The New Congress Will Try to Build More Border Walls

By Scott Nicol

I generally refrain from making New Year’s predictions, but following the mid-term elections one thing has been crystal clear: barring divine intervention or a grass-roots outcry loud enough to drown out the Tea Party, the new Congress will pass legislation requiring hundreds of miles of new border walls.

In the final days of the Congressional “lame duck” session Democrats struggled to line up votes in the Senate to pass the DREAM Act, which would have provided a path to citizenship for those who had been brought into the United States as minors, and who completed two years of college or military service. Hoping to bring Republicans on board, slots were left open for two Republican amendments, should the bill make it to the Senate floor.

Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC).

Republican Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina took one of those slots for an amendment that would change the Secure Fence Act to require 700 miles of “pedestrian” border walls; vehicle barriers built along the border could no longer be applied to the mile count. Currently, 302 miles of vehicle barriers are included in the Department of Homeland Security’s official total of 646 miles of border wall. DeMint’s amendment would require Customs and Border Protection to build 356 miles of new “pedestrian” wall. With “pedestrian” walls averaging $7.5 million per mile, this could cost taxpayers $2,670,000,000. And with California, Arizona, and New Mexico largely walled off, most of those miles would come to Texas.

Passage of the DREAM Act should have been fairly easy, as many Republican Senators had supported it in the past. Ten years ago Republican Senator Orin Hatch actually co-wrote the DREAM Act. Before he voted against his own creation this year, his spokesperson simply said, “Times have changed.”

The need for immigration reform has not changed. What has changed is the political landscape, particularly in the Republican Party. Where once Karl Rove cautioned against alienating Hispanic voters, the hard tack to the right brought on by the Tea Party has convinced Republicans that support of immigration reform could cost them their next election. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who had planned to coauthor Comprehensive Immigration Reform with Democratic Senator Charles Schumer in early 2010, said at the end of the same year, "There's no way I can go to the people in South Carolina and say, 'Let's pass the Dream Act,' when we've done nothing on the border and there's a raging war in Mexico."

When Senator Graham says “we’ve done nothing on the border” he knows full well that the opposite is true. The Government Accountability Office presented a report to Congress in November of 2010 that stated,

“Border Patrol agents staffed along the U.S. borders have increased from 11,264 in 2005 to 20,161 as of June 2010, with 2,139 agents staffed on the northern border and 17,089 agents staffed on the southwest border. In regard to infrastructure, CBP’s SBI office reported that as of April 2010, it had completed 646 of the 652 miles of border fencing—including pedestrian fencing and permanent vehicle barriers—that it committed to deploy along the southwest border.”


Bollard border wall in California. Photo by Jay Johnson Castro.

The myth that borders can be made airtight through the construction of hundreds of miles of border wall or the doubling of Border Patrol agents should have been laid to rest by the fact that after these things were done the cries from politicians that the borders are broken are louder than ever.

Republicans voted in lock-step to prevent the DREAM Act from reaching the floor of the Senate. Even Senator DeMint, who planned to attach his amendment to it, voted against even debating the bill.

DeMint’s proposed amendment to the DREAM Act is identical to the one that he successfully attached to the Department of Homeland Security’s appropriation bill in 2009. Texas Senators Cornyn and Hutchison voted in favor of the 2009 amendment, as they have for every border wall bill that has come before them. But because there was not a matching amendment in the House version of the bill Representative Ciro Rodriguez (D-TX) was able to remove it in the House -Senate conference committee.

Once the new Congress is sworn in the House of Representatives will no longer act as a brake on Senator DeMint’s desire to build more border walls. Ciro Rodriguez lost his reelection bid, and, thanks in part to the success of Tea Party candidates, Republicans will control the House. In addition to new members like Ben Quayle (R-AZ) who put militarizing the border front and center in their campaigns, the next Congress will see some of the border wall’s biggest backers chairing key House committees.


Signing ceremony for the Secure Fence Act of 2006

Peter King (R-NY) will be the new chair of the House Homeland Security Committee. He wrote the Secure Fence Act, which mandated the hundreds of miles of wall that now slice through border communities, farms, and wildlife refuges. In the White House photo of the Secure Fence Act signing ceremony he can be seen looking over President Bush’s shoulder, smiling from ear to ear. Last week he told the New York Post that, “The Obama Administration continues to display an obvious lack of urgency when it comes to operational control of the border.” He went on to list border walls as an important tool for gaining control.

