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. 

Border Wall Imperils Southern Arizona Pronghorn Herds

Statement from the Sierra Club's Borderlands Team
www.sierraclub.org/borderlands

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.

Arizona Public Media and the Arizona Daily Star 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.  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.

These two herds are victims of habitat fragmentation caused by environmentally reckless border policies.  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.  These laws, and dozens more, were waived along most of Arizona’s border with Mexico by the Bush Administration.

"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.”

“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.”

 

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The Sierra Club is America's oldest, largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization. More information on borderlands protection can be found at www.sierraclub.org/borderlands

The Grand Old Party Pushes for a Lawless Border

By Scott Nicol

Last month, the Pew Hispanic Center reported that net migration from Mexico into the United States has dropped to zero, with roughly the same number of Mexican citizens heading south across the border as north.

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).  Aimed at stopping the flood of immigrants that Pew found are, in fact, not 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.  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.

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.  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. 

The resulting damage has been tremendous.   Walls now carve up the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, fragmenting habitat set aside for endangered ocelot and jaguarundi.  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.  And during border wall construction ancestral remains were unearthed and left exposed by bulldozers in the Tohono O’Odham reservation.

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.  He has yet to explain why he believes that the Border Patrol is incapable of enforcing immigration laws without violating every other law.

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 “land management laws have had no effect on Border Patrol’s overall measure of border security.”  The current Secretary of Homeland Security, former Arizona governor Janet Napolitano, recently called HR 1505 “unnecessary” and “bad policy.” 

One would assume that those who represent border communities would stand up for the borderlands.  Yet  Representative Francisco Canseco, whose district already contains more miles of border wall than any other in Texas, is one of HR 1505’s cosponsors.  The city of Eagle Pass, whose residents are Rep. Canseco’s constituents, was on the receiving end of the very first border wall condemnation.  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.

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.  Representative Ruben Hinojosa, for example, whose district includes the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, criticized HR 1505, saying, “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.”

It may be that the difference between the two Representatives’ positions comes down to experience:  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.  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.

Representative Bishop is currently working hard to convince Democrats, 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.  Bipartisan support would increase the bill’s chances in the Senate, and make a Presidential veto unlikely.

Whether he comes to his decision out of ignorance or politics, Representative Canseco needs to think about the on-the-ground impacts of the National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act on his constituents and the lands they cherish.  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.  And when the next election comes around border residents need to think seriously about which side their Representatives in Washington are on.

Border Skirmish: Republicans Are Using Immigrants to Bash Our Wilderness

by Char Miller

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.

But the Republican-controlled House of Representatives is making a mockery of these basic rules of order and good government.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

(Query: why can't the government afford to take care of its treasured public lands? Answer: drastic Republican budget cuts!)

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."

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."

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."

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.

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.

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).

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."

Note, please, that Leopold was a Republican.

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."

Reprinted with the author's permission, this essay was originally posted at KCET:

http://www.kcet.org/updaily/socal_focus/commentary/border-skirmish-republicans-are-using-immigrants-to-bash-our-wilderness-34146.html

Border Walls versus Environmental Justice

By Scott Nicol

In 1994 President Clinton issued Executive Order 12898 to address the issue of Environmental Justice. It instructs federal agencies to identify and address actions that might have “disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects… on minority populations and low-income populations.” EO 12898 remains in effect today, but in building border walls the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has chosen to ignore it.

Since the passage of the Secure Fence Act around 650 miles of border wall have been built, slicing though towns, farms, and natural areas. Southern border states have rates of poverty that are significantly higher than the national average. In 2009 Arizona had the second highest poverty rate in the nation, New Mexico had the third highest, and Texas came in seventh. Within these states communities along the border tend to be the poorest. The 2007 list of 10 counties with the lowest median incomes in the nation included the Texas border counties of El Paso, Hidalgo, and Cameron, all three of which now have border walls.

Rather than act to minimize the border wall’s impacts on these communities, DHS used the Real ID Act to waive 36 federal laws. The Safe Drinking Water Act, Farmland Protection Policy Act, Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, and other laws that protect the rest of the nation no longer protect border communities. Equal protection under the law does not apply to those who live along the border.

This has led to a host of negative impacts on border communities. The economic impacts of land condemnation and damage to family farms have hit economically disadvantaged communities. Walls have cause severe flooding in Lukeville, Arizona, and across the border in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico, where two people drowned. In Texas wetlands have been destroyed, and construction has caused serious erosion, further degrading the Rio Grande, which is the source of drinking and irrigation water for border residents.

In documents released before wall construction began, DHS stated that each of the Texas communities living in the path of the wall, “meets these two criteria [high percentages of minority and low-income residents] as a potential environmental justice population.” DHS went on to claim, however, that “the Secretary’s waiver means that CBP no longer has any specific obligation under Executive Order (EO) 12898.” While the first statement is backed by census data, the claim that DHS is not bound by the executive order is false, because the executive order was not listed among the 36 laws that DHS waived. But the assertion has meant that little effort has gone into lessening the impacts of border walls on border communities, or including them in decision-making.

South Texas Communities

To build border walls the federal government filed condemnation lawsuits against more than 400 Texas landowners, in communities that are 85 – 90% Hispanic and have rates of poverty that are more than twice the state average.

In Hidalgo and Cameron counties, where border walls were built along existing levees, homes, businesses, farms, and privately-owned nature preserves have been cut in two, or even walled off entirely, trapped between the border wall and the Rio Grande.

DHS has only to paid for the exact footprint of the border wall (typically, a 60-foot wide strip) as it passes through a parcel of land. The agency has completely discounted the hardships that the border wall will bring to landowners, such as the devaluation of contiguous property, access to farm land and homes, and impacts on livelihood.

In south Texas there are 21 separate border walls, totaling 70 linear miles, with wide gaps between sections. Border residents noticed that walls tended to be built through the lands of low-income families, but stopped abruptly at the property line of landowners such as the Hunt family, who, coincidentally, donated millions for the construction of the Bush Presidential Library.

