Laredoans who attended last week’s Border Wall Town Hall meeting got eye-opening firsthand accounts on how the construction of the proposed wall will begin to affect them.
The forum, which was hosted by the Río Grande International Study Center (RGISC) at the UT Health Science campus on Bustamante St., was filled to capacity with many who had questions about the environmental, legal, quality of life, and cultural impacts the wall portends.
The answers came from the speakers for the informative, well-organized event, some who have experienced the federal government’s iron-fisted will to see the project’s destructive, racially-charged sweep through the river and wildlife habitat resources of the 10th most endangered river in the world.
The speakers included Mariana Treviño Wright of the National Butterfly Center in Mission, a panel of attorneys from the Texas Civil Rights Project (TCRP) in Alamo and from Washington, DC-based Earthjustice, and Laredo biologist Tom Miller of the Lamar Bruni Vergara Environmental Science Center.
Wright, wielding a wooden stake coated with orange fluorescent paint, laid out an unfiltered scenario for the progress of the border wall in the Valley. She said such markers heralded the presence of the U.S Army Corps of Engineers and their frequent trespass on private property prior to securing Right of Entry permission from landowners.
She cautioned landowners not to sign Right of Entry letters from the Corps of Engineers. “The word ‘irrevocable’ tells you that you can’t undo it,” she said, adding, “Say, ‘No.’ Your greatest asset is time.”
Citing the waiver of more than 40 federal laws for the construction of the border wall, Wright called the project a “lawless” endeavor, adding that the federal government’s waiver of the Clean Water Act gave notice of the intent to violate it. “As the wall construction is underway, construction waste will contaminate your water and the water of your children and grandchildren, who will have no legal recourse. These waived laws, which were written to protect you, will no longer apply to you and to this river.”
Wright spoke of the importance of being vocal in communicating with elected officials in every way possible and also of knowing what their political alignments are.
She cited the allegiance of Congressman Henry Cuellar, who serves on the House Committee for Homeland Security, to his campaign donors from the private prison industry, which benefits vastly from the prolonged incarceration of detained immigrants. She stressed the importance of knowing which legislators had enabled the wall to be built — Texas Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz and Congressman Cuellar. “Even Beto O’Rourke,” she added.
Wright spoke of the wall construction as President Trump’s repayment of political favors through the financial gains of steel providers, among them, she alleged, “the Russian oligarchs who own an American steel mill,” and construction contractors who will build the wall.
It is the residents along the border, she added, who will suffer the losses of land, water quality, health, cultural inheritance, and the freedom of access to one’s property and the riverfront.
Wright raised a clear voice for the river and its wildlife ecosystems as plans for the wall’s construction began to spell out radical and devastating changes in the ecology of the Río Grande Valley, the river, and the millions who depend on it as their only source of drinking water.
The National Butterfly Center was spared border wall construction, along with the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, the Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park, and the historic La Lomita Catholic chapel. Those carve-outs, however, aren’t permanent and may come into play once more during future Congressional hearings for border wall funding.
Her message at the Laredo town hall meeting was succinct — organize a coalition against the wall, make noise, raise your voices, communicate with elected officials at all levels of government, and march. “Leave your manners at the door,” she suggested.
Wright reminded attendees that the border wall land takings are “the largest seizure of private property in recent history.”
Rick Garza, an attorney with the TCRP’s Alamo office spoke of his counsel to Valley landowners. “The government assumes people will sign over their land. The government has to go through the Constitution to claim privately owned land by eminent domain. We want landowners to know their rights and the value of due process. You don’t have to consent to sell or to take an insulting offer. The government should pay what the land is worth,” he said.
Asked if the border wall was a foregone conclusion, Garza answered that in the time that he has worked with Valley landowners who have fought for their rights and their land, “not an inch of new border wall has been built.”
Attorney Raul García of Earthjustice, a national non-profit law firm that represents RGISC and other stakeholders and property owners along the entire stretch of the U.S./Mexico border, addressed the waiver of NEPA, the National Environmental Policy Act, which allows citizen input into assessments of environmental impact a proposed project may have.