The House Judiciary Committee, which oversees immigration laws and legislation, will be chaired by Texas Republican Lamar Smith. Lamar Smith was a vocal backer of the Secure Fence Act. He also co-sponsored a 2008 “English-only” bill, and supported an amendment forbidding the US government from telling the Mexican government about the activities of Minuteman border vigilantes. This past October he wrote an op-ed for FOX News, saying that, “If we want to prevent another terrorist attack, we must prevent terrorists from getting to the U.S. in the first place. That means finishing the border fence and giving Border Patrol all the necessary resources to keep our borders safe.” Apparently Rep. Smith missed the 9/11 Commission’s finding that none of the September 11 terrorists entered the U.S. by crossing a land border.

Iowa Republican Steve King is expected to lead the Judiciary Committee’s Immigration Subcommittee. In 2006 Rep. King assembled a model of the border wall during Congressional debate on the Secure Fence Act and suggested running electric current through it, saying, “we do this with livestock all the time.” Last month King said that as Immigration Subcommittee Chair he planned to conduct a formal review of the Obama Administration’s spending on border enforcement and push for construction of new border walls. He told the New York Times, “Build it until they stop going around the end – that would be my standard.”



Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) builds his wall on the House floor

Rep. Smith and the two Kings, along with Senator DeMint, are so enamored with the idea of a border wall that they have not bothered to look at whether the wall actually prevents immigrants, smugglers, or terrorists from entering the United States. Even Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which Congress tasked with building walls, cannot say whether or not they do anything. The November Government Accountability Office report found that, “As of May 2010, CBP had not assessed the effect of fencing on border security.”

But that will not stop Senator DeMint from reintroducing his amendment next year. The Senate passed it in 2009, and although Democrats will still control the chamber it will be more conservative now than it was then. Senator DeMint was an early and ardent backer of Tea Party candidates, and they will be anxious to return the favor by supporting his bill. And with Republicans in charge of the House of Representatives, Ciro Rodriguez gone, and the key committees in the hands of Representatives who have long histories of supporting border walls, the DeMint amendment is all but assured of passage there as well.

Once it passes the House and Senate, it will be up to President Obama to decide whether or not more walls are built. Will he veto an entire bill (perhaps the Department of Homeland Security’s appropriation) to stop border walls? That would mean a head-on fight with Republicans over an issue that he has so far chosen to avoid. As Governor of Arizona, Janet Napolitano famously said, “You show me a 50-foot wall, and I'll show you a 51-foot ladder." But as President Obama’s Secretary of Homeland Security, she failed to bring border wall construction to a halt.

The decision will come down to politics. If Democrats in the House and Senate oppose the DeMint amendment and vote against it, President Obama might oppose it as well. If it passes with Democratic support and votes, he will sign it.

So in looking ahead do we succumb to fatalism, and accept that eventually walls will stretch unbroken from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico, cutting off South Texas from the river that slakes its thirst, waters its crops, and anchors its wildlife refuges? Or do we work to change the political dynamic that pushes for more and more and more border walls?

When Senator DeMint reintroduces his border wall amendment in 2011 most of the politicians who will vote for or against it represent districts that are hundreds of miles away from the border. Their votes will be based on opinion polls and political expediency, not an understanding of border security or concern for border communities. Senators Hatch and Graham voted against the DREAM Act not because they believed that it was a bad bill, but because they believed that supporting it would be bad politics. When the political winds changed, their votes changed.

The Tea Party was successful in changing the political landscape not just because they had the backing of FOX News and Koch Industries. They were also very loud. They made so much noise that their ideas, no matter how far off the deep end, became impossible to ignore. They shaped the political debate, and then they turned out to vote.

If we want to prevent the construction of more border walls we need to be just as loud, and make it clear that politicians who support more walls will be less likely to return to Washington after the next election. In the end, a politician’s vote on border walls is about job security, not border security.

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.

Border War Rhetoric Has Real Consequences for the Borderlands

By Stefanie Herweck

This week Texas Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst addressed an assembly of border residents and community leaders in Harlingen, Texas, less than 15 miles from the Rio Grande, and proclaimed that there was a war going on along the border. His assessment of the border was extreme: “We have two wars everyone talks about going on, one is in Iraq and one is in Afghanistan. We’ve got a third going on and that’s the border.”

