Homeland Security Stands by Its Fence
Jeff Topping for The New York Times
The Mexican side of the fence in Naco, a village that straddles the border with Arizona.
Published: May 21, 2008
NACO, Ariz. — As the Department of Homeland Security pushes to complete 670 miles of fencing along the Mexican border by the end of this year, it is confronting the sharpest resistance yet while conceding that physical barriers alone do not stop illegal crossings.
In the latest challenge, the Texas Border Coalition, an organization of mayors, county commissioners and economists opposed to the fence, filed a federal lawsuit on Friday. It says that the homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, failed to conduct required negotiations with property owners and local authorities when he ordered that the barrier be built in Texas. The group wants the construction halted.
The protests come as known efforts at illegal crossings — measured by the number of people detained at the border — have fallen 17 percent this year, after declining 20 percent in 2007, figures that Chief David V. Aguilar of the Border Patrol points to as proof that the overall approach to border enforcement is working.
Still, Mr. Aguilar and other officials acknowledge, the new fencing has mainly proved useful when it has been backed up with other enforcement methods, like electronic surveillance and aggressive prosecution of illegal immigrants caught by the Border Patrol.
Since last year, the steepest drops in illegal crossings along the 2,000-mile border were recorded here in eastern Arizona and in places in Texas where those combined tactics were applied, official figures show.
Technical glitches have plagued plans to expand and enhance the electronic surveillance into a virtual fence, and it remains uncertain when it will be in broader use.
After months of delays, the Border Patrol approved a pilot system in February from its contractor, Boeing, which now says that most of a prototype tested along 28 miles of border will be replaced. The company will also build a virtual fence on another 30-mile stretch of southern Arizona and test similar technology on the Canadian border near Detroit this year.
Mr. Chertoff acknowledged in an interview that constructing physical barriers — as of last month, about 309 miles of fence had been built — is not the key to stopping illegal immigration, but he defended the fence’s usefulness.
“I don’t believe the fence is a cure-all,” Mr. Chertoff said. “Nor do I believe it is a waste. Yes, you can get over it; yes, you can get under it. But it is a useful tool that makes it more difficult for people to cross. It is one of a number of tools we have, and you’ve got to use all of the tools.”
As many as 2,000 immigrants a day still cross the Southwest border illegally, according to estimates by scholars well versed on the border. Continuing a decades-old cat-and-mouse game, the crossers move away from areas where the Border Patrol establishes control to more vulnerable points, most recently near San Diego.
In addition to the border enforcement, immigrant traffic is influenced by a variety of social, political and economic factors; the recent drop in known crossings, for example, occurred as the economy began to sputter, drying up construction jobs and others that lure immigrants.
Trinidad Alamea, who operates a small shelter across the border from Naco, said several nights had passed recently without a single immigrant seeking help. But, Mr. Alamea said, such fluctuations have occurred before, only for immigrant traffic to return when smugglers adjust to whatever new tactic or conditions confront them on the American side.
“The people are going to cross, wall or no wall,” he said.
Opposition to the fence intensified last month after Mr. Chertoff used authority provided by Congress to waive more than two dozen environmental laws and others to push ahead with construction. Mr. Chertoff said his department needed to bypass the laws if it was to meet the goal set by Congress two years ago of completing at least 670 miles of fence by the end of this year.
Fourteen United States representatives, all Democrats, including Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, have said they support a lawsuit filed in April by two environmental groups — the Sierra Club and Defenders of Wildlife — that challenges Mr. Chertoff’s waiver.
Meanwhile, officials in border cities, Indian groups and educational institutions have stepped up their criticism of the fence. The broad array of dissenters are protesting what they say are the economic and environmental impacts of the fence for border cities, ranches and natural areas, and questioning whether the estimated $2.1 billion for its construction is the best use of border security money.
“No thought was given methodically to this idea of the fence,” Patricio M. Ahumada Jr., the mayor of Brownsville, Tex., said on Friday in Washington, where the Texas Border Coalition filed its lawsuit. “Homeland Security is using it to give a false sense of security to middle America that it will keep illegal immigrants and terrorists out, but it just isn’t true.”