border security a prerequisite for the issuance of green cards to undocumented immigrants.  After that they could apply for full citizenship, going to the “back of the line.”

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.  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 over a century long.

But until the border is declared secure, that hundred-plus-year clock will not start ticking.

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. 

The Senate plan calls for a commission made up of “governors, attorneys general, and community leaders living along the Southwest border“ to determine when the border has been secured. 

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. 

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.  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.” 

Neither are particularly objective in their assessment of the border.

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.

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.  They now say the commission will be strictly advisory.

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.

Upon taking office Napolitano refused to halt the condemnation of land and construction of border walls in South Texas and elsewhere.  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.

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 “suffers from a fundamental flaw.” 

Her argument is backed by the numbers.  Border Patrol apprehensions are at a forty year low, and the Pew Research Center has found that net migration from Mexico is effectively at zero, with as many people heading south as north.

So why has her agency continued to push for border walls?  Politics, of course.

At the beginning of her tenure halting border wall construction would have opened up the newly elected President Obama to attacks in the press.  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.

Immigration reform should not be held hostage to “border security”, whether it is Perry and Brewer or Napolitano who decide on what that means.  There will always be conflicting political needs that will prevent the honest assessment and agreement that would allow reform to move forward.

When the Senators draft their bill in the coming weeks border security must not be a prerequisite for anything else.  Otherwise real reform will always be just over the horizon, one more agent, one more drone, one more wall away.

Politics is an abstraction, but the actual border consists of real lives and real landscapes.  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. 

Will Walls Worsen Rio Grande Flooding? U.S. IBWC Can’t Give a Straight Answer

By Scott Nicol

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.  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.

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. 

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.  US IBWC did not know. 

Residents asked whether walls crossing the washes that feed into the Rio Grande might become blocked with debris, preventing normal drainage and causing flooding.  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.

2007 Bureau of Land Management photo of debris in the Arizona wall

 

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. 

Using the Freedom of Information Act the Sierra Club has gotten a copy of the flood model, as well as a number of related documents.

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.  Baker’s accompanying report stated that, “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.”

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.  By telling the computer that 75% to 90% of floodwater will pass through the wall, Baker effectively predetermined the model’s end result.    

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.

In earlier reports Baker Engineering came to a very different conclusion about how much debris border walls were likely to catch.

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.  Baker found that, “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.” The report included photographs of bollard-style walls nearly identical to those planned for the Rio Grande floodplain filled with debris, and documented “debris build-up which sometimes reached a height of 6 feet.”

 Photo from the 2009 Baker report showing debris in the Arizona border wall

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.  In discussing the wall’s transfer capacity - the ability of water to pass between the bollards - it stated that,

“The transfer capacity estimate has been shown to include a significant allowance for “clogging” due to the accumulation of debris.  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.  For fence segment O-3 [Los Ebanos], a minimum allowance of 36% was estimated.  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.  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.”

Map of the three new border walls from the 2011 Baker flood model

 



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?

The US IBWC has yet to give the public an answer to that question.

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.  The Mexican section has rejected the model’s assumptions, countering in late 2011 that these walls would likely obstruct 60% - 70% of flood flows even before the clogging effect of debris is factored in. 

On February 9, 2012 the two sections of the bi-national organization met to discuss their disagreement.  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,

“It was recognized that the Mexican Section may prefer a higher percent debris blockage.  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.”

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.  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.”

Not only was Mexico’s estimate ignored, they were not even invited to participate in the 2011 modeling methodology meeting.  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.

Customs and Border Protection photo of debris backed up behind the border wall

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.  He declined to present any information, and remained silent unless he was asked a direct question. 

When asked when CBP would begin construction he said that at this time they do not have the funds to build these walls.  He failed to mention that CBP bought the steel years ago and currently has it in storage.  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. 

If border residents want answers, we need to demand them now. 

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.  They need to take concrete action, and they need to do it now.

But of course they won’t, unless we, their constituents and voters, tell them to.

October is only three weeks away.  The clock is ticking.

As we celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall, border walls are built in Brownsville, Texas

While the world celebrates the fall of the Berlin Wall, the United States is continuing construction on its own border wall in the southern tip of Texas. The following photos show the progress of the construction and how the people of Brownsville, Texas are having to learn to live with a wall in their midst.

Construction has been completed through many residential neighborhoods. This one is off Milpa Verde Street in East Brownsville.

A child plays in the shadow of the border wall behind her house.

Looking North into the neighborhood from behind the wall.

A border patrol surveillance tower and the border wall visible at the end of a Brownsville cul-de-sac.

Construction on the wall is quickly approaching Hope Park, a city park that was established on the banks of the Rio Grande in part to commemorate the strong ties between the U.S. and Mexico.

Inside Hope Park. The marker on the left is where the wall will be built. On the right is a state historical marker for the Chisolm Trail.

East of Brownsville is the Sabal Palms Audubon Sanctuary, home of the largest surviving stand of native Sabal Palms. With the border wall's impending construction, the sanctuary has been closed to the public since last spring. The gate on the left blocks the entrance to the sanctuary, and the sign has been taken down.

