THE SADNESS OF THE BORDER WALL By David Bacon

Award-winning photo journalist David Bacon tells a poignant story of how families are experiencing the border wall by first historicizing the border itself as follows:

The so-called "Mexican Cession" accounts for 14.9% of the total land area of the United States, including the entire states of California, Nevada and Utah, almost all of Arizona, half of New Mexico, a quarter of Colorado and a piece of Wyoming.  Some Congress members even called for annexing all of Mexico.  

Families get an opportunity to visit with their kin and "touch" them through a half-inch square hole at Parque de Amistad, or Friendship Park in Tijuana.  While better than nothing, the larger story is how in many respects, the wall, just like the border itself, is a fiction that intends to divide a people with deep roots to this continent, roots that no border wall could ever erase despite attempts by and through policies and politics to do so.  I encourage you to go to the actual website to view all the images that accompany this sad story.

It should be axiomatic that if capital and resources can travel freely across borders, then people should be able to do so, as well.  All of this makes me feel really blue. It's hurtful.  It's personal.  We absolutely did not cross the border.  The border crossed us. Our ancestors never left the continent.  Yet history has not been kind in this regard.

Thank you, David, for all that you do to chronicle this seemingly interminable story of crisis, suffering, and tragedy of mammoth humanitarian proportions.  May your kind multiply.

Angela Valenzuela
c/s


David Bacon Fotografias y Historias
THE SADNESS OF THE BORDER WALL
By David Bacon
Contexts, 3/22/17

In Playas de Tijuana, on the Mexican side of the border wall between Mexico and the U.S., Catelina Cespedes and Carlos Alcaide greet Florita Galvez, who is on the U.S. side. The family came from Santa Monica Cohetzala in Puebla to meet at the wall.

It took two days on the bus for Catalina Cespedes and her husband Teodolo Torres to get from their hometown in Puebla - Santa Monica Cohetzala - to Tijuana.  On a bright Sunday in May they went to the beach at Playas de Tijuana.  There the wall separating Mexico from the United States plunges down a steep hillside and levels off at the Parque de Amistad, or Friendship Park, before crossing the sand and heading out into the Pacific surf. 

Sunday is the day for families to meet through the border wall.  The couple had come to see their daughter, Florita Galvez. 

Florita Galvez is on the U.S. side of the border wall between Mexico and the U.S., and her family on the Mexican side can only see her through holes in the metal mesh.

Florita had arrived that day in San Ysidro, the border town a half hour south of San Diego.  Then she went out to the Border Field State Park, by the ocean two miles west of town.  From the parking lot at the park entrance it was a 20-minute walk down a dirt road to the section of the wall next to the Parque de Amistad.

At 11 that morning, Catalina and Florita finally met, separated by the metal border.  They looked at each other through the metal screen that covers the wall's bars, in the small area where people on the U.S. side can actually get next to it.  And they touched.  Catalina pushed a finger through one of the screen's half-inch square holes.  On the other side, Florita touched it with her own finger. 

On the Mexican side of the border wall Catelina Cespedes sticks her finger through a hole in the mesh so that she can touch the finger of her daughter, Florita Galvez, who is on the other side, the only physical contact possible between people on each side.

Another family shared the space with Catalina and Teodolo.  Adriana Arzola had brought her baby Nazeli Santana, now several months old, to meet her family living on the U.S. side for the first time.  Adriana had family with her also - her grandmother and grandfather, two older children and a brother and sister. 

It was very frustrating, though, to try to see people on the other side through the half-inch holes.  So they moved along the wall to a place where the screen ended.  There the vertical eighteen-foot iron bars of the wall - what the wall is made of in most places - are separated by spaces about four inches wide.  Family members in the U.S. could see the baby as Adriana held her up.

But only from a distance.  The rules imposed by the U.S. Border Patrol in Border Field State Park say that where there's no screen the family members on that side have to stay several feet away from the wall.  So no touching.

Adriana Arzola, her sister and her baby Nayeli Santana talk with her family living in the U.S. through the bars of the wall.  On the U.S. side, her family has to stay several feet away from the wall, so they can't touch each other through the bars.

I could see the sweep of emotions playing across the faces of everyone, and in their body language.  One minute the grandmother was laughing, and the next there were tears in her eyes.  The grandfather just smiled and smiled.  Adriana talked to her relatives, and tried to wake the baby up.  Her brother leaned on the bars with his arms folded against his eyes, and her sister turned away, overcome by sadness.  On the U.S. side, a man in a wheelchair and two women with him looked happy just to have a chance to see their family again.

Some volunteers, most from the U.S. side, called Friends of Friendship Park, have tried to make the Mexican side more pleasant and accommodating for families.  The older children with Adriana sat at concrete picnic tables.  While family members talked through the wall they used colored markers, provided by the Friends, to make faces and write messages on smooth rocks.  Around them were the beginnings of a vegetable garden.  Later in the afternoon one of the volunteers harvested some greens for a salad. 

At the Parque de Amistad, or Friendship Park, in Playas de Tijuana, children and families write on stones the names of other family members they're separated from because of the border.

Members of the Friends group include Pedro Rios from the U.S./Mexico Border Program of the American Friends Service Committee, and Jill Holslin, a photographer and border activist.  On the U.S. side, another of the participating groups - Angeles de la Frontera, or Border Angels, helped the families that came to the park.  "We're here seven or eight times a month," said Enrique Morones, the group's director.  "People get in touch with us because we're visible, or they know someone else we helped before."  Border Angels helps set up the logistics so that families can arrive on both sides at the same time, often coming from far away.

Weekend visiting hours, from10-2, are the only time the Border Patrol allows families to get close to the wall for the reunions.  Once a year they open a doorway in the wall.  Watched closely by BP agents, family members are allowed to approach the open door one by one, and then to hug a mother or father, a son or daughter, or another family member from the other side.  To do that, people have to fill in a form and show the agents they have legal status in the U.S.  During the rest of the year, the Border Patrol doesn't ask about legal status, although they could at any moment.  For that reason, Border Angels tells families not to go on their own.

On the Mexican side of the border wall Adriana Arzola brings her new baby, Nayeli Santana, to meet her family living in the U.S. for the first time.

Such carefully controlled and brief encounters are the ultimate conclusion of a process that, at its beginning, had no controls at all.  Before 1848 there was no border here whatsoever.  That year, at the conclusion of what the U.S. calls "the Mexican War," the two countries signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Mexico was forced to give up 529,000 square miles of its territory.  The U.S. paid, in theory, $15,000,000 for the land, but then simply deducted it from the debt it claimed Mexico owed it.  U.S. troops occupied Mexico City to force the government there to sign the treaty.

The so-called "Mexican Cession" accounts for 14.9% of the total land area of the United States, including the entire states of California, Nevada and Utah, almost all of Arizona, half of New Mexico, a quarter of Colorado and a piece of Wyoming.  Some Congress members even called for annexing all of Mexico. 

At the time, the city of San Diego was a tiny unincorporated settlement of a few hundred people.  It was considered a suburb of Los Angeles, then still a small town.  San Ysidro didn't exist, nor did Tijuana.  To mark the new border, in 1849 a U.S./Mexico boundary commission put a marble monument in the shape of a skinny pyramid where they thought the line should go.  A replica of that original pyramid today sits next to the wall in the Parque de Amistad.  On the U.S. side the road leading from San Ysidro to Boundary Field State Park is named Monument Road, and the area is called Monument Mesa.

A boy walks past the Mexican side of the border wall between Mexico and the U.S.

Early tourists chipped so many pieces from the marble pyramid that it had to be replaced in 1894.  The first fence was erected, not along the borderline, but around the new monument to keep people from defacing it.  The line itself was still unmarked, fifty years after it had been created.

The Border Patrol was organized in 1924.  Before that, there was no conception that passage back and forth between Mexico and the U.S. on Monument Mesa had to be restricted.  The Federal government only assumed control over immigration in 1890, when construction began on the first immigration station at Ellis Island in New York harbor.  Racial exclusions existed in U.S. law from the late 1800s, but the requirement that people have a visa to cross the border was only established by the Immigration Act of 1924.  The law also established a racist national quota system for handing visas out. 

In the 1930s the Border Patrol terrorized barrios across the U.S., putting thousands of Mexicans into railroad cars and dumping them across the border.  Even U.S. citizens of Mexican descent, or people who just looked Mexican, were swept up and deported.  Trains carried deportees to the border stations in San Ysidro and Calexico, but on Monument Mesa there was still no formal line to keep people from returning.

A man looks through the bars of the border wall into the U.S.

That changed for the first time after World War Two, when barbed wire was stretched from San Ysidro to the ocean.  Mexicans called it the "alambre," or the wire.  Those who crossed it became "alambristas."  Yet enforcement was still not very strict.  During the 1950s and early 1960s, thousands of Mexican workers were imported to the U.S. as braceros, while many migrants also came without papers.  In the Imperial Valley, on weekends during the harvest, those workers would walk into Mexicali, on the Mexican side, to hear a hot band or go dancing, and then hitch a ride back to sleep in their labor camps in Brawley or Holtville. 

In 1971, Pat Nixon, wife of Republican President Richard Nixon, inaugurated Border Field State Park.  The day she visited, she asked the Border Patrol to cut the barbed wire so she could greet the Mexicans who'd come to see her.  She told them, "I hope there won't be a fence here too much longer." 

