Texas border mayors' message on the wall: No
Capitol Hill policymakers told fence would harm trade and relations
By MICHELLE MITTELSTADT
WASHINGTON — Texas border mayors carried a clear message Wednesday to federal policymakers: Walling off the United States from Mexico is a costly, foolish idea that will harm commerce, travel and foreign relations.
The seven mayors, representing cities that stretch from El Paso to Brownsville, raced from meeting to meeting on Capitol Hill, urging Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and lawmakers to abandon Congress' mandate to build 700 miles of fence and instead rely on other border security measures.
"It's a united front: No to the wall," said Laredo Mayor Raul Salinas. "It's just money misspent."
Call for sensors, lights
Instead of fencing off more than 300 miles of the Texas-Mexico border, the mayors recommended that Chertoff and Congress improve border security by using technology such as motion detection sensors and lighting as a "virtual" fence, or by adding more Border Patrol manpower.
The Texans offered "very practical, very realistic views about what has to happen with border security," Chertoff said after a closed-door meeting with the mayors, organized by Texas Republican Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn. The senators support a fence as a part of an overall border security plan, but insist that local community concerns must be taken into account.
"Everyone wants border security — they just want to do it effectively," Hutchison said.
The mayors also pressed Congress to enact a comprehensive immigration overhaul that includes a guest worker program, saying it would take pressure off the border.
"There has to be a balance in there as to how you protect our security while at the same time you protect our business environment and our economy," said Rio Grande City Mayor Kevin Hiles.
The Texans' anti-fence case was boosted, they said, by a recent Congressional Research Service report estimating that the 700 miles of fence could cost as much as $49 billion to build and maintain over 25 years.
Proponents of the double-layered fence have called that estimate excessive, insisting it would cost no more than $2.1 billion to build.
With Democrats newly in control of Congress, the fence's prospects may be waning. Although President Bush last October signed into law legislation mandating 700 miles of fence, Congress hasn't fully appropriated money to build it.
A $1.2 billion appropriation for "strategic fencing" permits the Department of Homeland Security to use the money for other things, and department officials have not committed to using all the money for fencing.
"You might have a law, but if there is no appropriation to fund it, it doesn't really exist," said Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo.
House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., have made clear that Democrats will re-examine whether fencing is necessary.
Opportunity to testify
Emerging from a meeting with the mayors, Thompson said he would invite some of them to testify before the Homeland Security Committee.
"We have not heard from people in the impacted area," he said. "We have members from Iowa dictating policy about the fence."
The mayors noted that Texas is unique among the border states in having a river run along its entire boundary with Mexico.
Fencing off the Rio Grande would prevent ranchers from watering their cattle, would harm farmers and place the fence in jeopardy when the river overflows, they said.
"Fences work, but they don't work everywhere," Hiles said.
Chertoff said he would defer to Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar.
"To me, this is something driven by operational needs. It's not driven by some kind of general mandate," he said.
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