Researchers from the University of Texas who examined this determined, “Our comparison of the areas planned to be fenced along the border with those areas where ‘gaps’ in the fence are planned suggests disproportionate impact on individuals with lower income and education, Hispanic ethnicity and non-U.S. citizenship status.”

Tohono O’odham Nation

The Tohono O’odham nation in Southern Arizona is split by 75 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border, with 1,500 out of 20,000 tribal members living south of the line. As in many Native American nations poverty is widespread. According to the 2000 census the average income on the reservation was $8,137, compared to a national average of $26,940. Life expectancy was eight years less than the national average.

Speaking before a U.S. House of Representatives hearing on the border wall, O’odham Chairman Ned Norris Jr. said, “We are older than the international boundary with Mexico and had no role in creating the border. But our land is now cut in half, with O’odham communities, sacred sites, salt pilgrimage routes, and families divided.”

Chairman Norris went on to state that, with the waiving of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, “… fragments of human remains were observed in the tire tracks of heavy construction equipment. Barriers and the border road now cross the site.”

“Imagine a bulldozer parking in your family graveyard, turning up bones. This is our reality.”

Chairman Norris concluded, “We know from our own experience living on the border that security can be improved while respecting the rights of tribes and border communities, while fulfilling our duty to the environment and to our ancestors, and without granting any person the power to ignore the law.”

Climbing the Border Wall

A recent video clip showing two young women scaling the border wall in under 20 seconds has gone viral. The video was shot by a crew working on the film The Other side of Immigration, in what appears to be the Arizona desert. FOX and other media outlets have done stories on it, and as of today it has been watched 456,602 times on Youtube.

Here is the clip:




Most of the responses have been a mix of surprise and amusement that a federal project that has soaked up over $3 billion, and has involved more than 400 condemnation suits against landowners and the waiving of 36 federal laws would be so easy to overcome.

It should not surprise anyone.

Climbing the San Diego "triple fence." Photo by Laura Garcia.

Bush administration Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said in 2007, "I think the fence has come to assume a certain kind of symbolic significance which should not obscure the fact that it is a much more complicated problem than putting up a fence which someone can climb over with a ladder or tunnel under with a shovel."




Clip from the documentary The Wall.

Climbing the border wall in the Otay Mountain Wilderness Area while Border Patrol agents look on. Photo by Italia Milan.

Border Patrol spokesperson Mike Scioli said, "The border fence is a speed bump in the desert."

But that is likely giving it too much credit. In this clip former President Bush is giving an interview in front of the border wall, discussing the efficacy of his border security measures. Just over his shoulder a group of immigrants jump the wall:



Before the border walls that President Bush touted were built, Del Rio, Texas, Border Patrol Chief Randy Hill predicted, "We're going to see steel barriers erected on the borders where U.S. and Mexican cities adjoin. These will slow down illegal crossers by minutes." He made no claim that they would stop anyone.

Photo from a Time Magazine article titled "The Great Wall of America."

The border wall has been a farce since its inception. Forget the "danged fence." It is time to admit that the emperor has no clothes, and address immigration reform and substance abuse in a rational manner.

No Border Wall Announces a New Website

We are pleased to announce that the new No Border Wall website is up and running at

www.No-Border-Wall.com

This site is designed to be a comprehensive guide to the U.S.-Mexico border wall--its history, its ineffectiveness, types of wall designs, and the problems it has caused. There is also a geographical breakdown that details the damage walls have caused in specific regions. With loads of information and citation links to documents and newspaper articles embedded throughout, it is our hope that this site will become a point of entry into the issue for reporters, researchers, policy makers, and the general public.

The updated website comes at a particularly important time, with candidates for office as far from the border as Rhode Island running on border militarization. This often includes calls for more border walls, even double-layered walls from coast to coast, despite the tremendous financial, social, and environmental cost that this would inflict upon the United States. National policies of this magnitude must be based on facts, rather than misleading sound bites. That is why we have made every effort to ensure the accuracy of the information that is presented on the website.

Destroying the Borderlands to Secure the Border

By Scott Nicol

In the 1990’s politicians trying to explain away all of America’s ills, without blaming American voters or accepting their own fair share of blame, turned their attention towards the southern border. The ebb and flow of migrants across the border, which had been occurring since the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo established it at its present location, was recast as an invasion. The invaders (who were, conveniently, ineligible to vote) were blamed for rising crime and failing schools, unemployment and overstretched social services. Clearly, the invasion must be stopped before the nation was overwhelmed.

Time to call in the troops and wall off the border.

The first 14 miles of border wall, extending from the Pacific Ocean inland, were built of rusting steel helicopter landing mats left over from the Vietnam War crudely welded together. A second layer, 15-feet tall and made of steel mesh, was later added north of the first wall. In the no-man’s-land between these two walls was a graded road for Border Patrol vehicles, with towers for surveillance cameras and stadium lights.

The landing mat border wall entering the ocean between San Diego and Tijuana.

In 2004 the California Coastal Commission and environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, sued to stop the Border Patrol’s plan to plug several canyons in order to create a level path for the border wall. The court found that the Border Patrol was in violation of federal environmental laws and that such a fill project would have a devastating impact on the Tijuana Estuary. The judge ordered that construction be halted.

In order to override the court’s decision, a provision was inserted into the Real ID Act of 2005 giving the unprecedented power to the US Attorney General (later transferred to the Secretary of Homeland Security) to waive all federal, state, and local laws, environmental and otherwise, to build border walls. Former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff used the Real ID Act to brush aside the laws that had stopped the border wall, and resumed construction. In waiving those laws he was admitting that border wall construction would violate them.

