TX-Border wall sparks big debate in small town
Border wall sparks big debate in small town
Hernán Rozemberg - Express-News
Posted: 09/29/2008 12:00 CDT
PRESIDIO — This tiny border city in the Chihuahuan Desert has steered clear of international political controversy since the Mexican Revolution nearly a century ago, when Pancho Villa set up his headquarters in Ojinaga, across the Rio Grande, after capturing the town in a bloody assault.
But although people here are now mostly worried about a major flood threat after massive water releases from Mexican reservoirs, their attention might soon return to the issue that for months has placed them amid the uproar known as the border fence.
The Department of Homeland Security is following a congressional mandate to erect nearly 700 miles of barriers along the 1,952-mile border with Mexico by the end of this year. Some 346 miles are in place.
The move has drawn opposition up and down the border, with national attention focused on the fierce legal showdown taking place in South Texas, where many border landowners are fighting government efforts to condemn land for the project.
Hundreds of miles away in the middle of the desert, Presidio hasn't made national headlines, though a similar outcry is taking place over plans to build 6 miles of fencing to straddle the international bridge here.
With about 5,000 people and the only legal crossing point between El Paso and Del Rio, it's not known as a hub for illegal activity. It's in the Border Patrol's Marfa Sector, the agency's largest — with 510 miles of border — but by far its least active.
In the fiscal year that ends Tuesday, the sector has seen 4,741 illegal crossers detained and nearly 54,665 pounds of marijuana and cocaine seized. That pales in comparison with areas such as the Rio Grande Valley Sector, where agents have netted 94,225 crossers and 387,241 pounds of drugs.
In Presidio, the Border Patrol wanted to replace river levees — federal property, no private land affected — with guardrail-topped concrete walls. But the agency put the project on hold when bids estimated the cost at $20 million per mile, or about $120 million in total.
Going back to the drawing board, the government intends to ask engineers to retool the wall design to bring costs down. But construction has now been pushed back to July 1 thanks to that and flood delays, said Angela De Rocha, a Border Patrol spokeswoman in Washington.
Neither De Rocha nor Bill Brooks, spokesman for the Marfa Sector, would comment on why the agency deemed Presidio, a small town in no man's land, an “urban areaâ€
