The U.S. government said it plans to build 70 miles of 16-foot-tall (5 meter) border fencig in southern Texas

March 11th, 2010

The plans were unveiled in the first detailed look at the Wall the government says it must build to slow illegal immigration along the 1,200-mile-long (1,920-km) Texas-Mexico border.

In a request for public comment on the environmental impact of the Wall, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency said construction could begin next spring.

The fence, to be built in 21 segments at strategic points along the Rio Grande, must be able to withstand a crash by a 10,000-pound (4,545-kg) vehicle traveling at 40 miles per hour (64 kph), but also be “aesthetically pleasing,” the agency said.

University of Texas - Brownsville

University of Texas - Brownsville

The wall is part of a federal plan to build 700 miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The border protection agency said the wall would mostly be built on river levees, but also would cross private land and encroach on state parks and the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge.

The refuge is considered one of the most biologically diverse wildlife sanctuaries in the nation and environmentalists say the fence could harm endangered species such as ocelots and jaguarundi found there.

South of Texas

South of Texas

Many local leaders in southern Texas, which is heavily Hispanic and has strong economic and cultural ties to Mexico, have criticized the border wall as unnecessary and an affront to Mexicans.

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Is US – Mexico Wall the last product of heroic modernism

January 12th, 2010

Currently $2.4 billion has been spent since 2006 on a still-unfinished project to erect more than 613 miles (4 Million dollars a mile). $6.5 billion will be needed to maintain the new Wall over the next 20 years.

Still, the architects of the US – Mexico Wall hope it would change society. The result are towns divided in two without regard for prior form or use.

Texas Border Fence Map II

Texas Border Fence Map II

Over time, the Wall evolved from fences to concrete “jersey walls” with steel mesh in South of Texas. The final form would be a Wall, constructed from 15 to 20 feet high, separated by a no-man’s-land as wide as 1 mile .  The Wall is capped by a smooth pipe, making it difficult to scale and is accompanied by trenches as well as “Normandy” vehicle fence consisting of steel beams fencing set in concrete. Also, tower-based integrated cameras and sensors, ground-based radar and mobile surveillance systems.

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Border Life "La Linea"

It may succeed in changing society, but as with most modernist products, not in the way its builders intended. By providing a datum line for the US, the Wall gave meaning to the lives of its inhabitants. As the Wall was being constructed , situationists in the US and elsewhere are advocating for radical changes in cities as a means of preserving urban life.

In his 1972 thesis at the Architectural Association, entitled “Exodus, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture,” Rem Koolhaas found a way of reconciling modernism with Situationism through the figure of the Berlin Wall. Suggesting that the Wall might be exported to London and made to encircle it, Koolhaas writes, “The inhabitants of this architecture, those strong enough to love it, would become its Voluntary Prisoners, ecstatic in the freedom of their architectural confines.” Inside, life would be “a continuous state of ornamental frenzy and decorative delirium, an overdose of symbols.” Although officially proposing a way of making London more interesting, Koolhaas’s thesis is really a set of observations about the already existing condition of the real Wall. In choosing to encircle London with the Wall, Koolhaas recognized that it was not only the last great product of modernism, it was the last work of heavy architecture. Already in 1966, in his introduction to 40 Under 40, Robert Stern observed that an increasingly dematerialized “cardboard architecture”  was “the order of the day”  in the United States while in England, architects such as Archigram were proposing barrier-less technological utopias.

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Palomas - Arizona

Built of concrete and steel, the US – Mexico wall is solid, weighty. It hearkened back to the days of the medieval city walls, which were not only defensive but attempted to organize and contain a world progressively more interconnected through communications and trade.

Walls acts as concentrators, defining places in which early capitalism and urbanity could be found and intensifying both. So long as the modes of communication remained physical and the methods of making and trading goods were slow, nations retained their authority and autonomy through architectural solidity.


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1,200 miles (1,920 Km) Texas-Mexico Broder Wall

January 7th, 2010

The Wall, to be built in 21 segments at strategic points along the Rio Grande, must be able to withstand a crash by a 10,000-pound (4,545-kg) vehicle traveling at 40 miles per hour (64 kph), but also be “aesthetically pleasing,” the agency said.

The wall is part of a federal plan to build 700 miles of walling along the U.S.-Mexico border.

South Texas Border Wall 2010

South Texas Border Wall 2010

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency said the wall would mostly be built on river levees, but also would cross private land and encroach on state parks and the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge is considered one of the most biologically diverse wildlife sanctuaries in the nation and environmentalists say the fence could harm endangered species such as ocelots and jaguarundi found there.

