rssBush Environment Waivers Intact at Border
Monday, April 06, 2009 at 12:01 am
- 20 Comments
The end of the U.S.-Mexico border fence in California (Flickr: Bisayan lady)
Last July, presidential candidate Barack Obama took a stage in Berlin and told the adoring crowd that a wall erected between people — like that which divided the German capital for decades — would best be knocked down.
“The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand,” Obama said to roaring applause. “The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christians and Muslims and Jews cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.”
Illustration by: Matt Mahurin
Eight months later, hundreds of miles of border fence dividing the United States and Mexico are going up as planned. Despite pleas from some Democrats, environmentalists and local communities to halt construction until the wall’s impacts can be better examined, the Department of Homeland Security under President Obama has so far maintained the same border fence policies as the DHS under President Bush — a position reminiscent of the Obama’s continued support of certain controversial Bush terrorism policies.
The status quo approach comes as something of a surprise. Although, as a senator, Obama voted in 2006 to approve the fence strategy, he said on the campaign trail last year that he would “reverse” Bush-era fence policies in favor of a “better approach,” like deploying more border guards and installing better surveillance technologies.
More recently, his appointment of a vocal fence critic, former Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, to head the DHS signaled to many observers that fence policy would be soon to change. (Napolitano once mocked the border fence concept as futile, saying that “if you build a 50-foot-high wall, somebody will find a 51-foot ladder.”) At the very least, fence critics hoped that the Obama White House would reinstate dozens of environmental, public health and cultural heritage laws that the Bush administration waived to expedite fence construction, including statutes designed to protect endangered species, drinking water and Native American graves.
Yet more than two months after both Obama and Napolitano were sworn in, those waivers remain in place. And they’ll stay there, officials say, at least until the 670-mile-long first phase of fence construction is complete.
“We’ve committed to 670 miles,” said Lloyd Easterling, spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a branch of the DHS. “We’re going to go ahead and meet those goals.”
Easterling said “there was some question about stopping construction” when the new administration arrived, but the idea never materialized.
For environmentalists and congressional Democrats worried about the wall’s effects on local communities and ecosystems, the episode presents a dilemma. On one hand, these Obama supporters are optimistic that the young administration will eventually make good on its vows to break away from Bush’s border policies. On the other, they’re wary that the changes aren’t yet installed, allowing fence construction to continue through some of the most sensitive wilderness lands in the country. And of course, once a section goes up, it won’t be easy to get down.
For the administration, the fence is a political landmine that touches on a host of issues no less volatile than immigration, national security, landowner rights, the war on drugs and the environment. Complicating the debate, border violence has crescendoed in the last year, putting pressure on policymakers at all levels of government to prevent that crime from spilling further into the United States than it’s already come.
Still, some fence critics are beginning to challenge the White House to follow through on its pledges to examine fence policy more closely. In February, a group of eight border-state Democrats called on Obama to suspend fence construction until its impacts — cultural, political and environmental — could be scrutinized. The fence was “ill conceived” and “void of any meaningful input from the local communities,” the lawmakers wrote in a Feb. 10 letter to the president. “In an era of advanced technologies, the border fence is an antiquated structure that has torn our communities apart and damaged our cross border relationships.”
One signatory was Rep. Solomon Ortiz (D), who represents the Southeastern tip of Texas. In a telephone interview last week, Ortiz said that members of his office have met with Napolitano’s staff, adding that the new administration has been much more receptive than the last to lawmakers’ concerns about the fence. But Ortiz was also quick to reiterate his opposition to the waivers — and to the continued construction of the fence itself.
“It doesn’t sit well with the people in my district,” he said. “They don’t like it, [and] I don’t like it.”
Aaron Hunter, spokesman for Rep. Susan Davis, a Southern California Democrat who also signed the letter, said last week that the White House has not responded to the lawmakers’ concerns.
Easterling, the CBP spokesman, said the agency doesn’t have far to go to complete the first phase of construction. As of last week, he said, 613 of the 670 miles were up, and the remaining sections — most of which reside in California and Texas — should be finished by year’s end. Afterwards, he added, the administration will pause for a broader review before continuing to the next phase.
That there are fewer than 60 miles remaining in the first phase of construction has done little to stop fence opponents from pushing to have it stopped. Michael Degnan, Sierra Club lands representative, said that some of the unbuilt sections — including stretches in California’s Otay Mountain Wilderness Area and the Lower Rio Grande Valley in Texas — are also the most isolated, and therefore the most worthy of protecting from development. The wall, environmentalists say, cuts straight through the heart of breeding corridors used by such threatened species as the jaguar, ocelot and low-flying cactus ferruginous pygmy owl.
“Some of the last places are also the most ecologically rich,” Degnan said.