Dewhurst made this announcement in the keynote speech for State Senator Eddie Lucio’s State of the District Address. With Senator Lucio looking on, Dewhurst went on to make his case for war on the border, speaking in vague terms about “transnational gangs,” “drug lords killing Americans,” and “border violence,” but providing little in the way of concrete details. He urged that more law enforcement be deployed in order to “close down this border.”

Dewhurst’s comparison of the U.S.-Mexico border region to war-torn Iraq and Afghanistan is offensive and absurd. His characterization of a border at war is based on ignorant hysteria instead of reality. And his portrayal of the border region as the dangerous fount of criminal activity for the rest of the state and the country is categorically false.

When pressed in an interview after the speech to provide the details that would support his claims, Dewhurst said, “We’ve seen incidence of gangs, drive by shootings, in Wichita Falls, which is a long way from the border.” The Lieutenant Governor is right about one thing here: 600 miles between Wichita Falls and the Texas-Mexico border is a long way. But declaring war on the border in order to fight crime in Wichita Falls is ludicrous.

Especially because most Texas border cities are actually safer than Wichita Falls. Although Wichita Falls has 30,000 fewer people than the border city of McAllen, its crime rate in 2008 was higher than McAllen’s. According to FBI statistics, Wichita Falls had 557 incidences of violent crime in 2008, while McAllen only had 371. El Paso was ranked as the third safest large city in the United States in the same year. And all of these cities saw a decrease in violent crime from 2007 to 2008, as did the nation as a whole. Dewhurst’s perverse fantasy of a chaotic crime-ridden border simply does not match the relatively peaceful day-to-day border reality.

In his speech, Dewhurst also cited briefings he has received from the Department of Public Safety and other law enforcement. When asked to elaborate on these briefings after his speech, he cited no official reports or criminological studies, but said “Virtually every city I go into I talk to the DPS and I talk to the local police and they have all seen a pick up of gang activity that they feel is related to drug cartels in Mexico.” While the views of law enforcement officers around the state are valuable, it is irresponsible to make policy recommendations based on their “feelings” rather than hard facts.

Furthermore, Dewhurst has apparently failed to consult with law enforcement officials in the border region. When interviewed by NPR this spring, Brownsville Police Chief Carlos Garcia noted that there had only been 3 homicides in his city in 2008, and that none of them were related to drug cartels. In the same article McAllen Police Chief Victor Rodriguez provided some perceptive analysis that Dewhurst should heed: “The sky is not falling,” he said, refuting unfounded statements by pundits and politicians that cartel violence was spilling over at the border. "What's happening right now is we've got rhetoric that's driving the policy."

When it was pointed out after his speech that his talk of war might not be welcome at the border, Dewhurst quickly wrote it off as just a rhetorical strategy: “I use the word 'war' only in the sense to get people’s attention to understand that there’s a serious problem along our porous southern and northern border.”

Unfortunately, as Chief Rodriguez well understands, rhetoric drives policy. Dewhurst’s declaration of war on the border may be intended as nothing more than a metaphor, but it is likely to have real consequences for the residents of the Texas border.

In his own speech, Dewhurst called for more actual boots on the ground to deal with the war scenario that he later claimed was purely rhetorical. This same border war rhetoric is driving Governor Perry’s call for troops to patrol the border and military predator aircraft to fly up and down the Rio Grande. This month he stationed a specialized team of the Texas Rangers that will reportedly be patrolling the border region carrying automatic weapons, and wearing camouflage, helmets, and bullet-proof vests.

The governor’s action comes despite his own admission that crime along the border has been falling in recent years. And it has been deemed unnecessary by border law enforcement. Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño said, “We don't need the Texas Rangers to come to the border to quell any imaginary disturbance.”

Although sending the Texas Rangers or the National Guard to fight an imaginary war at the border might make for good sound bites in the rest of the state, it sends a shiver down the spine of border residents. Community and business leaders fear that their efforts to develop the border region will be undermined by the false perception of a dangerous, militarized border. Residents know that staging a war in their communities, parks, and farmlands only puts them more at risk.

Border war rhetoric like Dewhurst’s drives policy on the national stage as well. Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina introduced an amendment to the 2010 DHS Appropriations Bill calling for more than 300 miles of new border wall. If the amendment passes, hundreds of those miles could be built in Texas. These walls are being proposed despite the fact that the hundreds of miles of border walls already built have not stopped people from crossing the border. Wayne Cornelius, Director Emeritus of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California at San Diego, say that despite the walls at the border, between 92% and 98% of all those attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally eventually get through. This month, a report by the Government Accountability Office faulted the Department of Homeland Security for having no effective way to gauge the impacts that border walls are having on illegal entry.