A few hundred feet from the border wall’s starting point in the Pacific, the Tijuana River Estuary spills into the sea. It is the largest of Southern California’s remaining salt marshes, where over 90% of wetland habitat has been lost to development. The combined Tijuana River Slough National Wildlife Refuge, Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve and Border Field State Park protect sand dunes and beaches, vernal pools, tidal channels, mudflats and coastal sage scrub. During the wet winter season, water drains into the marsh from the Tijuana River and surrounding creeks and canyons, infusing the marsh with fresh water and creating a delicate balance on which its many highly sensitive habitats depend. The site is a key stopover point on the Pacific Flyway, and provides over 370 species of migratory and native birds, including six endangered species, with essential breeding, feeding and nesting grounds.

Smuggler's Gulch filled in to make way for the border wall.

Following the passage of the Real ID Act the canyon known as Smuggler’s Gulch, south of San Diego, was filled in with over 2 million cubic yards of earth that had been ripped from adjacent mountaintops. A border wall was then perched on top. With no regulations in place and no oversight by other agencies, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) put little effort into erosion control, and the still bare slopes of the earthen dam threaten to wash tremendous amounts of dirt into the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve, which is only 600 feet away. In addition to smothering vegetation, burying the estuary in sediment may raise its surface level enough to disrupt the twice-daily inundation of sea water upon which its fragile ecosystem depends.

A few miles up the Tijuana River, the Otay Mountain region is home to the last surviving stands of Tecate cypress, an ice age tree that survives by absorbing coastal moisture from the air. This tree in turn is the host plant for the rare Thorne’s hairstreak butterfly. In an attempt to protect these and other rare and endangered species that inhabit this unique ecosystem, 18,500 acres of the Otay Mountain region were designated a National Wilderness Area.

Border wall in the Otay Mountain Wilderness Area, California

When the Environmental Protection Agency reviewed the plan to build this section of border wall, they expressed concern that plans to fill in canyons and waterways that feed into the Tijuana River would violate the Clean Water Act. The Department of the Interior warned that 6 endangered species would also be harmed by the wall.

San Diego Sector Border Patrol spokesman Richard Kite said in 2006, "At the mountain range, you simply don't need a fence. It's such harsh terrain it's difficult to walk, let alone drive. There's no reason to disrupt the land when the land itself is a physical barrier."

Ignoring his observation, DHS decided to “disrupt the land” of the Otay Mountain Wilderness Area with a border wall and an access road. The rugged terrain of the Wilderness Area necessitated the blasting and removal of 530,000 cubic yards of rock and extensive grading and leveling. The Otay Mountain Wilderness Area is so steep that the goal of blasting was to achieve an elevation grade of 15%, even though the Secure Fence Act states that if the elevation grade of an area exceeds 10% walls do not need to be constructed there. Border wall construction caused tremendous erosion, and involved cutting down more than 100 Tecate cypress trees.

Because this is clearly incompatible with a wilderness designation, the goal of which was to limit human activity and protect fragile ecosystems, the Otay Mountain Wilderness Act was among the 36 laws that former Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff suspended using the Real ID Act. He also swept aside the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act, rather than listen to the concerns of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior. With the wilderness no longer protected by law, DHS blasted through it and built the border wall. The Otay Mountain Wilderness Area now suffers from a barren scar and erosion that will bleed sediment into the Tijuana River for years to come.

Unchecked by environmental protections, the walls that began in California’s borderlands now extend over 600 miles, inflicting tremendous damage upon many sensitive ecosystems. In Arizona the border walls that cross washes and streams in the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument have caused severe erosion and flooding. Border 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. 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.

Border wall in the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge in Texas.

Environmental organizations, including the Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife, and many others, have attempted to protect fragile border ecosystems from DHS’ lawless actions. They have challenged the constitutionality for the Real ID Act’s waiver provision in court, and have worked to educate Congress and the public about the wall’s environmental impacts. The Sierra Club has also produced a short documentary, Wild vs. Wall, that gives an overview of the border wall’s environmental impacts from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico.

Even the Department of Homeland Security admits that border walls have negative impacts on border ecosystems, though they consistently underestimate the extent of the damage. In Environmental Stewardship Plans prepared ahead of construction, DHS identified the purchase of equivalent replacement lands as the most practical way to make up for the many thousands of acres of land that walls would tear through. Setting aside the question of where one would find replacement land comparable to a mountainous wilderness area, Congress allocated some of the necessary funds in 2008 and 2009. The Department of Homeland Security has yet to provide the Department of the Interior with those funds, and not a single acre of replacement land has been bought.

The Department of Homeland Security’s dismissive attitude towards environmental laws and border ecosystems is a direct reflection of that of some politicians, who whip up hysteria about “broken borders” and are openly hostile towards environmental protections. Chief among them has been Utah Representative Rob Bishop, who has repeatedly called the idea that DHS should pay to fix some small portion of the damage that it has done “extortion”, and has worked to keep mitigation funds from reaching the Department of the Interior.

Bishop recently said, "If wilderness designation gets in the way of a secure southern border, I want the designation changed. If it means you lose a couple of acres of wilderness, I don't think God will blame us at the judgment bar for doing that."

In 1968 an unnamed Army major justified the bombing of the Vietnamese provincial capital of Ben Tre by stating coldly, “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.” The same Orwellian logic seems to animate Representative Bishop, and some of his colleagues, when they look at the U.S.-Mexico border. Blinded by the myth that the border is a war zone, they ignore inconvenient facts like the low crime rates in the border cities of San Diego, El Paso, and Brownsville, and call for a scorched earth campaign to stop the imagined invasion. They fail to see the hypocrisy in setting aside all of our nation’s laws to stop those whom they call “illegals”. They are destroying the borderlands to “secure” the border.

The Sierra Club documentary Wild vs. Wall can be viewed at sierraclub.org/borderlands .

Be Careful What You Wish For

by Char Miller

Jan Brewer, the Governor of Arizona, says the funniest things. Especially about immigrants. Ok, I’ll admit that SB 1070, the state’s vicious anti-immigrant legislation, is nothing to laugh about. But when Brewer went on local television in early July she cracked me up.

