• CHRISTINA BURKE - VICTORIA ADVOCATE
• Originally published July 13, 2008 at 11:47 p.m., updated July 13, 2008 at 11:47 p.m.

A fence is being built along the 1,952-mile southwest border of the United States, but it’s not a picket fence or white-washed. Instead, it's a 15-foot-high wall. The fence’s purpose is to reduce illegal immigration and secure America’s borders.

President George W. Bush signed the measure to authorize its construction in October 2006.

The massive structure is expected to stretch 670 miles, about 230 miles of it in Texas by the end of this year. It is costing billions of dollars in construction, acquisition of land and maintenance.

“The Texas part of the border is 1,200 miles long, but plans call for only 70 miles of it to be fenced,” reported The Economist.

The fence, which is being built under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Secure Border Initiative, is a hot topic. It is also the subject of a number of lawsuits that question the constitutionality of the manner in which it is being constructed.

While presidential hopefuls Senator John McCain R-Arizona and Senator Barack Obama D-Illinois have backed off on the debate about immigration and policy reform, the fence construction continues.

Building a fence to distinguish borders, or keep people in or out of a geographic area, or for security purposes is no new concept. The Great Wall of China dates back hundreds of years. There was the Berlin Wall, the wall between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, and many others.

The question remains: Do fences really make good neighbors?

Con

The border fence has been the subject of criticism for its high price tag and for the message it is sending to others.

“It’s an embarrassment. We’re neighbors to Mexico and we have that big old fence. That fence is not going to stop people from coming over. They’ll find a way to get either over it or under it. With that money they should have hired more Border Patrol. That would have been better. I really believe that it’s a big mistake,” said Benny Martinez, a member of LULAC for 55 years, and resident of Goliad.

Another Goliad resident is also against it.

It doesn’t matter whether they built it or not, people will find a way around it, said one local man. “I’m not for the fence. They’ll go over it, they’ll go under it, they’ll go through it,” said Hernan Jaso, former mayor of Goliad.

The cost is a big issue and has landed the project in court.

“The cost of building and maintaining a double set of steel fences along 700 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border could be five to 25 times greater than congressional leaders forecasted last year, or as much as $49 billion over the expected 25-year life span of the fence, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service,” reported the San Francisco Chronicle.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has waived a number of federal, state and local laws to complete the fence by its December 2008 deadline.

In addition to the high price, one group wonders if it’s even legal.

A group from El Paso has filed a federal lawsuit against the DHS related to the constitutional aspects of the Real ID Act of 2006 Section 102, which gives Chertoff the right to waive laws.

The plaintiffs include the city and county of El Paso, El Paso County Water District, the Tigua Indians of Ysleta del Sur Pueblo of El Paso, and others trying to overturn that act on constitutional grounds, said one of the plaintiffs Wayne Bartholomew, director of Frontera Audubon Society in Weslaco.

“The real issue is whether or not this is a constitutionally approved undertaking at all... the way they are going about it, by having one person given the authority to wave X number of laws.... That concerns me much, much more. Since when did we start giving up 200 years of a well tested and well run democratic process for the so-called greater interest of so-called national security?” asked Bartholomew.

Protecting and preserving the environment and habitat along in the Lower Rio Grande Delta are of particular concern for Frontera Audubon and others such as Nancy Brown, a public outreach specialist with the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge.

More than 150,000 visitors from 50 states and 35 countries visit the refuge a year, Brown said.

“For our purposes, the concern is that they are going to have to take out habitat to build the fence. We’re in an area where 95 percent of the habitat is already gone. If you don’t have brush, then you don’t have birds and the bird watchers who come inject $125 million a year into the local economy,” Brown said.

Given that the plan provides for only about 700 miles of border fence, more than 1,200 miles of border will not be protected.

“Wherever there isn’t a fence, those people are going to be funneled to those areas. That creates a greater intensity of border crossers in the remaining areas,” Brown said.

Christina Burke is a reporter for the Advocate. Contact her at 361-580-6516 or cburke@vicad.com, or to comment on this story go to www.VictoriaAdvocate.com

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