But the myth of a border war trumps the reality that walls don’t work. In the press release about his amendment, DeMint says that more border walls are urgently needed because “our southern border has become a battleground.”

Too many walls already blight the Texas borderlands. Texas citizens have had their private property stripped away to make way for walls. Texas cities have seen their landscape forever marred by them. Texas natural areas, wildlife refuges and parks have been irreparably damaged by them. All of this destruction is rooted in the myth of the border war.

Dewhurst’s inflammatory war rhetoric may have been intended only to “get people’s attention,” but the consequences for his constituents along the border are very real. When our borderlands are decreed a war zone, politicians in Austin and Washington forget that it is a place that millions of people call home. They jump on the border war bandwagon, hoping to score political points and to burnish their law-and-order credentials. Like Lt. Gov. Dewhurst, they make the border a scapegoat for crime in the rest of the Texas and the United States. Like Gov. Perry and Sen. DeMint, they dream up absurd, and ultimately destructive, schemes to fight an imaginary war.

Border residents desperately need leaders who will reject the border war scenario, who will refuse to bear false witness against the borderlands and who will work tirelessly to represent the reality of border life at the state and national level. We need uncompromising leaders who will not be complicit in the border war myth, who will actively oppose the schemes based on this myth, and who will not sit silently by as the border region that they were elected to represent is mischaracterized, maligned and damaged.

No Border Wall Calls on Congress to Strip the DeMint Border Wall Mandate from the DHS Appropriations Bill

The No Border Wall Coalition sent the following letter to the members of the House / Senate conference committee that will be deciding on the final language of the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill. While the House version does not include more border walls, the Seante's version includes the DeMint amendment, calling for 700 miles of pedestrian walls. After the letter was sent a new report from the Government Accountability Office on the Secure Border Initiative, which includes border walls, was released. It found,

"A life cycle cost study has been completed which estimates deployment, operations, and future maintenance for the tactical infrastructure will total $6.5 billion. Despite the investment in tactical infrastructure, its impact on securing the border has not been measured because DHS has not assessed the impact of the tactical infrastructure on gains or losses in the level of effective control."

The life cycle cost estimate is on top of construction costs, and does not include the cost of the construction called for by the DeMint amendment.

Here is the text of our letter to the committee members, explaining our opposition to the construction of more border walls:

The No Border Wall Coalition urges you to remove the DeMint amendment (1399), which calls for hundreds of miles of new border wall, from the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill. Further border wall construction will do tremendous damage to private and municipal property, severely impact critical wildlife habitat, and cost our nation billions of dollars. But like the walls that have already been built, the new border walls will have no impact on immigration.

The DeMint amendment changes the Secure Fence Act to require 700 miles of “pedestrian” border walls; vehicle barriers built along the border could no longer be applied to the mile count. As of July, DHS has completed 331 miles of “pedestrian fencing” and 302 miles of vehicle barriers. If DeMint’s amendment is accepted by the House/Senate Conference Committee and is signed into law, the border wall will suddenly be 369 miles short of its new mandate.

To build border walls the federal government has initiated condemnation suits against more than 400 landowners, of which 255 are still unresolved. Landowners and local elected officials have been denied basic information, including how they will access properties and water intake pumps that are walled off. If the DeMint amendment is not removed, hundreds more farmers, ranchers, nature preserves, and municipalities will be hauled into federal court to have their lands taken from them.

Border walls currently slice through National Monuments, National Wildlife Refuges, and preserves owned by the Nature Conservancy and Audubon. Habitats that are critical for the survival of federally endangered ocelots and Sonoran pronghorn have been fragmented, cutting animals off from the resources that they need to survive. Blocked watersheds have led to flood damage in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, and ongoing blasting in the Otay Mountain Wilderness Area is filling the Tijuana River with boulders and debris. If more border walls are built, more border ecosystems will be degraded or destroyed.

To date, $3.1 billion has been spent on border wall construction. Last year the Army Corps of Engineers reported that the average cost of building walls had increased to $7.5 million per mile. Some sections of border wall are particularly expensive: walls in South Texas averaged $12 million per mile; in California, a 3.5 mile section that involved filling in canyons cost taxpayers $57 million.

