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Washington, D.C.—Today, Congressman Raùl M. Grijalva and 42 other members of Congress, asked U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, to review the environmental impacts of border security infrastructure and operations along the U.S./Mexico border region.

“It is the Secretary’s responsibility to protect the homeland, not selectively destroy our environment,” said Grijalva. “This review is necessary to quantify, compensate for and avoid the negative consequences of border security infrastructure and operations. DHS should cooperate with other applicable agencies to create and fund a robust border-wide environmental monitoring program and to provide sufficient mitigation funding for damage caused by border enforcement activities. Our local communities are open to working on behalf of security – not a selective security, but rather one that includes habitat, national, border, and regional security.”

In the past several years, miles of border fence have been constructed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). This massive federal project has had serious consequences upon natural and cultural public resources, and has caused hardship for private land owners, whose lands have been condemned and livelihoods have been disrupted.

Editor’s Note: forwarded by Jay J. Johnson-Castro, Sr.

July 23, 2009
The Honorable Janet Napolitano
Secretary of Homeland Security
U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Washington, D.C. 20528

Dear Secretary Napolitano:

We write to you today with concern regarding mounting environmental and societal impacts
related to border security infrastructure and operations. As you conduct your evaluation of border security initiatives, we encourage you to consider the importance of monitoring, mitigation, and environmental training for border security personnel in order to quantify, compensate for and
avoid the negative consequences of border security infrastructure and operations. We ask that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) cooperate with other applicable agencies to create and fund a robust border-wide environmental monitoring program and to provide sufficient mitigation funding for damage caused by border security infrastructure and enforcement
activities.

As you are aware, hundreds of miles of new border fences and patrol roads have been
constructed by DHS along the US Mexico border in the past several years. This massive federal
project has had deleterious consequences upon natural and cultural public resources, and has
caused hardship for private land owners, whose lands have been condemned and livelihoods
have been disrupted. Considerable annual maintenance operations will be required for border fencing. The Congressional Budget Office estimates annual maintenance costs will amount to 1500 of initial construction costs, which are averaging $3 Million per mile. In addition, with
DHS adding significantly more Border Patrol personnel, it is becoming increasingly important
that impacts related to off-road vehicles, low-level flights and other interdiction activities be
quantified and mitigated for, and that DHS provide training for its personnel in techniques to
minimize damage to sensitive resources during enforcement activities.

We understand that in 2008 DHS allocated up to $50 Million to the Department of the Interior
(DOT) for border fence mitigation. It is our understanding this money will be utilized primarily
for off-site mitigation targeted to benefit threatened and endangered species that have been negatively impacted by new border security infrastructure projects. We believe this first round
of mitigation for threatened and endangered species, along with the memorandum of agreement signed between DHS and DOl, demonstrate a positive commitment to mitigating negative impacts. However, there are numerous impacts across the border caused by both security
infrastructure and operations that will require significantly more resources to properly monitor
and mitigate.

For example, the National Park Service issued a report in August, 2008 confirming that border
fencing astride the Lukeville Port of Entry has exacerbated seasonal flooding and has caused
accelerated scouring and erosion on the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument threatening to permanently alter the hydrology of the area if modifications are not made to rectify the
inadequate design. A similar problem was identified at the DeConcini Port of Entry, where
tunnel barrier and fence-exacerbated flooding caused extensive property and infrastructure
damage in Nogales, Mexico. There are also serious concerns related to border infrastructure
construction-induced siltation and resulting degradation of sensitive habitats of the Tijuana River Estuary and the San Pedro River located in southern California and Arizona, respectively. In
south Texas, private land owners and agricultural interests have significant tracts of land that
have been or will be isolated to the south of border fencing. Yet, DHS has only offered
compensation for the exact footprint of the infrastructure failing to recognize or compensate for fiscal losses of property value and accessibility caused by the construction of border fencing.

To date, there has been a lack of scientifically-based monitoring to quantify the environmental impacts of border security infrastructure and operations. Information from monitoring will provide objective data on impacts, so that efforts to avoid impacts and mitigate for unavoidable impacts can be targeted appropriately. It is our understanding that such a pilot program has been proposed and is to be led by the United States Geological Survey (USGS). We understand the initiation of this program is pending a memorandum of agreement between DHS and DOT. We are concerned that this monitoring program, currently in a conceptual stage, is not being implemented fast enough; ongoing acute and cumulative impacts continue to go unmonitored.

We urge you to ensure that DHS is an active partner in establishing this program and in utilizing the information derived from it to inform a robust, multi-year border mitigation fund.
We appreciate your consideration of this request.

Sincerely,

43 Signatures

Voters in the nation’s fourth largest city went to the polls today and elected Equality Texas-endorsed candidate Annise Parker the next mayor of Houston. Parker was elected with 53 percent of the vote, defeating her runoff opponent Gene Locke who garnered 47 percent.