Instead, Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986.  Although many people remember the law for its amnesty for undocumented immigrants, IRCA also began the process of dumping huge resources into border enforcement. A real fence was built in the early 1990s, made of metal sheets taken from decommissioned aircraft carrier landing platforms.  The sheets had holes, so someone could peek through.  But for the first time, people coming from each side could no longer physically mix together or hug each other. 

On the Mexican side of the border wall between Mexico and the U.S., the wall runs into the Pacific Ocean.

That old wall still exists on the Mexican side in Tijuana and elsewhere on the border.  But Operation Gatekeeper, the Clinton Administration border enforcement program, sought to push border crossers out of urban areas like San Ysidro, into remote desert regions where crossing was much more difficult and dangerous.  To do that, the government had contractors build a series of walls that were harder to cross. 

On Monument Mesa the aircraft landing strips were replaced in 2007 by the 18-foot wall of vertical metal columns.  Two years later a second wall was built on the U.S. side behind the first.  The area between them became a security zone where the Border Patrol restricts access to the wall itself to just four hours on Saturday and Sunday.  The metal columns were extended into the Pacific surf.

In Playas, though, the wall is just a sight to see for the hundreds of people who come out to the beach on the weekend.  The seafood restaurants are jammed, and sunbathers set up their umbrellas on the sand.  Occasionally, a curious visitor will walk up and look through the bars into the U.S., or have a boyfriend or girlfriend take a picture next to the wall, uploading it to Facebook or Instagram for their friends.

On the Mexican side of the border wall veterans of U.S. military service who have been deported gather to protest, and to remember those who died.  Their names are written on the bars.

The wall itself at the Parque de Amistad has become a changing artwork.  As the bars rust, they've been painted with graffiti that protests the brutal division. 

One section has the names of U.S. military veterans who've been deported to Mexico, with the dates of their service and death.  A deported veterans group comes down on occasional Sundays, with some in uniform.  In angry voices, they ask why fighting the U.S.'s wars didn't keep them from being pushed onto the Mexican side of the wall.

Books by David Bacon

The Right to Stay Home:  How US Policy Drives Mexican Migration  (Beacon Press, 2013)
http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2328

Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants  (Beacon Press, 2008)

Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008
http://www.beacon.org/Illegal-People-P780.aspx

Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006)
http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100558350http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100558350

The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004)
http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520244726

En Español: 

EL DERECHO A QUEDARSE EN CASA  (Critica - Planeta de Libros)
http://www.planetadelibros.com.mx/el-derecho-a-quedarse-en-casa-libro-205607.html

HIJOS DE LIBRE COMERCIA (El Viejo Topo)
http://www.tienda.elviejotopo.com/prestashop/capitalismo/1080-hijos-del-libre-comercio-deslocalizaciones-y-precariedad-9788496356368.html?search_query=david+bacon&results=1

For more articles and images, see  http://dbacon.igc.org and http://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com

"Criminal Aliens" Flashpoint of Border Security Debate

This piece deserves a close read in distinguishing fact from fiction.  Glad to see the Texas Tribune take this on.

 

-Angela

"Criminal Aliens" Flashpoint of Border Security Debate

• by Jay Root
• Feb. 8, 2016

Enlarge Photo by Martin do Nascimento

 

Enlarge Photo by Martin do Nascimento

A group of undocumented Mexican national ex-offenders enter Mexico at the US-Mexico border crossing at Brownsville/Matamoros after being deported from the United States on Nov. 4, 2015.

. 

 

The Texas Tribune is taking a yearlong look at the issues of border security and immigration, reporting on the reality and rhetoric around these topics. Sign up to get story alerts.

Juan Francisco de Luna Vasquez passed through the Webb County jail at least four times on more than a half dozen charges before allegedly beating his wife to death with a hammer last year in Laredo.
Victor Reyes had already spent three months in the Hidalgo County Jail, four months in state custody and six years in federal prison for multiple felony offenses by the time he went on a random shooting spree in Houston, killing two people and injuring three more in January 2015.

And before Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez allegedly shot Kate Steinle to death on Pier 14 in San Francisco last summer, authorities say he had racked up a criminal record including seven felonies, mostly drug related, and a 1997 arrest for assault.

There are peculiarities to each case, but they have something in common: all three men were thrown out of the country multiple times by federal immigration authorities but returned illegally — through the Texas-Mexico border — before committing new crimes in the United States, records obtained by The Texas Tribune show.

Their crimes put them at the center of a red-hot political debate about illegal immigration, the revolving door at the southern border and controversial immigrant catch-and-release policies that pit deportation-fixated conservatives against liberal immigrant advocates.

A Texas Tribune analysis found that undocumented immigrants make up a smaller share of those imprisoned in Texas — including on Death Row — than of the general population. However, a veil of government secrecy and inconsistent record-keeping make it difficult to accurately determine how many criminal immigrants are in the country or how many crimes they have committed. Fear, outrage and political jockeying have largely filled the information void.

"Frontera! Revolt and Rebellion on the Rio Grande"

Students in class last night just shared this PBS, animated counter-story to 
"The Last Conquistador," titled, "Frontera! Revolt and Rebellion on the Rio Grande."  

See my October 6, 2015 post on "The Last Conquistador.

Thought that others might want to see.

Angela Valenzuela
c/s

Town Bolsters Security as Mexican Deaths Continue

by Brandi Grissom | Texas Tribune
July 15, 2010

[This is the second part in a series examining life in three pairs of sister cities along the Texas-Mexico border and how residents on both sides of the line are affected by the bloody drug war.]

They can’t keep burying the bodies here. Not just because the small cemetery in this remote desert town can’t handle the volume — because somebody could get killed.

On a still, sunny spring morning in Fort Hancock, about 60 miles east of El Paso, two elderly Hispanic men sit on the tailgate of a pickup, surrounded by graves. Francisco Estrada and Alberto Rosales munch on pieces of fruit, legs dangling above the dusty earth where many former residents of this rural outpost make their final repose. As caretakers for the Fort Hancock Cemetery, they put in about 20 hours a week. It's mostly quiet work, meant to occupy their aging minds and bodies. This spring, though, as the drug war enveloped Fort Hancock’s Mexican sister city, El Porvenir, their stress levels spiked. “What they’re starting over there, they’re going to finish here,” Estrada frets.

Estrada and Rosales point to white and yellow silk flowers that adorn one of the most recent additions to the cemetery: the resting place of Manuel Morales Lerma, who was shot at his home in El Porvenir. Fearing cartel leaders would next target his family, Morales Lerma’s relatives moved his funeral to Fort Hancock’s tiny cemetery. People here describe the ceremony like a scene out of a spaghetti western. Sheriffs’ deputies from all around came to stand guard. Some mourners hid in the bushes with guns, says Hudspeth County Judge Becky Dean Walker.

Fewer than 20,000 people live in the Valle de Juárez, a 60-mile stretch of small villages that line the highway from Juárez to El Porvenir. In what was once a peaceful if desperately poor farming community, more than 75 people have fallen victim to the raging drug war so far this year. It’s an astonishing death rate. If the pace of killings continues this year, the murder rate could reach 1,600 homicides for every 100,000 people (in New Orleans, the 2009 murder rate was 52 per 100,000, the highest in the nation, according to FBI data). Cartel leaders have told entire towns to vacate or be decimated. They’ve burned homes and churches and left in their wake residents paralyzed with fear. The aftershocks extend far from the epicenter of the violence, bringing fear and confusion — along with legions of armed guards, and refugees from the bloodbath — to Fort Hancock and other rural Texas border outposts.

Morales Lerma’s funeral passed without another murder; the slaughter to the south has yet to bleed across the border. Yet no one disputes the need to be prepared: As El Porvenir and the rest of the Juárez Valley have descended into chaos, law enforcement has crushed into the small towns of Hudspeth County. More officers — state, local and federal — work more hours with more firepower during every hour of the day. Though Hudspeth County residents fret for their southern neighbors — especially family members who cannot escape to the United States — many welcome the protection from the nightmare just across the Rio Grande.

The number of uniforms in the Juárez Valley has increased, too. Mexican military troops set up checkpoints on the highway and patrol the villages with automatic weapons at the ready. Mexican federal police are ever present. But petrified residents say their presence has done little to curb the killing. Some believe the soldiers are at least complicit in the cartels’ dirty work and may be actively doing drug lords’ bidding. “The population is fearful of the soldiers,” one El Porvenir resident says. “They are always beating people up for information.”

Valle de muerte

Death and terror rule Highway 2, or Carretera Porvenir-Ciudad Juárez — the stretch of road that links the small towns of the Juárez Valley. Just east of Juárez, the sign on the highway says “Colonia de Esperanza.” It means Colony of Hope. Less than a hundred yards away, the blistered black shell of a pink cinderblock home sits idle. The frame of what used to be a single dining room chair sits outside the home, as if someone once sat there and watched the traffic fly by.

A block past, a single porch light illuminates an abandoned home; whoever fled must have left it on. Next door, the burned frame of another pink cinderblock home sits empty, ashes still piled on the ground. Across the street, another charred house. Black scars surround barred windows where flames licked out from within.

A small military convoy passes on the highway. A pickup loaded with soldiers gripping automatic rifles follows a drab olive-green semi-truck with military gear. Two women walk along the shoulder with three small children toting backpacks. They hardly notice. A couple of miles down the road, cars maneuver around two loose horses trotting along the road.

In Guadalupe, one of the largest town in the Valle de Juárez with about 9,000 people, a group of young factory workers gathers at a bus stop, waiting for a ride into Juárez. Federal police sit on benches at the edge of a park plaza, where a few children shoot hoops and romp around on bright colored play equipment. The town’s mayor, Jesús Manuel Lara Rodríguez, was shot down in Juárez last month. Two members of the town council were killed in 2009, according to the El Paso Times.

