South of Texas
May 4 the GAO issued a report on SBInet, which included a statement that DHS has allocated fiscal 2010 funds to build the 3 sections of wall in Roma, Rio Grande City, and Los Ebanos which have been on hold for the past 2 years because DHS could not get approval from IBWC.
100-mile radius raises debate over Constitution, civil rights
WASHINGTON — Vince Peppard was cruising up the highway toward San Diego, wife in the seat next to him and a bunch of tile in tow.
The 53-year-old retired social worker was driving north from Tecate, Mexico, on his way to fix up an old house.
“I breezed right through the checkpoint,” Pepper recalled. “Then a half-hour later, when I got into the U.S., they were opening my trunk and searching my car. I didn’t feel like I was in the United States. I felt like I was in some police state.”
Peppard was stopped about 20 miles north of the Mexican border by customs officials who demanded to search his car, he said. When he refused, Peppard said, a customs official brought in search dogs, hassled his wife — who is from Syria — for her citizenship papers and detained him for more than 30 minutes.
He was ultimately let go. But he can’t let go of the fact that he was stopped inside the United States.
“I actually feel nervous that I’m going to be pulled over,” Peppard said via a video hookup at a news conference Wednesday. “Now I have to have my passport when I go to the Home Depot or something.”
It was stories like Peppard’s that prompted a civil rights group to challenge the constitutionality of practices carried out by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
The American Civil Liberties Union charged Wednesday that searches by customs agents within 100 miles of the U.S. border threatens the rights of millions of Americans.
The civil rights group released a map showing that nearly two-thirds of Americans – 194.7 million people — live within a 100-mile-radius of the U.S. borders and could be subject to an infringement of their Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches.
“This is an area where the government is attempting to turn into a Constitution-free zone,” said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office. “The federal government has been allowed to turn areas of this nation into places where anyone can be stopped and searched for any reason — or no reason at all.
“It is a classic case example of law enforcement powers expanding far beyond the proper boundaries–in this case literally.”
The group said it will push for legislation in the next administration to curtail customs officials’ search authority.
Customs and Border Protection, which falls under the Department of Homeland Security, was authorized by Congress nearly 50 years ago to operate within a “reasonable distance” inside the border, which it designates as a 100-mile radius. The agency operates 33 checkpoints, and the ACLU said complaints about the checkpoints have risen since Sept.11.
But border patrol officials say that the checkpoints are anything but unconstitutional.
“The 100-mile zone absolutely is not a Constitution-free zone,” said Jason Ciliberti, a supervisory border patrol agent with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. “Those 100 miles are what essentially is said to be a reasonable distance from the boundary from the United States, and the Supreme Court has come down firmly on our side and said that what we’re doing is not unreasonable.”
Ciliberti said that the department is sensitive to citizen complaints about checkpoints and has tried to smooth the process.
“The vast number of those encounters is very brief,” Ciliberti said. “If [necessary], agents do take some time to conduct investigations. But, of course, they conduct those investigations with due diligence and as minimally invasive as possible.”
“In order to arrest that person, we still need probable cause as anywhere in the United States,” he added.
But, he noted, the agency will continue its searches as part of its efforts to stop drug smugglers and illegal immigrants.
“We do have a job to do and we don’t have the opportunity to be wrong — even once,” Ciliberti said. “So, we understand if people are offended by our tactics. We take the Constitution very seriously, we take it to heart.”
2000-2001 136
2001-2002 163
2002-2003 205
2003-2004 234
2004-2005 282
2005-2006 205
2006- 2007 237
2007- 2008 183
2008-2009 206
October 1, 2009 – February 28, 2010 110
Total Human Remains = 1,961
“Coalción de Derechos Humanos” counts the number of bodies recovered in Arizona for the fiscal year, which begins October 1st and ends September 30th of every year. This will be so that we can compare the numbers put out by the government officials with those that we gather, in collaboration with the Consular offices and county medical examiners.
The plans were unveiled in the first detailed look at the Wall the government says it must build to slow illegal immigration along the 1,200-mile-long (1,920-km) Texas-Mexico border. In a request for public comment on the environmental impact of the Wall, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency said construction could begin next spring
South of Texas
The fence, to be built in 21 segments at strategic points along the Rio Grande, must be able to withstand a crash by a 10,000-pound (4,545-kg) vehicle traveling at 40 miles per hour (64 kph), but also be “aesthetically pleasing,” the agency said.
The wall is part of a federal plan to build 700 miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border.
The border protection agency said the wall would mostly be built on river levees, but also would cross private land and encroach on state parks and the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge.