Houston is the winner because Annise Parker’s prior experience will serve her well as Mayor. Parker, a native Houstonian, has already served the city for over a decade as a City Council Member and as the current City Controller. Prior to entering public service Parker spent twenty years in the oil and gas industry. Parker will need to draw upon this experience to lead Houston through lean economic times and position the city to be a leader in new energy development.

Houston is the winner because it did not succumb to bigoted fear-mongering and homophobia. Yes, Annise Parker will become the first openly-lesbian mayor of a major U.S. city. However, Houston voters demonstrated, for the 7th time in Parker’s case, that they can elect candidates based on their experience, qualifications and abilities, without regard to their sexual orientation.

Houston is the winner because it has elected an eminently qualified public servant as its next mayor. We are all winners because fear-mongering and homophobia lost.

Source: Equality Texas.

By Wayne Krause
Legal Director
Texas Civil Rights Project

As summer approaches, an APD officer has shot another young person of color. We don’t yet know all of the details of how or why Nathaniel Sanders was killed, but there is one thing we are sure of already, and it is inexcusable: there is no video from the shooter’s police car.

How can there be no video?! Is it not APD policy to turn on the camera when an officer might come into contact with a dangerous individual or make an arrest?

APD Policy A306b mandates that police car videos record at all traffic and pedestrian stops, sobriety tests, and pursuits. APD cars are equipped with video cameras, so why aren’t officers using them?

Time after time, Austinites are forced to endure tragic incidents of APD brutality in which the actual events are shrouded in an air of impenetrable mystery. It doesn’t have to be this way. Not only do pictures tell a thousand words, but video cameras don’t write false or biased reports to protect themselves or their partners.

With violent officers such as Michael Olsen and Gary Griffin, we all now know how video cameras expose lies about what really happened on the scene. Having represented victims of these police attacks, I am certain they never would have found justice without having a videotape as evidence.

But for every case I’ve accepted, there are dozens I have not because the video backed up the officer’s account or at least showed some understandable reaction. If an officer acted reasonably on the scene, turning the camera on is her insurance policy. So why wouldn’t there be a tape?

We hear the excuses: the tape was lost, I forgot to turn it on, and so on. None of them ring true. If you’re an officer doing your job right, you want that camera on.

During the death of Jessie Lee Owens, four of the five officers who eventually arrived at the scene had video proof of their actions. The one that didn’t was the shooter, so we’ll never know what really happened.

The bottom line is if there is a shooting, but no video, we are left with nothing but the perception that the officer wanted it that way for a reason.

If the APD seriously wants to put an end to this problem, it will actually begin punishing officers who violate its video policy and it will ensure that video recorders are in working order. When is the last time an officer got more than a slap on the wrist for refusing to turn the video camera on? And if police supervisors, who are required to check the cameras regularly, can’t or won’t keep them running well, we should appoint a neutral, competent employee to do so.

Video cameras are a window to truth, and officers who turn them off cast a shadow on that truth and their profession. If we have cameras, they should work. And if you won’t do your job, you should be fired, or at least suspended for as long as your victim remains horizontal. Until that happens, it will remain a sad irony that our citizens who run red lights have a better chance of being caught on video than those shot dead.

A TCRR Sunday Sermon

By Greg Moses

For many months the right wing populist chatter box has been drumming up the spectre of a socialist radical president with no respect for civil liberties, due process, or property rights. Then as soon as the president says it is stupid to arrest a man on his own property for speaking his own mind, the right wing populist chatter box denounces the president for that.

Overnight, the fashion for denouncing the president is all the rage. Nobody worries anymore about private property, due process, or civil liberties. It is the uniformed officer who can do you no wrong. And just like that, America’s post-racial presidency has come to a windshield-smashing end. The color line is back.

One hardly knows how to defend the man who holds the most powerful office in the world. His defeat already shows on his face. Either one has already helped to defeat the president or one is already too late.

It is already too late to distinguish between racism as bigotry aforethought and racism as saturated cultural response. It is already too late to point out that the president said, “Now, I don’t know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that . . .”

It is already too late to ask how a career cop in Cambridge can approach the home of Skip Gates without already knowing who he is. It is already too late to undo the swift victory that white supremacy has won, with all its well-known right wing populist momentum.

The choosing time has passed. You already know which side you’re on. And if you’re on the president’s side this time, you know what comes next. The president will try to figure out how to appeal to the side that you and he are not on. He’ll try to appease the right wing populist rest. Say you’ve been on the president’s side before? ‘Nuff said.

With another three years of hard work left in this presidency, I think the shape of things going forward will depend upon the internal struggle now at play between the bulls and bears. As I’m working on that struggle internally in a fractal replay of things writ large, I have to think that the arrest of Skip Gates marks a bear market in the currency of respect.

By coincidence Skip Gates was returning home from the land of scholars when he encountered some difficulties at his own front door. “Slight the learned,” warned Mozi in 400 BCE, “and you will neglect the ruler and injure the state.”

Even in Cambridge Massachusetts the learned are not respected. Apparently they are not even well known. The ruler has been neglected, the state injured. Neat as a fortune cookie America, in the image of Skip Gates handcuffed, your future has just been read.