For decades, residents in these tiny, poor towns have toiled either in the cotton and alfalfa fields or in the giant maquilas of Juárez. If they wanted more than the paupers’ wages of the farm and factory, they worked for the drug cartels. Yet these communities remained peaceful until early this year, when the Juárez drug war bled into the farmland.

The terror fell perhaps hardest on El Porvenir. Off the highway, the only paved street, stray dogs prowl dusty roads. Plywood covers the windows in modest houses, mostly stucco and cinderblock, painted in pastels. Drying clothes swing in the light breeze. A padlock shuts off the park. The closet-sized police station — dark and barred shut, with a foot-long hole in its side — houses no police. The church has been burned. Many here have seen family members perish at the hands of the cartels.

On a sunny May afternoon, two men sitting on a bench near the town square are among the few people out in the daylight. They agree, nervously, to talk with reporters. “No names,” they say over and over again, constantly scanning the area for suspicious vehicles or people. A young man with a scraggly beard and a bejeweled Playboy bunny necklace says he has lived here all his life. All the soldiers, he says, don’t make a difference. The killings continue; he believes the soldiers work with the murderers. “They don’t do anything; they’re just cruising,” he says. He’s married and he has a job here in El Porvenir, so he can’t leave.

No one here knows who can be trusted, the older man says. Some work for the Army or the cartels as informants. And if anyone talks to someone whose name appears on a hit list, they risk having their own name added. Everyone here knows who is on the list, he says. Someone — he doesn’t know who — writes up the names, copies them and distributes them on fliers strewn around town. “They say, we are going to kill you one by one,” the older man says.

It didn’t used to be this way. This used to be a happy place, the two men say. Music filled the streets every weekend. People drank and danced. Now, only fear remains.

Mayberry of yesteryear

When he was a little boy, Jose Franco would ride his bicycle across the border into El Porvenir to play with friends. Now, as superintendent of the 540-student Fort Hancock Independent School District, he sees young boys and girls who come from El Porvenir so traumatized they can’t stand being in the same room with other children. “Ah, these kids could tell you stories,” he says, shaking his head. One teenager saw his mother shot and his grandfather attacked with an ice pick. A young girl getting ready for her quinceañera watched her father get executed while her grandmother was strapped to a chair, Franco says. A disabled elementary student saw television footage of his mother’s beaten and suffocated corpse wrapped in plastic. “The violence,” he says. “These guys are ruthless.”

This year, the tiny school district has seen its student population grow more than 10 percent. Fifty-four of the 63 new students are from Mexico, Franco says. They come to his schools years behind academically, shredded emotionally from what they’ve seen, what they still see in their minds every day. The children imagine horrors befalling their uncles, their fathers, their sisters, those who can’t come join them on the other side, Franco says.

He met with state officials to coordinate social services for the new students, and he hired a special teacher to help immerse them in their new language and academic culture. The district has also hired its own security, a constable who patrols the small campus. “I have a very compassionate staff,” Franco says, “and they pretty much do whatever it takes to help these children.”

The students are among dozens who call Fort Hancock their new home — at least part of the time. When the sun sets, a steady stream of cars make their way across the two-lane international bridge that joins El Porvenir and Fort Hancock, says Hudspeth County Deputy Sheriff Keith Hughes. One of the many ramshackle mobile homes that line Fort Hancock’s unpaved streets becomes a haven for as many as 16 people each night. “It’s hard to find a vacant house, and there are a lot of Mexican plates,” Hughes says.

It’s hard to know which of the nightly residents are victims and which are running from their own involvement in the drug trade. The uncertainty has made Fort Hancock’s residents a vigilant bunch. Though the violence has not crossed, Hughes gets calls all the time from people worried about suspicious vehicles and activities.

Hughes is one of 17 Hudspeth County deputies — up from 12 five years ago — who are working 16-hour days seven days a week to patrol the massive border county. Sheriff Arvin West has received grants from Gov. Rick Perry totalling nearly $3.6 million to hire more deputies and pay them for overtime patrols, and he’s used those dollars to beef up security as the violence in El Porvenir gets ever closer. In May, a shootout erupted right on the river. One person died on the Mexican side; four others were injured. The wounded made it across the river and had to be transported, with a sheriff’s escort, to the hospital in El Paso. West has moved all the men and money he can to Fort Hancock, he says. He has told the cotton farmers whose fields line the Rio Grande to arm themselves — not that they needed the prodding. “This used to be Mayberry,” says West, his own pistol perched in a holster around his paunchy waist.

The U.S. Border Patrol has surged here, too. Hundreds more agents in green uniforms man highway checkpoints and patrol back roads. Doug Mosier, spokesman for the Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector, which encompasses most of Hudspeth County, would not disclose the total number of agents in the area, but West estimates about 400 agents patrol here, twice as many as a few years ago. The increased presence has made a difference, Mosier says. Drug busts have slowed to a trickle, and agents are apprehending only about five illegal crossers a day.

Unlike the feared police presence in El Porvenir, the infusion of law enforcement comforts most of the residents of Fort Hancock. But some of the officers go too far, says Bill Addington, whose family owns farmland in Sierra Blanca, another tiny Hudspeth County border town. “Everywhere we go, we’re stopped,” he says. County Commissioner Jim Ed Miller says agents have repeatedly torn up his farm property by driving through it. And though he’s lived here for decades, farming cotton and alfalfa in the now majority-Hispanic town, agents regularly pull him over and ask if he’s a citizen. “I was stopped for making a ‘suspicious turn,’” he says. “Seven units put the habeas grabbus on me.”

No room in the cemetery

Estrada and Rosales slide off the back of the pickup to resume weed-pulling and flower-tending duties at the cemetery. Estrada, only half-joking, tells Rosales in Spanish that they need to start getting the place ready for all the new residents. “They just spray bullets; they don’t care who’s around,” Estrada says of the cartels.

The two have lived in this area for decades. Estrada says he used to do his shopping just across the bridge in Mexico, where goods were cheaper and more plentiful. Now he travels to El Paso. Rosales used to live in El Porvenir. His son still lives there, and Rosales fears for his safety. Recently, when his son came to Fort Hancock for a visit, he returned to Mexico to find his home had been set on fire, though federal police doused the blaze before it engulfed the whole house. Rosales says his son can’t seek asylum in the United States, because he has a family, a job and a home he can’t sell in El Porvenir. “I’m scared for him, but what can I do?” he asks in Spanish. “Nobody’s going to buy that house.”

In a way, Estrada hopes the violence in Mexico continues, because he worries that the cartel leaders will bring their fight north. Already, he says, they have buried too many people from El Porvenir. “It’s hard over there, but poor people can’t come over here,” he says. Since the Morales Lerma funeral, Estrada and Rosales say the number of uniformed officers in the region has spiked. And the board that oversees the cemetery has for the most part stopped burials from Mexico. The two say they feel safer.

The cemetery board now enforces a longstanding rule that only people who lived in town, or had a relative there, could be buried in the Fort Hancock Cemetery, says Mary Miller, a member of the board. “It’s real sad, because I have friends over there who … encourage people from here not to come over there, because they’re shooting people at funerals,” Miller says.

No one’s real sure how many people are buried among the tall, skinny pine trees and sparse brush of the cemetery. In the 1950s or 1960s, Miller says, a flood exhumed many of the bodies, and they floated away. What they do know, she says, is that the cemetery is too small to accommodate the death toll across the border. “The way they’re killing ‘em in Juárez and El Porvenir,” she explains, “there wouldn’t be any room left.”

Guard troops to head to border states Aug. 1

By SUZANNE GAMBOA The Associated Press
July, 19, 2010


WASHINGTON — National Guard troops will head to the U.S.-Mexico border Aug. 1 for a yearlong deployment to keep a lookout for illegal border crossers and smugglers and help in criminal investigations, federal officials said Monday.

The troops will be armed but can use their weapons only to protect themselves, Gen. Craig McKinley, chief of the National Guard Bureau, told a Pentagon news conference. The troops will undergo initial training and be fully deployed along the nearly 2,000-mile southern border by September.
The announcement provides details on how the government will implement President Barack Obama's May decision to bolster border security and comes as drug-related violence has escalated in Mexico, where several people died over the weekend in a car bombing and in a separate massacre at a private party. It also comes as the U.S. debate over illegal immigration has intensified in an election year.
"The border is more secure and more resourced than it has ever been, but there is more to be done," said Alan Bersin, commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, part of the Homeland Security Department.

The 1,200 troops will be distributed among four border states, with Arizona getting 524; Texas, 250; California, 224 and New Mexico, 72. Another 130 would be assigned to a national liaison office.
Bersin also said the Homeland Security Department will provide six more aircraft, including helicopters, to the border. He said at least 300 Customs and Border Protection agents and inspection officers would be sent to the Tucson area, along with mobile surveillance vans and additional technology.

"It will help," Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard, a Democrat, said Monday in Santa Fe, N.M., where he was attending the annual meeting of the Conference of Western Attorneys General. "Manpower clearly has been deficient. Technology has been somewhat deficient, and they're bolstering that."

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, said the deployment isn't enough "nor tied to a strategy to comprehensively defeat the increasingly violent drug- and alien-smuggling cartels that operate in Arizona on a daily basis."

Republican Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl of Arizona said Obama's administration was taking a step in the right direction but a lot more needs to be done.

U.S. Reps. Ann Kirkpatrick and Gabrielle Giffords, both D-Ariz., separately called the announced actions welcome but insufficient.