Why? Because she told astonished viewers that Arizona police have begun to stumble on bodies buried in the desert that have been beheaded. Beheaded by those nasty immigrants she has been warning us about. Really, she said that.

Of course there is no truth to this preposterous allegation. Nor is there any basis for her claims that the “terrible border security crisis…has gotten worse.” Quite the reverse: the U. S. Borderlands are among the safest places in the United States, and getting more so. Then there is Brewer’s remarkable assertion that the majority of immigrants crossing into Arizona are drug dealers, mules or addicts. Investigations by journalists, Border Patrol officials, and county medical examiners have produced not a shred of evidence to support this and other of her bizarre rants.

Just as baseless is Senator John McCain’s frenzied claims that the state he represents is the “No. 2 kidnapping capital in the world.” Arizona has experienced nothing like the wave of kidnappings that mar social life in Africa, Asia and Central America; indeed, its figures are dropping, which suggests that the once-principled presidential candidate has gone off the deep end.

In this he has good company in the wacky State Senator Sylvia Allen. She has been blustering of late that "in the last few years 80 percent of our law enforcement that have been killed or wounded have been by an illegal." Arizona police departments have been quick to denounce her false charges.

All these lies have a purpose: the GOP in Arizona and across the nation has been flogging anti-immigrant horror stories to terrorize voters. The party wants to whip up its political base and drive independent voters into its ranks. Its fearmongering tactics and eagerness to incite racial prejudice, aided and abetted by right-wing talk radio and television, are also designed to cut into President Obama’s popular support and the Democratic Party’s congressional majority. This summer’s GOP craziness is all about the November 2010 elections.

Yet in so operating Republicans are proving to be certifiably crazy. They swear they want to include Latinos in their “Big Tent” coalition; they recognize--or at least the savviest of them do--that being inclusive is the only way that the GOP can remain a national party; it cannot otherwise survive in our twenty-first nation of immigrants. Perhaps it does not wish to: how else explain its sanctioning of repeated and vicious assaults on Hispanics, the very voters with whom they claim such great affinity?

The political impact of GOP anger and hostility is captured in the latest LatinoMetrics poll. It shows that the economy is no longer Latinos key worry--immigration is. And this change in focus came about in just six months, the exact period of time when Arizona politicians and others began to lambast immigrants. Latinos have taken notice. As one commentator told the Los Angeles Times: “Latinos are feeling less optimistic and more under siege.” Embattled, they are ready to fight back. They “have taken offense to the way immigrants have been demonized by politicians and political interest groups,” said Brent Wilkes, LULAC Executive Director, “and are prepared to vote accordingly.”

Come November, a crazed Jan Brewer may be just what the Democrats needed to maintain power. How funny is that?


Char Miller is W. M. Keck Professor and Director of the Environmental Analysis Program at Pomona College, Claremont CA. He is author of Deep in the Heart of San Antonio: Land and Life in South Texas and a columnist for the Rio Grande Guardian, where this essay originally appeared.

Trading on Fear in an Election Year: Using the Spillover Myth to Build Border Walls and Score Votes

By Scott Nicol

On May 25, President Obama announced that he would deploy up to 1,200 National Guard troops to the US-Mexico border. This followed a White House meeting with Congressional Republicans aimed at attracting support for, or at least blunting opposition to, comprehensive immigration reform legislation. With mid-term elections on the horizon, conservative members of Congress have turned their attention to the border. Or, more precisely, to walling it off. In May two bills and one amendment aimed at building more border walls were introduced. One failed, but the other two are still pending.

On Cinco de Mayo Senator Jim DeMint announced that he would reintroduce his “Finish the Fence” amendment. It would change the Secure Fence Act to say that, “Fencing that does not effectively restrain pedestrian traffic (such as vehicle barriers and virtual fencing) may not be used to meet the 700-mile fence requirement.” As of April 2010, DHS reports that it has completed 347 miles of “pedestrian fence”, meant to stop people on foot, and 299 miles of “vehicle barriers.” If DeMint’s amendment makes it into law an additional 353 miles of “pedestrian fence” will be built along the border.

"Pedestrian fence" south of San Diego, California. Photo courtesy Jay Johnson Castro.

When DeMint proposed this amendment last July, the Senate voted 54 to 44 to include it in the Department of Homeland Security’s annual appropriations bill. The House version of the bill did not contain a matching provision, and Representative Ciro Rodriguez, who, unlike DeMint, represents a district encompassing part of the border, was able to remove it during the House/Senate conference committee.

This time around DeMint attempted to attach his amendment to Financial Reform legislation. Seeing that this had nothing to do with financial reform (in fact, at roughly $7.5 million per mile DeMint’s new walls would cost taxpayers $2,647,500,000) DeMint’s amendment was not adopted. Following this failure DeMint tried to attach it to a bill funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That attempt also fell short (though just barely), but he will almost certainly try again between now and the November elections.

Even more extreme than DeMint’s amendment is Representative Todd Tiahrt’s Secure the Border Act, which requires continuous double-layered border walls along the entire 2,000 mile long border, from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. Tiahrt made no attempt to explain how the monumental expense of his legislation would benefit his Kansas constituents, who already have Oklahoma and Texas acting as buffers between them and Mexico.

Instead, Tiahrt proudly proclaimed that the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and NumbersUSA support his bill. FAIR has earned a place on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of hate groups. They received $1.2 million from the Pioneer Fund, an organization founded to promote eugenics and foster policies of “racial betterment.” NumbersUSA has also been denounced by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its ties to nativist and racist organizations. FAIR president Dan Stein and NumbersUSA president Roy Beck both formerly edited the white nationalist publication The Social Contract. One would expect Congressman Tiahrt to avoid their endorsements, not embrace them.

Border Wall construction in El Paso, Texas. Customs and Border Protection photo.

