Border fence add-on disputed
Critics say 11 more miles of Arizona barriers will bring about an ecological disaster
Sean Holstege
The Arizona Republic
Feb. 10, 2008 12:00 AM

The government plans to add 11 miles of border fence in Arizona this year, far fewer than what was built last year.

For months the government has been mum about much of its plans, but details emerged in recently released environmental assessments. Those documents, the first step in fence-building, reveal officials' plans to add 7 miles of fence east of Nogales and 4 miles along the Colorado River, using a combination of pedestrian fence, vehicle barrier and access road improvements.

The effort is being criticized by two sides.

Environmentalists say the Department of Homeland Security is threatening endangered animals by ignoring environmental laws to build barriers across their habitats.

"I'm really now very concerned about an ecological disaster by blocking off this border," said Kim Vacariu, western director of the Wildlands Project.

Pro-fence activists, on the other hand, accuse the DHS of backing off its obligations by not building enough pedestrian fencing and not double-layering it.

They say more fence is critical in a state that remains the most active pot- and human-smuggling route on the entire U.S.-Mexican border.

Glenn Spencer, founder of American Border Patrol, says the government cares more about open borders and amnesty for illegal immigrants than building the fence.

"Where the smuggling is really serious, they're not building anything," Spencer said.

Government officials say Arizona benefited from a big effort last year when almost all of the 74 miles of new fence went up in the state.

Officials say the border-wide strategy is based on local conditions.

"What makes sense here might not work there. We are interested in putting in the right mix, based on terrain, location and maintenance needs," Border Patrol spokesman Lloyd Easterling said.

The Border Patrol said it has no plans for more pedestrian fence in Arizona, but might add vehicle barricades, roadworks and networks of cameras and sensors.

Current plans call for 85 miles of barriers in Texas, 59 miles in California and 25 miles in New Mexico, as part of an effort to bolster 670 miles of the 1,950-mile international border by year's end.

Property owners along the Rio Grande filed a class-action lawsuit in Texas to block the government from seizing their property to build the fence.

The government sued land- owners who refused to allow access, but attorneys argued in a Texas federal court Wednesday that government threats to seize property for the border fence in Texas and Arizona are illegal.

It's unclear whether opponents can stop the fence in court, but they could significantly delay it.

A 2006 congressional law ordered double fencing throughout.

The Bush administration credits double fences with sharp reductions in illegal crossings near Yuma and San Diego, although increases in border personnel, stricter enforcement and a slowing economy have also played a role.

Fence supporter Spencer says the government inflated its 2007 fence-building statistics by describing permeable vehicle barriers as fence.

"They bamboozled the Senate," Spencer said.

Vehicle barriers are no "impediment to potential terrorists, (illegal immigrants) or drug smugglers entering the U.S. on foot," the government's own environmental assessments conclude.

Environmentalists, such as the Sierra Club's borderlands committee chairman, Sean Sullivan, fault those assessments for the opposite reason.

"They are not conducting these studies the way they should," Sullivan said.

The government's assessment for Nogales said surveyors were denied access to some properties and therefore could not make "definitive statements about specific resources."

"While this is not an ideal situation, with our time constraints to meet this mandate, it's necessary to move forward," Easterling said, explaining the off-limits property resembled land that had been studied.

The assessments conclude that adding fence will limit the destruction caused to the environment from smuggling. Border crossers routinely litter large areas of desert with abandoned clothing, trash, cars and gasoline cans.

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