The border wall reaching the edge of the Nature Conservancy Southmost Preserve. Construction here is delayed while Nature Conservancy fights DHS in court.

Homeowners living across the street from the border wall draw explicit parallels between the border wall and the Berlin wall.

Will Ciro Rodriguez Stop a New Round of Border Walls?

By Scott Nicol

U.S. Representative Ciro Rodriguez, whose district stretches from San Antonio to the border communities of Eagle Pass, Del Rio, and Presidio, will play a key role in determining whether or not more border walls are built in Texas. After Congress returns from its August recess, Rodriguez will serve on the Conference Committee responsible for reconciling the House and Senate versions of the Department of Homeland Security’s 2010 Appropriations Bill. The Senate’s version contains an amendment requiring the construction of up to 369 miles of new border walls, while the House version makes no mention of walls.

Ignoring the destructive impacts on municipalities, private property, and wildlife refuges that Texas has already suffered, Senators Hutchison and Cornyn both voted for more border walls.

Based on his record, there is hope that, in contrast to Texas’ Senators, Representative Rodriguez will stand up for his constituents and work to strip the border wall amendment from the bill. But a recent action also gives reason for concern.

Standing up for Texas border communities would certainly be welcomed by those in Representative Rodriguez’ district who live along the Rio Grande. Eagle Pass was the first such municipality that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sued to condemn land for the border wall.

Eagle Pass Mayor Chad Foster has repeatedly criticized the border wall, calling upon DHS to, “halt construction on [this] expensive and useless one-size-fits-all solution to border security. Instead, the [DHS] secretary should be working toward genuine solutions, with input from local and state officials. Only then will we achieve real security along our nation's southern border."

Representative Rodriguez has made efforts to lessen the border wall’s impact and give the Secretary of Homeland Security the latitude to spare Eagle Pass and other border communities. He inserted an amendment into the 2008 supplemental appropriations bill which changed the Secure Fence Act to read,

“nothing in this paragraph shall require the Secretary of Homeland Security to install fencing, physical barriers, roads, lighting, cameras, and sensors in a particular location along an international border of the United States, if the Secretary determines that the use or placement of such resources is not the most appropriate means to achieve and maintain operational control over the international border at such location.''

Since the Congressional Research Service had already determined that border walls have “no discernible impact” on the number of undocumented immigrants and smugglers who cross the border each year, it should have been easy for then-Secretary Chertoff to decide that walls were not the most appropriate means to control the border. Unfortunately, neither he nor current DHS Secretary Napolitano has been willing to take the political heat and halt the construction of more “expensive and useless” walls.

Rep. Rodriguez also joined the rest of Texas’ border representatives in asking President Obama to “suspend construction of border fencing” until a cost-benefit analysis could be conducted and consultation with local stakeholders could be initiated. He also signed on to a letter calling on DHS to monitor the damage caused by the wall and establish a mitigation fund.

So clearly, Rodriguez can be counted on to remove the border wall building amendment from the DHS appropriations bill, right?

Maybe not. In July, Rep. Rodriguez co-sponsored the Secure America with Verification and Enforcement (SAVE) Act. One provision of the SAVE Act states,

“[T]he Secretary shall construct or purchase […] additional fencing (and aesthetic fencing in business districts) in urban areas of the border; and vehicle barriers, to support, not replace, manpower, in rural and remote areas of the border necessary to achieve operational control of the international borders of the United States.”

So despite his prior record of opposing the border wall, Representative Rodriguez is now co-sponsoring a bill that calls for more wall construction, which may cut through the communities he serves.

This earned Representative Rodriguez and the rest of the SAVE Act’s co-sponsors a congratulatory letter from Roy Beck, president of the anti-immigration group NumbersUSA, who said, “It is with highest enthusiasm and expectation that NumbersUSA endorses your re-introduction of the SAVE Act.”

NumbersUSA has been denounced by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its ties to nativist and racist organizations. Roy Beck himself was a longtime editor of the white nationalist publication The Social Contract, and NumbersUSA shares a Washington, DC office with the anti-immigrant group ProEnglish. One would expect that their enthusiastic endorsement would be as welcome as that of the Ku Klux Klan.

Representative Rodriguez’s support for the SAVE Act muddies his record as an advocate for the border communities in his district and begs the question: what will he do in Conference Committee? Will he work to strip border walls from the DHS bill, or allow them to tear through his constituents’ communities? Will he side with Chad Foster, or Roy Beck?

It is possible that Representative Rodriguez’ support for the walls in the SAVE Act is a response to the right wing’s howls that he and Senator Hutchison “gutted” the Secure Fence Act when they gave DHS the flexibility to decide whether or not to wall off a given refuge, community, or family farm. Senator Hutchison has been unable to stand up to the right’s criticism, and has given the border wall unwavering support ever since.

Ultimately, Representative Rodriguez was not elected to serve Roy Beck. Ciro Rodriguez is in Washington DC to represent the interests of Eagle Pass, Del Rio, Presidio, and other communities that are threatened with border wall construction. If he fails to act on their behalf by removing the border wall amendment from the DHS bill, more of his constituents will see border walls tear through their communities.