"Border fence" bullshit: Fence cuts across property of low andmiddle income, big gaps at golf cours

Homeland Security Won't Explain Why the Mexican Border Wall Bypasses

the Rich and Connected

By Melissa del Bosque , Texas Observer

Posted on February 19, 2008, Printed on February 19, 2008

http://www.alternet.org/story/77320/

As the U.S. Department of Homeland Security marches down the Texas

border serving condemnation lawsuits to frightened landowners,

Brownsville resident Eloisa Tamez, 72, has one simple question. She

would like to know why her land is being targeted for destruction by a

border wall, while a nearby golf course and resort remain untouched.

Tamez, a nursing director at the University of Texas at Brownsville,

is one of the last of the Spanish land grant heirs in Cameron County.

Her ancestors once owned 12,000 acres. In the 1930s, the federal

government took more than half of her inherited land, without paying a

cent, to build flood levees.

Now Homeland Security wants to put an 18-foot steel and concrete wall

through what remains.

While the border wall will go through her backyard and effectively

destroy her home, it will stop at the edge of the River Bend Resort

and golf course, a popular Winter Texan retreat two miles down the

road. The wall starts up again on the other side of the resort.

"It has a golf course and all of the amenities," Tamez says. "There

are no plans to build a wall there. If the wall is so important for

security, then why are we skipping parts?"

Along the border, preliminary plans for fencing seem to target

landowners of modest means and cities and public institutions such as

the University of Texas at Brownsville, which rely on the federal

government to pay their bills.

A visit to the River Bend Resort in late January reveals row after row

of RVs and trailers with license plates from chilly northern U.S.

states and Canadian provinces. At the edge of a lush, green golf

course, a Winter Texan from Canada enjoys the mild, South Texas winter

and the landscaped ponds, where white egrets pause to contemplate golf

carts whizzing past. The woman, who declines to give her name,

recounts that illegal immigrants had crossed the golf course once

while she was teeing off. They were promptly detained by Border Patrol

agents, she says, adding that agents often park their SUVs at the edge

of the golf course.

River Bend Resort is owned by John Allburg, who incorporated the

business in 1983 as River Bend Resort, Inc. Allburg refused to comment

for this article. A scan of the Federal Election Commission and Texas

Ethics Commission databases did not find any political contributions

linked to Allburg.

Just 69 miles north, Daniel Garza, 76, faces a similar situation with

a neighbor who has political connections that reach the White House.

In the small town of Granjeno, population 313, Garza points to a field

across the street where a segment of the proposed 18-foot high border

wall would abruptly end after passing through his brick home and a

small, yellow house he gave his son. "All that land over there is

owned by the Hunts," he says, waving a hand toward the horizon. "The

wall doesn't go there."

In this area everyone knows the Hunts. Dallas billionaire Ray L. Hunt

and his relatives are one of the wealthiest oil and gas dynasties in

the world. Hunt, a close friend of President George W. Bush, recently

donated $35 million to Southern Methodist University to help build

Bush's presidential library. In 2001, Bush made him a member of the

Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, where Hunt received a security

clearance and access to classified intelligence.

Over the years, Hunt has transformed his 6,000-acre property, called

the Sharyland Plantation, from acres of onions and vegetables into

swathes of exclusive, gated communities where houses sell from

$650,000 to $1 million and residents enjoy golf courses, elementary

schools, and a sports park. The plantation contains an 1,800-acre

business park and Sharyland Utilities, run by Hunt's son Hunter, which

delivers electricity to plantation residents and Mexican factories.

The development's Web site touts its proximity to the international

border and the new Anzalduas International Bridge now under

construction, built on land Hunt donated. Hunt has also formed Hunt

Mexico with a wealthy Mexican business partner to develop both sides

of the border into a lucrative trade corridor the size of Manhattan.

Jeanne Phillips, a spokesperson for Hunt Consolidated Inc., says that

since the company is private, it doesn't have to identify the Mexican

partner. Phillips says, however, that no one from the company has been

directly involved in siting the fence. "We, like other citizens in the

Valley, have waited for the federal government to designate the

location of the wall," she says.

Garza stands in front of his modest brick home, which he built for his

retirement after 50 years as a migrant farmworker. For the past five

months, he has stayed awake nights trying to find a way to stop the

gears of bureaucracy from grinding over his home.

A February 8 announcement by Homeland Security Secretary Michael

Chertoff said the agency would settle for building the fence atop the

levee behind Garza's house instead of through it, which has given

Garza some hope. Like Tamez, he wonders why his home and small town

were targeted by Homeland Security in the first place.