When he announced his bill Tiahrt neglected to mention that before his election to the House of Representatives he was employed by Boeing, where he worked on a number of government contracts. His old boss has not forgotten him; in 2009-2010 Boeing was Tiahrt’s biggest campaign contributor. Boeing is in turn one of the largest recipients of contracts for the Secure Border Initiative (SBI), which includes both solid border walls and virtual fences. To date, Boeing has received 13 task orders for SBI, totaling $1.2 billion.

Representative Tiahrt is currently running for the U.S. Senate. Senate races are expensive, and a successful candidate needs publicity to energize voters. Boeing has consistently provided him with campaign cash, and NumbersUSA and FAIR make regular appearances on FOX news, where they defend anti-immigrant legislation and promote favorite legislators such as Tiahrt.

Not to be left out, Senators John McCain and Jon Kyl rolled out a “10-Point Border Security Plan”, along with accompanying legislation. Their bill would “construct double- and triple-layer fencing” throughout Arizona. McCain also released a campaign commercial in which he and Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu walk alongside the border wall and discuss McCain’s border scheme.




“The plan is perfect,” Sheriff Babeu intones.

“Then complete the danged fence,” McCain responds, with the domain CompleteTheDangedFence.com on the screen below him.

Those who try to visit the website are redirected to JohnMcCain.com, where they can purchase McCain t-shirts or donate to his reelection campaign.

McCain is in a tough primary fight with JD Hayworth, who has been attacking McCain for his prior willingness to support immigration reform. Before Hayworth threatened to unseat him, McCain told Vanity Fair, "I think the fence is least effective. But I'll build the g--damned fence if they want it." The possibility of losing the election has caused the Senator to embrace the border wall that he once dismissed.

Sheriff Babeu seems like an odd choice to accompany McCain alongside the Nogales border wall. Babeu’s jurisdiction is 115 miles north of Nogales, and does not include any of the border that McCain advocates walling off. Why not consult an actual border sheriff about his border security plan?

Because those who work on the border might give an honest answer, instead of reading McCain’s cue cards. If he were to ask Nogales Assistant Police Chief Roy Bermudez, for example, the response might mirror Bermudez’ statement earlier this month, when he said, "We have not, thank God, witnessed any spillover violence from Mexico.”

Clarence Dupnik, Sheriff of neighboring Pima County, which also includes a long stretch of the US-Mexico border, said at that time, "This is a media-created event. I hear politicians on TV saying the border has gotten worse. Well, the fact of the matter is that the border has never been more secure."

In fact, according to FBI statistics, crime rates in Arizona border towns, including Nogales, have remained flat for the past decade. There has been no increase in violence as a result of “spillover” from Mexico. There was also no decrease in crime following the erection of border walls and the hiring of thousands of Border Patrol agents. FBI statistics show that the same is true for U.S. cities all along the border, from San Diego to El Paso to Brownsville.

Contrast what the FBI says with statements by DeMint, who said, “Drug trafficking, human trafficking, gang activity and other crimes are raging in American cities near the border.” Or McCain, who opens his campaign spot by listing, “Drug and human smuggling, home invasions, murder…” as justifications for sending in the National Guard and building more “danged fence.”

Politicians and law enforcement seem to be looking at two completely different borders.

In fact, they are looking at completely different numbers. The numbers that DeMint, Tiahrt, and McCain are interested in are votes, not FBI crime statistics. Facts about the border do not matter; voters’ beliefs, no matter how divorced from reality, do. As Senator McCain indicated during his earlier, pre-campaign Vanity Fair interview, building walls and sending troops to the border are political gestures meant to get votes, not solutions to any real problem.

Just as in McCain’s commercial, for politicians the border wall is simply a prop, a stage set upon which they can project an illusion of strength and security for an audience of voters who will never see the actual border. They are looking at voters who live far from the border, who can be told that “spillover” violence poses an existential threat to the United States, and only they (certainly not their election opponents!) can protect the nation. Those of us who live on the actual border, and live with the land condemnations, the suspension of laws, and the environmental damage that accompany actual border walls, see it very differently.

Walling off Texas' Last Sabal Palm Forest

By Scott Nicol

On April 19, Kiewit construction crews began clearing ground for yet another section of border wall just east of Brownsville, Texas on land that was, until the prior week, part of the Nature Conservancy’s Lennox Foundation Southmost Preserve. The 18-foot tall steel wall will cut off 95% of the 1,034 acre preserve. As with the more than 400 other landowners whose property the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has condemned, the Nature Conservancy was only offered compensation for the exact footprint of the wall – a strip 60 feet wide and 6,000 feet long – not the land that will be behind the wall. In DHS’ limited view, $114,000 is “just compensation” for walling off lands purchased in 1999 for $2.6 million.

Kiewit construction sign in front of the South Texas border wall

Before the order granting the federal government possession of their land, the Nature Conservancy had attempted to use the courts to force DHS to provide compensation and guarantee access to its property. The Department of Homeland Security has stated that the new border wall will have gates, but they have refused to explain under what circumstances they will be opened to permit access to areas behind the wall. With no way of knowing if staff or eco-tourists will be allowed into the Southmost Preserve, it is hard to see how they can continue to operate. Faced with a similar situation, the neighboring Sabal Palms Audubon Sanctuary simply took down its sign and ceased operations.

The Southmost Preserve contains one of the last of the sabal palm forests that once enveloped the mouth of the river. Before it was called the Rio Grande in the United States and the Rio Bravo in Mexico, the river was known as the Rio de las Palmas to Spanish explorers and conquistadors, who used the palm forest at its mouth as a landmark as they sailed along the Gulf Coast. Then dense groves of sabal palms followed the river up to 80 miles inland, but today the last stands are confined to one tract of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, the former Sabal Palms Audubon Sanctuary, and the Nature Conservancy’s Southmost Preserve. All three are now behind the border wall.

Border wall under construction in front of Sabal Palms Audubon Sanctuary

Federally listed endangered species, including the ocelot and jaguarundi, depend upon riparian habitat along the Rio Grande for their continued survival. Naturally solitary animals, they require large territories in which to hunt, find mates, and disperse after they are weaned. But South Texas has lost roughly 95% of its historic vegetative cover to urban development and agriculture.

