Controversy of US-Mexico border wall

Ineffectiveness

Research at Texas A&M University and Texas Tech University indicates that the wall, like border walls in general, is unlikely to be effective at reducing illegal immigration or movement of contraband.

In mid-April, 2019, Arizona's junior U.S. Senator, Republican Martha McSallysaid that a barrier will not resolve the border crisis.

Effectiveness

The US Customs and Border Protection Agency has frequently called for more physical barriers on the Mexico-United States border, citing their efficacy.""I started in the San Diego sector in 1992 and it didn't matter how many agents we lined up," said Chief Patrol Agent Rodney Scott. "We could not make a measurable impact on the flow [of undocumented immigrants] across the border. It wasn't until we installed barriers along the border that gave us the upper hand that we started to get control."

Carla Provost, the chief of U.S. border patrol, stated "We already have many miles, over 600 miles of barrier along the border. I have been in locations where there was no barrier, and then I was there when we put it up. It certainly helps. It's not a be all end all. It's a part of a system. We need the technology, we need that infrastructure," she added in the interview that aired Thursday."

Divided land

Tribal lands of three indigenous nations would be divided by a proposed border fence.

On January 27, 2008, a Native American human rights delegation in the United States, which included Margo Tamez (Lipan Apache-Jumano Apache) and Teresa Leal (Opata-Mayo) reported the removal of the official International Boundary obelisks of 1848 by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in the Las Mariposas, Sonora-Arizona sector of the Mexico–U.S. border.

The obelisks were moved southward approximately 20 m (70 ft), onto the property of private landowners in Sonora, as part of the larger project of installing the 18-foot (5.5 m) steel barrier wall.

The proposed route for the border fence would divide the campus of the University of Texas at Brownsville into two parts, according to Antonio N. Zavaleta, a vice president of the university.

There have been campus protests against the wall by students who feel it will harm their school.

In August 2008, UT-Brownsville reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for the university to construct a portion of the fence across and adjacent to its property. The final agreement, which was filed in federal court on Aug 5 and formally signed by the Texas Southmost College Board of Trustees later that day, ended all court proceedings between UTB/TSC and DHS. On August 20, 2008, the university sent out a request for bids for the construction of a 10-foot (3.0 m) high barrier that incorporates technology security for its segment of the border fence project. The southern perimeter of the UTB/TSC campus will be part of a laboratory for testing new security technology and infrastructure combinations.

The border fence segment on the UTB campus was substantially completed by December 2008.

The SpaceX South Texas Launch Site was shown on a map of the Department of Homeland Security with the barrier cutting through the 50-acre facility (20 ha) in Boca Chica, Texas, on the Gulf of Mexico near Brownsville.

Hidalgo County

In the spring of 2007 more than 25 landowners, including a corporation and a school district, from Hidalgo and Starr County in Texas refused border fence surveys, which would determine what land was eligible for building on, as an act of protest.

In July 2008, Hidalgo County and Hidalgo County Drainage District No. 1 entered into an agreement with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for the construction of a project that combines the border fence with a levee to control flooding along the Rio Grande. As of September 2008, construction of two of the Hidalgo County fence segments was under way, with five more segments scheduled to be built during the fall of 2008. The Hidalgo County section of the border fence was planned to constitute 22 miles (35 km) of combined fence and levee.

Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge

On August 1, 2018, the chief of the Border Patrol's Rio Grande Valley sector indicated that although Starr County was his first priority for a wall, Hidalgo County's Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge had been selected instead for initial construction, because its land was owned by the government.

National Butterfly Center

The proposed border wall has been described as a "death sentence" for the American National Butterfly Center, a privately operated outdoor butterfly conservatorythat maintains a significant amount of land in Mexico.

Filmmaker Krista Schlyer, part of an all-woman team creating a documentary film about the butterflies and the border wall, Ay Mariposa,

estimates that construction would put "70 percent of the preserve habitat" on the Mexican side of the border.

In addition to concerns about seizure of private property by the federal government,

Center employees have also noted the local economic impact. The Center's director has stated that "environmental tourism contributes more than $450m to Hidalgo and Starr counties."

In early December 2018, a challenge to wall construction at the National Butterfly Center was rejected by the US Supreme Court. According to the San Antonio Express News, "the high court let stand an appeals ruling that lets the administration bypass 28 federal laws", including the Endangered Species Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

Mexico's condemnations

See also: Mexico–United States relations

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Mexico–United States barrier at the pedestrian border crossing in Tijuana

In 2006, the Mexican government vigorously condemned the Secure Fence Act of 2006. Mexico has also urged the U.S. to alter its plans for expanded fences along their shared border, saying that it would damage the environment and harm wildlife.

In June 2007, it was announced that a section of the barrier had been mistakenly built from 1 to 6 feet (2 meters) inside Mexican territory. This will necessitate the section being moved at an estimated cost of over $3 million (U.S.).

