President Obama’s budget blueprint Thursday shelved extension of the controversial border fence beyond the 670 miles already completed or planned — rejecting the much-heralded security approach orchestrated by former President George W. Bush.
The Obama administration’s turnabout left funds for roads, lights and so-called tactical infrastructure — but not a dime to extend the pedestrian fencing and vehicle barriers erected along roughly a third of the nation’s 1,947-mile border with Mexico.
The top financial officer at the Department of Homeland Security, Peggy Sherry, and her team told reporters Thursday that the Obama administration would not extend a barrier network that has irked neighboring Mexico and raised concerns among immigrant advocates.
Some Texas’ landowners have stubbornly challenged the fence project, denying or delaying federal access to survey their property in legal warfare that prolonged construction along some parts of the border.
As recently as last October, the federal government had completed just a one half-mile section of the 110 miles of pedestrian border fence promised in Texas.
Chad Foster, mayor of Eagle Pass and head of the Texas Border Coalition, welcomed the decision. “We’ve always wanted to stop the fence right where it is,” Foster said.
The Obama administration asked Congress for $779 million for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 for border security-related expenses that included installation of technology, tactical infrastructure and completion of some of the remaining 46 miles of barriers.
That represents a significant drop from the $1.9 billion spent on the same activities by the Bush administration in fiscal 2008 and the $926 million set aside by the outgoing administration for the current fiscal year.
“There are additional funds for implementation, some additional (money for) roads, lights some additional tactical infrastructure,” said one official. “In terms of any particular set (number of) additional miles of fence, there’s nothing specifically identified as money for further miles of fence.”
The Obama administration will continue efforts “to finish up the fencing to get as close to the 670 miles of fence that has been previously identified,” the official said.
Congress approved a shift of $400 million from technology accounts to construction of the U.S. border fence despite a Customs and Border Protection admission that it cannot be completed by year’s end, officials said Monday.
The House Appropriations Subcommittee for Homeland Security agreed to a CBP proposal to transfer funds from other accounts to build the remainder of the 670 miles of border fence.
Eagle Pass Mayor Chad Foster, chairman of the Texas Border Coalition, voiced disappointment over Congress’ decision to continue to fund “the border wall.”
“It won’t work. It is lethal to people and wildlife and eventually will be torn down,” Foster said.
Or perhaps that is too strong of a statement because it disrespects a horse’s hind end.
Tom Tancredo, Colorado representative who tried to run a Presidential campaign on one issue, ridding the US of all Hispanics, while in the past he hired illegals to remodel his Boulder mansion amongst other things. This man is a hypocrite and a fraud.
Border mayors, Colorado lawmaker fight over ‘no border’ comments
Members of the Texas Border Coalition are sparring with Colorado Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo over his muttered suggestion that if politicians think a border fence will disrupt the region’s multiculturalism, the best place for it might be north of Brownsville.
Tancredo sent a letter to Brownsville Mayor Pat Ahumada and Eagle Pass Mayor Chad Foster on Thursday “clarifying” the comment, which came during a congressional field hearing Monday at the University of Texas-Brownsville, which could lose land to the fence.
Tancredo and U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., strong proponents of the fence, were at odds with Democrats on the panel who said the fence will be an ineffective blight for a region that thrives on social and economic ties with Mexico.
“Securing the border is not a local issue,” Tancredo wrote to Ahumada. “Local communities have expressed multiculturalist sentiment by suggesting that ‘there is no border’ between the U.S. and Mexico, and refusing to cooperate with federal authorities over the congressionally approved border fence.
“This is a matter of national importance, and the American public should not be asked to sit back and allow a handful of local governments and their friends in the ‘open borders’ lobby to exercise veto power over something that impacts not only our national security, but our national sovereignty.”
Ahumada and Foster responded Friday by accusing Tancredo of misquoting them and suggested Tancredo take Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff’s advice to “grow up.”
Chertoff made the comment during a January interview with the Associated Press. He was referring to critics of new documentation rules at border crossings.
“We have never said, ‘there is no border,’” the mayors wrote. “The Rio Grande … has been our border since the agreement to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. To ascribe that quote to us, even by inference, in your tirade is ridiculously juvenile.”
Their letter ends, “Best wishes in your post-congressional career.”