Habitat fragmentation, in which disconnected “islands” of habitat are separated by large areas cleared of vegetation, split by roads, or divided by other impediments to movement, poses a tremendous threat to these species’ long-term survival. Ocelot and jaguarundi trapped within too-small habitat “islands” may not have sufficient prey or access to water, and often show evidence of inbreeding. Today, the Rio Grande Valley is home to the less than 80 ocelots and 40 jaguarundi that are still believed to survive in the United States.

The Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge was established to address the threat to the survival of ocelot, jaguarundi, and other wildlife posed by habitat fragmentation. Over the years 113 individual tracts of land, totaling 88,044 acres, have been acquired, with a goal of using the ribbon of riparian habitat along the Rio Grande as a wildlife corridor to link them. Though not operated by US Fish and Wildlife, the Southmost Preserve and Sabal Palms Audubon Sanctuary are critical parts of the corridor. Bound together by the river, it was hoped that they would provide sufficient resources and allow for the necessary mobility to prevent the extirpation of these endangered cats.

Mile after mile of border wall now slice through the LRGV National Wildlife Refuge; along the northern border of the Sabal Palms Audubon Sanctuary; and soon will tear through the Nature Conservancy’s Southmost Preserve, fragmenting habitat that was painstakingly pieced together over the course of many years. The walls that break apart the wildlife corridor may prove to be the final nail in the coffin for ocelots and jaguarundi.

Sabal Palms Audubon Sanctuary closed

Though the border walls called for by the Secure Fence Act are nearly finished, the threat of Congressionally mandated damage to the borderlands continues. With mid-term elections looming, many politicians hope to exploit fears of “spillover violence” and a Mexican “reconquista” in their bids to stay in office. Calling for the erection of more walls and the deployment of troops may not be sound border policy, but it is a sure-fire way to land an interview on Fox news, which is tantamount to a free campaign ad. The border environment is then either used as a scapegoat or ignored.

Claiming that federal land managers are “hiding behind the law” and preventing the Border Patrol from doing their job, recently Representative Rob Bishop introduced legislation that would prevent the Department of Interior from “impeding” Homeland Security’s attempts to fulfill the Secure Fence Act’s mandate. Rep. Bishop, whose Utah district lies 800 miles north of the U.S. – Mexico border, failed to ask the Border Patrol if the Department of the Interior’s stewardship of public lands was in fact interfering with their operations. Brandon Judd, vice president of Local 2544 of the National Border Patrol Council, spoke out against Rep. Bishop’s bill, stating that without environmental regulations, “you would destroy the land.”

Last week the Senate held hearings on border security and the failure of Boeing’s multi-million dollar “virtual fence.” The Senators did not discuss the environmental impacts of the border wall, or address the underlying economic factors driving immigration, or even consider whether or not it made sense to continue “enforcement only” immigration policies. Instead Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, suggested that, "The best answer to this continuing crisis and continued flow of illegal immigrants into the U.S. is to go back to the old-style fences, double- and triple-tiered, and layered."

"Triple fence" border wall design in San Diego, California

So while we may want to believe that border wall construction, and the accompanying destruction of border ecosystems, is finally coming to an end, the truth is that so long as politicians believe that militarizing the border plays well in their home districts they will continue to draft legislation calling for more border walls. To voters in Utah and Connecticut sabal palm forests along the Rio Grande are no more real than the forests in Avatar. When the palm forests are gone most won’t notice their passing.

This is why it is so important for those of us who can see the damage that is being inflicted upon the borderlands, and who will mourn the loss of sabal palms, ocelots, and the rest of our unique environment, to make certain that when these decisions are made far from the border our voices are heard. We cannot allow ecosystems that predate the founding of the United States and Mexico to be destroyed just to score points in an off-year election. As John Muir said, “God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools.”

Border Walls are Ineffective Speed Bumps in the Desert

By Scott Nicol

All of the imagined benefits of the border wall flow from the assumption that if walls are built they will stop undocumented traffic from coming across. Politicians claim that building 700 miles of wall along our 1,933 mile long southern border, while ignoring the 3,987 mile long northern border and 12,479 miles of coastline will somehow allow the Department of Homeland Security to achieve the Secure Fence Act’s goal, to “achieve and maintain operational control over the entire international land and maritime borders of the United States.”


Crossers climbing the “triple fence” near San Diego, California. Photo by Laura Garcia.

In fact, the Border Patrol’s own statistics show that the border walls have not brought about a decrease in illegal entries. The border patrol uses the number of border crossers apprehended in a given sector to gauge the overall number of attempted crossings. Apprehensions dropped dramatically between 2005, the year before the Secure Fence Act was passed, and 2007, the year after. But the decrease did not occur in areas where border walls had been built. On the contrary, the greatest reductions in apprehensions, which according to the Border Patrol would indicate a successful strategy for stopping undocumented immigration, were seen in sectors that did not have walls. Texas’ Rio Grande Valley sector saw a 45.3% decrease in apprehensions, bringing them to a 15 year low. The Del Rio, Texas, sector saw a 66.5% decrease. Neither sector had an inch of border wall before 2008. In sectors such as Tucson, which saw walls built shortly after passage of the Secure Fence Act, the reduction in apprehensions began before any wall posts were erected. The areas that saw an increase in crossings were California’s San Diego and El Centro sectors, both of which have had border walls for over a decade. At the same time that the unwalled border witnessed dramatic decreases in crossings, heavily fortified San Diego saw a 20.1% increase.

Even before the passage of the Secure Fence Act, it was clear that border walls did not reduce the number of people entering the United States. The Congressional Research Service found that the number of border crossers apprehended nationally in 1992 was the same as the number apprehended in 2004, after walls in San Diego had been erected. They concluded that migrant traffic had simply shifted to more remote areas in Arizona and that “increased enforcement in San Diego sector has had little impact on overall apprehensions.” Migrants were not stopped by border walls; they simply went around them.

