A suit filed July 6, 2020 in federal court alleges that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, as directed by Donald Trump, “are engaged in a full-on assault” against the people who reside in Zapata and Webb counties.
Defendant Chad Wolf, the “purported” acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), is being sued in his official capacity. The suit challenges his appointment and the validity of his actions.
The suit was filed by attorney Carlos E. Flores of the firm of Whitworth Cigarroa, PLLC for plaintiffs Zapata County, riverfront property owner Melissa Cigarroa, CCMD, LLC, and George C. Rincón, executive director of San Ygnacio’s River Pierce Foundation.
Zapata County v. Donald Trump
(click to read)
The suit cites the violation of the U.S. Constitution through the weapons of 1) the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA); 2) the Real ID Act; and 3) Executive Order 13767, Trump’s January 25, 2017 order to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
The racist rhetoric of the president’s border wall campaign promise, the suit recounts, has demonized and dehumanized immigrants and border residents — who are largely Mexican-American — into victims of Trump’s animus in the creation of a Constitution-free zone “of not fully vested citizens.”
The suit alleges that Trump and Wolf have violated the Fifth and Tenth Amendments. The Fifth provides protections that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.
The Tenth Amendment states “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
The suit also alleges that the defendants have violated the mandate in IIRIRA Sec. 102(b)(1)(C):
“In carrying out this section, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall consult with the Secretary of the Interior, the Secretary of Agriculture, States, local governments, Indian tribes, and property owners in the United States to minimize the impact on the environment, culture, commerce, and quality of life for the communities and residents located near the sites at which such fencing is to be constructed.”
EXHIBIT 1 – SAN YGNACIO HIST. DISTRICT
(click to read)
Some of the exhibits that accompany the lawsuit, and summaries of those exhibits cited in the complaint, offer some compelling reading. EXHIBITS 2, 3, and 4 shed light on a Facebook group called “I’m 10-15,” BP speak for “aliens in custody.”
EXHIBIT 2 – ProPublca I’M 10-15
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EXHIBIT 3 – THE INTERCEPTOR I’M 10-15
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EXHIBIT 4 – I’M 10-15
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Page 21 of the suit recaps a July 1, 2019 ProPublica story about the secret Facebook group used by some Border Patrol agents.
ProPublica posted: “Members of a secret Facebook group for current and former Border Patrol agents joked about the deaths of migrants, discussed throwing burritos at Latino members of Congress visiting a detention facility in Texas on Monday and posted a vulgar illustration of Rep. Alejandra Ocasio Cortez engaged in oral sex with a detained migrant, according to screenshots of their postings.”
The Intercept, an online journal, reported that on or about July 12, 2019, former United States Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost, was a member of “I’m 10-15.” The article recaps:
“Provost is one of several Border Patrol supervisors The Intercept has identified as current or former participants in the secret Facebook group, including chief patrol agents overseeing whole Border Patrol sectors; multiple patrol agents in charge of individual stations; and ranking officials in the Border Patrol’s union, who have enjoyed direct access to President Donald Trump. (It is technically possible that someone else posted in the group using the individual’s accounts.) The group’s existence has already generated at least two investigations from lawmakers and internal Department of Homeland Security oversight bodies.”
On or about July 15, 2019, The New York Times published:
“At least 62 current federal border agents have joined private Facebook groups and other social media pages that included obscene images of Hispanic lawmakers and threats to members of Congress, internal investigators said on Monday. In all, 70 current or former Customs and Border Protection employees were identified as members of the groups, officials from the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility said.”
The takeaway from reading about “I’m 10-15” is the disconcerting realization that some USBP agents in the workforce are in lockstep with the xenophobic misogynist their union endorsed in the last presidential election.
EXHIBIT 5 recaps the 27 federal laws waived by the DHS and published May 15, 2020 in the Federal Register “for the expeditious construction of barriers and roads” in Webb and Zapata counties. The target area is detailed as “starting at the Colombia Solidarity Bridge and generally following the Rio Grande south and continuing to approximately one-half (0.5) of a mile south of the city limits of San Ignacio.” The first 14 miles of wall in Laredo will cost taxpayers $275 million.
EXHIBIT 5 – FEDERAL LAWS WAIVED FOR LAREDO WALL CONSTRUCTION
(click to read)
EXHIBIT 6 tracks apprehensions in border towns from 1960 through 2019.
Flores expressed his admiration for Zapata County Judge Joe Rathmell and the Zapata County Commissioners Court for their unwavering stance on the border wall issue, “for not letting the sentiments of others factor into their decision. This is no delay tactic. We are a protected class under the Equal Protection Clause making good faith arguments against the unconstitutionality of the border wall.”
EXHIBIT 6 – APPREHENSIONS BY YEAR
(click to read)
EXHIBIT 7 – ORDER OF DISMISSAL BROWNSVILLE
(click to read)
The suit is vast in its scope of historic and statistical data for Webb and Zapata counties and the border communities of Zapata, San Ygnacio, and Laredo, and it is thorough in charting Trump’s racist agenda from a campaign promise to build a border wall to the present-day reality of the heartbreaking, way-of-life-altering condemnations and takings of private property on the riverfront.
It occurred to me as I read through the 51 pages of the well-organized complaint that I was reading a document that presented a wide swath of the history of this region: the then of settlers building a fort and sandstone block houses that two centuries later would put San Ygnacio on the map as one of the last vestiges of Spanish colonial architecture on the frontera; and the now of ruthless government overreaching and indifference to history, culture, the heart of family legacies, and the most valuable natural resource of the borderlands — the Río Grande.
Well do many Zapatans remember the condemnations of their ancestral lands and the loss of the small historic settlements along the river in the early 1950s when the government spun the greater good fantasy of the shallow pan of the Falcon Reservoir.
One of the most clear attributes of the language of this lawsuit is its capture of the spirit of resistance and the enduring essence of a river lending life to all that drinks from it.