If the DeMint amendment remains in the DHS appropriations bill, we will spend no less than (and quite possibly a lot more than) $2,767,500,000.00 to build 369 miles of new border walls.

Border walls have utterly failed to stop either immigrants or smugglers from entering the United States. The majority enter through ports of entry, so walls erected between the ports have no effect on them. And according to the Border Patrol, even those who find the wall directly in their path are only slowed down by around 5 minutes.

Professor Wayne Cornelius of the University of California at San Diego has spent more than a decade researching undocumented immigration. His work has revealed that, even with border walls,

“all but a tiny minority eventually get through – between 92 and 98 percent, depending on the community of origin. … [T]he eventual success rate is virtually the same for migrants whose most recent crossing occurred before 1995, when the border was largely unfortified, and those crossing in the most recent period. In other words, the border enforcement build-up seems to have made no appreciable difference in terms of migrants’ ability to enter the United States clandestinely.”

The Department of Homeland Security recognizes this fact. After DeMint’s amendment was adopted, DHS spokesman Matt Chandler told the Wall Street Journal that it is, “designed to prevent real progress on immigration enforcement and [is] a reflection of the old administration's strategy: all show, no substance."

Rather than spend billions more on walls that will do tremendous damage to border communities and ecosystems, and which the Department of Homeland Security says will not help them to do their job, the membership of the No Border Wall Coalition urges you to adopt the House version of the DHS appropriations bill. For many of us, the border is our home, and as walls have been erected our needs, concerns, and voices have been ignored. We ask that you listen to us now. Strip the DeMint amendment from the bill, and refrain from building more border walls.

LULAC Opposes DeMint Amendment in the Senate Version of the Homeland Security Appropriations Bill

LULAC Press Release
September 15, 2009

Washington, DC – The League of United Latin American Citizens, the largest and oldest Hispanic civil rights organization in the country, conveys strong opposition to the DeMint amendment included in the Senate version of the Homeland Security Appropriations bill, H.R. 2892 which would require additional several hundred miles of pedestrian fencing along the southern border costing taxpayers approximately $3 billion.

“Our border security remains a national priority but with our budget constraints we face, I believe we need to go about appropriating our resources where they are most needed," said LULAC National President Rosa Rosales. "The Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano has indicated that there are more useful ways of using these resources such as in deploying new surveillance assets, sensors, and tactical infrastructure to the southern border.”

We strongly recommend that the Senate recede to the House on the DeMint amendment, eliminating it from the final bill. Should conferees have the funds available for such a proposal as was approved by the Senate, we recommend that the money be used to strengthen border security at the southern ports of entry, where the nation’s needs are most urgent. There is an investment of $720 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds to improve security at land ports of entry, including $260 million for new technology and equipment.

We look forward to working with the Senate and House to reconcile both appropriations bills.

The League of United Latin American Citizens advances the economic condition, educational attainment, political influence, housing, health and civil rights of Hispanic Americans through community-based programs operating at more than 700 LULAC councils nationwide.

Building More Border Walls is Not Effective Immigration Reform

By Scott Nicol

In 2006, both the House and Senate passed Comprehensive Immigration Reform bills. Each contained hundreds of miles of border wall, inserted as a bone to lure conservative support. The bills differed on a number of points, including the number of miles of wall to be built. When a conference committee convened to craft a final bill they were unable to work out their differences, and immigration reform died in committee. From its ashes Congress pulled the one thing that they could agree on: 700 miles of border wall.

The stated goal of the Secure Fence Act was to “achieve and maintain operational control over the entire international land and maritime borders of the United States.” Nearly 3 years later, most of the border walls that it mandated are complete. Time to dust off the “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED” banner and hang it on the border?


Apparently not. This month Senator Jim DeMint, whose home state of South Carolina is closer to Canada than Mexico, inserted an amendment into the Senate’s bill funding the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). It changes 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 July 17, DHS claims to have completed 331 miles of “pedestrian fencing” and 302 miles of vehicle barriers. If DeMint’s amendment makes it through the House/Senate Conference Committee and is signed into law, the border wall will suddenly be 369 miles short of its new mandate. DHS will probably replace many of the 302 miles of vehicle barriers with “pedestrian fence,” inflicting tremendous environmental damage in the process. That leaves at least 67 miles of brand new border wall to be built in places that are currently unwalled. With California, Arizona, and New Mexico largely walled off, those new border walls will most likely be built in Texas.