"This is the kind of action we want from the administration — not suing the state," Kirkpatrick said, referring to the Department of Justice's challenge to the new Arizona immigration enforcement law. "However, we should continue to move forward with a much larger commitment of National Guard troops right away and with an expansion of the Border Patrol to strengthen security for the long run."
Texas Gov. Rick Perry also criticized the troops as "grossly insufficient" for the Texas border in a letter to the administration last week.

President George W. Bush deployed 6,000 National Guard troops to the border in June 2006, also a midterm election year. The troops were part of his effort to persuade the Republican-led Congress to pass his immigration reform proposals that included a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants. The troops' deployment ended in July 2008.

McKinley said even though the four border states are contributing 54,000 troops to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, they still have a sizable number available for other deployments or disaster response. More can be deployed at state cost if governors wish, but the 1,200 are being paid for by the federal government, he said.

"Right now I cannot see a case where we would be overextending the National Guard for this effort," he said.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement also is beefing up its presence in Arizona, said John Morton, the Homeland Security Department assistant secretary overseeing the agency.
Morton said ICE is opening a new office in Ajo, Ariz., to focus exclusively on cross-border crime and to deploy a specialized investigative team in Douglas, near where an Arizona rancher was shot and killed while surveying his ranch on the border.

Also, the agency will send ICE lawyers to U.S. attorneys offices to help prosecute felons who illegally re-enter the country after deportation. It also will increase the number of ICE agents in Mexico to 40, making it the largest of ICE's 63 offices in 44 countries.

"We are placing a particular emphasis on the Tucson sector in Arizona, an area favored by smugglers and the principal point of illegal entry into the United States along the southwest border," Morton said.
___
Associated Press writers Susan Montoya Bryan in Santa Fe, N.M., and Paul Davenport in Phoenix contributed to this report.
___
Online:
Homeland Security Department: http://www.dhs.gov
National Guard: http://www.ng.mil

DECLARATION IN SUPPORT OF CIUDAD JUÁREZ AND ITS EFFORTS TO REDUCE THE VIOLENCE RELATED TO DRUG TRAFFICKING

May 10, 2010

DECLARATION IN SUPPORT OF CIUDAD JUÁREZ AND ITS EFFORTS TO REDUCE THE VIOLENCE RELATED TO DRUG TRAFFICKING

We, the undersigned, U.S. citizens and residents of El Paso, Texas and
Las Cruces, New Mexico express our profound concern and dismay
regarding the absence of public safety, the near-complete breakdown of
the rule of law, and the humanitarian catastrophe in our neighboring
city of Ciudad Juárez. The terror that now confronts the residents of
Juárez, most of it a consequence of the climate of lawlessness created
by drug trafficking, is endangering the future peace and prosperity of
our binational region.

The Tragic Facts

Since 2006 the level of violence has been unprecedented, and Juárez
has become one of the most dangerous cities in the world. Over 1,600
people were killed in Juárez in 2008, nearly 2,700 in 2009, and 2010
is on track to equal or exceed previous records. Since 2008 over 150
children under the age of 18 have been slain, including toddlers
caught in the crossfire. Criminals acting with impunity have savagely
raped, tortured, and executed hundreds of young women, disposing of
their mutilated bodies in the desert surrounding Juárez. In 2009
there were 16,000 car thefts, of which 1,900 were classified as
carjackings. In addition, disappearances, kidnappings, extortions,
arsons, and assaults have become a daily occurrence.1

The uncontrolled violence has devastated the economy of Juárez and
seriously disrupted daily life. The dangerous climate has contributed
in a significant way to a steep drop in new investment of capital, to
diminishing productivity, to the closure of over 11,000 businesses,
and to massive unemployment. Between 100,000 to 200,000 people have
abandoned the city, with over 116,000 homes left vacant and many of
them vandalized. At least 30,000 of the refugees have moved to El
Paso.

Why Residents of El Paso and Las Cruces Should Care

It is in the interest of El Paso and Las Cruces to assist in all ways
possible to quell the violence in Juárez. The three cities constitute
one community and are deeply dependent on each other. Many people
from El Paso and Las Cruces commute regularly to work in Juárez, to
visit relatives, to shop, and to get medical and dental care. Many
tuition-paying students from Juárez cross the border daily to attend
elementary and secondary schools, as well as institutions of higher
learning, on U.S. soil. The intense interaction between our three
cities means an overall annual economic impact of billions of dollars
in El Paso and Las Cruces. Juarenses annually spend over $1.2 billion
in El Paso, and over 60,000 jobs El Paso rely upon the Juárez
maquiladoras and other economic activity.

The Underlying Cause of the Violence

It is well documented that much of the Juárez violence is fueled by
the various drug wars – those between cartels, those within cartels,
and those between cartels and the governments of the U.S. and Mexico –
wars that take the lives of members of drug trafficking organizations
and those innocent of any involvement. Residents of El Paso and Las
Cruces need to participate with our own government as well as with our
Mexican neighbors toward finding a pragmatic and workable solution
that ends the violence and restores order, law, and justice.

We can no longer afford to deny the overwhelming role that U.S.
consumption of drugs plays in fueling the violence in Juárez and
elsewhere in Mexico, or ignore that illicit cash and arms flows from
the United States into Mexico play a direct and powerful role in
sustaining the cartels and in fomenting the massive killing of people
in our neighboring Mexican city.

Call to Action

It is time to recognize that the U.S. 40-year War on Drugs has been a
dismal social, economic and policy failure. It has not achieved any of
its goals. Narco-related violence along the U.S.-Mexico border is
raging at unprecedented levels with no end in sight. We join many
prominent Americans, including ex-U.S. secretaries of state George
Schultz and James Baker, U.S. Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton
Friedman, ex-presidents of Mexico Vicente Fox and Ernesto Zedillo, ex-
president of Colombia César Gaviria, and ex-president of Brazil
Fernando Enrique Cardoso in calling for a comprehensive revamping of
the failed War on Drugs waged by the United States and other
countries.

* We support a well-funded and aggressive U.S. national
educational campaign to encourage people to refrain from the use of
illegal drugs by connecting their use to cartel-related terror.
* We support increased emphasis on treating substance abuse,
including the building of more substance abuse facilities
* We support U.S. drug policy initiatives that do not result in
wasting government funds and empowering criminal gangs and trafficking
organizations.
* We advocate, as an important first step in drug reform, the
repeal of the ineffective U.S. marijuana drug laws in favor of
regulating, controlling and taxing the production, distribution, sale
and consumption of marijuana by adults. The sale of marijuana in the
U.S. black market contributes 50 to 70 percent of Mexico’s cartel
revenues.
* We oppose unsuccessful militaristic approaches and demand that
any future U.S. aid involve a rigorous accounting of allegations of
human rights abuses and have strict performance metrics.
* We support U.S. aid that is tied to social, educational and
economic development in Mexico and support that country’s fight to
establish effective and just rule of law.
* We call on the U.S. government to properly and without bias make
decisions on applications from Mexicans seeking asylum from the
violence in Mexico, as well as make use of other existing avenues
available under U.S. law to ensure that all asylum seekers whose lives
are in danger are not unjustly rejected.

SIDE BARS:

Between 18,000 and 23,000 Mexicans have been killed since 2006, when
Mexico’s calamitous War on Drugs began.

Over 1,600 people were killed in Juárez in 2008, nearly 2,700 in 2009,
and 2010 is on track to equal or exceed previous records. Since 2008
over 150 children under the age of 18 have been slain, including
toddlers caught in the crossfire.

In 2009, more El Pasoans were killed in Juárez than in El Paso.

Massacres of large groups and discoveries of mass graves of murdered
victims have become frequent occurrences in Juárez since the late
1990s.

CIUDAD JUÁREZ SUPPORT NETWORK http://drugwar40.wordpress.com

3 dead in Tamaulipas border cities

Jared Taylor | The Monitor
May 10, 2010

CAMARGO, Tamps. — Three people — including a man and woman inside a vehicle — were found dead Monday in separate attacks, authorities said.

Tamaulipas state police found a man and a woman shot to death inside a vehicle in a street in the Rancherías community near Camargo. State police continue to investigate those homicides.

In Miguel Alemán, across the river from Roma, police said another man was found fatally shot. The man was found dead in the Américo Villarreal neighborhood, just south of the Rio Grande and west of the city’s downtown. State police continue to investigate.

Cities across the border from South Texas have seen a surge in homicides since February, when the Zetas — a Miguel Alemán-based drug smuggling gang — broke its ties with the Gulf Cartel, the other dominant smuggling operation in the region. Since then, open street fights between cartel gunmen and the Mexican military have killed scores of suspected cartel members, innocent civilians and soldiers.

Last week, the U.S. State Department renewed its travel warning for people traveling in Tamaulipas and northeast Mexico, citing frequent reports of carjackings, robberies and unauthorized checkpoints along highways.

A recent report from the Mexican defense ministry revealed that nearly one third of all attacks on military soldiers this year have occurred in Tamaulipas, where bloodshed from the drug war has spread beyond the border region.

Amid worsening violence in Reynosa, Gonzales announces border security hearing

This has become an increasingly severe issue. Here's the link to stay connected on updates for the Border & Intergovernmental Affairs hearings.

-Patricia

By Steve Taylor | Rio Grande Guardian

McALLEN, March 12 - The chairs of two state House Committees have announced a joint hearing to examine the security of Texas' international border and the state's ability to protect its residents from violence in Mexico.