“It is the right to be able to speak at town hall meetings with decision makers. It’s been waived on the border, but the rest of the country still enjoys that right,” García said.
“The law the President cannot waive is the American Constitution,” García said. “When he declared a national emergency and re-directed funds to wall construction, he violated Article I of the Constitution.”
The attorney called out Congressman Cuellar on border wall literature distributed in his absence by a staff member at the town hall meeting. “Where is the public input? This is not a war zone. Why does the Department of Defense need operational control? These are lies,” he said, holding up the eight-page document.
García urged landowners to “Raise your voices in D.C.” He offered himself and Earthjustice as resources “to take the true stories of Laredoans to Washington.”
Earthjustice has 15 law offices across the country and 167 fulltime attorneys who represent environmental clients at no charge. The firm — which fights for clean water, clean air, and wild places — represents the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in its ongoing legal battle with the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Tom Miller, who has studied and enjoyed this stretch of the Río Grande over the last four decades, addressed erosion and the siltation of the river as wall construction is underway. “How will the wall cross tributaries to the river, arroyos, and streams? Wildlife with habitat ranges on both sides of the river — including deer, ocelot, mountain lions, and porcupine — will be cut off on this side from their primary water source.”
Miller said the river above the Columbia Solidarity Bridge where the first 52 miles of wall will be built to the Maverick County line “is wild and beautiful with boulder fields, rapids, and waterfalls.”
Elsa Hull, a property owner on the river below San Ygnacio and an environmental investigator, read a plaintive poem about the connection to pristine riparian habitat and wildlife she has enjoyed on the river with her family over the last 20 years. The poem, which was accompanied by photos of her view of the river just outside her gate, ended with a picture of a message on her rooftop — “No Border Wall.” Hull’s message was well taken and ended with resounding applause.
During the Q&A that followed the program, Mayor Pete Saenz told the gathering, “We don’t want the wall. We are watchful and looking at the next federal budget. We are concerned about Las Palmas Park and the river. If the federal government is going to impose a wall, we proposed a bulkhead.”
Those comments were not well-received by the audience and by one attendee in particular.
Joseph Hein, a rancher at the Webb-Zapata County line, told Saenz, “How dare you trade my ranch for that bulkhead. Be fair. Represent everyone.”
Frontera Radio host Sergio Mora said there was ample proof that the wall will not hinder immigrant entry, to which attorney García added, “This administration is not concerned with reality. The wall is a political stunt that objectifies racism. It is a statue to hate.”
Mercurio Martinez III, the only Laredo City Council member in attendance, said, “Speaking for myself, I am totally against the wall. It hurts us, and it offends our neighbors.”
Wright reminded attendees that opposition to the wall was “a marathon, not a sprint. You can’t get tired of this.”
Johnathan Salinas, a member of the executive committee of the Lower Rio Grande Sierra Club, one of the last town hall attendees to make a comment, addressed Mayor Pete Saenz, acknowledging the City’s stance on the bulkhead as “If we are going to get the wall, we should get the most amenable version.”
Referring to rancher Hein’s earlier comment to Mayor Saenz, Salinas said Hein was “rightfully indignant about his land being used as a chit in negotiations with the federal government.”
Salinas said that Starr County leaders had tried the same customized approach to a border wall as Laredo had. They collaborated with Congressman Cuellar to secure language in the 2019 appropriations bill that stipulated that CBP would consult with municipal governments about border wall placements.
Salinas said that Starr County leaders met with CBP a few times over several months and presented an alternative wall proposal. CBP acknowledged receipt and said the matter would be reviewed.
“They found out as Laredo leaders have that CBP is not interested, and that as with the City of Laredo’s plan to sacrifice freedom and private property for security or economic development, it got neither,” Salinas said.
Near the close of the town hall meeting, RGISC executive director Tricia Cortez urged attendees to be present at the Oct. 7, 2019 City Council meeting to make known their opposition to the border wall.