So far, Congress has given the Department of Homeland Security $3.1 billion for border wall construction. The Army Corps of Engineers reported that between February and October of 2008 the cost of building walls increased by 88%, from an average of $3.5 million per mile to $7.5 million per mile. Some sections of border wall are particularly expensive: the levee-border wall combination in South Texas averaged $12 million per mile; in California, a 3.5 mile section that involved filling in canyons cost taxpayers $57 million.


If the Secure Fence Act succeeded in achieving “operational control” of the border, why should we spend no less than (and quite possibly a lot more than) $2,767,500,000.00 to build 369 miles of new border wall?

First and foremost, the border wall has failed to stop either immigrants or smugglers from entering the United States. The majority enter through ports of entry, rather than crossing the desert on foot or the Rio Grande on an inner tube, so walls erected between the ports have no effect on them. And according to the Border Patrol, even those who find the wall directly in their path are only slowed down by around 5 minutes. As Border Patrol spokesperson Mike Scioli said, “The border fence is a speed bump in the desert.”


Professor Wayne Cornelius, with the University of California at San Diego, has spent more than a decade interviewing immigrants before and after they cross the border. His research has revealed that, even with border walls,

“fewer than half of migrants who come to the border are apprehended, even once, by the Border Patrol. … [T]he apprehension rate found in these studies varied from 24% to 47%. And of those who are caught, all but a tiny minority eventually get through – between 92 and 98 percent, depending on the community of origin. If migrants do not succeed on the first try, they almost certainly will succeed on the second or third try.”

Professor Cornelius goes on to conclude,

“the eventual success rate is virtually the same for migrants whose most recent crossing occurred before 1995, when the border was largely unfortified, and those crossing in the most recent period. In other words, the border enforcement build-up seems to have made no appreciable difference in terms of migrants’ ability to enter the United States clandestinely.”


So why would Senators, ranging from alleged fiscal conservatives such as Texas Republican John Cornyn to New York Democrat Charles Schumer, vote to spend nearly $3 billion on more border walls when those already erected do not work?

Simply put, for those politicians 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 crossers is irrelevant. The reality that more than 300 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 Senators who voted for more border walls were voting for a symbol, nothing more.

Even the Department of Homeland Security recognizes this fact. After DeMint’s amendment was adopted, DHS spokesman Matt Chandler told the Wall Street Journal that it is, “designed to prevent real progress on immigration enforcement and [is] a reflection of the old administration's strategy: all show, no substance."

Senator Schumer, who will be introducing a Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill around Labor Day, wrote in an op-ed, “I voted to require the Department of Homeland Security to construct significant fortifications to the border fence” as proof that he is, “serious about securing the border.” He did not bother to defend the effectiveness of the border wall, because that was not the point. The wall that he voted for is simply a symbol, meant to show that immigration reform and border enforcement can go arm in arm.

Senator Schumer seems to think that by voting for more walls, and more than likely including border walls in his Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill, he can appease conservatives like Cornyn and gain their votes. If so, he is deluded. No matter how much of the borderlands the bill sacrifices for the sake of empty gestures, immigration reform will not woo conservatives. It is far more likely that Schumer will instead see a repeat of 2006, in which the only part of Comprehensive Immigration Reform that makes it to the President’s desk is hundreds of miles of border wall.

Our nation desperately needs immigration reform. But as Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said this past February, “you cannot build a fence from San Diego to Brownsville, Texas, and call that an immigration policy.”

It is a message that Congress sorely needs to hear.

Riding the Border Wall to Reelection

By Scott Nicol

Representative Duncan Hunter (R-CA) likes to brag about the wall that he built on the border. It took a decade and $39 million to build the first 9 miles of border wall south of San Diego, and its impact was minimal at best, but it made Rep. Hunter proud. In the weeks just before the 2006 mid-term elections, politicians desperate to look tough on national security and hang on to their seats jumped on Hunter’s bandwagon and rushed through the Secure Fence Act, which mandated “[at] least 2 layers of reinforced fencing, the installation of additional physical barriers, roads, lighting, cameras, and sensors” along 700-plus miles of the U.S. - Mexico border. Though no walls would be built along the Canadian border and the coasts would likewise be unaffected, the Act’s pie-in-the-sky goal was “to achieve and maintain operational control over the entire international land and maritime borders of the United States."