State Rep. Veronica Gonzales, D-McAllen, chairs the Committee on Border and Intergovernmental Affairs and state Rep. Tommy Merritt, R-Longview, chairs the Committee on Public Safety.

“The growing violence occurring between the drug cartels in Mexico is extremely concerning and Speaker Joe Straus has specifically charged my committee, along with Chairman Merritt's Public Safety Committee, to study Texas' preparedness to address those drug-related crimes,” Gonzales said, in a news release issued Friday.

“We need to hear from our state law enforcement officers and other agencies on what is being done to keep our residents safe from the drug cartels fighting in Mexico.”

A specific date has yet to be announced for the hearing. However, Gonzales told the Guardian on Thursday it will happen “soon” and it is likely to be held in the Rio Grande Valley.

Gonzales said she and Merritt have been planning to hold their joint interim hearing in McAllen since their joint charge was issued by Straus last November. However, the hearing has been pending due to the availability of committee members' schedules.

When Straus announced his charges for the interim, he asked Gonzales and Merritt to have their committees “evaluate the effectiveness of state operations at controlling drug-related crimes and other violence along the Texas-Mexico border.”

The findings from the hearing will be presented to the Legislature at the start of the 2011 legislative session.

The announcement of a joint hearing to discuss border security comes amid a worsening situation in Reynosa, just across the border from McAllen. Three people died in a gun battle between rival drug cartels in the city earlier this week. On Tuesday, the U.S. Consulate warned U.S. citizens not to travel on the major highways from Reynosa to Monterrey and Nuevo Laredo to Monterrey. Last week, the Department of Public Safety warned students on Spring Break not to travel to border cities in Mexico.

On Monday, Alfredo Corchado, a veteran border reporter for the Dallas Morning News, reported that at least eight journalists have been abducted in Reynosa. “One died after a severe beating, according to reports that could not be independently verified,” Corchado wrote. “Two were released by their captors. The rest are missing.”

“A radio reporter, Jorge Rabago, died late last week after a severe beating,” Corchado reported. “The five missing journalists are a reporter from El Mañana, the largest news organization in the area; a freelance photographer from La Tarde, the afternoon edition of El Mañana; two journalists from an online service, and a TV cameraman, according to editors and reporters who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing daily threats,” Corchado reported.

Corchado quoted award-winning border reporter Jorge Luis Sierra, who was born and raised in Mexico City but now edits and publishes the McAllen Times. “We are under a virtual gag order. We live in silence,” Sierra said.

On Thursday, the Associated Press reported that eight journalists had gone missing in Reynosa over the past two weeks. The agency cited the Inter-American Press Association. Of the eight, one had died and two were released.

The joint hearing between Gonzales’ and Merritt’s committees will not be the only one to look at the issue of border security. On Thursday, state Rep. Aaron Peña, D-Edinburg, said his Select Committee on Emergency Preparedness would hold two hearings on border security, one in Austin on March 30 and one in McAllen on May 17.

Peña’s committee is charged with looking at the state's preparedness level for natural disasters and terrorist activity. Gonzales pointed out that the reported drug violence in Mexico is recognized as being financially motivated and has not been classified as an act of terrorism against the state of Texas.

“I welcome the feedback of other lawmakers on the issues that the Speaker asked my committee to study, especially one as crucial and close to home as border security,” Gonzales said.

Obama: Stop Border Wall Say Nine CA Elected Officials

November 14, 2008

John Podesta
Co-Chair
Presidential Transition Team
Washington DC 20270

Dear Mr. Podesta,

We appreciate this opportunity to share with you a single and simple recommendation for the 2008 presidential transition. Unlike some requests that may be submitted for your consideration, this one would require immediate action in order to have the desired effect.

We are asking your transition team to intervene to save "Friendship Park" - a place of great historic and cultural significance to the people of the U.S. - Mexico border region. By seeing to it that the Department of Homeland Security halts construction of supplemental border fencing near Friendship Park, the transition team can make a powerful and symbolic gesture of bi-national goodwill that will be hailed by people on both sides of the border.

"Friendship Park" is a half-acre plaza overlooking the Pacific Ocean at the southwest-most corner of the continental Unites States. The plaza sits atop Monument Mesa, a six-acre mesa within the bounds of California's 800-acre Border Field State Park.

At the center of Friendship Park stands a monument marking the first meeting of the U.S.-Mexico Boundary Commission in 1848. For generations residents of the United States have gathered around this monument to visit through the border fence with family and friends in Tijuana, Mexico. When Border Field State Park was formally inaugurated as a California State Park in 1971, then-First Lady Patricia Nixon presided over a bi-national dedication ceremony at the monument. Clearly the idea of the monument as an international meeting place lies at the very heart of the park's design.

On April 1, 2008, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Michael Chertoff waived dozens of environmental and other regulations to expedite construction of 670 miles of supplemental fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border. Operating under the Chertoff waivers, DHS contractors are now beginning construction of a second security wall across the heart of Monument Mesa. This wall will eliminate routine public access to Friendship Park - this despite the fact that illegal border crossings and drug smuggling at Friendship Park are well controlled by Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) thorough the current practice of monitoring the area through visual observation and advanced surveillance technology.

As is the case with other construction projects along the length of the border, DHS intends to erect the new barriers atop Monument Mesa by year-end 2008. For this reason immediate intervention is required to save Friendship Park. We are encouraged by the recent announcement that CBP has decided no to move forward this year on the construction of three proposed border fence segments in Texas. We feel this cherished part of the California landscape should receive similar consideration.

The plan to eliminate public access to Friendship Park has become for the peoples of the U.S.-Mexico border region a tragic symbol of the "enforcement only" approach to U.S. - Mexico border policy. For two examples of the widespread news coverage which the case of Friendship Park has been receiving, please see the attached stories from the New York Times (10/22/08) and from the Christian Century magazine (10/7/08). Coverage in the Mexican press has been even more extensive, communicating the dismay of the Mexican people that the U.S. government would eliminate routine public access to this historical gathering place.

Direction to DHS contractors halting all border fence construction on Monument Mesa would send a powerful message to the peoples of the U.S. - Mexico border region. It would also give a new staff at DHS time to solicit new proposals for the re-design of security measures that will ensure continued public access to Friendship Park.

Were such directions given by President Bush, it could be celebrated as a noble gesture reaffirming his lifelong commitment to good relations between the peoples of Mexico and the United States. Were such direction insisted upon by the Obama transition team, it would signal the incoming administration's understanding that our national security is enhanced, not diminished, by the promotion of friendship with the people of Mexico.

Should you have any questions about Friendship Park, please do not hesitate to contact us. With best wishes for a successful transition, we thank you for your time and consideration. (signed)

Sincerely,
Susan Davis, Member of Congress
Bob Filner, Member of Congress
Denise Ducheny, California State Senator
Christine Kehoe, California State Senator
Mary Salas, California Assemblymember
Lori Saldana, California Assemblymember
Donna Frye, San Diego City Councilmember
Ben Hueso, San Diego City Councilmember
John Garamendi, Lt. Governor of the State of California

Pact lifts threat of border fence from UT-Brownsville

This is great news for the university and students. It's unfortunate though that a similar agreement couldn't have been reached for other residents; apparently due to the lack of "unique status".

-Patricia

By LYNN BREZOSKY | San Antonio Express-News
July 31, 2008

BROWNSVILLE — A federal court agreement reached Thursday with the Department of Homeland Security removes the threat of an 18-foot fence splitting the campus of the University of Texas-Brownsville/Texas Southmost College.

Instead, the federal agency agreed to accept the bolstering of an existing fence along the university perimeter and use the site to test and study technological alternatives to a physical barrier to curb illegal immigration.

"DHS will not build a fence on the university campus," UTB/TSC President Juliet Garcia said. "They will not condemn or seek to condemn the land."

Students and other protesters waiting outside the courthouse cheered the news on one of many battlefronts over the government's controversial effort to build border fencing.

The agreement comes weeks after U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen sent DHS back to the table. Hanen told the agency that it had not complied with his March order to exchange ideas with the university on both security and campus life.

Attorneys described the compromise as an "agreement in principle" whose paperwork was interrupted by Hurricane Dolly but which should be final next week.

DHS spokeswoman Laura Keehner said details are still being worked out.

"The goal that was agreed upon Thursday was basically to develop a program to meet the Border Patrol's operational requirements by the Dec. 31 deadline, while at the same time recognizing the University of Texas-Brownsville's unique status as an institution of higher education," she said.

University officials had taken the latest round of negotiations straight to DHS officials in Washington.

The government's original plan would have lopped off about 180 acres of university land, putting remnants of a historic battlefield and the university golf course on the Mexican side of the fence.

Traveling across campus

Some critics asked if students or staff would have to show passports when they crossed the barrier to practice their golf game.

"There will be no impediment to the golf course," Garcia said.

"There will be no gate. There will no checkpoints. There will be none of that."

According to the proposed agreement, the university will be responsible for repairing the existing fence and raising it to 10 feet.

"It can be a very friendly fence," Garcia said. "I kind of see it with bougainvillea and vine climbing all over it."

It will be up to the Border Patrol to install surveillance technology along it and patrol it.

The agreement would also have DHS drop its eminent domain lawsuit against the school, as well as plans for a "floating" fence that could be moved should the university get approval to expand south toward the Rio Grande.

Also Thursday, about a dozen land owners who refused initial government compensation offers for their land got good news.

Sides ordered to meet

Judge Hanen denied a DHS request to seize the land to erect the fence while money issues get litigated in court.

