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Minutemen redesign border fence to protect cattle
Advocates to pray for undocumented immigrants

BY EMMA PEREZ-TREVIÑO
The Brownsville Herald

The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps on Friday announced plans to modify a border fence it is building on private property in Ari-zona so that it doesn’t hurt cattle.

Meanwhile, advocates for the roughly 12 million undocumented immigrants in the country are planning to hold a prayer vigil in Brownsville.

Their vigil will be held at 10 a.m. today at Hope Park in downtown Brownsville along the banks of the Rio Grande next to the bus station.

The group will pray for fair immigration reform but against the use of National Guard troops to secure the U.S.-Mexico border and the construction of a border fence included in two separate immigration bills by the U.S. House and Senate.

The House and Senate are expecting to start negotiations soon on their separate bills in an effort to reach a compromise.

The Minutemen, however, aren’t waiting.

The group has been monitoring locations close the U.S.-Mexico border since 2004 in an effort to prevent entry by undocumented immigrants and has started its own small-scale fence-building project in Arizona.

Minutemen President Cris Simcox stated in an e-mail that there will be surveillance cameras on the fencing that Minutemen across the country will monitor by computer.

“We have chosen a security design that is based on the Israeli fences in Gaza and on the West Bank that have reduced terrorist attacks there by 95 percent or more. In order to be effective, a fence should not be easy to compromise by climbing over it with a ladder, cutting through it with wire cutters, ramming it with a vehicle or tunneling under it undetected,” Simcox stated.

On Friday in another e-mail, Simcox advised of its redesign, but only on one property.

“This new design has a vehicle barrier to not only deter the drug and human traffickers from crashing through the fencing in their vehicles, but this barrier will also help protect the rancher’s cattle from the razor wire,” Simcox said.

Simcox’s e-mail stated that the full-flown security fencing as presented in its original design will be constructed on other private tracts of land.

“In the face of the betrayal of the Senate and our federal government, we are more galvanized and organized than ever to do the work that they refuse to do,” Simcox stated.

Simcox is upset about the Senate’s recent proposal to provide a path toward legalization for undocumented immigrants who have been in the country two years or more and starting a guest worker program.

The U.S. House proposal does not provide for legalization or a guest worker program. Both proposals provide for fencing, but the House calls for 700 miles while the Senate calls for 350 miles in addition to vehicle barriers.

Simcox was not available for comment Friday to say if, besides cattle, serious injury to an undocumented immigrant had been considered in designing the fence.

“With the wire and the trench, the rancher felt that his cattle would be injured,” Simcox’s spokeswoman Connie Hair said by tele-phone from Dallas.

“A cow is too stupid to see the trench,” Hair said. “A cow is not a real smart animal. A horse would go around it, but not a cow. A human being can easily avoid it, but a cow can’t, so the only people who would be subject to be injured are if they are trying to dis-mantle the fence.”

Texas Minutemen representative Mike L. Vickers did not anticipate any injuries.

“I don’t think it’s going to be harmful to anyone, it’s a standard livestock fence,” Vickers said.

eperez-trevino@brownsvilleherald.com



Posted on Jun 03, 06 | 12:00 am