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South Texas Border Wall

January 6th, 2010

Landowners in south Texas are fighting plans by the federal government to build a Wall along the U.S.-Mexico border from Brownsville to Del Rio. The property owners in the Rio Grande Valley have refused to let U.S. surveyors onto their land. The government is suing to gain access, which it says it needs to complete nearly 370 miles of border fencing by the end of the year 2009.

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South Texas Border Wall 2010

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s removal of more than 70 grapefruit trees from loop family land. On Wednesday morning, members of the Loop family watched helplessly as a government contractor’s large yellow Caterpillar excavator began the process of removing the trees. The trees were removed to make way for the border wall, which is being built by the Kiewit Corporation.

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Problems continue for virtual U.S.-Mexico border fence

November 19th, 2009

Published 5 November 2009 by DHS

With most of the 661-mile border fence complete, DHS is gearing up for testing a section of the fence near Tuscon; if the system survives this first round, it will be handed off to the Border Patrol in early 2010, who will put the technology through some real world scenarios.

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DHS will this month conduct a crucial test that could determine the future of the U.S.-Mexico border fence project. With most of the 661-mile border fence complete, DHS is gearing up for the next step to secure the border: it is another “fence” — a virtual fence — armed with high-tech cameras, radars and sensors. This two-fence system is called the Secure Border Initiative, or SBI.

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Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Should Investigate U.S.-Mexico Border Crossing Deaths

November 15th, 2009

ACLU, Mexican Human Rights Group Petition Commission: Act to End Deadly Policies SDGLN.com Staff | Fri, 11/13/2009 – 9:16pm | Login to Like articles (SAN DIEGO) –

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of San Diego and Imperial Counties is calling on U.S., Mexican and international officials to recognize the alarming number of migrant deaths at the U.S. – Mexico border as an international humanitarian crisis; address the ongoing violations of the right to life and identify protective measures going forward.

The ACLU joined together with Mexico’s National Commission on Human Rights (Comision Nacional de Derechos Humanos – CNDH) and sent a letter to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) – a commission of the Organization of American States (OAS). In the letter, they requested that the IACHR get permission from the U.S. and Mexican governments to make an onsite visit to the region. They further requested that once there, the IACHR conduct an investigation on the crisis, issue a report for the General Assembly of the OAS, and identify measures that both countries should adopt to bring them in compliance with their international human rights obligations.

La Linea

For emphasis, the ACLU and CNDH also provided the commission with the 76 page white paper they drafted documenting the situation: Humanitarian Crisis: Migrant Deaths at the U.S.-Mexico Border. The release of this report marked the 15th anniversary of the border enforcement policy, Operation Gatekeeper. This policy not only provided a higher concentration of border agents, but added walls and fencing along populated areas, forcing migrants into hostile environments and creating natural barriers that increased the incidence of injury and death. Since the program’s inception, an average of one migrant per day has died.

“More than 5,000 people have died crossing our border, and an estimated seven to eleven percent of them are children,” said Kevin Keenan, Executive Director of the ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties. “Equally alarming are the hundreds of family members who are left in inconsolable limbo, never knowing the fate of their loved one.”

According to their report, family members have no alternative recourse, and are often faced with complex or contradictory methods and red-tape when merely trying to locate a loved one who may be missing or even dead. State obligations to these families with regards to migrant deaths at the border has never been addressed. There is no uniform standard or centralized data base for locating the migrants or identifying their remains. One-quarter of those who perish in transit are never identified, leaving their families behind in a permanent state of anguish.

Ten years ago, the San Diego ACLU submitted a petition to the IACHR alleging that U.S. border enforcement-deterrence strategies under Operation Gatekeeper violated the right to life under Article 1 of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man. The Commission initially expressed concern over the findings, even agreeing to monitor the situation, but eventually dismissed the petition and things have only gotten worse.

“Since the Commission consented to monitor the border situation, we respectfully ask that they now act on their concerns,” said Jose Luis Soberanes, president of CNDH. “When they initially expressed unease, only 300 migrants had died. Today, nearly twenty times that number have died—many of their deaths directly attributable to U.S. border enforcement policies.”

The local ACLU hopes that since the United States and Mexico are bound by the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, they will soon begin to adopt policies or negotiate bilateral agreements to deal with the crisis. Their recent white paper on the situation only highlights the fact that to date, the two countries have seemingly abandoned their obligations under international law to respect and ensure the rights of migrant populations.

