Ready or not, border wall construction appears imminent

McALLEN — In just 18 months, a significant portion of the Rio Grande Valley will be cut off from the river by the Department of Homeland Security’s border wall, designed to control illegal traffic from Mexico.

Thus far, protest has been incessant.

Those voices of dissent range from the farmer worried about losing access to his irrigation pumps on the Rio Grande, to the Minuteman who thinks ground sensors and all elements of “virtual fencing” are ineffective; from the Democrat who calls the fence a colossal waste of money, to the Republican who says not nearly enough of it is being built; from the conservationist crying out for the ocelot, to the business person worried it could create bad blood with the Mexican business community.

As the debate continues, rumor and unanswered questions continue to fly, but certain elements now have been established.

By the end of 2008, DHS plans to have built 370 miles of fencing and 200 miles of vehicle barriers along the U.S. Mexico border.

The fence line will be composed of a single layer of fence, as opposed to the double-layer fence system that exists in San Diego and stretches about 100 yards fence to fence, according to DHS spokesman Mike Friel.

A DHS map leaked to the media in May showed most of the 125 miles of fence planned for Texas would be constructed in the Valley. That included segments in and around Roma, Rio Grande City, Hidalgo and Progreso, as well as an almost continuous stretch from Los Indios to Brownsville that would cut into the Lower Rio Grande National Wildlife Refuge.

Nothing has been announced officially, but speculation is the fence will be built atop the levees that run parallel to the Rio Grande. That would cut down on brush clearing and give Border Patrol access via the road already in place on the levees.

Details on the height and look of the fence, access roads, ditches and other accompanying infrastructure will have to be worked out as DHS meets with local officials and landowners along the border.

However, in all likelihood, none of it will look like what Congress asked for when it passed the Secure Fence Act last fall with the mandate of locking down the southern border to undocumented immigrants, drug smugglers and potential terrorists.

That bill, which President Bush signed in October 2006, called for more than 700 miles of double-layer fencing spread across 854 of the 1,952 miles of border between Brownsville and San Diego.

Based on the findings of a recent Border Patrol study, the Secure Fence Act identified major smuggling corridors and specifically laid out where the fence was to be built, including a continuous stretch from Brownsville to 15 miles northwest of Laredo.

The document also stipulates all construction be complete by March 2009, with earlier deadlines set for some sections of fence - a timetable that almost certainly will not be met.

As a government agency, DHS is staying neutral on this point.

Asked about the divergence between DHS plans and the Secure Fence Act, Friel said, “I think we’re prepared to speak until the end of 2008, and we will complete 370 miles of fence by that time.

“We’re committed to what Congress intended, but that commitment is grounded in funding availability for fence building.”

BOTTOM LINE ISSUES

Also affecting fence construction is last year’s Homeland Security Appropriations Bill, which allocated $1.2 billion for the project.

That money is not nearly enough to build all the fence Congress originally called for, and with the current political climate in Washington, D.C., it is unclear whether more money will be coming.

Mid-term elections last November put the Democrats in control of both the U.S. House and the Senate. Only months earlier, the party had voted overwhelmingly against the fence. With the Democrats’ rise came a bipartisan effort to amend the act, to only require construction of the 370 miles to which DHS already has committed.

With the defeat of President’s Bush immigration reform bill this past week, those amendments will have to wait until the next congressional session.

“A lot of people up here talk about a fence, but they don’t understand the fence runs through some of our cities,” said U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas.

“I think there could be more (fence coming), but it will be part of an overall, 2,000-mile, total-border security project that would be based on what works and what doesn’t.”

The possible reduction of border fencing is cause for consternation amongst many conservative Republicans, who are quick to point out that the 854 border miles ordered to be fenced was based on a Border Patrol study of those routes most-trafficked by drug and human smugglers.

The original plan effectively would have sealed off the entire southern border of Arizona and the Texas border at El Paso, between Del Rio to Eagle Pass and from Laredo to Brownsville. Now preliminary maps from DHS for the most part limit fencing to urbanized areas, where border security officials believe nearby homes and buildings give undocumented immigrants and smugglers easy access to hiding places.

WHAT PRICE SECURITY?

For hard-line border security advocates, 370 miles of single-layer fence simply will not do.

“You have to have a fence, a road and then a fence,” said U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colorado, who is running for president in 2008 on a border security platform. “The theory is, if you get 850 miles built in the heavily trafficked areas, you can direct forces into other areas.

“Without that, it’s essentially useless. It’s like that old saying: It’s like putting lipstick on a pig.”

What the DHS plan seems to represent is a compromise.

Estimates for the cost of double-layered fencing run about $3 million a mile, putting the total cost - were the Secure Fence Act to be followed - at about $2.1 billion.

For those who do not believe the fence to be an effective tool in border security, that price is simply too high. From Gov. Rick Perry to state and local officials along the Texas border, the plea has always been for more agents and more technology.

“(A fence) is not the most effective way to guard our borders. Look at the Great Wall of China, the Berlin Wall,” said U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, who also represents the Valley from McAllen westward.

Efforts already are under way by the federal government to secure the border through other means.

So far this year, 1,000 new Border Patrol agents have been hired, with 5,000 more expected by the end of 2008. That represents an almost 50 percent increase in the agency’s forces, said Border Patrol spokesman Xavier Rios, from the agency’s Washington, D.C., headquarters.

And Project 28, DHS’ radar-based border security system, is scheduled to go online this summer in a 28-mile stretch of desert in southern Arizona. If successful, the project - a mix of surveillance towers, cameras, ground sensors and radar, all running back to an agent’s onboard computer - is expected to expand to other areas of the border.

But for now, at least, the Rio Grande Valley will have to ready itself for the border wall.

Ask anybody involved and they’ll tell you the implications are immense for the Valley economy, environment, cultural relationship with Mexico and numerous elements of life here.