Other researchers have studied the effectiveness of the border wall and border enforcement by analyzing how successful migrants are at getting through it. The Migrant Policy Institute found that 97% of undocumented immigrants eventually succeed in entering the United States, a number that has been unchanged since the first border walls went up in 1995. Wayne Cornelius, Director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California-San Diego told the House Judiciary Committee that according to his research,

Tightened border enforcement since 1993 has not stopped nor even discouraged unauthorized migrants from entering the United States. Even if apprehended, the vast majority (92-97%) keep trying until they succeed. Neither the higher probability of being apprehended by the Border Patrol, nor the sharply increased danger of clandestine entry through deserts and mountainous terrain, has discouraged potential migrants from leaving home.

Assertions by pundits and politicians that walls will allow the U.S. to “secure” its southern border are patently false. Spokespersons for the Border Patrol tend to describe it much more modestly. Del Rio, Texas, Border Patrol Chief Randy Hill said, “We're going to see steel barriers erected on the borders where U.S. and Mexican cities adjoin. These will slow down illegal crossers by minutes.” Not stop crossers, or allow the Border Patrol to “achieve and maintain operational control” of the border, but slow them down by “minutes.” As Border Patrol spokesperson Mike Scioli said, “The border fence is a speed bump in the desert.”

Even Bush administration Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said in 2007, “I think the fence has come to assume a certain kind of symbolic significance which should not obscure the fact that it is a much more complicated problem than putting up a fence which someone can climb over with a ladder or tunnel under with a shovel.”

Mile upon mile of border wall have been built, with no apparent thought given to efficacy, because the Secure Fence Act only mandated a mile count. There is no requirement that border walls have any measurable impact on immigration or smuggling, and in 2009 the Government Accountability Office found that the Department of Homeland Security had made no effort to determine whether or not walls were having any effect. Even the Border Patrol has questioned whether walls are being built in some locations for political, rather than operational, reasons. In a 2007 email obtained by the Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) through a Freedom of Information Act request, the Assistant Chief Patrol Agent for the Yuma sector asks, “will we be getting fence where we don’t need it in our sector for the sake of putting up the required mileage?” The miles of unnecessary border wall that he referred to have since been built through the Imperial Sand Dunes of Southern California.


Border Wall in the Imperial Sand Dunes. Border Patrol photo.

Despite its “symbolic significance” and its possibly arbitrary placement, the border wall comes with a real price tag. In 2007 the Congressional Research Service estimated that the border wall could cost as much as $49 billion to build and maintain. Since then the costs of construction have risen dramatically. The Army Corps of Engineers reported that the cost of building “pedestrian fences” has increased from an average of $3.5 million per mile to $7.5 million per mile. The cost of building vehicle barriers on the border is now $2.8 million per mile. Some sections of border wall are particularly expensive: the walls that have been inserted into the levees in south Texas averaged $12 million per mile; in California, a 3.5 mile section that involved filling in canyons cost taxpayers $57 million. In 2008, the Department of Homeland Security asked Congress to allocate an additional $400 million for border wall construction, because the $2.7 billion already spent was not enough to finish out the year.

Why would members of Congress vote to spend billions of taxpayer dollars on border walls that do not work?

Simply put, for members of Congress who do not live beside the border, and do not count on the votes of those who do, the border wall is an abstraction. The reality that the border wall has little or no impact on border crossings is irrelevant. The reality that more than 400 property owners have had their property condemned is irrelevant. The reality that federally designated wilderness areas and wildlife refuges have been severely impacted is irrelevant. The politicians who voted for border walls were voting for a symbol, something that could be used to give voters a false sense of security during election cycles, and nothing more.

The Border Wall's Ongoing Environmental Toll

By Scott Nicol

In 1996 the United States Congress called for the construction of “triple layered fencing” along the U.S.-Mexico border, beginning in the Pacific Ocean and extending 14 miles into California. This was to consist of parallel 10 to 15 foot high steel walls, with 50 feet of land in between graded and cleared of all vegetation, and the entire expanse lit by stadium floodlights. The Border Patrol also proposed filling in canyons and scalping mountains to give the new walls and road a level path. The California Coastal Commission determined in 2004 that these initial border walls would violate the Coastal Zone Management Act. Of particular concern was the damage that walls would do to the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve, the largest of the remaining California salt marshes, which harbors many endangered plant and animal species. The Sierra Club, Audubon Society, and other environmental groups also challenged the border wall in court. Construction came to a halt.

Congress responded by passing the Real ID Act of 2005, which gave the Secretary of Homeland Security the power to waive all laws that might slow construction of border walls, and also curtailed normal judicial review. President Bush’s Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, used this unprecedented power to “waive in their entirety” the Coastal Zone Management Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and the National Historic Preservation Act in order to resume border wall construction. The challenges brought by the California Coastal Commission and environmental organizations were thrown out when the laws that they were based upon were waived.

When Congress passed the Secure Fence Act in 2006, the power to waive laws granted by the Real ID Act carried over to all of the walls that the new law mandated. The Secure Fence Act called for over 700 hundred miles of new border wall extending from California into Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, stopping just short of the Gulf of Mexico. Its path takes it through some of our nation’s most fragile and biologically diverse protected lands. Over the years former Homeland Secretary Chertoff issued 5 separate waivers under Real ID, setting aside 36 federal laws and, “all federal, state, or other laws, regulations and legal requirements of, deriving from, or related to the subject of” those named laws. The waivers encompass the broad subjects of water, air, wildlife, and the environment, leaving few, if any, federal, state, or other environmental laws in place. In addition to brushing aside environmental protections, laws relating to farmland, archaeological and historic sites, religious freedoms, and Native American graves were also suspended.




Construction of the massive earthen berm to fill in Smuggler’s Gulch. Border Patrol photo.