The refuge is considered one of the most biologically diverse wildlife sanctuaries in the nation and environmentalists say the fence could harm endangered species such as ocelots and jaguarundi found there.
Many local leaders in southern Texas, which is heavily Hispanic and has strong economic and cultural ties to Mexico, have criticized the border wall as unnecessary and an affront to Mexicans.
Currently $2.4 billion has been spent since 2006 on a still-unfinished project to erect more than 613 miles (4 Million dollars a mile). $6.5 billion will be needed to maintain the new Wall over the next 20 years.
Still, the architects of the US – Mexico Wall hope it would change society. The result are towns divided in two without regard for prior form or use.
Texas Border Fence Map II
Over time, the Wall evolved from fences to concrete “jersey walls” with steel mesh in South of Texas. The final form would be a Wall, constructed from 15 to 20 feet high, separated by a no-man’s-land as wide as 1 mile . The Wall is capped by a smooth pipe, making it difficult to scale and is accompanied by trenches as well as “Normandy” vehicle fence consisting of steel beams fencing set in concrete. Also, tower-based integrated cameras and sensors, ground-based radar and mobile surveillance systems.
Border Life "La Linea"
It may succeed in changing society, but as with most modernist products, not in the way its builders intended. By providing a datum line for the US, the Wall gave meaning to the lives of its inhabitants. As the Wall was being constructed , situationists in the US and elsewhere are advocating for radical changes in cities as a means of preserving urban life.
In his 1972 thesis at the Architectural Association, entitled “Exodus, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture,” Rem Koolhaas found a way of reconciling modernism with Situationism through the figure of the Berlin Wall. Suggesting that the Wall might be exported to London and made to encircle it, Koolhaas writes, “The inhabitants of this architecture, those strong enough to love it, would become its Voluntary Prisoners, ecstatic in the freedom of their architectural confines.” Inside, life would be “a continuous state of ornamental frenzy and decorative delirium, an overdose of symbols.” Although officially proposing a way of making London more interesting, Koolhaas’s thesis is really a set of observations about the already existing condition of the real Wall. In choosing to encircle London with the Wall, Koolhaas recognized that it was not only the last great product of modernism, it was the last work of heavy architecture. Already in 1966, in his introduction to 40 Under 40, Robert Stern observed that an increasingly dematerialized “cardboard architecture” was “the order of the day” in the United States while in England, architects such as Archigram were proposing barrier-less technological utopias.
Palomas - Arizona
Built of concrete and steel, the US – Mexico wall is solid, weighty. It hearkened back to the days of the medieval city walls, which were not only defensive but attempted to organize and contain a world progressively more interconnected through communications and trade.
Walls acts as concentrators, defining places in which early capitalism and urbanity could be found and intensifying both. So long as the modes of communication remained physical and the methods of making and trading goods were slow, nations retained their authority and autonomy through architectural solidity.
The American Wall, to be built in 21 segments at strategic points along the Rio Grande, must be able to withstand a crash by a 10,000-pound (4,545-kg) vehicle traveling at 40 miles per hour (64 kph), but also be “aesthetically pleasing,” the agency said.
The wall is part of a federal plan to build 700 miles of walling along the U.S.-Mexico border.
South Texas Border Wall 2010
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency said the wall would mostly be built on river levees, but also would cross private land and encroach on state parks and the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge is considered one of the most biologically diverse wildlife sanctuaries in the nation and environmentalists say the fence could harm endangered species such as ocelots and jaguarundi found there.
Landowners in south Texas are fighting plans by the federal government to build a Security Wall along the U.S.-Mexico border from Brownsville to Del Rio. The property owners in the Rio Grande Valley have refused to let U.S. surveyors onto their land. The government is suing to gain access, which it says it needs to complete nearly 370 miles of border fencing by the end of the year 2009.
South Texas Border Wall 2010
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s removal of more than 70 grapefruit trees from loop family land. On Wednesday morning, members of the Loop family watched helplessly as a government contractor’s large yellow Caterpillar excavator began the process of removing the trees. The trees were removed to make way for the border wall, which is being built by the Kiewit Corporation.
Published 5 November 2009 by DHS
With most of the 661-mile border fence complete, DHS is gearing up for testing a section of the fence near Tuscon; if the system survives this first round, it will be handed off to the Border Patrol in early 2010, who will put the technology through some real world scenarios.
DHS will this month conduct a crucial test that could determine the future of the U.S.-Mexico border fence project. With most of the 661-mile border fence complete, DHS is gearing up for the next step to secure the border: it is another “fence” — a virtual fence — armed with high-tech cameras, radars and sensors. This two-fence system is called the Secure Border Initiative, or SBI.
