The release of the report marks the 15th anniversary of the border enforcement policy Operation Gatekeeper that concentrated border agents and added walls and fencing along populated areas, intentionally forcing migrants to hostile environments and natural barriers that increase the incidence of injury and death.

“The current policies in place on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border have created a humanitarian crisis that has led to the deaths of more than 5,000 people,” said Kevin Keenan, Executive Director of the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties. “Because of deadly practices and policies like Operation Gatekeeper, the death toll continues to rise unabated despite the decrease in unauthorized crossings due to economic factors.

South of Texas

The report analyzes deadly border enforcement policies and practices and their impact on individuals, families and communities and offers concrete recommendations to significantly decrease and possibly end the humanitarian crisis at the border.

Some of the report’s major findings include:

• Border deaths have increased despite the economic downturn, fewer migrant crossers and a steady drop in apprehensions.
• In the last 15 years, the deaths occurring during unauthorized border crossings have been a predictable and inhumane outcome of border-security policies like Operation Gatekeeper.
• Migrants’ risk of death during unauthorized crossings has increased in spite of government programs that attempt to reduce the harmful effects of border enforcement policies and strategies.
• The ongoing deaths of migrants have exposed government incompliance with international law obligations in the treatment of the dead and their families.

Since Operation Gatekeeper went into effect in 1994, an estimated 5,600 migrants have died while attempting unauthorized border crossings. In response to government failures to prevent migrant deaths, many organizations have set up water stations, desert medical camps, humanitarian-aid patrols and other rescue and recovery operations in an attempt to save lives along the U.S.-Mexican border area. As the report details, these activities have been increasingly met with government opposition and punishment.

“By any measure, Operation Gatekeeper is a failure. It didn’t reduce unauthorized border crossings, the economy did. It has, however, cost thousands of people their lives,” said Andrea Guerrero, Field and Policy Director of the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties. “Instead of policies that foster fatalities, we need sensible, humane immigration and border policies that prioritize human life over death.”

The report recommends actions that the U.S. and Mexican governments should take to protect and advance the human right to life of migrants, including:

• Recognize border crossing deaths as an international humanitarian crisis.
• Adopt sensible, humane immigration and border policies.
• Shift more U.S. Border Patrol resources to search and rescue.
• Support nongovernmental humanitarian efforts at the border.
• Direct government agencies to allow humanitarian organizations to do their work to save lives and recover remains.
• Establish a binational, one-stop resource for rescue and recovery calls and convene all data collecting agencies to develop a uniform system.
• Invite international involvement.

Javier Garcia, whose testimony about his brother who died while crossing the border is featured in the report, said, “I hope that my brother’s case is taken as an example of what should not happen, that things change.”

The report can be found online at: www.aclu.org/immigrants/gen/41186pub20091001.html

Courtesy of ACLU 2010.

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

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

This Year’s Deaths

“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.

Data courtesy of (®).Coalción de Derechos Humanos

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.

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 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.

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.

]]> http://www.mauricesherif.com/blog/index.php/south-texas-border-wall/feed/ 0 http://www.mauricesherif.com/blog/index.php/problems-continue-for-virtual-u-s-mexico-border-fence/ http://www.mauricesherif.com/blog/index.php/problems-continue-for-virtual-u-s-mexico-border-fence/#comments Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:15:13 +0000 maurice http://www.mauricesherif.com/blog/?p=388 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.

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.