“Stopping the border wall from being built in our community is the most important issue facing Laredo today,” Cortez said after the town hall meeting. “The window of time in which we have to act is extremely narrow, and the damage that it will do will be so permanent. Now is the time to join the movement to stop this radical land grab by the feds. Now is the time to stop the construction of this destructive, useless, and un-American border wall.”
The City Council will reportedly re-visit its position on the national emergency declaration and border wall at the upcoming meeting, perhaps considering joining the Earthjustice lawsuit with an amicus brief.
Cortez said one of the most important takeaways from the town hall meeting was being able to join hands with Valley activists who are working to stop the border wall. “We need to work with other border wall coalitions, share information, and speak up in one voice for the river and for a way of life protected by federal laws that safeguard free speech, water, and the environment,” she said, adding, “We are inviting anyone who wants to join us in this effort, to call the RGISC office at (956) 718-1063 or to visit rgisc.org.”
SIDEBAR
The town hall meeting on the border wall presented a much-needed forum to hear of the measures by which our lives will change as we experience the world along and through a steel bollard fence.
For those who have thought the wall’s construction might be a far-off proposition or that it simply would not happen here, the sobering stories of Valley residents who are in the throes of eminent domain takings of farm and ranch lands have handed us a reality check.
It isn’t only our vista that will change.
In the straight line expediency of the Army Corps of Engineers, the 72 miles of the wall from the downtown railroad bridge south to the Falcon Reservoir will truncate and rob the rich river vega from ranches and farms and traverse schools, public parks, neighborhoods, businesses, and environmentally sensitive wildlife habitat.
It will be built up from the riverbanks, disturbing millions of tons of soil that will silt-up the river and the quality of water for millions of border residents for whom the Río Grande is their sole source of drinking water.
The wall’s construction will be the largest man-made source of contamination and devastation exacted on the Río Grande, a life altering disaster for the fisheries and wildlife and for farmers and ranchers who feed the nation.
The wall will not stop the flow of immigration into this country built by immigrants. The wall’s bollard construction has proven to present a 30-second impediment to lithe climbers and no impediment to those ingenuous enough to find other means to navigate it.
The wall is political folly, a campaign promise that will exact incalculable losses on everyone and everything that takes life from this river.
Should it become a reality, the rusted form of the wall encrusted with sopilote guano will always be a monument to racism and xenophobia and an affront to the mother country from which our forebears and many of us migrated and to which we have indelible cultural ties.
The wall will edify, too, those who did not speak up against it and those who had the political will to act against it but did not find the courage to do so.
MEG
I WALKED TO THE RIVER
By Elsa Hull
I walked to the river this morning
And saw seven deer bounding into the brush.
Where is the emergency, Mr. President?
I walked to the river this afternoon
And saw a great blue heron spear a fish.
Where is the emergency, Mr. President?
I walked to the river this evening
And watched the setting sun sparkle off the water.
Where is the emergency, Mr. President?
I walked to the river tonight
And heard the coyotes yipping nearby.
Where is the emergency, Mr. President?
I hear the birds singing, the frogs chirping, the cattle lowing.
I hear the water lapping at the shore and the wind softly blowing through the carrizo.
I see the beauty in this river of life, a river uniting, not dividing, people.
I see many things along this river, Mr. President.
However, . . .
I do not see your emergency.
This wall will be a monument to the stupidity and blatant racism of the brattish, pathologic egoist presently besmirching the White House. We must rid our country of this orange plague infesting our entire nation and making the U.S. the world’s laughing stock, and yesterday was not soon enough to cast of Trump’s pure evil. I pity the Laredoans who support this asinine excuse for a real man and ask if Crusius, the El Paso mass murderer, would have distinguished Mexican American Trump supporters from others had he decided to shoot up a Laredo Walmart. Brutos.
Meg, what an informative article of what transpired in the Townhall meeting . It surely opened our eyes to the terrible consequences and negative impact this proposed wall will have in our area, in our life source, our river, and our community. We, Laredoans have to take a stand.