As a citizen of Laredo and rancher in San Ygnacio, I want to thank the City Council for finally standing up to the declaration of a national emergency that has transformed a hateful campaign promise into the looming, imminent, fast-paced possibility that will change the river and our lives on the border forever.
In the wake of learning that the City will get but one mile of bulkhead construction — and not the 13 for which Council members and City staff lobbied so assiduously locally with U.S. Border Patrol, the Department of Homeland Security, and with legislators in Austin and D.C. for a good part of 2019 — the Laredo City Council on Monday passed a resolution to file an amicus brief in support of the lawsuit filed by the Río Grande International Study Center (RGISC) against President Trump’s February 15, 2019 declaration of a national emergency.
Raul García, an attorney with Earthjustice — the national non-profit law firm that represents RGISC and other stakeholders and property owners in the lawsuit — said that the declaration last February declared the Southern border a war zone.
“The President said he needed money meant for military construction and other matters in order to build the border barrier in Laredo and elsewhere throughout the Southern border,” García said, distinguishing the difference between the two pots of funding sources: Congressional appropriations for wall funding in the Lower Río Grande Valley and Trump’s violation of the U.S. Constitution with the declaration of a national emergency.
He spoke succinctly before the Council on Oct. 7, dismantling with unvarnished truth the City’s quixotic quest to turn a 10-year old mothballed drawing of a bulkhead into a riverfront alternative to a 30-foot steel bollard wall.
García said the time had come and gone for the City to negotiate with the federal government, “which in order to build this wall, they are waiving every single law on the border, including the National Environmental Policy Act, which guarantees public input and environmental analyses, which are usually done when there is water contamination and infrastructure being built. That happens everywhere else but here.”
He noted that Starr County’s good faith negotiations with the federal government were for naught, as evidenced by last week’s media announcement that Starr County would see at least 42 miles of bollard wall construction.
He said the Trump government planned “never to engage with local communities. They are planning and building, and the people who will bear the brunt are left without any say. This was the plan of the Trump administration from the get-go.”
García added that the wall’s builders, the Army Corps of Engineers, “has not engaged with the City, has not had one meeting with anyone in Laredo. They are not going to come to your front door to ask for your opinion. They are going to ram it through.”
According to García, the President’s drive to build the wall, paint it black, and to pardon any law broken by anyone building the wall in his administration “tells you how lawless this monument to hate is going to be.”
García continued, “Our ask is for you to stand with your constituents, to stand with people who care about this issue and to make sure that the City acts, that it is outspoken.”
He said that despite a Council resolution passed in 2017 opposing the border wall, the City’s silence since then is no longer an option in light of the announcement that the wall “will be here by the end of this year.”
He said that the one voice that the Trump administration has consistently silenced “is the voice of local communities. They are not asking people on the border what this thing should be or whether we need it or what form it should take. This is an opportunity for the City to weigh in and be able to say there is no place for this.”
He likened the racist affront of the wall to the slandering of a family’s name. “When someone comes to your door and insults your family, you don’t negotiate. You stand up.”
According to García, the declaration of a national emergency is tantamount to the president saying, “This town, this city, is a war zone, and therefore it does not deserve the protection the law gives to the rest of the country.”
The president, he continued, “is going to build this wall with or without the rule of law. That is what we are challenging in court.”
One after another, Laredoans spoke at the public podium against the border wall and to implore the City to take a stand against the declaration of the national emergency. Among them were educators, students, and environmentalists.
By unanimous vote, with the absence of members George Altgelt of District VII and Rudy Gonzalez of District I, the Council agreed to revisit their 2017 resolution against the border wall, pass a new resolution opposing the national emergency declaration, and file an amicus brief in support of the RGISC lawsuit.
What remains to be seen is how pronounced will be the City’s position and whether it will raise its voice with the ever-growing local coalition against the border wall.
I find it lamentable that seven months were lost in the City’s maneuver to sell the 13-mile bulkhead to entities that, as it turns out, apparently were deaf to local concerns or had no say or sway in its viability.
RGISC did not idly sit by for seven months. There was a great deal of face-to-face communication between RGISC — including members of its board and executive director Tricia Cortez — and Mayor Saenz, members of the Council, and City administrators to ask that they consider speaking up against the declaration of a national emergency as Zapata County courageously did by unanimous resolution in March of this year.
It was easy to see through the Council’s bulkhead strategy and its earlier thinking that speaking up against the national emergency — the vehicle that has given the racism of the wall velocity and form — could dash the viability of the bulkhead.
The decade-old proposal came with no current environmental review for what its dredging, construction, and alteration of the river’s channel would spell for the environment and for flooding in Nuevo Laredo.
The bulkhead was perceived as having aesthetic, welcoming value to Mexican visitors. Perhaps it even had economic value, but it threw riverfront property owners, ranches and farms that feed the nation, wildlife habitat, parks, riparian environmental treasures, and water quality under the bus, as well as the beauty of the river and those who count on access to it for health, respite, and recreational pursuits.
Had I had to consider a matter as weighty as this, I would have thought first of the river and everything that draws life from it, with us — the citizenry, including the eight members of the City Council and their children — first in line for the sustainability of our lives at the tap into Laredo’s sole source of water, the Río Grande, one of the 10 most endangered rivers in the world.
In the world.
SIDEBAR
When Tricia Cortez and RGISC board members met last Spring one-on-one with Webb County Judge Tano Tijerina, his staff, and individual commissioners to ask if they would join the Earthjustice lawsuit or take a stand on the declaration of a national emergency, they got a resounding “Nope” at the top and little interest elsewhere. That changed, however, on October 7 when Commissioners Jesse Gonzalez of Pct. 1 and Wawi Tijerina of Pct. 2 began working in earnest on an agenda item for next week’s County Commissioners meeting to file an amicus brief in support of the RGISC lawsuit.
A tip of the hat and much gratitude to District III City Council member Mercurio Martinez III for authoring the agenda item and for stating, as did District II Council member Vidal Rodriguez, that he stands with RGISC. And a nod to District IV Council member Albert Torres for being well informed and for giving this worthy agenda item the attention and momentum it merited.
Big step by council now remains to be seen if the Commissioner’s Court will follow in their footsteps. Hard to imagine any organ of local government not supporting the RGISC lawsuit. It’s a David vs Goliath and this Goliath ignores all the rules but it’s a fight worth fighting to build a record as to who is and who isn’t on the right side of history. The only way to stop this madness is to make a change at the top so the next president will pursue a saner more effective way to reduce the migration of undocumented persons seeking asylum.