Hanen ordered both sides to meet this month and told the government to supply landowners with information about the fence, including what's going up, where it's going up, how landowners will access their property behind the fence and what money is being offered.

He said he would not rule on the government's possession request before then.

Most of the 210 lawsuits filed by the government to take Texas land for fencing have ended in settlements, but lawyers for both sides said the remaining handful of cases could stretch on for months.

DHS is committed to having 370 miles of fence built by Dec. 31.

"All they seem to be interested in, in my view, is them getting possession so they can meet their timeline," said Norton Colvin, an attorney for various landowners.

Virginia Butler, land acquisition chief with the Department of Justice, said compensation offers would be based on the value of the land before the fence decreased its value.

Full compensation possible

She said in cases where the land was made worthless because of the barrier, a landowner could be compensated full land value even if the barrier only takes part of the land.

She said preliminary estimates were made by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and that appraisals couldn't be shared with defendant landowners because "when the government has tried that it starts bidding against itself."

Lawyers for property owners said there were all sorts of issues to sort out, ranging from having to move water wells on the fence path to recouping lost revenue from white wing dove hunts.

Texas RioGrande Legal Aid attorney Robert Doggett said there was still an issue of whether Congress called for a fence "along the border," meaning it couldn't go on places a quarter-mile inland. The actual U.S.-Mexico border is the middle of the Rio Grande.

Hanen told him to submit a brief outlining his argument.

UTB is not the first public entity to reach a compromise on the fence. Hidalgo County reached an agreement to shore up 22 miles of eroding levees with concrete to serve as a combination security barrier and flood structure.

Work on the fence-levee got under way this week.

Holes in the Wall: Texas Border Wall Bypassing Wealthy Residents with Bush Admin Ties

Great interview. You can check out the article "Holes in the Wall: Homeland Security Won’t Say Why the Border Wall is Bypassing the Wealthy and Politically Connected" from an earlier post. -Patricia

Democracy NOW
February 7, 2008

With the Texas Democratic primary and caucus less than a week away, the Bush administration’s plan to build a wall along part of the southern border has suddenly become a campaign issue. After many landowners refused to give over their land for the eighteen-foot-high wall, the Department of Homeland Security began filing lawsuits against some homeowners. At the same time, the government is leaving large gaps to avoid building the wall on the property of wealthy residents, including those with ties to President Bush.

Guests:

Melissa Del Bosque, Reporter in Austin, Texas. She has been covering the story of the border wall for the Texas Observer.

Jay Johnson-Castro, Border activist and coordinator of the group Border Ambassadors. He is currently leading a 63-mile weeklong march in opposition to the wall. The walk is scheduled to end on March 4, the day of the Texas primary and caucus. He joins us on the phone from Brownsville on the Texas-Mexican border.

AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to the border. With the Texas Democratic primary and caucus less than a week away, the Bush administration’s plan to build a wall along part of the southern border has suddenly become a campaign issue. In 2006, both Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton joined Republicans in passing the Secure Fence Act, but now the candidates are raising questions over whether the fence should be built in South Texas.

After many landowners refused to give over their land for the eighteen-foot-high wall, the Department of Homeland Security began filing lawsuits against some homeowners. At the same time, the government is leaving large gaps to avoid building the wall on the property of wealthy residents, including those with ties to President Bush. Even the University of Texas is in the middle of the dispute, because the proposed wall passes through the school’s Brownsville campus.

Part of the controversy also centers on the role being played by the arms manufacturer Boeing. Boeing leads a consortium of private contractors known as SBInet, which was hired by the government to carry out the project.

Two guests join me now from Texas. Melissa del Bosque is a reporter in Austin. She has been covering the story of the border wall for the Texas Observer. Jay Johnson-Castro is a border activist and coordinator of the group Border Ambassadors. He is currently leading a sixty-three-mile weeklong march in opposition to the wall. The walk is scheduled to end on March 4th, the day of the Texas primary and caucus. He joins us on the phone from Brownsville on the Texas-Mexico border.

Melissa del Bosque, let’s begin with you. Lay out where the wall is planned for construction, whose homes are expected to be destroyed, whose property will be saved.

MELISSA DEL BOSQUE: Sure. We’re going to have about twenty-one different segments of fence built along the Texas-Mexico border, and some of those segments are under a mile long, some are as long as thirteen miles. And what I did was I started traveling up and down the border and speaking to various landowners and mayors and county judges about the fence. And they started putting my attention towards, you know, well, the wall is going to go through here—it’s a mile-long segment—but it’s not going to go through this resort and golf course, you know, a mile down the road. And then the fence starts up on the other side of the golf course and resort. So I started seeing these patterns. Another landowner would tell me, “The fence is going to go through my home and my son’s home, but it’s going to stop right at the edge of my property, and on the other side is 6,000 acres that belongs to a wealthy billionaire from Dallas.” So I started asking the question of, you know, what sort of methodology is Homeland Security using to determine where they’re going to place these segments of fence?

AMY GOODMAN: And what did you find?

MELISSA DEL BOSQUE: Well, they didn’t answer me. I called them several times, emails. At one point, I did get a gentleman on the phone who’s in charge of building the fence, but he told me that the information was classified, because they didn’t want the methodology getting out to the people who are going to be crossing illegally, is what he told me.

AMY GOODMAN: You begin your piece, “Holes in the Wall: Homeland Security Won’t Say Why the Border Wall is Bypassing the Wealthy and Politically Connected” by telling the story of Eloisa Tamez. I want to turn to an interview with her. She lives in Brownsville. She’s suing the Department of Homeland Security over the Department’s plan to build the wall on part of her property. The interview was conducted by your paper, the Texas Observer.

ELOISA TAMEZ: The reason that I speak out about hanging on to our land is because the people here, we’re all humble people, we respect the government, and we are facing quite a challenge. And it is important for my people here to know that it is alright to stand up for our rights.

This three acres that I have here is the remnant of the San Pedro de Carricitos Land Grant that was awarded to my family back in 1767. And I remember my father and my grandfather used to farm this part of this area, plus what’s over on the other side of the levee, as well as lands that my grandmother had that went all the way up to the river’s edge. So there is no dollar value for this land in comparison to those memories of how hard it was for my father and my grandfather to carve a life for us.

I think that it was a hasty decision to pass that bill. It was a political move. And no thought was given to who would be harmed by this. They have had many, many years to think about what to do about illegal immigration. However, this bill, supposedly, was enacted for the purpose of keeping America safe from terrorists. To my knowledge, no terrorists have come through the southern border.


AMY GOODMAN: Brownsville resident, Eloisa Tamez, interviewed by our guest today, joining us from Austin, Melissa del Bosque. Can you tell us more about her, one of the last of the Spanish land grant heirs in the county? And then tell us about other residents you talked to.

MELISSA DEL BOSQUE: Sure. We have a pretty unique culture here in Texas, because many of the landowners—well, I won’t say “many,” but some of the landowners, such as Dr. Tamez, has had that property in her family for since the eighteenth century. Her family was given that land by the King of Spain. So for them to give up their remaining acreage to build a mile-long fence that’s going to stop at the edge of a golf course and resort is a pretty hard thing for them to take.

Another family that I spoke to in Granjeno, a little town near McAllen in Hidalgo County, which is just west of where Dr. Tamez lives, there are also Spanish land grant families, and they’ve had that land for, you know, 265 years. So they feel like they’re especially being targeted, because they had already given up so much of their land to build the levee system down there. There’s a large flood plain in that area, and the federal government had asked for that land and didn’t compensate them, so they feel again that they’re being asked to give up what land remains to them to build the border fence.

And I think what a lot of people don’t realize is that the fence is actually being built about a mile to two miles in from the river. It’s not being built along the bank of the Rio Grande, which is, I think, how—

AMY GOODMAN: Why is that?

MELISSA DEL BOSQUE: Because of the levee system. It takes up about a mile north of the river, and it is a bi-national levee system. Mexico and the United States operate it. So if they were to build in that area, they would need the permission of Mexico, and then they would also probably lose the fence if they had a large flood event. It would just wash it away. So they need to build it north, above that.

AMY GOODMAN: Is the resident you’re talking about in Granjeno Daniel Garza, who’s seventy-six years old, who you write about facing this similar situation?

MELISSA DEL BOSQUE: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: And you describe his situation, pointing to a field across the street where a segment of the proposed eighteen-foot-high border wall would abruptly end. Talk about his neighbor.

MELISSA DEL BOSQUE: Well, his neighbor is Ray L. Hunt. He’s a Dallas billionaire. He comes from a very well-known oil family here in Texas. And Mr. Hunt is a good friend of President George W. Bush’s. He recently donated $35 million to build the President Bush’s library at Southern Methodist University. And so, he’s a fairly wealthy and powerful person here in Texas.

AMY GOODMAN: In 2001, you point out that Bush made him a member of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, where he received a security clearance—Ray L. Hunt did—and access to classified intelligence.

MELISSA DEL BOSQUE: Right, yeah. He has been on that Foreign Advisory Committee, yeah, for several years. He recently just brokered a deal with the Kurds, a large oil deal, which has caught some attention. So he has 6,000 acres just north and east of Mr. Garza. And, you know, it’s literally across the street from Mr. Garza’s property, and the wall, you know, stops right there at the edge of Mr. Garza’s property. It doesn’t go through—

AMY GOODMAN: So he’s turned this plantation that he had from acres of onions and vegetables, you write, into an exclusive gated community, where the homes sell, well, for around $1 million each.