Last week the Sierra Club, which endorsed Obama the candidate, urged Obama the president to halt all current and future fence construction “to review the full impacts and effectiveness” of the imposing barrier.
There are other concerns associated with the border wall. In August, flooding attributed to the fence damaged Arizona’s Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, and another flood a month earlier caused millions of dollars of property damage on both sides of the border near Nogales, Ariz.
In 2007, 69 graves of the Tohono O’odham tribe were destroyed by fence construction south of Tuscon, with fragments of human bone discovered in the bulldozer tracks, the tribe’s chairman testified before a congressional panel last year.
Fence critics contend that the waived laws — which include the Endangered Species Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act — could have prevented such crises.
“If they’d followed the procedure and done the proper impact studies,” Matt Clark, of Defenders of Wildlife, said of the flooding, “they might have avoided a disastrous situation.”
Easterling said the CBP has “been very cognizant” of the wall’s effects, maintaining that the agency has conducted all the appropriate impact reviews. The waivers, he added, were necessary only to prevent lawsuits from hindering the process — a claim strongly disputed by environmentalists.
“There was really no reason for them to waive those laws unless they had reason to think they couldn’t comply with them,” Clark said.
Still, border fence critics have been much easier on the Obama administration than they were on President Bush. When the Bush administration announced a year ago that it was waiving roughly three dozen environmental laws, a number of powerful Democrats signed their support to a Defenders of Wildlife lawsuit contending that the waivers were unconstitutional — an effort spearheaded by House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.). Requests for comment from nearly all the supporters of that push — including Thompson, who was traveling on the border with Napolitano last week — went unanswered.
In another effort to protect the border environment, Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who signed the Feb. 10 letter to Obama, introduced legislation in the last Congress to revoke the waivers — a bill that has yet to resurface this year. Calls and emails to Grijalva’s office also went unanswered.
Politically speaking, the silence is understandable. With the sharp increase in border drug violence making headlines nationwide, very few lawmakers appear willing to criticize the waivers or the fence for fear of being attacked for protecting ocelots above Arizonans.
The Washington Times neatly summarized this disdain for waiver opponents in an April 1 editorial, entitled “All the Pretty Mule Deer.” The paper argued that the fence is a vital, if imperfect, law enforcement tool protecting the U.S. from a tsunami of criminality.
“When floodwaters are approaching, you begin filling sandbags to buttress the levee,” the Times wrote. “You do not go to court to debate what type of sand to use.”
Still, fence critics hope the Obama administration will step in sooner than later with a broad and revamped strategy for tackling the many thorny border issues — a strategy they hope will move away from the current reliance on an intrusive physical barrier dividing border communities and scarring delicate landscapes.
“Putting up a fence,” said Hunter, “is not a comprehensive immigration policy.”
20 Comments
Pingback posted April 6, 2009 @ 11:59 am
[...] in Daily life, Democrats, Government, Obama administration at 8:59 am by LeisureGuy Mike Lillis in the Washington Independent: Last July, presidential candidate Barack Obama took a stage in Berlin and told the adoring crowd [...]
Comment posted April 6, 2009 @ 11:29 am
Obama said in a campaign speech that we are the United States, we sent a man to the moon and we can do anything. Not so, Mr. President. We cannot build a wall, we cannot keep thousands of illegal aliens out, we cannot stop the anchor baby law, we cannot stop benefits, we cannot stop schooling, medical care and the cost of incarceration of illegal criminals (more than just breaking in), we cannot stop the filth that is left on our border for us to clean up, we cannot stop the breakdown of our neighborhoods, we cannot stop the foreign flags flying on our country, we cannot stop the tower of babel this nation has become, we cannot stop the drunk illegal drivers who kill and maims innocent citizens, we cannot stop the fraudulent documents and illegal use of other's IDs, we cannot stop greedy businesses from hiring illegals, we cannot use the best tool we have to stop this – E-verify, we cannot
keep our country and our citizens safe. Now, Mr. President, what are you going to do beside push amnesty and citizenship that the majority of loyal, legal, taxpaying citizens of this country have said “no” to time and again.
Comment posted April 6, 2009 @ 12:13 pm
It is such a shame that so many wild creatures and their habitats have been destroyed by poor wall design and that building the wall has violated the US's own laws to protect habitats and wildlife. Not only does the borderwall fail in its aim to prevent immigrant crossings and drug/weapons crossing, it also prevents wild animals belonging to both the US and Mexico from migrating and reproducing, such as the Jaguar which was caught recently.
Comment posted April 6, 2009 @ 12:16 pm
Well said June! We CAN take our country back from the scourge of illegal immigration. The border fence with Mexico is only a fraction of what MUST be done if America is to regain control of its sovereignity. Janet Napolitano has shown no committment to safeguard our nation from the socio-economic mayhem illegal immigration has caused to this nation. She must go ! Bring back Michael Chertoff.
