The Washington Independent

Posts Tagged border fence

Congress Strips New Funding for Mexican Border Fence

By | 10.20.09 | 5:34 pm

In a move being cheered by environmentalists and community groups, Congress on Tuesday sent the White House a spending bill for the Department of Homeland Security which, for the first time, excluded mandatory funding for new construction of the controversial fence along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Although the Senate More…

A Border Wall, At What Cost?

By | 07.27.09 | 5:05 pm

That’s the question being asked by 43 House Democrats, who wrote a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano last week urging the administration to consider the environmental and cultural consequences of throwing up a 20-foot-tall concrete barrier at the Mexican border.

The Bush administration, empowered by Congress, More…

House Dems to DHS: Obey the Law at the Border

By | 06.23.09 | 2:09 pm

As Daphne pointed out, the Supreme Court last week declined to take up a case brought by several U.S. towns against the Department of Homeland Security for waiving a number of environmental laws during construction of the anti-immigration fence at the Mexican border.

Those waivers — effectively scrapping laws to More…

Supreme Court Won’t Get Involved in Border Fence Construction

By | 06.15.09 | 12:18 pm

The Supreme Court today announced it won’t get involved in a lawsuit brought by El Paso and other Texas counties against Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano over construction of a border fence intended to deter illegal immigrants.

The Texas local governments had argued that Michael Chertoff, Napolitano’s predecessor, improperly More…

Fighting Our Berlin Wall

By | 04.23.09 | 4:20 pm

We wrote a piece a few weeks back charging congressional Democrats with a kind-of silence in the face of the Obama administration’s policy to retain controversial Bush-era environmental waivers in order to expedite construction of the U.S.-Mexico border fence.

Today, Arizona Democratic Rep. Raul Grijalva proves us wrong, re-introducing More…

Bush Environment Waivers Intact at Border

By | 04.06.09 | 12:01 am

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 More…

Obama to Defer to Napolitano on Border Fence

By | 12.10.08 | 10:54 am

Buried in an article about an interview President-elect Barack Obama gave to The Chicago Tribune yesterday is this little nugget that should reassure supporters of comprehensive immigration reform.

Asked if he would support the extension of the fence between the U.S. and Mexican border, Obama deferred to

More…

Yo, Michael Chertoff: Still Think Waiving Environmental Laws Are the Best Way to Get Up This Border Fence?

By | 08.29.08 | 12:50 pm

Remember those dozens of environmental laws that the Dept. of Homeland Security has scrapped in order to expedite construction of the U.S/Mexico border fence? Well, now environmentalists are saying that waiving those laws probably contributed to recently flooding in Lukeville, Ariz., as well as in Organ Pipe Cactus National More…