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Stimulus plan includes “virtual Wall”

October 20th, 2009

One of the many unnoticed projects included in the massive “$800,000,000,000″ economic stimulus plan is “$100,000,000″ for Boeing Inc. to resume work on the troubled “virtual fence”, the “$8,000,000,000″ 2006 plan to construct a highly sophisticated electronic barrier along the U.S. border with Mexico.

As a result of the technical problems, the Department of Homeland Security put the virtual Wall project on hold in 2008 after spending billions to make technology take the place of a physical fence. In total, DHS built only 28 miles of virtual Wall in a pilot project.

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The debate over constructing Walling on the US-Mexico is not new

The Clinton administration, for example, passed legislation in the mid-90s that called for Walling around the major US metropolitan centers on the border.

Yet, the extent of the inflow of illegal immigration (roughly 500,000 annually) as well as the growing Hispanic demographic in the United States has caused many people to view a more extensive walling system as increasingly urgent.

The Wall is intentionally placed in the least dangerous border crossings, while leaving open treacherous routes. Given the strong desire to cross, many will attempt to make these crossing fatally. Hundreds die each year already. Hundreds more could be expected. After the construction of the San Diego fence, many illegal immigrants began crossing through the Arizona desert, which caused many of San Diego’s border agents to move out there. According to T.J. Bonner, the president of the National Border Patrol Council, the main union for Border Patrol agents, “Tucson now has 2,600 plus agents. San Diego has lost 1,000 agents. Guess where the traffic is going? Back to San Diego. San Diego is the most heavily fortified border in the entire country, and yet it’s not stopping people from coming across.

From west to east, the border city twinnings and border crossings include the following:

  1. San Diego, California (San Ysidro) – Tijuana, Baja California (San Diego-Tijuana Metro.) (I-5 and Mexico 1 highway)
  2. Otay Mesa, California – Tijuana, Baja California (California State Route 905 and Boulevard Aztecas)
  3. Tecate, California – Tecate, Baja California (California State Route 135 and Mexico 3 highway)
  4. Calexico, California – Mexicali, Baja California
  5. Calexico, California (Eastern border checkpoint) – Mexicali, Baja California
  6. Andrade, California – Los Algodones, Baja California
  7. San Luis, Arizona – San Luis Río Colorado, Sonora (US 95 and Mexico 2 highway)
  8. Lukeville, Arizona – Sonoita, Sonora
  9. Sasabe, Arizona – Altar, Sonora
  10. Nogales, Arizona – Nogales, Sonora
  11. Naco, Arizona – Naco, Sonora
  12. Douglas, Arizona – Agua Prieta, Sonora
  13. Antelope Wells, New Mexico – El Berrendo, Chihuahua
  14. Columbus, New Mexico – Puerto Palomas, Chihuahua
  15. Santa Teresa, New Mexico – San Jerónimo, Chihuahua
  16. El Paso, Texas – Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua
  17. Fabens, Texas – Práxedis G. Guerrero, Chihuahua
  18. Presidio, Texas – Ojinaga, Chihuahua
  19. Heath Canyon, Texas – La Linda, Coahuila (closed)
  20. Del Rio, Texas – Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila
  21. Eagle Pass, Texas – Piedras Negras, Coahuila
  22. Laredo, Texas – Colombia, Nuevo León
  23. Laredo, Texas – Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas
  24. Falcon Heights, Texas – Presa Falcón, Tamaulipas
  25. Roma, Texas – Ciudad Miguel Alemán, Tamaulipas
  26. Rio Grande City, Texas – Ciudad Camargo, Tamaulipas
  27. Mission, Texas – Reynosa, Tamaulipas
  28. Hidalgo, Texas – Reynosa, Tamaulipas
  29. Pharr, Texas – Reynosa, Tamaulipas
  30. Progreso Lakes, Texas – Nuevo Progreso, Tamaulipas
  31. Los Indios, Texas – Matamoros, Tamaulipas
  32. Brownsville, Texas – Matamoros, Tamaulipas.