Comment posted April 6, 2009 @ 4:52 pm
Sorry ! I don't care about the impediment to wild creatures, I care about the American property owners who have been ignored for years by numerous administrations? Their animals have been killed, fences smasshed and homes robbed. If the environmentalists care so much about the border wall, why have they kept silent about the mounds of trash stretching in both directions for miles just inside our perimeter. One reason is they say nothing, is because they get substantial grants from their corporate donors–they certainly don't want a border barrier, because it hinders the millions of illegal aliens pouring across our undermanned border annually to be hired? It's cheap labor in most cases and easy to exploit–however many jobs are now going to blue and white collar illegal aliens.
Call Washington to stop this travesty; 202-224-3121 We must also ask the question? Is the illegal immigration situation causing nationwide taxes to escalate? Federal law demands we pay for their health care, education and selective benefits. Command the removal of illegal aliens in the workplace–E-Verify be fully funded–and in perpetuity.
With a new AMNESTY in the pipeline. Should it pass? That means more money out of your taxes. To pay for millions more, who are sure to come? This includes the whole family circle they can sponsor? Old, young, sick, mentally handicapped will get SSI, benefits–without ever paying into Social Security. KICK THEM OUT!
Comment posted April 6, 2009 @ 6:44 pm
Even though less than 400 miles of pedestrian fence, have been built, rather than the 670 miles of double, and triple-layer, fence that was legislated in the FENCE ACT OF 2006, or the 800 miles of double-layer fence, legislated in 2007, surprisingly it has been very effective at disrupting any number of the smuggling routes, as well as effectively decreasing the invasion by illegal immigrants.
HELP OUR BORDER PATROL STOP THE INVASION!!!
BUILD THE FENCE!!!
MANDATE E-VERIFY!!!
San Diego Border Patrol Sector Apprehensions—Length 66 miles long
———-OCT—NOV—DEC—JAN—FEB
FY2009-10036–7953–6549-10250-11681
FY2008–9801–9163–7773-12877-15092
FY2007–9494–7764–6591-12489-12997
FY2006-10145–7730–6531-13959-17160-
El Centro Border Patrol Sector Apprehensions—Length 71 miles long
———-OCT—NOV—DEC—JAN—FEB
FY2009–2618–2176–1692–2970–2904
FY2008–3230–2412–2000–3839–4095
FY2007–4379–3667–3037–4983–5187
FY2006–5072–3831–2998–5797–6399
Yuma Sector began Operation Streamline on December 4, 2006 (FY2007)
Yuma Border Patrol Sector Apprehensions—Length 118 miles long
———-OCT—NOV—DEC—JAN—FEB
FY2009—338—406—364—614—731
FY2008–1094—955—956–1062–1089
FY2007–3478–3240–2601–5357–4474
FY2006–9428–8913–6884-13743-17117
The Yuma Sector now has a total of 94 miles of fencing
Tucson Sector began Operation Streamline in Jan. 2008
Tucson Border Patrol Sector Apprehensions—Length 262 miles
———-OCT—NOV—DEC—JAN—FEB
FY2009-18814-12850–9865-18650-20955
FY2008-21725-18232-11722-26348-34297
FY2007-25135-21323-16136-29459-34148
FY2006-27316-24270-16447-33229-43153
El Paso Border Patrol Sector Apprehensions—Length 268 miles
———-OCT—NOV—DEC—JAN—FEB
FY2009–1468–1159—865–1340–1434
FY2008–3605–2648–2014–3470–3945
FY2007–6183–5098–4189–6570–7482
FY2006-11027–8191–5668-11941-14457
01-29-09 In the El Paso sector, crews finished 79 miles of the planned 81 miles of “vehicle fencing,” usually concrete or metal barriers that were mostly installed in the flat New Mexico desert west of El Paso, Cordero said. The 15- to 18-foot tall metal “pedestrian fencing” needs about 11 miles to reach the planned 56 miles in the El Paso region.
Marfa Border Patrol Sector Apprehensions—Length 510 miles
———-OCT—NOV—DEC—JAN—FEB
FY2009—540—456—473—529—691
FY2008—386—388—451—350—612
FY2007—368—442—383—556—532
FY2006—655—590—563—739—908
The Del Rio Sector began Operation Streamline on December 5, 2005 (FY2006)
Del Rio Border Patrol Sector Apprehensions—Length 210 miles
———-OCT—NOV—DEC—JAN—FEB
FY2009–1321–1063—872–1604–1908
FY2008–1680–1059—945–1961–2462
FY2007–1618–1701–1051–2044–2421
FY2006–4840–4016–2910–4839–5854
The Laredo Sector began Operation Streamline on October 30, 2007 (FY2008)
Laredo Border Patrol Sector Apprehensions—Length 171 miles
———-OCT—NOV—DEC—JAN—FEB
FY2009–2708–2460–1930–3971–3720
FY2008–3825–2658–1969–3907–5001
FY2007–4286–3810–2890–4678–5855
FY2006–5014–4323–3544–7415–9554
Rio Grande Valley Border Patrol Sector Apprehensions——Length 316 miles
———-OCT—NOV—DEC—JAN–FEB
FY2009–5088–4261–3340–4572–5206
FY2008–5989–4696–3974–5217–6879
FY2007–5772–4549–3649–5798–6172
FY2006-10060–9111–7128–9533-10444
KEEP BUILDING THE FENCE!!!
