<< BACK TO ARTICLES

PRESIDIO COUNTY – A proposal to build a border fence along southern Presidio County stunned local officials Wednesday.

A new Customs and Border Protection map, obtained by the Associated Press this week, depicts a fence along several segments of a 600-mile stretch of the Texas-Mexico border, including a section in Presidio County. Bill Brooks, spokesperson for the agency’s Marfa Sector, confirmed Wednesday there is a proposal to build a fence in the vicinity of the Presidio Port of Entry.

“We still don’t have any of the specifics,” Brooks said. “Just that Presidio was included in the proposal, which I think came from Congress, to build some fencing along the border with Mexico.”

Brooks said he understood Congress had mandated this portion of fencing be completed by December 2008. The agency is talking to landowners and is going to talk to city and county officials about the proposal, he said.

“We are just really in the early throes of this,” he said. “This has been planned at some really high levels, and it’s just coming down to us.”

Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Russ Knocke said he could not speak to any specific plans in Presidio. But, he said, DHS has been clear and consistent in its plans to install fencing, vehicular barriers, and advanced technologies, such as radar, sensors and cameras, along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“We are building infrastructure as we communicate,” he said. “We have every expectation that we’re going to continue to do so.”

That infrastructure will include traditional fencing in metropolitan areas and surveillance technologies in rural areas, he said.

The proposed Presidio fence was news to Presidio County Judge Jerry Agan, who first learned about it from the Associated Press story.

“When I saw that map, it was the first inkling I had that they planned to put a fence in Presidio,” said Agan, a retired Border Patrol officer and former acting patrol chief. “It’s astounding that DHS would have the effrontery to do that and not even ask any local officials at all about it.”

Rod Ponton, attorney for the city of Presidio and Presidio County, was also surprised to read about the proposal in the Associated Press story.

“This is an issue that the Department of Homeland Security needs to confer with local officials about the impact locally, instead of just letting us read about it in the newspaper,” Ponton said.

Presidio City Administrator Cyndi Clarke had not heard anything about a Presidio fence.

“This is all news to me,” she said. “I’ve never really heard talk of any wall being built down on this end.”

Knocke, however, said DHS has had a “significant and ongoing dialogue” with local and state officials.

“There is a strong commitment from this department to working with local officials on our plans for developing and installing a virtual solution at our borders,” the DHS spokesperson said. “We look forward to continue working with local officials.”

U.S. Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn issued a press release Wednesday calling on DHS to work with local officials on border fence plans.

“Months ago, we were given every assurance by DHS that state and local officials would be consulted on the location of the border fence,” Hutchison said. “We expect DHS to honor their commitment to confer with the local landowners and elected officials.”

Besides being surprised by the fence proposal, local officials were skeptical about the need for a fence between Ojinaga and Presidio.

“With the river down here, I didn’t think there would be any fence. We’ve got our own natural barrier,” Clarke said. “The only reason I think people down here might want a fence is to keep cattle on their land.”

Agan said a border fence at Presidio would not be very effective.

“It wouldn’t deter anybody. They could go around either end of the fence and walk across there,” he said. “Or you could drive up by Candelaria and drive a car across. So I’m not sure what a fence would do.”

Ponton said the fence would not be effective enough to warrant the negative impact it would have on Presidio residents and area tourism.

“The cost of a few extra Border Patrol agents to patrol that area would probably be much less than the cost of building an unsightly fence and have a greater impact on solving the problem,” he said. “And a fence is only going to be as effective as the people watching the fence. If you have a fence and you don’t monitor it, illegal aliens will go over, around or under it.”

Katherine Cesinger, a spokesperson for Governor Rick Perry, said the governor does not believe a border fence is the best solution.

“The best way to secure our border is to get more boots on the ground and more resources and assets along the border. A wall might provide a false sense of security,” she said. “We would like to not only secure our border but strike a balance between border security and border commerce.”

Knocke said the fence will send border communities the message “that for more than two decades, the situation on our borders that has led to significant public frustration and rightly so, is being solved.”

That frustration, he said, has been over illegal immigration and border security.

Elsewhere in the state, officials have raised concerns about the fence’s environmental impact, such as preventing endangered species from crossing the river.

The DHS has the authority to waive environmental assessments to speed up the border fence construction process. Knocke said the department has so far used that authority to halt the environmental review process in San Diego and in Arizona’s Barry M. Goldwater Range wildlife area.

Last week, Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar said his agency is working to build 370 miles of fencing called for in the 2006 Secure Fence Act, according to a DHS meeting transcript.

Of that 370 miles of fencing, the Customs and Border Patrol memo stated 153 miles of were to be in Texas, 129 in Arizona, 76 in California, and 12 in New Mexico, according to the Associated Press. The memo also outlined plans for 200 miles of vehicle barriers, primarily in Arizona and New Mexico.

Congress approved $1.2 billion for the fence, of which at least $400 million has been released, according to the Associated Press.

Congressman Ciro Rodriguez, who sits on the House Homeland Security Appropriations Committee, did not respond before press time.

<< BACK TO ARTICLES