Border fence faces challenges

WASHINGTON – With a green light from Congress, proposals to erect hundreds of miles of new fences along the southwestern border are moving closer to reality, but advocates still face a host of challenges, including right-of-way issues and diplomatic friction with Mexico.

The Senate endorsed its version of border barriers last week, calling for 370 miles of triple-wide fencing that will cost at least $1 billion. A more expansive $2.2 billion House of Representatives plan envisions nearly 700 miles of fencing in each of the four states bordering Mexico.

The proposals, included in separate immigration bills, reflect a growing outcry to plug the nation’s porous borders as Congress grapples with legislation to deal with as many as 12 million illegal immigrants who’ve entered the United States over the past two decades.

Calls for extensive border fencing traditionally have gone nowhere in Congress. But the momentum has shifted dramatically in the post-Sept. 11 era, with lawmakers now lining up behind measures that would stretch fencing across at least one-fifth of the nearly 2,000-mile-long U.S.-Mexico border.

“We’re going to build,” Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., the architect of the House proposal, said Friday.

The Senate voted 83-16 to support fencing in sections of the border that are especially vulnerable to illegal immigration and drug smuggling. The Senate plan, endorsed by President Bush, is based on recommendations by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who’s overseeing the administration’s plans to toughen border security.

Hunter’s proposal, passed by the House in December, designates fencing in five specific sections of the border in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. They range from a 10-mile stretch in far western California to three segments in Texas totaling nearly 370 miles, including an area near Laredo that’s been plagued by a spillover of violence from a Mexican drug war.

The congressional embrace of expanded fencing stems at least in part from a growing grass-roots clamor for toughened national security. A citizens lobbying group called WeNeedAFence.com, for example, has called for an elaborate, multifaceted fence stretching the length of the border.

Members of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, which has drawn controversy and international attention with its volunteer border watchers, also plan to erect fences on private ranch land along the border, according to spokeswoman Connie Hair. They’re scheduled to break ground for their first project on an Arizona ranch next week.

Colin Hanna, president of WeNeedAFence.com, described the Senate vote as “a major breakthrough” that underscores a shifting mood to his point of view. “In my mind, that amendment changed everything,” he said. “It may have rescued the immigration issue for the president.”

Others, however, fear that the proposals could soil the country’s welcoming image and undercut relations with its neighbor to the south. Mexican President Vicente Fox has strongly denounced proposals for a fence between the two countries and expressed opposition to the Senate plan last week.

Those sentiments are especially strong in U.S. cities along the border, where civic leaders and business groups fear that the proposed fences will chill friendly relations and robust trade with residents in sister cities in Mexico.

“It will have a negative impact all across border communities,” said Richard Dayoub, president of the Greater El Paso Chamber of Commerce, which works closely with business leaders in Cuidad Juarez, Mexico.

The proposals also have prompted a backlash from environmental groups, who worry that even the more modest Senate proposal would spoil pristine areas and endanger the habitats of wildlife that now wander freely across the border.

Rob Smith, the Southwest representative for the Sierra Club, said Senate-proposed fencing in Arizona could cut through as many nine protected areas covering more than 1 million acres. “It would be a major development in the middle of what is now a world-class national landscape,” said Smith, of Phoenix.

The construction project also could cause monumental logistical problems, including right-of-way issues and potential eminent domain proceedings to allow the government to confiscate land. More than 90 percent of the estimated 11.8 million people living along the border in the United States and Mexico are clustered in 14 sister cities.

The Senate’s overwhelming acceptance of the fence proposal in an amendment by Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., was somewhat unexpected. Several senators said they embraced the plan after Chertoff told them in briefings that it was part of a comprehensive homeland security plan to secure the border.

The administration has opposed Hunter’s plan but supports strategically placed barriers or fences in heavily trafficked, generally populous areas, along with other measures, such as high-tech surveillance, unmanned aircraft and expanded manpower.

Jarrod Agen, a homeland security spokesman, said the department’s plan is still taking shape but will likely include fences in urban areas where “it can take only a second for someone to cross the border and be out of sight before anyone can respond.”

“In these situations, a fence is a necessary and practical deterrent,” he said. The department may use sensors or vehicle barriers in remote areas. Sessions’ amendment also calls for 500 miles of vehicle barriers.

The Border Patrol has installed more than 100 miles of fences, walls and vehicle barriers along the border, primarily in urban areas. The most common barriers are walls composed of steel portable landing strips formerly used by the military.

Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, helped pioneer the use of barriers when he was the El Paso Border Patrol chief in 1993 by ordering the construction of a fence that remains in place today. He supports the limited use of barriers in especially porous areas but believes that the two competing recommendations in Congress both overreach.

The 700-mile proposal, he said, “is a waste of money and not well-thought-out policy.” The Senate’s proposal, he added, “is probably excessive as well.”