IT'S WORKING!!!
SUPPORT OUR BORDER PATROL!!!
Comment posted April 6, 2009 @ 7:10 pm
I care greatly about the wilderness, and the creatures in it. There is more damage being done by the intrusion of millions of illegals, and drug smugglers, than a permanent fence could ever cause.
Keep building the fence so that we can keep the invasion of the wilderness, by invading illegals, and smugglers, to an absolute minimum.
Comment posted April 6, 2009 @ 8:37 pm
ISNT IT CURIOUS THAT AN ALL OUT LOSE OF CONTROL REMINESCENT OF VIETNAM HAS TO TAKE PLACE BEFORE PEOPLE WAKE UP TO THE NEE FOR THIS FENCE. dorothy if i recall correctly there have been provisions for animals if not they need to be
Comment posted April 6, 2009 @ 9:59 pm
It isn't as if we only have 12 million illegals…as the media would have us believe…..
In the last 22 years, since the 1986, Reagan, one-time amnesty, over 26 million illegals have been apprehended, after they crossed the border into our United States.
UNITED STATES BORDER APPREHENSIONS (Source DHS/CBP)
1987–1,190,488——1995–1,394,554——2003—-931,557
1988–1,008,145——1996–1,649,986——2004–1,160,395
1989—-954,243——1997–1,412,953——2005–1,189,075
1990–1,169,939——1998–1,555,776——2006–1,089,902
1991–1,197,875——1999–1,579,010——2007—-876,704
1992–1,258,482——2000–1,676,438——2008—-723,825
1993–1,327,259——2001–1,266,213——2009—-
1994–1,094,717——2002—-955,310
However, less than 1, out of 4, illegals, crossing into our United States, are estimated to have been apprehended.
According to the U.S. Immigration Service another 6 million illegals in our country are visa overstays.
Lack of E-verify in the Stimulus Bill only entices even more illegals to enter our country!!
40 million, or more, illegals are in our United States.
It's time to change that.
Comment posted April 7, 2009 @ 8:46 am
I support President Obama and I think legal immigrants make this country the shining city on the hill, but I am 100% against illegal immigration not only because it contributes to population growth which in turn creates more pollution and environmental destruction (key is to keep it controlled with legal entry), but because businesses who hire illegal immigrants are taking jobs away from legal citizens and abusing these migrants by taking advantage of their underground status.
I also think this fence is ridiculous and just divides us more then unites us. We should create a national I.D act in this country just like they have in France. I mean, whats the big deal…we have a Social Security # right? Well, what's wrong with also having a national I.D that will verify in a computer system if your legally in the country or not?
Comment posted April 7, 2009 @ 11:46 am
It's sad that so many people who post here appear to be hateful, bigoted and self-righteous. Where did your ancestors come from? Are you all Native Americans whose family members were here before the “first immigration” to this continent? If not, did you feel that your relatives contributed to the good of this society by working hard, bringing their unique customs and adding to the diversity that has always been the “United States?”
What are you so afraid of? Why have your neighborhoods deteriorated? I can observe so-called “new immigrants” rejuvenating decrepit and dangerous parts of town, making them safer and more pleasing to the eye. Why are you afraid of other languages (reference to “tower of babel”)? Many Europeans speak three, four or more languages as a matter of custom. They learn these from any early age. Are we in the US so “provincial” that we can only envision one language and one culture? It's not only Anti-American by tradition, but it's betrays a demeaning ignorance on the part of Americans that others around the word already detect.
The problem with immigration in our times is not that it's happening, but that it's mainly illegal. From the beginning, people have continually sought out this land as a place of opportunity and new beginnings. What we need is reform and a change in quotas, that will allow immigrants to continue to make the important contributions to our society that they historically have done so.
Don't be hateful, people. Be grateful for what you have and be generous of heart enough to wish the same for others.
Comment posted April 8, 2009 @ 2:36 am
Ya its great decision this may be helpful for both the country
Comment posted April 8, 2009 @ 9:36 am
Ya its great decision this may be helpful for both the country
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