The politicians who voted for the Secure Fence Act were primarily interested in the symbolism of a wall, not its substance, otherwise they would have checked to see if the original San Diego border wall had worked. In fact, it hadn’t. The Congressional Research Service concluded that the border wall “did not have a discernible impact on the influx of unauthorized aliens coming across the border in San Diego.” Recent Border Patrol statistics bear this conclusion out. Fiscal year 2007 saw a 7% increase in illegal crossings in the San Diego sector. In contrast, during the same year crossings border-wide dropped by 20%. The Del Rio sector, which like the rest of Texas east of El Paso has never had a wall, saw a 46% drop. The unwalled Rio Grande Valley saw a 34% drop, bringing illegal entries in that sector to a 15 year low. Even Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff recognized the border wall’s ineffectiveness, saying, “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.”


Unfortunately, the border wall is not just a symbol or a line drawn on a map. It is a physical structure that will tear through private homes and property, municipalities, parks and wildlife refuges, and a college campus. While its benefits may be illusory, the damage that it causes will be real. Recognizing this fact, in December Representative Ciro Rodriguez (D-TX) and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) inserted language into the Omnibus Spending Bill that gave DHS Secretary Chertoff the flexibility to determine where walls would be built, as well as how many miles of wall would be built, based on his determination of the Border Patrol’s operational needs. The bill also requires Chertoff to consult with property owners, local governments, Indian tribes, and the Secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior to “minimize the impact on the environment, culture, commerce, and quality of life for the communities and residents located near the sites at which such fencing is to be constructed.”

While this would seem like the first small step towards a rational border policy, it enraged right wing politicians who screamed that the border wall had been “gutted.” Representative Hunter, whose failed bid for the White House had been based on little more than his claim to have built the California border wall, quickly introduced the Reinstatement of the Secure Fence Act. It repeals the Omnibus Spending Bill’s flexibility language, and requires that 700 miles of double layered border wall be built within 6 months. The nearly 300 miles of border walls and vehicle barriers that have already been built would not count towards that number, and the funds necessary to build the new walls would be immediately appropriated. The bill currently has 19 cosponsors. Clearly, Representative Hunter realized that the border wall is his only claim to fame, and that during his presidential bid the media ignored him if he talked about anything else. Howling that our national security is being put at risk gets him media attention and brings in donations to his reelection campaign and his Peace Through Strength Political Action Committee.

Duncan Hunter is not alone in exploiting fears of an immigrant invasion and terrorists crossing our southern border to fill his campaign coffers. Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) introduced the Complete the Fence Act, which does much the same things as Hunter’s bill. In a letter announcing the bill DeMint also heralded “the launch of a new grassroots website called Completethefencenow.com”. Of course, the “grassroots” website has a link to JimDeMint.com on its banner, a video clip of Jim DeMint on the home page, and declares at the bottom of the home page “Paid for by Jim DeMint For Senate, Inc.” It is little more than a campaign ad. In fact, the letter announcing the Complete the Fence Act ends with a heartfelt P.S., “I will continue to lead the charge for conservative reforms, but I need your help. Please consider making a contribution to my campaign.”

Not to be left out, Representative Walter Jones (R-NC) has introduced the Fence by Date Certain Act, which contains the same provisions as the Reinstatement of the Secure Fence Act. Congressman Jones is best known for his efforts to change the names of French Fries and French Toast to Freedom Fries and Freedom Toast in the congressional cafeteria to punish France for refusing to support the invasion of Iraq. His latest valiant effort to defend our national honor already has 42 cosponsors, including 14 of the 19 cosponsors of Hunter’s nearly identical bill. Why introduce a third bill that mimics two existing bills? Because actually building a wall is not the point. Getting credit for demanding its construction is.

Politics is a game that exists outside of the real world. In the real world the border wall is an expensive failure, but it sure looks great behind the candidate in a campaign ad. If demolished homes and bulldozed wildlife refuges clash with the rhetoric of protecting the homeland, they are simply ignored. When the Border Patrol says it only takes 5 minutes to get past the border wall, Representative Jones calls it “a foolproof barrier on the border.” While the General Accounting Office says that the wall has caused the number of crossers who die in the desert to double, Representative Hunter says “the fence works” in his ads. Reality is irrelevant. The only real-world consequences that matter to Hunter, DeMint, and Jones are campaign contributions in their pockets and votes in the next election.