• By the Advocate Editorial Board
• Originally published June 28, 2009 at 2:37 p.m., updated June 28, 2009 at 2:37 p.m.

No one knows just yet if the border wall really works. The last bits of steel barrier won't tower in the Valley until year's end.

In the rush to build the wall, though, the federal government recklessly wielded eminent domain, avoided consulting with frustrated landowners and fast-tracked proper environmental impact studies.

The wall violated more than the soil it protrudes from.

We understand the post 9/11 world, the need to secure this county's borders and the importance of building systems to slow illegal immigration. We can't fathom, however, why the government would denigrate so many American principles in the process.

To build the wall, the federal agency sued 300 Texas landowners and cities to condemn ancient soils. In poor areas, agents easily persuaded less-educated residents, many whom fear the government, into signing paperwork that allowed bulldozers and workers onto lands.

The wall splits nature reserves, devoured thousands of acres of habitat-rich brush and pokes through important city districts such as in Eagle Pass.

This reckless use of eminent domain stains 10 percent of the Texas border with Mexico. Instead of beautiful views from birding centers to once bird-healthy vistas, rusted steel pickets now dominate the landscape.

Not once did U.S. Homeland Security speak to Nancy Brown, a prominent Valley environmentalist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department, or Chad Foster, mayor of Eagle Pass.

The agency, in fact, consulted with only a few landowners before ripping family plots in two.

Eloisa Tamez is just one example. When the 74-year-old El Calaboz resident refused to grant access to her land, which her family enjoyed for 240 years, the government sued her and took one third of it.

When a judge ordered Homeland Security to consult with her about placement of pedestrian gates, the federal agency ignored the order and instead bulldozed Tamez's land within days. She can no longer walk out her backdoor to the ground her father once farmed.

To reach her land south of the wall, she must walk 3,000 feet along a federal right-of-way and alongside neighbors' plots to a pedestrian gate.

Neighbors must maneuver similar routes to move cattle.

Neither Tamez nor these ranchers had a say in any of it. An estimated 36,000 acres of U.S. land in the Valley, much of which is privately owned, rest south of the wall.

An inmate on death row receives more due process than hundreds of longtime Texas landowners, wildlife areas and cities received from Homeland Security.

The wall, after all, doesn't just block people from prized lands. The steel blocks wildlife.

The health of many Valley animals depends on the freedom to roam from one side of the Rio Grande to the other. While the long-term environmental effects of the wall are unknown, already deer, birds and prey run smack into a giant steel roadblock.

Brown, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife expert, worries the endangered ocelot will disappear in the shadows of the wall. Only 40 ocelots remain in the wild and all roam in the Valley.

Instead of undertaking lengthy environmental impact studies, which often require years of study, Congress pushed Homeland Security to rush ground breaking in six months.

The 2005 Real ID Act granted the agency rights to waive 36 federal laws, including the Clean Drinking Water Act, to break ground in record time.

We hope the border wall works, because if not, it will stand as a colossal mistake and perhaps the all-time costliest U.S. blunder.

Before rushing to build a wall or implement any border or other barrier, the federal government must properly study the effects on the land, the wildlife and the people who call the soil home.

The previous administration spurred the wall's construction. As that administration learned, rushing to decisions in any part of the world often leads to unpredictable outcomes and damaging problems.

This editorial reflects the views of the Victoria Advocate's editorial board.

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