References:

  1. National Immigration Forum
  2. US Chamber of Commerce[16]
  3. American Immigration Lawyers Association
  4. American Farm Bureau
  5. National Association of Homebuilders
  6. Catholic Charities USA
  7. Associated Builders and Contractors
  8. United Auto Workers
  9. Families First, a conservative religious organization.
  10. Federation for American Immigration Reform FAIR
  11. Weneedafence.com - A project of the Let Freedom Ring Foundation, advocating constructing a “multi-element fence” along the US-Mexico border, similar to the Israeli fence.
  12. The Minuteman Project – “a citizens’ Operation monitoring immigration”.
  13. You Don’t Speak for Me, a Latino American group that favors border security and the enforcement of immigration laws.
  14. Debatepedia
  15. Border Angels

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The Wall between the United States and Mexico

October 1st, 2009
The fence between the United States and Mexico
The anti-immigration wall of the Tercera Nación
Wall Facts
Date of construction: beginning in 1994
Length: 1,200 km
Material used: wire mesh, corrugated iron, barbed wire
Garrison: 12,000 border patrol (18,000 when completed)
Communities concerned: Mexicans, Latin Americans and Americans
The border between the United States and Mexico, 3,200 km long, crosses an entire
continent, from the Pacific Ocean on the Californian coast to the Gulf of Mexico in
east Texas. The fence, built by the United States in 2006 along a portion of this
border, doesn’t appear to exist at first sight, but it is there, made of recovered
corrugated steel sheets, rusted by time. Three metres high, topped by electrified
barbed wire, it is lined with a parapet walk overhung by radars, cameras, projectors,
ground sensors, and supplemented by unmanned aircraft and the latest surveillance
technologies.
A tradition dating back 100 years
Between 1830 and 1860, the new boundary between Mexico and the U.S. saw
Mexico lose some two million square kilometres of territory. At the end of the 19th
century, Mexican peasants began coming to offer their labour, first in large farms in
California, then from the 1920s in the emerging U.S. industry. In 1965, the abolition of
bilateral agreements prohibited the back-and-forth travel of Mexican seasonal
workers. The influx of illegal migrants began to increase, raising the issue of
clandestine immigration and its regulation. In 1994, as a free trade agreement had
already been signed between the United States, Canada and Mexico, the United
States decided to strengthen their border and stop illegal immigrants.
On 26 October 2006, U.S. President George W. Bush promulgated the Secure Fence
Act, aimed at reinforcing surveillance of the border with Mexico and combating illegal
immigration. Totalling 1,200 km in length, representing one-third of the border, the
fence should be completed by the end of 2008, and will cross the Arizona desert.

Wall Facts

Date of construction: beginning in 1994

Length: 1,200 km

Garrison: 12,000 border patrol (18,000 when completed)

Communities concerned: Mexicans, Latin Americans and Americans

The border between the United States and Mexico, 3,200 km long, crosses an entire continent, from the Pacific Ocean on the Californian coast to the Gulf of Mexico in east Texas. The wall, built by the United States in 2006 along a portion of this border, doesn’t appear to exist at first sight, but it is there, made of recovered corrugated steel sheets, rusted by time. Three meters high, topped by electrified barbed wire, it is lined with a parapet walk overhung by radars, cameras, projectors, ground sensors, and supplemented by unmanned aircraft and the latest surveillance technologies.

Nogales-000200010

-first generation wall 2006-

A tradition dating back 100 years Between 1830 and 1860, the new boundary between Mexico and the U.S. saw Mexico lose some two million square kilometers of territory. At the end of the 19th century, Mexican peasants began coming to offer their labour, first in large farms in California, then from the 1920s in the emerging U.S. industry. In 1965, the abolition of bilateral agreements prohibited the back-and-forth travel of Mexican seasonal workers. The influx of illegal migrants began to increase, raising the issue of clandestine immigration and its regulation. In 1994, as a free trade agreement had already been signed between the United States, Canada and Mexico, the United States decided to strengthen their border and stop illegal immigrants.

On 26 October 2006, U.S. President George W. Bush promulgated the Secure Fence Act, aimed at reinforcing surveillance of the border with Mexico and combating illegal immigration.

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Death Statistics

September 28th, 2009

Thursday’s Daily Star, during the first half of this fiscal year the remains of 60 migrants were found in the Southern Arizona desert; 128 bodies were found across the entire U.S./Mexican border.

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In the first six months of this fiscal year arrests dropped 24%. Deaths rose 7%.

Note : the U.S. government is using steel tubes from China in the construction of the wall on the border with Mexico.

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“Billions” for a US-Mexico border Wall

September 23rd, 2009

$2.4 billion has been spent since 2005 on a still-unfinished project to erect more than 600 miles of new Wall along the US-Mexico border. A report, released Thursday by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), also says $6.5 billion will be needed to maintain the new Wall over the next 20 years. So far, it has been breached 3,363 times, requiring $1,300 for the average repair.

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Been travelling and photographing the Wall since 2006 and there is no reason to believe that additional investments in the Wall project – both physical Wall and the new “virtual Wall” – will create an effective deterrent.

How much will it cost to tear down the Wall?

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