Thread: Feds seek builders for border fence near Brownsville

Feds seek builders for border fence near Brownsville
By CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN
Associated Press

McALLEN, Texas — A federal bid request to build three hotly contested pieces of the border fence in Cameron County has turned up the pressure on local officials and landowners still holding out.

Brownsville and its county have been the nerve center for some of the most outspoken opposition along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border.

The local university has railed against the fence, which would divide its campus, and landowners have fought it for months in federal court. U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado caused a kerfuffle at a congressional field hearing in late April when he suggested the fence be built north of Brownsville.

Yet the government has not blinked.

In the last three weeks, government lawyers have filed 52 condemnation lawsuits against Cameron County landowners to make way for the fence.

And late Friday, the Army Corps of Engineers requested proposals to build three fence segments totaling about seven miles on the western side of the county.

One of those would graze an acre of land owned by Eloisa Tamez, the project’s most vociferous and litigious South Texas opponent.

“It’s all scare tactics, it’s all pressure,â€

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