U.S.-Mexico fence building continues despite Obama's promise to review effects - NYTimes.com

On the day of its first foreign policy discussions with Mexico, the Obama administration remains mum on whether it will honor a campaign promise to alter a Bush administration policy establishing a massive fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, including in federally protected areas.

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So far, the Department of Homeland Security has erected about 613 miles of new pedestrian fencing and vehicle barriers to thwart illegal border crossers and drug smugglers trying to enter the United States.

While President Obama voted for the 2005 Secure Fence Act as an Illinois senator, he pledged on the campaign trail last year to review the Bush administration's fortification efforts, in part due to concerns about environmental impacts.

"I think that the key is to consult with local communities, whether it's on the commercial interests or the environmental stakes of creating any kind of barrier," Obama said last year at a debate in Austin, Texas.

While acknowledging that some areas may need fencing, Obama said deploying new surveillance technology and stepping up patrols would "be the better approach."

Yet almost three months into the new administration, neither Obama nor Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano are addressing the issue. Meanwhile, construction is beginning on two new sections of the fence, one through the Rio Grande Valley near Brownsville, Texas, and another in the Otay Mountain Wilderness in California's San Diego County.

Homeland Security spokesman Matt Chandler said Napolitano decided to allow border fence projects already contracted under the Bush administration to go forward. But she is reviewing the fence policy as part of a comprehensive examination of all immigration and border security programs. "She will discuss her review of immigration and border security policies once it is completed," he said.

Lloyd Easterling, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a DHS subagency, said, "As it stands right now, we're committed to completing the project at hand."

Proponents of the the border fence say the project is an effective deterrent to would-be illegal border crossers, and they cite government data showing precipitous drops in illegal border crossings at places like Yuma, Ariz., once a hot spot for illegal immigrants driving into the United States.

But critics point to a 2008 Congressional Research Service report that found the new fencing simply shifts illegal crossings to other, more remote locations.

Perhaps more important, any attempt by the administration to scale back the border fence is likely to attract intense public scrutiny at a time when Mexican drug cartel violence has flared up along the border, fueled in large part by guns smuggled from the United States. Obama is making his first visit to Mexico today, where among other things he will discuss the intensifying drug war, which killed 6,300 people last year.

Needs are critical

Even so, critics say they are dismayed by the Obama administration's slow progress in addressing the fence's environmental impacts.

"The need to address all the negative impacts that have already occurred is critical," said Michael Degnan, lands representative for the Sierra Club.

Matt Clark, Southwest representative for Defenders of Wildlife, said his group was "hopeful that the administration would quickly change course, and even reverse the Bush-era wall-building approach to border issues."

Defenders of Wildlife has joined a coalition of other environmental groups -- as well as faith-based organizations, immigration groups and border community organizations -- backing a bill to be introduced later this month by Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) calling for mitigation of the environmental damage caused by the fence.

While the language of the Grijalva bill is still being hammered out, proponents say it will probably seek to reverse a 2005 provision allowing the Homeland Security secretary to waive any federal or state law deemed to interfere with fence construction, including the nation's core environmental laws. Former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff invoked the waiver authority four times during his tenure.

http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/04/16/16greenwire-usmexico-fence-building-continues-despite-obam-10570.html