"I don't see why they have to destroy my home, my land, and let the

wall end there." He points across the street to Hunt's land. "How will

that stop illegal immigration?"

Most border residents couldn't believe the fence would ever be built

through their homes and communities. They expected it to run along the

banks of the Rio Grande, not north of the flood levees -- in some

cases like Tamez's, as far as a mile north of the river. So it came as

a shock last summer when residents were approached by uniformed Border

Patrol agents. They asked people to sign waivers allowing Homeland

Security to survey their properties for construction of the wall. When

they declined, Homeland Security filed condemnation suits.

In time, local landowners realized that the fence's location had

everything to do with politics and private profit, and nothing to do

with stopping illegal immigration.

In 2006, Congress passed the Secure Fence Act, authored by Republican

Congressman Peter King from New York. The legislation mandated that

700 miles of double-fencing be built along the southern border from

California to Texas. The bill detailed where the fencing, or, as many

people along the border call it, "the wall," would be built. After a

year of inflamed rhetoric about the plague of illegal immigration and

Congress's failure to pass comprehensive immigration reform, the bill

passed with overwhelming support from Republicans and a few Democrats.

All the Texas border members of the U.S. House of Representatives,

except San Antonio Republican Henry Bonilla, voted against it. Texas

Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn voted for the bill.

On August 10, 2007, Chertoff announced his agency would scale back the

initial 700 miles of fencing to 370 miles, to be built in segments

across the southern border. Chertoff cited budget shortages and

technological difficulties as justifications for not complying with

the bill.

How did his agency decide where to build the segments? Chad Foster,

the mayor of Eagle Pass, says he thought it was a simple enough

question and that the answer would be based on data and facts. Foster

chairs the Texas Border Coalition. TBC, as Foster calls it, is a group

of border mayors and business leaders who have repeatedly traveled to

Washington for the past 18 months to try to get federal officials to

listen to them.

Foster says he has never received any logical answers from Homeland

Security as to why certain areas in his city had been targeted for

fencing over other areas. "I puzzled a while over why the fence would

bypass the industrial park and go through the city park," he says.

Despite terse meetings with Chertoff, Foster and other coalition

members say the conversation has been one-sided.

"I think we have a government within a government," Foster says.

"[This is] a tremendous bureaucracy -- DHS is just a monster."

The Observer called Homeland Security in Washington to find out how it

had decided where to build the fence. The voice mail system sputtered

through a dizzying array of acronyms: DOJ, USACE, CBP, and USCIS. On

the second call a media spokesperson with a weary voice directed

queries to Michael Friel, the fence spokesman for Customs and Border

Protection. Six calls and two e-mails later, Friel responded with a

curt e-mail: "Got your message. Working on answers..." it said. Days

passed, and Friel's answers never came.

Since Homeland Security wasn't providing answers, perhaps Congress

would. Phone conversations with congressional offices ranged from "but

they aren't even building a wall" to "I don't know. That's a good

question." At the sixth congressional office contacted, a GOP staffer

who asked not to be identified, but who is familiar with the fence,

says the fencing locations stemmed from statistics showing high

apprehension and narcotic seizure rates. This seems questionable,

since maps released by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers showed the

wall going through such properties as the University of Texas at

Brownsville -- hardly a hotbed for drug smugglers and immigrant

trafficking.

Questioned more about where the data came from, the staffer said she

would enquire further. The next day she called back. "The border fence

is being handled by Greg Giddens at the Secure Border Initiative

Office within the U.S. Customs and Border Protection office," she

said.

Giddens is executive director of the SBI, as it is called, which is in

charge of SBInet, a consortium of private contractors led by Boeing

Co. The group received a multibillion dollar contract in 2006 to

secure the northern and southern borders with a network of vehicle

barriers, fencing, and surveillance systems. Companies Boeing chose to

secure the southern border from terrorists include DRS Technologies

Inc., Kollsman Inc., L-3 Communications Inc., Perot Systems Corp., and

a unit of Unisys Corp.

A February 2007 audit by the U.S. Government Accountability Office

cited Homeland Security and the SBInet project for poor fiscal

oversight and a lack of demonstrable objectives. The GAO audit team

recommended that Homeland Security place a spending limit on the

Boeing contract for SBInet since the company had been awarded an

"indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract for 3 years with

three 1-year options."

The agency rejected the auditors' recommendation, saying 6,000 miles

of border is limitation enough.

