Hostile Reception For Pro-Fence Congressmen In Brownsville

By CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN, Associated Press Writer

BROWNSVILLE, TX (AP) — One of Congress’ strongest border fence proponents received a hostile reception Monday in the city that has become the epicenter of fence opposition.

Boos and hisses emanated from the audience for a congressional field hearing when Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado dismissed residents’ concerns that the effort to build 670 miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border by year’s end would damage the environment and destroy a centuries-old bond between residents on both sides of the Rio Grande.

Late in the five-hour hearing, Tancredo returned to a comment made earlier by panelist Betty Perez, a rancher and local activist. Perez said, “It really isn’t a border to most of us who live down here.”

Tancredo dismissed Perez’s remarks as a “multiculturalist attitude toward borders.” As jeers rose,he added, “I suggest that you build this fence around the northern part of your city.”

Brownsville sits at the southernmost tip of Texas, where the Rio Grande meets the Gulf of Mexico. The border fence as planned would cut through the campus of the University of Texas at Brownsville and Southmost Texas College, leaving it’s golf course on the Mexican side.

Opposition to the fence is so pervasive that last fall, when the federal government offered property owners money for access to survey their land, Mayor Pat Ahumada called it “blood money.”

The hearing was supposed to focus on whether Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff had the authority he used April 1 to bypass three dozen laws that could have slowed fence construction.

Work on the fence in South Texas is scheduled to begin this summer. Instead, panelists largely replayed the debate that has been raging in border communities for months in a lecture hall not far from where a section of 18-foot tall border fence would divide the campus.

Opinions about the pressing necessity for 670 miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border split between those who see a war with drug smugglers and illegal immigrants spreading north from the border and those who see the fence as a threat to the environment and their way of life.

“This wall, built on U.S. soil, will not only move the U.S. border inward from the Rio Grande river, but will also alienate people and businesses who live and work between the wall and the border, in effect creating a zone where U.S. citizens and businesses exist ‘south of the border,”‘ said Rev. Raymundo Pena, Bishop of the Diocese of Brownsville.

Pena submitted 10,000 signatures of people opposed to the fence.

Tancredo, who recently criticized Pope Benedict XVI for his comments in defense of immigrants, asked Pena if he believed there should be a border – Pena said he does – and said such references to the barrier as a “wall” were inaccurate and meant to dredge up images of the Berlin Wall.

“This is meant to keep people out,” Tancredo said. The fence is a “logical and effective approach” and “perhaps the most humane way” to curb illegal immigration.

U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat and chairman of the subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands, has introduced legislation that would repeal Chertoff’s waiver authority. Tuesday’s was a joint field hearing with the Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife and Oceans.

Tancredo and U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, both former Republican presidential hopefuls who ran on anti-illegal immigration platforms, argued that environmental degradation caused by unchecked illegal immigration and drug smugglers exceeded any impact from the fence.

In defending the waivers, Hunter gave the example of a four-mile stretch of border fence through his Southern California district that took 12 years to build because of objections by environmentalists.

“I think he’s done the right thing,” Hunter said of Chertoff’s decision to use the waivers.

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)