ACLU, Mexican Human Rights Group Petition Commission: Act to End Deadly Policies SDGLN.com Staff | Fri, 11/13/2009 – 9:16pm | Login to Like articles (SAN DIEGO) –
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of San Diego and Imperial Counties is calling on U.S., Mexican and international officials to recognize the alarming number of migrant deaths at the U.S. – Mexico border as an international humanitarian crisis; address the ongoing violations of the right to life and identify protective measures going forward.
The ACLU joined together with Mexico’s National Commission on Human Rights (Comision Nacional de Derechos Humanos – CNDH) and sent a letter to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) – a commission of the Organization of American States (OAS). In the letter, they requested that the IACHR get permission from the U.S. and Mexican governments to make an onsite visit to the region. They further requested that once there, the IACHR conduct an investigation on the crisis, issue a report for the General Assembly of the OAS, and identify measures that both countries should adopt to bring them in compliance with their international human rights obligations.
For emphasis, the ACLU and CNDH also provided the commission with the 76 page white paper they drafted documenting the situation: Humanitarian Crisis: Migrant Deaths at the U.S.-Mexico Border. The release of this report marked the 15th anniversary of the border enforcement policy, Operation Gatekeeper. This policy not only provided a higher concentration of border agents, but added walls and fencing along populated areas, forcing migrants into hostile environments and creating natural barriers that increased the incidence of injury and death. Since the program’s inception, an average of one migrant per day has died.
“More than 5,000 people have died crossing our border, and an estimated seven to eleven percent of them are children,” said Kevin Keenan, Executive Director of the ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties. “Equally alarming are the hundreds of family members who are left in inconsolable limbo, never knowing the fate of their loved one.”
According to their report, family members have no alternative recourse, and are often faced with complex or contradictory methods and red-tape when merely trying to locate a loved one who may be missing or even dead. State obligations to these families with regards to migrant deaths at the border has never been addressed. There is no uniform standard or centralized data base for locating the migrants or identifying their remains. One-quarter of those who perish in transit are never identified, leaving their families behind in a permanent state of anguish.
Ten years ago, the San Diego ACLU submitted a petition to the IACHR alleging that U.S. border enforcement-deterrence strategies under Operation Gatekeeper violated the right to life under Article 1 of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man. The Commission initially expressed concern over the findings, even agreeing to monitor the situation, but eventually dismissed the petition and things have only gotten worse.
“Since the Commission consented to monitor the border situation, we respectfully ask that they now act on their concerns,” said Jose Luis Soberanes, president of CNDH. “When they initially expressed unease, only 300 migrants had died. Today, nearly twenty times that number have died—many of their deaths directly attributable to U.S. border enforcement policies.”
The local ACLU hopes that since the United States and Mexico are bound by the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, they will soon begin to adopt policies or negotiate bilateral agreements to deal with the crisis. Their recent white paper on the situation only highlights the fact that to date, the two countries have seemingly abandoned their obligations under international law to respect and ensure the rights of migrant populations.
One of the many unnoticed projects included in the massive “$800,000,000,000″ economic stimulus plan is “$100,000,000″ for Boeing Inc. to resume work on the troubled “virtual fence”, the “$8,000,000,000″ 2006 plan to construct a highly sophisticated electronic barrier along the U.S. border with Mexico.
As a result of the technical problems, the Department of Homeland Security put the virtual Wall project on hold in 2008 after spending billions to make technology take the place of a physical fence. In total, DHS built only 28 miles of virtual Wall in a pilot project.
The debate over constructing Walling on the US-Mexico is not new
The Clinton administration, for example, passed legislation in the mid-90s that called for Walling around the major US metropolitan centers on the border.
Yet, the extent of the inflow of illegal immigration (roughly 500,000 annually) as well as the growing Hispanic demographic in the United States has caused many people to view a more extensive walling system as increasingly urgent.
The Wall is intentionally placed in the least dangerous border crossings, while leaving open treacherous routes. Given the strong desire to cross, many will attempt to make these crossing fatally. Hundreds die each year already. Hundreds more could be expected. After the construction of the San Diego fence, many illegal immigrants began crossing through the Arizona desert, which caused many of San Diego’s border agents to move out there. According to T.J. Bonner, the president of the National Border Patrol Council, the main union for Border Patrol agents, “Tucson now has 2,600 plus agents. San Diego has lost 1,000 agents. Guess where the traffic is going? Back to San Diego. San Diego is the most heavily fortified border in the entire country, and yet it’s not stopping people from coming across.
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