In a February 2007 hearing, Congressman Henry Waxman, a California

Democrat and the chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform

Committee, had more scathing remarks for Giddens and the SBInet

project. "As of December, the Department of Homeland Security had

hired a staff of 98 to oversee the new SBInet contract. This may seem

like progress until you ask who these overseers are. More than half

are private contractors. Some of these private contractors even work

for companies that are business partners of Boeing, the company they

are supposed to be overseeing. And from what we are now learning from

the department, this may be just the tip of the iceberg."

Waxman said of SBInet that "virtually every detail is being outsourced

from the government to private contractors. The government is relying

on private contractors to design the programs, build them, and even

conduct oversight over them."

A phone call to Giddens at SBI is referred to Loren Flossman, who's in

charge of tactical infrastructure for the office. Flossman says all

data regarding the placement of the fence is classified because "you

don't want to tell the very people you're trying to keep from coming

across the methodology used to deter them."

Flossman also calls the University of Texas at Brownsville campus a

problem area for illegal immigration. "I wouldn't assume that these

are folks that aren't intelligent enough that if they dress a certain

way, they're gonna fit in," he says.

Chief John Cardoza, head of the UT-Brownsville police, says the Border

Patrol would have to advise his police force of any immigrant

smuggling or narcotic seizures that happen on campus. "If it's

happening on my campus, I'm not being told about it," he says. Cardoza

says he has never come across illegal immigrants dressed as students.

Flossman goes on to say that Boeing isn't building the fence, but is

providing steel for it. Eric Mazzacone, a spokesman for Boeing, refers

the Observer to Michael Friel at Customs and Border Protection, and

intercedes to get him on the phone. Friel confirms that Boeing has

just finished building a 30-mile stretch of fence in Arizona, but

insists other questions be submitted in writing.

Boeing, a multibillion dollar aero-defense company, is the second-

largest defense contractor in the nation. The company has powerful

board members, such as William M. Daley, former U.S. secretary of

commerce; retired Gen. James L. Jones, former supreme allied commander

in Europe; and Kenneth M. Duberstein, a former White House chief of

staff. The corporation is also one of the biggest political

contributors in Washington, giving more than $9 million to Democratic

and Republican members of Congress in the last decade. In 2006, the

year the Secure Fence Act was passed, Boeing gave more than $1.4

million to Democrats and Republicans, according to the Center for

Responsive Politics.

A majority of this money has gone to legislators such as Congressman

Duncan Hunter, the California Republican who championed the Secure

Fence Act. In 2006, Hunter received at least $10,000 from Boeing and

more than $93,000 from defense companies bidding for the SBInet

contract, according to the center. During his failed bid this year for

the White House, Hunter made illegal immigration and building a border

fence the major themes of his campaign.

In early February 2008, Chertoff asked Congress for $12 billion for

border security. He included $775 million for the SBInet program,

despite the fact that congressional leaders still can't get straight

answers from Homeland Security about the program. As recently as

January 31, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs

Committee members sent a letter to Chertoff asking for "greater

clarity on [the Customs and Border Protection office's] operational

objectives for SBInet and the projected milestones and anticipated

costs for the project." They have yet to receive a response.

Boeing continues to hire companies for the SBInet project. And the

congressional districts of backers of the border fence continue to

benefit. A recent Long Island Business News article trumpeted the

success of Telephonics Corp., a local business, in Congressman King's

congressional district that won a $14.5 million bid to provide a

mobile surveillance system under SBInet to protect the southern

border.

While Garza and Tamez wait for answers, they say they are being asked

to sacrifice something that can't be replaced by money. They are

giving up their land, their homes, their heritage, and the few

remaining acres left to them that they hoped to pass on to their

children and grandchildren.

"I am an old man. I have colon cancer, and I am 76 years old," Garza

says, resting against a tree in front of his home. "All I do is worry

about whether they will take my home. My wife keeps asking me, 'What

are we going to do?'"

Besides these personal tragedies, Eagle Pass Mayor Foster says there

is another tragedy in store for the American taxpayer. A 2007

congressional report estimates the cost of maintaining and building

the fence could be as much as $49 billion over its expected 25-year

life span.

"They are just going to push this problem on the next administration,

and nobody is going to talk about immigration reform, and that's the

illness," Foster says. "The wall is a Band-Aid on the problem. And to

blow $49 billion and not walk away with a secure border -- that's a

travesty."

© 2008 Texas Observer All rights reserved.

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