“Best wishes in your post-congressional career.”
That probably went over some of your heads. What they are referring to, and I am still laughing my ass off over this is that Tancredo, during his first campaign, he promised to only be a two-term Congressman. But, he lied! What new with that.
Tom the tool! e’s just another pathetic tool who abandoned his integrity to become a permanent, mediocre fixture in Washington D.C.
Confronted with environmental concerns about proposed border fencing, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff used his power Tuesday to waive dozens of federal laws to clear the way for building it.
Chertoff’s announcement followed a March 3 letter from a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service official pointing out that U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials had abruptly spiked a compromise the agencies were working on to protect an extensive riverfront wildlife refuge affected by a Hidalgo County fence-levee project.
He signed two waivers Tuesday, one of them negating 37 environmental, historic preservation and land management laws to speed 470 miles of fence projects in Texas, California, Arizona and New Mexico.
The other, which waived 27 laws, was specific to the 22-mile project in Hidalgo County that Chertoff, on a visit there on Feb. 8, had touted as a win-win plan to shore up worn Rio Grande flood control levees while creating a barrier to unauthorized entry.
Under the 2005 Real ID Act, Congress granted homeland security the authority to waive legal restrictions that could impede efforts to secure the border.
Chertoff that year used waivers for 14 miles of fencing near San Diego, Calif. Last year, he waived regulations for two stretches of fencing in Arizona. But this is the first time he has used a waiver in Texas.
“Criminal activity at the border does not stop for endless debate or protracted litigation,” Chertoff said in a news release Tuesday. “Congress and the American public have been adamant that they want and expect border security. We’re serious about delivering it, and these waivers will enable important security projects to keep moving forward.”
Combining the fence with repairs to the levees had been suggested by local leaders fearful of potentially devastating flood damage, and the idea was quickly backed by U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison.
Hutchison on Tuesday praised Chertoff’s action, calling it a “responsible approach to exercise his legal authority to keep the agreement with Hidalgo County that serves the dual purposes of flood protection and border security.”
Hidalgo County Judge J.D. Salinas said the waiver was “responsive to the needs of our diverse border community.”
But the fence-levee plan is unpopular among environmentalists, who say it will cut off endangered cats and other wildlife from their sole water source in parts of the Lower Rio Grande National Wildlife Refuge. The patchwork of preserves stretches about 275 river miles and is considered one of the most biologically diverse havens in the United States.
“We need for the administration and Congress to hit the pause button here and stop this outrageous, accelerated quest to finish a wall that most people realize not only will not work but will do more damage than good,” anti-fence activist Jay J. Johnson-Castro said.
Eagle Pass Mayor Chad Foster, chairman of the Texas Border Coalition, issued a statement railing against what he said was “the largest waiver of U.S. environmental laws since the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, and we all know how well that worked out. Just ask the people of Valdez, Alaska.”
Cornyn was reserving comment until he could be fully briefed, said his spokesman, Brian Walsh.
U.S. Reps. Solomon Ortiz and Ciro Rodriguez, both Democrats, expressed outrage. Ortiz called the waivers draconian, and Rodriguez said Chertoff was “selectively ignoring laws and the will of Congress.”
In the March 3 letter to Greg Giddens, executive director of U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Secure Border Initiative, the wildlife service’s Kenneth Stansell wrote: “We were very concerned that after months of consultations on a proposed project design and reaching consensus on a way forward that satisfies the needs of both wildlife and a secure border, CBP would unilaterally propose a completely new design and request an immediate response from the service.”
He added, “We will continue to work with CBP to develop mitigation alternatives. … We would like to document, however, that any proposed fence and/or levee segment that bisects lands within the Lower Rio Grande National Wildlife Refuge cannot be found compatible with the purposes for which the refuge was established. Therefore, we see the need for (homeland security) to utilize its authority … to waive the National Wildlife Refuge Administration Act of 1966.”
Interior Department spokeswoman Tina Kreisher said that the waiver didn’t mean an end to environmental considerations for the project and said homeland security was prepared to dedicate up to $50 million for mitigation projects.
“As they continue to work on this they’re continuing to do some of things like the environmental assessments that we normally do. It won’t come to a conclusion because they will be exempt from it,” she said
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