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.

City Commissioners Vote to Buy Brownsville a Border Wall

By Scott Nicol

On June 2, the Brownsville City Commission finally capitulated to the Department of Homeland Security’s demand that they give away city property to build the border wall. They had attempted to do this twice before, first last July and again this past February. In both instances the commissioners backed down in the face of widespread opposition from Brownsville residents. This time, however, they stuck with DHS, ignoring the will of the people by voting to give away the city’s land and to commit to build a border wall through Brownsville at the city’s expense. No other city has done so much to help build the border wall.

When the City Commissioners considered this deal last February, they issued a press release praising it, saying that “The City of Brownsville is in the unique position to be the only border city between San Diego, California and the Gulf of Mexico to be offered the ability to remove the federally mandated border fence.” The Commissioners’ spin leaves out the fact that the initial border wall will only be removed after it is replaced with a border wall that will be far more permanent and imposing, and one for which Brownsville taxpayers will foot the entire multi-million dollar bill.

While the contract with DHS has been rewritten, the substance remains the same. The City of Brownsville will give up 15 acres of city property, which DHS valued at $123,100 when it initiated condemnation proceedings last September. The Department of Homeland Security will not pay a dime for the city’s land.

"Floating fence" border wall design in Cameron County, Texas

DHS will then build what they call a “floating fence” on the formerly city-owned property. While the City Commissioners may see the use of this border wall design as a victory, maps of the border wall released by DHS in July 2008 for their Environmental Stewardship Plan (ESP) clearly show “floating fence” on the city’s land. The ESP states, “Floating primary pedestrian fence consists of prefabricated floating fence panels placed on the levee. Floating fences are generally concrete barriers with pickets anchored on top.” This type of border wall has already been erected in parts of western Cameron County. So the floating fence is not a concession on the part of DHS, but what DHS had planned in the first place.

According to the contract, at some indefinite time in the future, the city will pay to build a levee-border wall in another unspecified location to replace the “floating fence.” It stipulates that the city must pay to buy the land for the new levee-border wall, and “construction shall be the responsibility of Brownsville, and shall not be performed by the United States or at any cost to the United States.” The bids for the levee-border walls in Hidalgo County ranged from $12 to $16 million per mile. Placing cost ahead of confidence in the quality of construction of our flood control levees, Hidalgo naturally went with the low bidder. Assuming that Brownsville does the same, the 2-4 miles of levee-border wall that will slice through the city will cost between $24 and $48 million, every dime of which must come from city coffers.

Levee-border wall under construction in Hidalgo County

Once Brownsville constructs the new levee-border wall, DHS will pay to take down the “floating fence.” Maybe. Homeland Security’s promise to pay to take down the first border wall is “subject to the availability of funding.” If they do not have the cash in hand, “then DHS shall provide Brownsville with appropriate access and authority to remove such sections and dispose of the removed material” at the city’s expense.

One new provision in the contract that the City Commission approved states that, “Brownsville shall, at its sole expense, preserve and maintain the Replacement Border Barrier.” So not only will Brownsville’s taxpayers have to pay to build a levee-border wall that none of them want, they must also pay to maintain it for decades to come.

Of course, it is unlikely that Brownsville will be able to come up with all of this money, so the “temporary” border wall will in fact be permanent.

But if they do, and private developers come through with millions more to build a riverwalk, we can look forward to long lines of tourists waiting to show their passports to go through the border wall to reach the trendy restaurants on the other side. What could be more appealing than fine dining in a no-man’s land that the Department of Homeland Security has walled off to keep “terrorists and terrorist weapons” from entering the rest of the United States?

Levee-border wall at the Old Hidalgo Pumphouse World Birding Center in Hidalgo County

Even if everything goes as the City Commission hopes, this deal defies all logic. It is as if someone took away your home, and rather than fight in court to either stop them or force them to pay you its market value of $123,100, you offered to buy them new land and build them a new house that would cost anywhere from $24 to $48 million, and you would then pay to maintain it. Accepting such a deal would certainly put you in a “unique position.”

Yet, this is the deal that Brownsville City Commissioners Anthony Troiani, Edward Camarillo, Ricardo Longoria, and Leo Garza voted to accept. Charlie Atkinson, who is a Border Patrol employee, abstained. Commissioner Carlos Cisneros and Mayor Pat Ahumada voted to reject it.

