Biden must get creative to halt thewall
Trump’s minions are hastening work in wildlife preserves and Native American territory.
A map misleads. A map of the southwestern United States and northern Mexico, for example, suggests a clearly delineated demarcation. Residents on both sides of that line know that’s not exactly accurate. They live and work in proximity to a U.S.-Mexico border that more closely resembles an impressionist water- color painting, with the hues of culture, history, economics and family of each nation bleeding across the imperfect confines of a cartographer’s rendering.
Constructing a high, forbidding barrier as a simulacrum of the precise black line on a paper map has long been, from numerous perspectives, a grotesque affront: It’s a multibillion-dollar boondoggle, for one thing, that will not accomplish what President Donald
Trump proclaims it will do. (Oh, and despite his promises, Mexico hasn’t paid a dime for it and never will.) The barrier Trump envisions plows through wildlife preserves, bird sanctuaries, sacred Native American land and other sensitive habitats. It separates landowners from fields and pastureland. It’s an aesthetic abomination.
We could go on, but fortunately we don’t have to. Thanks to the voters’ repudiation of Trump, the wall will not go on either. Presidentelect Joe Biden has pledged to halt construction as soon as he takes office. We applaud that decision.
Unfortunately, bringing Trump’s Folly to its ignominious end won’t be quite as simple as opponents had hoped. Even though Trump has completed only 30 miles of new wall, according to a Customs and Border Protection report obtained recently by the San Antonio Express-News, construction has accelerated during the past year, and Trump has vowed to keep pushing until he departs the White House.
At this very moment, as the Associated Press reported recently, “work crews are blasting through mountains and destroying tree-like cactus and other habitat in Arizona and New Mexico.”
Mostly they’re working in wildlife refuges and Native American territory that the federal government already owns, although in South Texas, Trump’s border-wall minions are more intrusive. In the Rio Grande Valley, in the Laredo area, along the border near Eagle Pass and elsewhere, the Justice Department is suing landowners and threatening to take property through eminent domain. The pressure is unrelenting, regardless of costs to the environment and wildlife or the deleterious effects on the lives and livelihoods of ranchers and farmers whose land is being taken.
Making it difficult for Biden to fulfill his pledge to build “not another foot of border wall” are contracts the government has let with numerous construction companies. The new administration could terminate the contracts, but under federal rules contractors could seek costly settlements.
According to the Texas Civil Rights Project, Homeland Security has filed more than 117 lawsuits against landowners this year. Except for tactics of delay, citizens determined to hold on to their land have few tools for fighting back. We applaud their determination, but battling an opponent with virtually unlimited resources is an expensive and time- consuming proposition. With assistance from civil rights and property rights groups, we hope they can hold on.
Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar is looking for a more definitive end to Trump’s border wall obsession. The Laredo Democrat, whose 28th congressional district abuts the border for roughly 200 miles, released a letter last week that offers guidelines to the incoming administration for thwarting Trump’s last-minute building spree. He urges Biden first, to rescind the national emergency declaration that allowed the president to build his wall with some $6 billion that Congress originally allocated to the Defense Department. It’s money that was supposed to have been used for new schools, training facilities and maintenance on military bases.
Cuellar, who oversees border wall funding as vice chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, also would direct the Justice Department to dismiss all condemnation suits, terminate all current and pending Army Corps of Engineer contracts and rescind waivers allowing Homeland Security to construct new border barriers.
“We must remedy the challenges border communities have faced
over the last four years due to the Trump administration’s insistence on constructing a wasteful border wall,” Cuellar said in a statement. “Our number- one priority at this time should be preventing the spread of COVID-19, saving lives and supporting working families.”
Cuellar emphasizes, as do we, that opposition to Trump’s wall in no way implies support for open borders. A nation has every right — indeed, an obligation — to control who and what comes in. Biden surely agrees since as a senator, he voted to take private land under the Secure Fence Act of 2006. But Trump’s obsession with building a multibillion-dollar barrier in places where it’s clearly not needed is as self-defeating as it is fiscally irresponsible. Walls will be breached. A strategy that relies on smart, 21st Century technology (in conjunction with barriers in some places), sensible immigration laws and regulations, as well as cooperation with our southern neighbors on mutual border issues, stands a much better chance of success than an absurd and offensive medieval barrier from the Gulf to the Pacific.