With no need to obey environmental laws, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) filled in the canyon known as Smuggler’s Gulch, south of San Diego, with over 2 million cubic yards of earth that had been ripped from adjacent mountaintops, and planted the border wall on top of the berm. With no regulations in place and no oversight by other agencies, DHS put little effort into erosion control, and the still bare slopes of the earthen dam threaten to wash tremendous amounts of dirt into the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve, which is only 600 feet away. Burying the estuary in sediment may raise its surface level enough to disrupt the twice-daily inundation of sea water upon which its fragile ecosystem depends.

To the east of Smuggler’s Gulch, in the rugged Otay Mountain Wilderness Area, DHS has blasted mountainsides in order to create access roads and level ground upon which to build the border wall. Before construction began the Environmental Protection Agency raised concerns that the dumping of tons of rubble, and the erosion that would follow, would clog the Tijuana River and violate the Clean Water Act. The Otay Mountain Wilderness Area was established in part to preserve some of the last stands of rare tecate cypress trees, the host plant for the even rarer Thorne’s hairstreak butterfly, which are found nowhere else in the United States. But with the Real ID Act’s waiver authority in hand, DHS has ignored the EPA’s concerns and our nation’s environmental laws, including the Otay Mountain Wilderness Act and the Clean Water Act. Border wall construction caused tremendous erosion, as predicted, and also involved cutting down more than 100 tecate cypress trees.

In July of 2008 the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument received seasonal monsoon rains which resulted in the flooding of a number of washes that are bisected by the border wall. Storms of this type normally occur every 3 – 5 years in this part of the Sonoran desert. The Army Corps of Engineers had previously stated that the border walls built across washes would "not impede the natural flow of water.” In stark contrast to these claims, the National Park Service determined that the grates built into the base of the wall to allow for the passage of water were quickly choked with debris and sediment. The border wall then acted as a dam, with floodwaters up to seven feet deep piling up behind it. The floodwaters then followed the wall in search of an outlet, which they found at the Sonoyta port of entry, causing millions of dollars of damage to private businesses and government buildings.



Flood debris backed up by the border wall in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. National Park Service photo.

The U.S.-Mexico border consists of hundreds of miles of public and protected lands, which is habitat for scores of species. The border wall and patrol road slicing through these areas fragments the habitats of the animals that live here. Cut off from their usual range, populations may not have access to mates in other groups, a necessity for a genetically diverse, healthy population. Border walls also block animals from food and water sources, which leaves them especially vulnerable in times of drought. As the border wall funnels migrants into rugged, remote terrain and Border Patrol vehicles pursue them, they damage fragile ecosystems and disturb sensitive wildlife, like the bighorn sheep and the desert tortoise, both of which are endangered.

Endangered jaguars, which were almost entirely extirpated in the United States, have been photographed and even captured in Southern Arizona and New Mexico in recent years. In 1997, the jaguar was placed on the endangered species list in hopes of reviving U.S. populations. While their former range extends into all four southern border states, the individual animals which have been seen in Arizona likely came into the U.S. from Mexico, where larger populations live. With routes from Mexico almost completely sealed off by the border wall, establishing a healthy breeding population of jaguar in the U.S. may no longer be possible.

South Texas is home to ocelots and jaguarundi, both of which are listed under the Endangered Species Act. Agricultural and urban development have stripped these animals of 95% of their original habitat. Because so few of each species are left in the U.S., they need access to mates in Mexico to avoid inbreeding. The Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge was created to provide them with sufficient habitat to survive, as well as offer a potential route to Mexico. Over the past 20 years, more than 90 million tax dollars and thousands of volunteer hours were spent piecing together and revegetating tracts of land along the Rio Grande in order to create this wildlife corridor. The border walls in South Texas now divide some of these refuge tracts, and cut others off from the Rio Grande and from Mexico. With the Endangered Species Act waived, the Department of Homeland Security has largely ignored the way that border walls fragment the ocelot and jaguarundi’s remaining habitat and seriously diminish hope for their recovery, or even survival.


Levee-border wall through the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge in Texas. Photo by Scott Nicol.

Before former Secretary Chertoff’s last Real ID Act waivers in April 2008, DHS prepared draft environmental impact statements and draft environmental assessments for the various sections of border wall, as mandated by the National Environmental Policy Act. In reviewing the draft environmental impact statement for the Rio Grande Valley, the Environmental Protection Agency found it to be “insufficient,” and recommended that DHS start the process over. The EPA reached the same conclusion, and made the same recommendation, when it reviewed the draft environmental impact statements and draft environmental assessments that DHS prepared for each the other border wall sections.

Following the waivers, which allowed DHS to disregard the National Environmental Policy Act, the agency abruptly ended the environmental assessment and environmental impact statement processes. Instead, they created a brand new category, the “environmental stewardship plan,” which was not governed by any federal legislation. These new reports recycle the bulk of the prior, “insufficient” reports, in many cases word-for-word, but have no established criteria or requirement for review from the EPA or the public. While they do include recommendations to minimize the wall’s environmental impact, most of which appeared in the earlier “insufficient” reports, there is no requirement that these be adhered to. In the instance of Smuggler’s Gulch, for example, revegetation and erosion control measures called for in DHS’ own report were not implemented.

One of DHS’ most absurd claims for the border wall is that it will actually be good for the environment because border crossers leave litter, make foot paths, and, in the states that do not have a river for a border, drive off road vehicles through sensitive habitat. This ignores the difference in scale between a dirt path that winds through the brush and an area 150 feet wide cleared of all vegetation, and 10 – 15 foot tall steel and concrete walls. The border wall’s destructive impact is made obvious by the Department of Homeland Security’s need to “waive in their entirety” our nation’s most important environmental laws. The only reason for DHS to waive laws is the knowledge that the border wall violates them. Litter can be a problem for wildlife, but the blasting, bulldozing, fragmentation, and large-scale erosion caused by border wall and Border Patrol road construction are much worse. Animals can sidestep discarded water bottles, but when their habitat is cleared of vegetation, flooded, or silted up, and blocked by an impermeable wall, they cannot survive.