In 2012, then presidential candidate of Mexico Enrique Peña Nieto was campaigning in Tijuana at the Playas de Monumental, less than 600 yards (550 m) from the U.S.–Mexico border adjacent to Border Field State Park. In one of his speeches he criticized the U.S. government for building the barriers, and asked for them to be removed, referencing Ronald Reagan's "Tear down this wall!" speech from Berlin in 1987.

Migrant deaths

Main article: Migrant deaths along the Mexico–United States border

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The wall at the border of Tijuana, Mexico and San Diego; the crosses represent migrants who have died in crossing attempts.

Between 1994 and 2007, there were around 5,000 migrant deaths along the Mexico–United States border, according to a document created by the Human Rights National Commission of Mexico, also signed by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Between 43 and 61 people died trying to cross the Sonoran Desert from October 2003 to May 2004; three times that of the same period the previous year.

In October 2004 the Border Patrol announced that 325 people had died crossing the entire border during the previous 12 months.

Between 1998 and 2004, 1,954 persons are officially reported to have died along the Mexico–U.S. border. Since 2004, the bodies of 1,086 migrants have been recovered in the southern Arizona desert.

U.S. Border Patrol Tucson Sector reported on October 15, 2008 that its agents were able to save 443 undocumented immigrants from certain death after being abandoned by their smugglers, during FY 2008, while reducing the number of deaths by 17% from 202 in FY 2007 to 167 in FY 2008. Without the efforts of these agents, hundreds more could have died in the deserts of Arizona.

According to the same sector, border enhancements like the wall have allowed the Tucson Sector agents to reduce the number of apprehensions at the borders by 16% compared with fiscal year 2007.

On 13 December 2018, US media reported that Jakelin Caal, a 7-year-old from Guatemala, had died while in custody of US Customs.

The girl’s family denied she did not have enough food to eat before she died.

Environmental impact

See also: Environmental issues along the Mexico–United States border

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The Gulf Coast jaguarundiis already threatened by extinction.

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"Wildlife-friendly" border wall in Brownsville, Texas, which would allow wildlife to cross the border. A young man climbs the wall using horizontal beams for foot support.

In April 2008, the Department of Homeland Security announced plans to waive more than 30 environmental and cultural laws to speed construction of the barrier. Despite claims from then Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoffthat the department would minimize the construction's impact on the environment, critics in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, asserted that the fence endangered species and fragile ecosystems along the Rio Grande. Environmentalists expressed concern about butterfly migration corridors and the future of species of local wildcats, the ocelot, the jaguarundi, and the jaguar.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) conducted environmental reviews of each pedestrian and vehicle fence segment covered by the waiver, and published the results of this analysis in Environmental Stewardship Plans (ESPs).

Although not required to by the waiver, CBP has conducted the same level of environmental analysis (in the ESPs) that would have been performed before the waiver (in the "normal" NEPA process) to evaluate potential impacts to sensitive resources in the areas where fence is being constructed.

[citation needed]

ESPs completed by CBP contain extremely limited surveys of local wildlife. For example, the ESP for the border fence built in the Del Rio Sector included a single survey for wildlife completed in November 2007, and only "3 invertebrates, 1 reptile species, 2 amphibian species, 1 mammal species, and 21 bird species were recorded." The ESPs then dismiss the potential for most adverse effects on wildlife, based on sweeping generalizations and without any quantitative analysis of the risks posed by border barriers. Approximately 461 acres (187 ha) of vegetation will be cleared along the impact corridor. From the Rio Grande Valley ESP: "The impact corridor avoids known locations of individuals of Walker's manioc (Manihot walkerae) and Zapata bladderpod (Physaria thamnophila), but approaches several known locations of Texas ayenia (Ayenia limitaris). For this reason, impacts on federally listed plants are anticipated to be short-term, moderate, and adverse." This excerpt is typical of the ESPs in that the risk to endangered plants is deemed short-term without any quantitative population analysis.

[citation needed]

By August 2008, more than 90% of the southern border in Arizona and New Mexico had been surveyed. In addition, 80% of the California-Mexico border has been surveyed.

About 100 species of plants and animals, many already endangered, are threatened by the wall, including the jaguar, ocelot, Sonoran pronghorn, Mexican wolf, a pygmy owl, the thick-billed parrot, and the Quino checkerspot butterfly. According to Scott Egan of Rice University, a wall can create a population bottleneck, increase inbreeding, and cut off natural migration routes and range expansion.

An initial 75-mile (121 km) wall for which U.S. funding has been requested on the nearly 2,000-mile (3,200 km) mile border would pass through the Tijuana Slough National Wildlife Refuge in California, the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refugeand Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge

in Texas, and Mexico's Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refugeand El Pinacate y Gran Desierto de Altar Biosphere Reserve, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site that the U.S. is bound by global treaty to protect.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) plans to build the wall using the Real ID Act to avoid the process of making environmental impact statements, a strategy devised by Michael Chertoff during the Bush administration. Reuters said, "The Real ID Act also allows the secretary of Homeland Security to exempt CBP from adhering to the Endangered Species Act", which would otherwise prohibit construction in a wildlife refuge.