MELISSA DEL BOSQUE: Yeah, the northern portion of the property has been turned into a high-end gated community. And then, the southern end is going to be a business corridor. They have an international bridge that’s being built there on land that he donated that crosses into Mexico, so they’re going to have—and then he’s also partnered with businessmen on the Mexican side, and they’re also building over there on the Mexican side, as well. So it’s—when it’s finished, it will be about the size of Manhattan. It’s going to be a large business corridor, international business corridor.

AMY GOODMAN: And the wall stops there. The wall doesn’t go through there.

MELISSA DEL BOSQUE: Right, correct.

AMY GOODMAN: Where do the weapons manufacturers come into this story? Where does Boeing fit in, Melissa del Bosque?

MELISSA DEL BOSQUE: Well, Boeing secured a contract in 2006, and it’s called SBInet. And it’s under the SBI, Secure Border Initiative, office under Customs and Border Protection, and it’s a consortium of private contractors. And they won an indefinite contract with—it has no maximum value on how much they can spend. There’s not a limit on how much they can spend. And it’s a three-year contract with three-year optional advance. And their task is to do whatever it takes to secure the northern and the southern borders. And, you know, in terms of whether we know exactly what that’s going to take or entail, I’m not sure that it’s really ever been completely laid out. So, I mean, they’re—you know, they’re building fences, they’re doing video surveillance, all kinds of things.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, you talk about this, what seems like a limitless amount of money that’s going into the border wall. And who is overseeing this in Washington? Who is overseeing how much Boeing gets?

MELISSA DEL BOSQUE: Well, I mean, Secretary Chertoff and Homeland Security have to go to Congress to ask for the appropriation and explain, you know, what it is that they’re doing. But several congressional leaders have sent letters and mentioned in hearings, you know, we’d like to know more about exactly what’s going on, and I’m not sure that they’ve really received the kind of answers that, you know, that they’d like to hear in detail: exactly how much we’re spending, are we getting what we’re paying for, and is this really going to secure our borders?

AMY GOODMAN: You write that Congressman Henry Waxman, the California Democrat in charge of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, had scathing remarks for the SBInet project. “As of December, the Department of Homeland Security had hired a staff of ninety-eight to oversee the new SBInet contract,” he said. “This may seem like progress until you ask who these overseers are.” He says, “More than half are private contractors. Some of these private contractors even work for companies that are business partners of Boeing, the company they are supposed to be overseeing. And from what we are now learning from the Department, this may be just the tip of the iceberg,” says Congressman Waxman.

MELISSA DEL BOSQUE: Yes. I mean, what I’ve been hearing in transcripts from hearings such as that one, which Congressman Waxman heard, is that there’s a real concern that the office that’s overseeing the Boeing contract has a majority of private contractors actually staffing the office. So it’s unclear as to who exactly is overseeing the contract and whether there is any conflict of interest. I think they’re trying to recruit more federal employees, but as of last year, I think they were still—they still had, I think, a 60 percent of the employees were private contractors.

AMY GOODMAN: Melissa del Bosque is with us from Austin. She’s a reporter with the Texas Observer. We’re also joined by Jay Johnson-Castro, who is a border activist and coordinator of the Border Ambassadors, on a long march until the Texas primary. Jay Johnson-Castro, where are you?

JAY JOHNSON-CASTRO: Well, I happen to be—and good morning, by the way. I happen to be on Eloisa Tamez’s land, staying in a little house here with a distant nephew of hers.

AMY GOODMAN: Brownsville area.

JAY JOHNSON-CASTRO: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: So, what about this march? What are you trying to accomplish?

JAY JOHNSON-CASTRO: Well, we had two objectives, and we feel we accomplished the first one. The first objective was to impact the Texas debate that they had and get on the agenda the fact that Homeland Security had sued University of Texas, Brownsville to get access to take 166 acres of their land, which would cut right through the campus in Brownsville; illuminate the fact that they’re taking land by eminent domain; illuminate the fact that they were—that they are suing like, for instance, the city of Eagle Pass to take a couple hundred acres of their land, which would include some public park land and golf course, so they could build this wall and cut—basically cut the public off from being able to enjoy the river.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to play for you—

JAY JOHNSON-CASTRO: That was objective number one. We got that on—we got that on the debate. And the objective number two is to impact the March 4 primaries. We’re calling this the March for March 4. We end on March 2nd, which is Sunday.

AMY GOODMAN: Jay Johnson-Castro, I wanted to play for you part of the debate, last week’s Democratic debate in Austin. CNN’s John King asked both Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama about the border wall.

JOHN KING: Senator, back in 2006 you voted for the construction of that fence. As you know, progress has been slow. As president of the United States, would you commit tonight that you will finish the fence and speed up the construction? Or, do you think it’s time for a president of the United States to raise his or her hand and say, “You know what? Wait a minute, let’s think about this again. Do we really want to do this?”

SEN. HILLARY CLINTON: I think when both of us voted for this, we were voting for the possibility that where it was appropriate and made sense it would be considered, but as with so much, the Bush administration has gone off the deep end, and they are unfortunately coming up with a plan that I think is counterproductive.

JOHN KING: But does that mean that you think your vote was wrong or the implementation of it was wrong?

SEN. HILLARY CLINTON: I think that the way that the Bush administration is going about this, filing eminent domain actions against landowners and municipalities, makes no sense. So what I have said is, yes, there are places when, after a careful review—again, listening to the people who live along the border—there may be limited places where it would work. But let’s deploy more technology and personnel instead of the physical barrier.

CAMPBELL BROWN: Senator Obama, go ahead, please.

SEN. BARACK OBAMA: Well, this is an area where Senator Clinton and I almost entirely agree. I think that the key is to consult with local communities, whether it’s on the commercial interests or the environmental stakes of creating any kind of barrier. And the Bush administration is not real good at listening. That’s not what they do well. And so, I will reverse that policy. As Senator Clinton indicated, there may be areas where it makes sense to have some fencing. But for the most part, having Border Patrol, surveillance, deploying effective technology, that’s going to be the better approach.


AMY GOODMAN: That was both Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton debating in Austin. Jay Johnson-Castro, your quick response?

JAY JOHNSON-CASTRO: Well, we appreciate the fact that they are reversing their position. We would have appreciated it much more had they been more informed before they voted for something as sinister as an iron curtain on the Texas side of the Rio Grande.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we are going to leave it there. I want to thank you both for being with us, Jay Johnson-Castro, border activist, coordinator of Border Ambassadors, and Melissa del Bosque, who is a reporter with the Texas Observer, author of the new article, “Holes in the Wall.” We’ll link to it at democracynow.org, and you can also see the images of the wall at our website at democracynow.org.

Holes in the Wall

Homeland Security won’t say why the border wall is bypassing the wealthy and politically connected.

Melissa del Bosque | The Texas Observer
February 18, 2008

As the U.S. Department of Homeland Security marches down the Texas border serving condemnation lawsuits to frightened landowners, Brownsville resident Eloisa Tamez, 72, has one simple question. She would like to know why her land is being targeted for destruction by a border wall, while a nearby golf course and resort remain untouched.

Tamez, a nursing director at the University of Texas at Brownsville, is one of the last of the Spanish land grant heirs in Cameron County. Her ancestors once owned 12,000 acres. In the 1930s, the federal government took more than half of her inherited land, without paying a cent, to build flood levees.

Now Homeland Security wants to put an 18-foot steel and concrete wall through what remains.

While the border wall will go through her backyard and effectively destroy her home, it will stop at the edge of the River Bend Resort and golf course, a popular Winter Texan retreat two miles down the road. The wall starts up again on the other side of the resort.

“It has a golf course and all of the amenities,” Tamez says. “There are no plans to build a wall there. If the wall is so important for security, then why are we skipping parts?”

Along the border, preliminary plans for fencing seem to target landowners of modest means and cities and public institutions such as the University of Texas at Brownsville, which rely on the federal government to pay their bills.

A visit to the River Bend Resort in late January reveals row after row of RVs and trailers with license plates from chilly northern U.S. states and Canadian provinces. At the edge of a lush, green golf course, a Winter Texan from Canada enjoys the mild, South Texas winter and the landscaped ponds, where white egrets pause to contemplate golf carts whizzing past. The woman, who declines to give her name, recounts that illegal immigrants had crossed the golf course once while she was teeing off. They were promptly detained by Border Patrol agents, she says, adding that agents often park their SUVs at the edge of the golf course.

River Bend Resort is owned by John Allburg, who incorporated the business in 1983 as River Bend Resort, Inc. Allburg refused to comment for this article. A scan of the Federal Election Commission and Texas Ethics Commission databases did not find any political contributions linked to Allburg.

Just 69 miles north, Daniel Garza, 76, faces a similar situation with a neighbor who has political connections that reach the White House. In the small town of Granjeno, population 313, Garza points to a field across the street where a segment of the proposed 18-foot high border wall would abruptly end after passing through his brick home and a small, yellow house he gave his son. “All that land over there is owned by the Hunts,” he says, waving a hand toward the horizon. “The wall doesn’t go there.”

In this area everyone knows the Hunts. Dallas billionaire Ray L. Hunt and his relatives are one of the wealthiest oil and gas dynasties in the world. Hunt, a close friend of President George W. Bush, recently donated $35 million to Southern Methodist University to help build Bush’s presidential library. In 2001, Bush made him a member of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, where Hunt received a security clearance and access to classified intelligence.