When public funds are used to build schools, hospitals, or other structures for the benefit of taxpayers, the politicians who approved the project can be counted on attend a ribbon-cutting ceremony and place a plaque telling future generations of their accomplishment. If the City of Brownsville manages to pull funds from schools, hospitals, or other projects to build the levee-border wall, I trust that the City Commissioners who voted for it will be on hand for the dedication ceremony. They can smile and wave and shake hands with the grateful residents of Brownsville, who will sleep better knowing that the border is no longer broken, that floods of terrorists no longer wash over Brownsville, and that it was their City Commission that brought about this shining moment. Engraved on a bronze plaque that will be bolted to the concrete slab of the border wall will be the names:

Anthony P. Troiani

Edward C. Camarillo

Ricardo Longoria

Leo Garza

Secretary Napolitano Must End DHS’ Abuse of Texas Border Communities

By Stefanie Herweck

Over the past two years, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the organizations that it manages, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Border Patrol, have shown a deep-seated indifference to the welfare of those of us living on the Texas-Mexico border. These agencies have treated our elected leaders with disrespect, they have assumed an adversarial relationship with the public, and they have shown disdain for border communities, culture, and the environment. These actions have seriously undermined DHS’s credibility along the Texas border and have fostered a great deal of antagonism.

The border wall is the clearest example of this. The border wall project has been propelled by a blind determination to build as many miles of wall as possible regardless of cost, safety, effectiveness, and environmental damage. It has been shrouded in secrecy, and DHS has purposely obfuscated time and time again, as though border residents have no right to know what is happening in their communities and even on their own property.

Levee-border wall in Hidalgo County, Texas February 22, 2009

In June 2007, they started with a lie to the Texas Border Coalition. Texas border mayors and other community leaders were assembled to hear details about the border walls that would run through their cities. Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar told them that he could give them few details because even though he had attended the signing ceremony for the Secure Fence Act nine months earlier, the border wall plans were still sketched on “the backs of napkins.” At the exact same time in another location, the Border Patrol held a private meeting with landowners, during which detailed maps of the proposed route of the wall were displayed.

DHS lied again in order to comply with legislation that requires local consultation. When ask to submit proof of the “18 town hall meetings” that they claimed to have held, they listed random phone calls and lunch meetings with single individuals, but no actual town hall meetings.

Then, in the ultimate act of negligence, DHS decided that border residents should not be protected by the laws that govern the rest of the country, and Bush Administration Secretary Chertoff waived 36 federal laws in order to slam the border wall through the Texas borderlands regardless of its impact on public safety and the environment. The Safe Drinking Water Act, National Environmental Policy Act, and others that protect the rest of the nation no longer apply where the wall is being built.

Border wall "pickets" in front of the wall in El Calaboz, Texas March 14, 2009

Yet another DHS policy revealed this same disregard for public safety. Shortly before hurricane season last year, the news broke that in the event of a hurricane making landfall in the Rio Grande Valley, the Border Patrol intended to check documents of every Valley resident seeking to evacuate or seeking entrance into a shelter. According to Border Patrol’s plans, anyone without the proper documentation would be immediately arrested and placed in a detention facility.

Worried that this policy would cause a bottleneck at the checkpoints and the unjustified arrests of citizens fleeing in haste without documents, border leaders and residents decried the practice. Advocates for colonias complained that it unfairly risked the safety of the poor, elderly, and those with limited English who would be afraid to evacuate. Since many people would be unwilling to leave their undocumented family members, this policy could mean many thousands of people left in the path of a deadly storm.

In the face of criticism that DHS was willing to put so many human lives in jeopardy, and the perception that they might even be taking advantage of a natural disaster to make more arrests, Secretary Chertoff downplayed the policy and said that the Border Patrol would not impede evacuations. However, when Hurricane Dolly bore down on the Rio Grande Valley in July 2008, the Border Patrol continued to arrest undocumented immigrants who tried to pass through the checkpoints.

Although there has been a change in administration, the agency is still primarily staffed by the same officials that crafted and implemented DHS's stance during the last administration. Among them is the CBP employee who in February gave the Brownsville City Commissioners an arbitrary deadline to accept a border wall deal. The deadline was later repudiated by Secretary Napolitano, who had not been informed of it, after U.S. Representative Ortiz intervened on Brownsville’s behalf.

