Anger and the Border Fence

The Washington Post presents some arguments against the border fence.

The emphasis in the article isn't on politics. It focuses on why residents along the Rio Grande and ecologists oppose securing the border with a fence.

ROMA, Tex. -- Since 1767, some 150 acres of wooded riverfront along the Rio Grande has belonged to the family of Cecilia Ramirez Benavides, land granted to her ancestors by Spanish settlers who colonized Mexico, or New Spain, as it was then known.

Generations later, much of the Ramirez tract, with its mile of riverbank, remains undisturbed, overrun by huge mesquite and ebony trees, thick clusters of prickly pear cactus and chaparral. It is inhabited by the endangered ocelot -- only 100 are believed to remain in the United States -- the bright-orange Altamira oriole with its distinctive whistle and huge, pouchlike woven nests, and the green jay, with its bright-blue nape.

Already, the modern world has intruded on this privately owned mini-nature preserve. Cecilia Benavides and her husband, Noel Benavides Sr., have given the Border Patrol, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the National Guard permanent access to their land to apprehend illegal immigrants and drug smugglers.

But the Department of Homeland Security's latest entreaty is where the couple have decided they must draw the line. Their tranquil piece of riverfront -- owned by the Ramirez clan long before northern Mexico became Texas -- lies directly in the path of the federal government's plan to build 700 miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border.

"They're going to destroy an ecosystem that took centuries and that's never going to come back," said Noel Benavides, an alderman in this small border city.

"But it's the law, we're told, and it's homeland security."

Is this supposed to convince us that a fence along the border is a bad idea?

It doesn't.

Ecosystems are destroyed for reasons far less important to the common good than securing the border. When celebrities build their multi-million dollar homes in remote areas of Montana, I don't think they manage to do it without impacting ecosystems.

It's unfortunate that the mini-nature preserve of Mr. and Mrs. Benavides has to be upset, but this isn't 1767.

..."Are we going to build another Berlin Wall, against Mexico? This will change the whole scenario of life down here," said Mike Allen, the recently retired head of the McAllen Economic Development Corp., which focuses on promoting trade and other exchanges with Mexico. "A fence is the most expensive brick in the mortar of border security and it won't work. If someone can swim this river, they can climb a fence."

Eagle Pass Mayor Chad Foster, who said he crosses the bridge daily to Piedras Negras, the Mexican city across the Rio Grande, said the lawmakers "that voted for this fence have never seen the reality of the border" and seen "the relationship that we have with our neighbors."

Berlin Wall?

That's really lame.

I don't think Allen understands what the Berlin Wall was about.

There's no comparison.

Early this year, border officials had two meetings with Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to get his assurances their advice and local considerations would be taken into account before the agency determined where it would build a fence and where it would erect electronic surveillance towers. But in late spring, a DHS memorandum that was leaked to South Texas officials said U.S. Customs and Border Protection was committed to building 370 miles of primary fence by the end of 2008. Texas will get 153 miles of fence; Arizona, 129 miles; California, 76 miles; and New Mexico, 12. A map of the proposed fencing was attached to the memo.

The documents sparked an outcry from border officials from El Paso down to Brownsville, as well as from farmers who plant vegetables, cotton and grain in the rich alluvium along the banks of the Rio Grande. Border businessmen who depend on Mexicans for a majority of their retail sales and private landowners, such as the Benavideses, were outraged, too.

The environmental groups that oversee a corrider of 182,000 acres of wildlife refuge along or near the river -- a top birding destination whose devotees infuse the deep South Texas economy with an estimated $150 million yearly -- said the region is now under threat.

All these people are outraged because they don't see any need for a fence.

It will ruin their businesses and make birdwatching a bitch.

I understand that some people will be impacted negatively.

I can understand that they want to stand in the way of the fence. It's that not in my backyard mentality.

But when the U.S. - Mexican border is in your backyard you have to think of the bigger picture. Sometimes we're called to make sacrifices.

That's life.