Over the years, Hunt has transformed his 6,000-acre property, called the Sharyland Plantation, from acres of onions and vegetables into swathes of exclusive, gated communities where houses sell from $650,000 to $1 million and residents enjoy golf courses, elementary schools, and a sports park. The plantation contains an 1,800-acre business park and Sharyland Utilities, run by Hunt’s son Hunter, which delivers electricity to plantation residents and Mexican factories.

The development’s Web site touts its proximity to the international border and the new Anzalduas International Bridge now under construction, built on land Hunt donated. Hunt has also formed Hunt Mexico with a wealthy Mexican business partner to develop both sides of the border into a lucrative trade corridor the size of Manhattan.

Jeanne Phillips, a spokesperson for Hunt Consolidated Inc., says that since the company is private, it doesn’t have to identify the Mexican partner. Phillips says, however, that no one from the company has been directly involved in siting the fence. “We, like other citizens in the Valley, have waited for the federal government to designate the location of the wall,” she says.

Garza stands in front of his modest brick home, which he built for his retirement after 50 years as a migrant farmworker. For the past five months, he has stayed awake nights trying to find a way to stop the gears of bureaucracy from grinding over his home.

A February 8 announcement by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the agency would settle for building the fence atop the levee behind Garza’s house instead of through it, which has given Garza some hope. Like Tamez, he wonders why his home and small town were targeted by Homeland Security in the first place.

“I don’t see why they have to destroy my home, my land, and let the wall end there.” He points across the street to Hunt’s land. “How will that stop illegal immigration?”

Most border residents couldn’t believe the fence would ever be built through their homes and communities. They expected it to run along the banks of the Rio Grande, not north of the flood levees—in some cases like Tamez’s, as far as a mile north of the river. So it came as a shock last summer when residents were approached by uniformed Border Patrol agents. They asked people to sign waivers allowing Homeland Security to survey their properties for construction of the wall. When they declined, Homeland Security filed condemnation suits.

In time, local landowners realized that the fence’s location had everything to do with politics and private profit, and nothing to do with stopping illegal immigration.

In 2006, Congress passed the Secure Fence Act, authored by Republican Congressman Peter King from New York. The legislation mandated that 700 miles of double-fencing be built along the southern border from California to Texas. The bill detailed where the fencing, or, as many people along the border call it, “the wall,” would be built. After a year of inflamed rhetoric about the plague of illegal immigration and Congress’s failure to pass comprehensive immigration reform, the bill passed with overwhelming support from Republicans and a few Democrats. All the Texas border members of the U.S. House of Representatives, except San Antonio Republican Henry Bonilla, voted against it. Texas Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn voted for the bill.

On August 10, 2007, Chertoff announced his agency would scale back the initial 700 miles of fencing to 370 miles, to be built in segments across the southern border. Chertoff cited budget shortages and technological difficulties as justifications for not complying with the bill.

How did his agency decide where to build the segments? Chad Foster, the mayor of Eagle Pass, says he thought it was a simple enough question and that the answer would be based on data and facts. Foster chairs the Texas Border Coalition. TBC, as Foster calls it, is a group of border mayors and business leaders who have repeatedly traveled to Washington for the past 18 months to try to get federal officials to listen to them.

Foster says he has never received any logical answers from Homeland Security as to why certain areas in his city had been targeted for fencing over other areas. “I puzzled a while over why the fence would bypass the industrial park and go through the city park,” he says.

Despite terse meetings with Chertoff, Foster and other coalition members say the conversation has been one-sided.

“I think we have a government within a government,” Foster says. “[This is] a tremendous bureaucracy—DHS is just a monster.”

The Observer called Homeland Security in Washington to find out how it had decided where to build the fence. The voice mail system sputtered through a dizzying array of acronyms: DOJ, USACE, CBP, and USCIS. On the second call a media spokesperson with a weary voice directed queries to Michael Friel, the fence spokesman for Customs and Border Protection. Six calls and two e-mails later, Friel responded with a curt e-mail: “Got your message. Working on answers…” it said. Days passed, and Friel’s answers never came.

Since Homeland Security wasn’t providing answers, perhaps Congress would. Phone conversations with congressional offices ranged from “but they aren’t even building a wall” to “I don’t know. That’s a good question.” At the sixth congressional office contacted, a GOP staffer who asked not to be identified, but who is familiar with the fence, says the fencing locations stemmed from statistics showing high apprehension and narcotic seizure rates. This seems questionable, since maps released by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers showed the wall going through such properties as the University of Texas at Brownsville—hardly a hotbed for drug smugglers and immigrant trafficking.

Questioned more about where the data came from, the staffer said she would enquire further. The next day she called back. “The border fence is being handled by Greg Giddens at the Secure Border Initiative Office within the U.S. Customs and Border Protection office,” she said.

Giddens is executive director of the SBI, as it is called, which is in charge of SBInet, a consortium of private contractors led by Boeing Co. The group received a multibillion dollar contract in 2006 to secure the northern and southern borders with a network of vehicle barriers, fencing, and surveillance systems. Companies Boeing chose to secure the southern border from terrorists include DRS Technologies Inc., Kollsman Inc., L-3 Communications Inc., Perot Systems Corp., and a unit of Unisys Corp.

A February 2007 audit by the U.S. Government Accountability Office cited Homeland Security and the SBInet project for poor fiscal oversight and a lack of demonstrable objectives. The GAO audit team recommended that Homeland Security place a spending limit on the Boeing contract for SBInet since the company had been awarded an “indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract for 3 years with three 1-year options.”

The agency rejected the auditors’ recommendation, saying 6,000 miles of border is limitation enough.

In a February 2007 hearing, Congressman Henry Waxman, a California Democrat and the chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, had more scathing remarks for Giddens and the SBInet project. “As of December, the Department of Homeland Security had hired a staff of 98 to oversee the new SBInet contract. This may seem like progress until you ask who these overseers are. More than half are private contractors. Some of these private contractors even work for companies that are business partners of Boeing, the company they are supposed to be overseeing. And from what we are now learning from the department, this may be just the tip of the iceberg.”

Waxman said of SBInet that “virtually every detail is being outsourced from the government to private contractors. The government is relying on private contractors to design the programs, build them, and even conduct oversight over them.”

A phone call to Giddens at SBI is referred to Loren Flossman, who’s in charge of tactical infrastructure for the office. Flossman says all data regarding the placement of the fence is classified because “you don’t want to tell the very people you’re trying to keep from coming across the methodology used to deter them.”

Flossman also calls the University of Texas at Brownsville campus a problem area for illegal immigration. “I wouldn’t assume that these are folks that aren’t intelligent enough that if they dress a certain way, they’re gonna fit in,” he says.

Chief John Cardoza, head of the UT-Brownsville police, says the Border Patrol would have to advise his police force of any immigrant smuggling or narcotic seizures that happen on campus. “If it’s happening on my campus, I’m not being told about it,” he says. Cardoza says he has never come across illegal immigrants dressed as students.

Flossman goes on to say that Boeing isn’t building the fence, but is providing steel for it. Eric Mazzacone, a spokesman for Boeing, refers the Observer to Michael Friel at Customs and Border Protection, and intercedes to get him on the phone. Friel confirms that Boeing has just finished building a 30-mile stretch of fence in Arizona, but insists other questions be submitted in writing.

Boeing, a multibillion dollar aero-defense company, is the second-largest defense contractor in the nation. The company has powerful board members, such as William M. Daley, former U.S. secretary of commerce; retired Gen. James L. Jones, former supreme allied commander in Europe; and Kenneth M. Duberstein, a former White House chief of staff. The corporation is also one of the biggest political contributors in Washington, giving more than $9 million to Democratic and Republican members of Congress in the last decade. In 2006, the year the Secure Fence Act was passed, Boeing gave more than $1.4 million to Democrats and Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

A majority of this money has gone to legislators such as Congressman Duncan Hunter, the California Republican who championed the Secure Fence Act. In 2006, Hunter received at least $10,000 from Boeing and more than $93,000 from defense companies bidding for the SBInet contract, according to the center. During his failed bid this year for the White House, Hunter made illegal immigration and building a border fence the major themes of his campaign.

In early February 2008, Chertoff asked Congress for $12 billion for border security. He included $775 million for the SBInet program, despite the fact that congressional leaders still can’t get straight answers from Homeland Security about the program. As recently as January 31, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee members sent a letter to Chertoff asking for “greater clarity on [the Customs and Border Protection office’s] operational objectives for SBInet and the projected milestones and anticipated costs for the project.” They have yet to receive a response.

Boeing continues to hire companies for the SBInet project. And the congressional districts of backers of the border fence continue to benefit. A recent Long Island Business News article trumpeted the success of Telephonics Corp., a local business, in Congressman King’s congressional district that won a $14.5 million bid to provide a mobile surveillance system under SBInet to protect the southern border.

While Garza and Tamez wait for answers, they say they are being asked to sacrifice something that can’t be replaced by money. They are giving up their land, their homes, their heritage, and the few remaining acres left to them that they hoped to pass on to their children and grandchildren.

“I am an old man. I have colon cancer, and I am 76 years old,” Garza says, resting against a tree in front of his home. “All I do is worry about whether they will take my home. My wife keeps asking me, ‘What are we going to do?’”

Besides these personal tragedies, Eagle Pass Mayor Foster says there is another tragedy in store for the American taxpayer. A 2007 congressional report estimates the cost of maintaining and building the fence could be as much as $49 billion over its expected 25-year life span.

“They are just going to push this problem on the next administration, and nobody is going to talk about immigration reform, and that’s the illness,” Foster says. “The wall is a Band-Aid on the problem. And to blow $49 billion and not walk away with a secure border—that’s a travesty.”