Suit gives access to border land for fence

[struggle4progress]

Source: Reuters

Tue Jan 15, 2008 9:14pm EST

By Jim Forsyth

SAN ANTONIO, Texas (Reuters) - A U.S. court has given the government permission to survey a parcel of land for a proposed fence along the Texas-Mexico border, in the first of more than 100 lawsuits threatened against recalcitrant landowners, a Justice Department spokesman said on Tuesday.

The decision in federal court is a potentially important step toward construction of a barrier aimed at keeping illegal immigrants from crossing the Rio Grande into the United States.

Resistance to the fence has been strong in heavily Hispanic southern Texas, where many have refused to let federal teams on their land to make surveys and conduct soil tests on potential wall sites.

On Monday, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit in Del Rio, Texas, against the city of Eagle Pass, Texas requesting access for 180 days to 233 acres, which, according to Justice Department spokesman Andrew Ames, was granted by the court ...

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN1536720920080116

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Federal Government Suing Eagle Pass
Tuesday , January 15, 2008 Posted: 01:17 PM
More lawsuits planned in connection to border fence

EAGLE PASS - The federal government is suing Eagle Pass to get access to land to build the border fence.

The U.S. Attorney filed the lawsuit yesterday. The city's mayor serves as chairman of the Texas Border Coalition and has been highly critical of the fence.

This is the first of 102 lawsuits planned to be filed against landowners. This includes Valley residents. http://www.newschannel5.tv/2008/1/15/985208/Federal-Government-Suing-Eagle-Pass


Eloisa Tamez Will Fight Federal Government
Tuesday, January 15, 2008

... Eloisa Tamez has received phone calls since August from the Department of Homeland Security requesting permission to survey her land for a whole year, Tamez said no way then and says no way now!

Eloisa Tamez owns 3 acres in El Calaboz where she grew up at and says seeing some of her land taken away if the border wall is built would be devastating.

When Tamez finally met with Homeland Security personnel, they told her they would survey her land for 12 months. At first she had no problems with it, that was until she learned the real reason for the survey, the border wall. She said no then, that's when she received a letter from Michael Chertoff, Secretary of Homeland Security, expaining that they had reduced survey time to only 6 months, but if she didn't allow any access, they would take legal action against her.

Tamez has hired an attorney to help her fight the government and says she's ready for the battle ... http://www.kveo.com/news/local/13796352.html


Feds sue border landowners over fence
A barrier many doubted would ever be built suddenly looks very real
By Howard Witt | Tribune correspondent
8:25 PM CST, January 15, 2008

... "To appease people in middle America, they are going to kill our communities along the border," said Pat Ahumada, the mayor of Brownsville. "The rest of America has no idea how we live our lives here. We are linked by the Rio Grande, not divided by it. Our history, our families, our neighbors are tied together on both sides of that river."

By the end of this year, the Homeland Security Department intends to erect 670 miles of single- and double-fencing along the border, about 180 miles of it in Texas. But this is not a straightforward fence as the average American homeowner might imagine it.

Even when the construction is complete, the fence will not be an unbroken barrier. Instead, sections of fencing will start and stop, interspersed with natural barriers such as mountains or open areas where surveillance cameras and invisible tripwires will alert Border Patrol agents when someone tries to cross illegally.

In some areas, according to draft maps issued by the government, the fence will follow the contours of the wildly twisting Rio Grande, which forms the natural border between Texas and Mexico. In other areas, it will abut an old earthen levee that lies a mile or more from from the border, potentially cutting farmers off from their fields and the fabled river, which is their historic source of irrigation ... http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-080115fence,1,2290389.story


In Texas, Weighing Life With a Border Fence

By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
Published: January 13, 2008

GRANJENO, Tex. — Rafael Garza, a former mayor of this small border city, stood steps from the back door of his simple brick house and chopped the air with a hand. “This is where the actual fence would be,” he said.

And the federal property line, he said, would be at his shower.

Mr. Garza, 36, a Hidalgo County sheriff’s sergeant who traces his family here to 1767, was imagining what life would be like in the shadow of the Proposed Tactical Infrastructure — the wall, to many outraged South Texans — that the Department of Homeland Security has committed to build by the end of the year.

Although federal officials say its location and design are still in flux, official maps of the Texas third of the 370-mile intermittent pedestrian barrier from Brownsville to California have provoked widespread alarm among property owners fearful of being cut off from parts of their own land or access to the Rio Grande for livestock and crops ... http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/us/13border.html?_r=1&em&ex=1200373200&en=9db8630e23a09587&ei=5087%0A&oref=slogin

[rodeodance]

1. so sad to hear.

[dbackjon]

2. Disgusting

Mr. Bush - don't build the fucking wall.