Bringing down the

LUKE TURF
Tucson Citizen
July 1, 2003
After protests locally and nationally, officials from the Department of Homeland Security say a controversial proposal to barricade most of the border between Arizona and Mexico is "not based upon reality."
The proposal, which cost about $250,000, is known as the Border Patrol's Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, and it's going back to the drawing board.
Originally released in October 2002, the 354-page statement was supposed to envision all the roads, lights, fences and other development the agency would need to effectively secure the border. It's part of the National Environmental Policy Act requiring agencies to assess impacts of broad governmental policies.
But according to Jim Caffrey, facilities director for the Border Patrol, the agency got "a little carried away" and envisioned more infrastructure than could ever be needed, even if the United States and Mexico went to war, he said.
"We're going to go back and be, I guess, a little bit more realistic," he said. "We were a little bit overly enthusiastic when we started this process."
Nonetheless, the proposal created a united front of human rights and environmental organizations joining forces to "bring down the wall."
The Department of Homeland Security got 162 comment letters and about 1,000 unsigned form letters regarding the project, according to the department's program manager for border infrastructure, Geraldine Pontius.
 

Of the 351 miles of land border between Arizona and Mexico, 261 miles fall within the Border Patrol's Tucson sector. The agency proposed to line 222.3 of the 261 miles with a primary pedestrian barrier, on top of what already exists. In addition, the statement called for 233 miles of secondary barriers with a road in between the two fences to make it twice as hard for people to illegally enter the United States.
It also called for 631 miles of new roads in the Tucson sector and dozens of lights, including stadium-style fixtures.
"Many of these ideas were not based upon reality and were only conjectured plans for a USBP response to a 'worst case scenario,' " according to a public notice issued by the Department of Homeland Security.
The original statement concluded the plan to move ahead with the barriers, roads and lights would have "no significant impact" on the environment.
And it was "a joke in terms of its analysis," according to Scotty Johnson, Defenders of Wildlife's rural outreach coordinator in Tucson.
"This is either total incompetence or an attempt to slip it through without scrutiny," Johnson said of the statement. "It was so poorly done it was offensive to science (and) it was offensive to policy-makers who need to decide the impacts of the development."
It's particularly disturbing to Johnson because the proposed barriers won't only keep out illegal immigrants, but they'll also prevent the return of a sometimes-spotted, sometimes-black jaguar that once called Arizona home. Populations are now found only in Mexico. Johnson says the jaguar was sighted in Arizona recently, hinting at a possible migration from Mexico, but the walls would stop any progress in the species return.
The statement also didn't take into consideration the effect of 24 hours of light, 365 days a year, on nocturnal animals such as the endangered lesser long-nosed bat, Johnson said.
 

It also ignores the endangered pygmy owl, said Daniel Patterson of the Center for Biological Diversity.
"It's going to trap wildlife on both sides of the border," Patterson said of the barriers. "The wall would take what is currently a political barrier and make it a wildlife barrier."
Besides the biological impact, human rights groups such as Tucson-based Derechos Humanos, spearheads of the Bring Down the Walls campaign, are concerned about the political impact and the impact on people who illegally immigrate to the United States, because it would push them even farther into the harsh deserts where more than 50 people have already died since October.
"With the history and experience of this strategy of sealing the border, policy-makers should be charged with high crimes in an international tribune," said Derechos Humanos founder Isabel Garcia. "It's outrageous that we are creating a war zone between the states of Arizona and Sonora."
Garcia said 15 to 20 local organizations have signed on to Bring Down the Walls.
Pontius said the agency plans to "rewrite" the statement.
"Needs that were identified two or three years ago can change," Pontius said. "I don't know if it's less or more. We don't know what it is; we haven't determined it yet."
But Johnson, who said his agency never received a copy of the statement despite requesting it, said he doubts the agency will do more than pay lip service to environmental laws.
"Is this or is this not developments into the foreseeable future?" Johnson asked. "It may be that their philosophy is it's better to beg forgiveness than ask permission, but once the wall is up, the wall is up."
 

Caffrey and Pontius insisted the statement doesn't give the agency a green light for any construction. They said they hope to have a new issue out for review by the end of the year.
Any project to be implemented by the Border Patrol must include a published environmental assessment, for which the statement acts as a reference, that must be reviewed by agencies including the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, they said.
Of the Border Patrol's four types of fencing, the document doesn't specify which types would have been used, which further irked Sean Garcia, senior associate of the Washington- based Latin America Working Group, a national coalition focused on the impact of U.S. policy on Latin American human rights.
"They say they can't find any kind of environmental impact, and they don't even know what kind of fencing they are going to use," he said.
Even the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency expressed objections to the statement.
"The DPEIS lacks critical information regarding the proposed actions and their environmental impacts. The infrastructure proposed in the preferred alternative will result in the alteration of 5,260 acres of land which will be stripped of vegetation, graded, filled, or paved.
"An additional 1,700 acres of land will be disturbed by proposed operations, including continued patrol activities and illumination for 12-hour periods at night with stadium-style lighting. The affected area includes critical habitat for over 43 endangered species, numerous streams, wetlands, and ephemeral washes, unknown number of cultural and native American sites, including reservation property of 10 Indian tribes, and 27 ecologically unique sites," according to a letter issued by the agency.
 

 A jaguar was captured on film by the Arizona Game & Fish Department.