Under the Obama administration, DHS has also maintained its indifference toward the landowners whose properties are being directly affected by the construction of the border wall. Having long refused to provide landowners and their elected officials with a detailed border wall plans, they sabotaged yet another opportunity to explain where and how the wall will be built when they refused to “walk the line” with the Texas Border Coalition in February. DHS said that they were willing to visit a very few of the properties where the border wall would be built with TBC, but the property owners must be kept away.

Border wall behind a home in Cameron County, Texas March 14, 2009

In perhaps the ultimate act of disrespect to landowners, as well as evidence of sheer incompetence and unprofessionalism, last week brought news that DHS usurped one Cameron County resident’s property for the border wall without a contract and without offering compensation. Eva Lambert woke up one morning to find the border wall being constructed across her backyard. It wasn’t until after the wall on her property was finished that she was visited by a DHS official.

Given this track record, it is no surprise that Texas border residents are suspicious of DHS’s latest scheme to eradicate Carrizo cane by aerially spraying an herbicide in Laredo. This proposed spraying project is certainly following the modus operandi of DHS under the Bush Administration. There was a mere one-day public comment period on the Environmental Assessment for the project last summer, and that assessment itself was not made available online until last month, 2 days after the Laredo City Council had granted Customs and Border Protection an easement to spray. CBP attempted to move up the timeline for spraying from June 2009, as stated in the Environmental Assessment, to immediately. And they did not bother to consult with the City of Nuevo Laredo across the border in Mexico, whose drinking water intake is immediately downstream from the spraying area. The rejection of meaningful public input, the headlong push to implement a controversial project as quickly as possible, and the apparent disregard for the health and safety of Texas and Mexico border residents are all hallmarks of DHS’s operations along the border.

This behavior reinforces the widespread notion in Texas border communities that the Department of Homeland Security is an agency motivated by politics and ideology rather than the facts on the ground and the welfare of citizens. Unless and until DHS, CBP and Border Patrol transform the way that they operate on the border, unless and until they show real sensitivity to border communities and real stewardship to border natural areas, their operations and projects will continue to be regarded with a high degree of suspicion and even hostility on the Texas border. This will certainly undermine their ability to fulfill their mission to protect the United States.

Secretary Napolitano must begin immediately to mend the broken relationship between DHS and border residents. This will require an attitude shift across the entire agency: DHS must recognize that for millions of people, the borderlands are the homeland. Instead of viewing the border as the frontline in a war zone, Secretary Napolitano needs to instill in her agency the understanding that the people who live on the border are entitled to the same rights and privileges, and due the same protections, as those who live in any other part of the United States. Proximity to the Rio Grande does not dissolve our constitutional guarantees to private property or equal protection under the law.

Secretary Napolitano will have little success in reversing the Department’s abusive practices until she replaces the ideologues that her predecessor hired. Even as she speaks to Congress and in the press about bringing change to DHS, holdovers from the last administration tell Congress and the press that there will be no change. So long as they are willing to go so far as to issue ultimatums on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security without bothering to inform its new leadership, any positive changes that she wishes to make will dissipate before they make it from Washington, D.C. to border communities.

Tremendous damage to the Texas borderlands has already been done by former Secretary Chertoff, but in a few places it is not too late to stop border wall construction and thereby signal that change is real and profound, rather than just a campaign slogan. Where the wall has not yet been built because condemnation lawsuits are still in court, DHS should drop its court case and enter into meaningful negotiations.

Finally, if Secretary Napolitano truly sees the defense of our nation’s laws as a fundamental part of her new job she should rescind former Secretary Chertoff’s Real ID Act waivers and restore the rule of law to the Texas border. It is absurd to claim that immigration rules supersede every other law that has been passed by Congress or the states. It is offensive to claim that living near the border strips U.S. citizens of legal protections that are enjoyed by the rest of the nation. Secretary Napolitano must defend all U.S. citizens and all U.S. laws, and repudiate Secretary Chertoff’s practice of picking and choosing which to prioritize and which to ignore.

The new Administration has a tremendous opportunity to reverse the Bush administration’s abuses, and to begin to repair the damage that was done. But they must act immediately. Right now, landowners are facing condemnation proceedings. Right now, construction crews from South Texas to San Diego are erecting border walls. Right now, laws that should protect border residents are suspended. We have yet to see the change that we have been promised, and that we so desperately need.