The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was asked Tuesday by the Justice Department to allow a transfer of federal funds to pay for a towering wall along Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument's border with Mexico. The taller wall would replace these Normandy style barriers at Organ Pipe/Patrick Cone file
How the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rules on the Trump administration's bid to build a towering wall across the southern border of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona could wash out the Milky Way for visitors, block wildlife movements, and turn the borderline into something of an industrial construction zone, according to the local Sierra Club representative.
"The entire southern boundary of Organ Pipe would be walled off by what has been described as a 30-foot wall with all-night floodlighting," Dan Mills, of the Sierra Club's Grand Canyon Chapter Borderlands Program, said by phone Tuesday evening. "The contractor is already there on the ground, doing surveys and planning work. They’re talking about drilling new wells to do onsite concrete mixing for the foundation and for filling the steel posts. So it would be an enormous change."
Earlier this year the U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced its desire to build a tall barrier wall along the monument's 63-mile-long boundary with Mexico. Last week, however, a federal judge in California blocked the plan to build a wall with concrete-filled steel bollards that are approximately 6 inches in diameter. U.S. District Judge Haywood S. Gilliam, Jr. held that it was illegal for the Trump administration to use $2.5 billion in funds appropriated to the military to pay for the border wall.
On Tuesday the administration asked the 9th Circuit to overrule Judge Gilliam.
"The (lower court's) orders ... threaten to permanently deprive (the Department of Defense) of its ability to complete the projects at issue because the district court’s orders forbid DoD from spending money it has transferred for construction of the projects but has not yet obligated via construction contracts," Justice Department lawyers argued. "Unless those funds are obligated by September 30, 2019, the money will no longer remain available to DoD."
Southern border parks such as Organ Pipe Cactus, Big Bend, and Coronado National Memorial long have been thrust into the news by threats posed by drug runners and undocumented immigrants. Though Organ Pipe Cactus is one of the park system’s oldest national monuments, for more than a decade earlier in this century backcountry travel was forbidden due to the 2002 murder of Ranger Kris Eggle, who was shot while chasing a Mexican gunman said to be trying to execute a $15,000 murder contract on a rival drug lord.
In the wake of the ranger’s death, heavy lobbying convinced Congress to provide $18 million to build a vehicle barrier along the US-Mexico border. Officials say it succeeded in ending illegal vehicular border crossings while allowing wildlife to pass through.
The travel of upwards of 1,000 undocumented immigrants a day led the Fraternal Order of Police to declare Organ Pipe the country's most dangerous park for a time early in this century. Indeed, at one point 95 percent of the park was closed to the traveling public because of the danger posed by this traffic.
But in 2014, the entire park was reopened after the National Park Service and Border Patrol conceived a plan to allow continued surveillance by the Patrol while Park Service crews erased hundreds of miles of illegal roads and road traces that had been woven through Organ Pipe Cactus.
The return to more of a natural setting, however, could be short-lived if the administration is allowed to proceed with the wall, said the Sierra Club's Mills.
"I was just at Organ Pipe last week. I camped out at the campground there by the visitor center there," he said. "You can see the wall from the campground. What I experienced last week, of dark skies full of stars and the Milky Way and everything, that might be one of the last times that people get to experience that because of the floodlights that would be on this new wall.”
Mills said all of the bollard walls he was familiar with along the border had gaps just 4 inches wide, something that would prevent most wildlife from passing back and forth between the two countries.
"Any wildlife that’s terrestrial that is not a fantastic climber is going to be out of luck if that wildlife is wider than four inches," he said, pointing to rare Sonoran pronghorn, bobcats, desert tortoise, and mountain lions that frequent the area.
Comments
Perhaps Mr Mills would like to propose an alternative plan for stopping the invasion of illegal immigrants across our border. I have a plan that would obviate the need for the barriers but I am quite confident Mr Mills wouldn't be on board. At least now the left is conceding there is a crisis on the border, the very crisis Trump identified and the left denied less than 6 months ago. Of course, leaving this up to the ninth circuit makes it a fate accompli. They are on the anti-Trump bandwagon like many others regardless of the facts, law or Constitution.
ec--
Have you ever been to the border in Organ Pipe? There's already a wall for about a mile on either side of the crossing and road at Lukeville. That barrier has washout problems, but it prevents foot traffic for a mile on either side of the only road to the north. Other than that, the vehicle barrier plus sensors is very effective. It's a several day walk through the park to a road where smugglers might be able to pick up migrants who walked across, with a couple of chokepoints that Border Patrol occupy. Unlike 10 yeras ago, now there is almost no unauthorized border crossing in that area. Wildlife including desert pronghorn can cross through the barrier, although some migratory routes are blocked by Border Patrol bases in saddles & passes.
I disagree with you about the crisis at the border. The crisis is what it has been for over a year: the large numbers of asylum seekers from Central America, not migrants from Mexico. We no longer allow more than a token number of asylum applications per day at our ports of entry. They can only get their asylum applications accepted for processing by setting foot on US soil and turning themselves in to INS. Those asylum seekers are the humanitarian crisis at the border, because we then neither house them in humane conditions nor process their applications. A wall in Organ Pipe, far from any place to submit an asylum application, will hae no effect on that crisis: that's not where the border is being crossed.
If your goal was a barrier to deter asylum seekers, migrants, or drug smugglers, Organ Pipe would not be in the next 1000 mile priority for buidling a larger barrier. If your goal is to build something for the symbology, it is already Federal land, so no eminent domain, just waive ESA and other environmental laws, and you can build a quick symbol at great damage to the wildlife and the park. If you want to reduce your "invasion", reduce the asylum seekers by providing aid to address the conditions in Central American that drive asylum seekers north, and reduce economic migrants by enforcing everify for all construction and hospitality jobs in western Colorado, no matter the cost to your local economy.
My understanding of the court case is that it is about the ability to repurpose funds from what Congress appropriated them for to building a symbolic wall in the middle of nowhere, something that Congress explicitly refused to fund. I don't think it has anything to do with the merits (or lack thereof) of a larger barrier along this specific section of the border.
tomp2 - 90 % of "asylum" seekers never show up for their asylum hearings. They aren't seeking asylum as for the most part they wouldn't qualify. I understand they are looking for a better life but entering this country illegally is not a legitimate way to get there. Open borders and a welfare state are incompatible. Regarding your opinion it is not needed in the park, I ask, why would those living the border crisis every day want to build a barrier where it isn't needed when it could be build elsewhere with far more effect? I believe you may have underestimated the problem along that border. Finally, you are correct that the legal issue is regarding the redirection of defense funds (which has been done in the past). I suspect if the redirection was to pay for free healthcare for illegals, the litigants would be celebrating in the streets rather than fighting in the courts. Given this is in front of the 9th Circuit I maintain it is a fate acompli and will be decided on politics rather than facts, law or the Constitution.
Well, the right wing extremists are correct about one thing - illegal immigration itself is a crime. Remove the law that is "broken" so that all immigration is legal and you no longer have "illegals".
The crisis at the border is a humanitarian crisis, and the familty separation policy is a karmic burden that will be on all of our shoulders for years, as it is being done "in our name".
Yes Rick, committing a crime is committing a crime. And it is a crime for a reason. You don't get rid of criminals but getting rid of the crime. I guess in your mind we could eliminate speeding by eliminating speed limits. You don't have to be a right wing extremists to know better than that. And yes there is a crisis at the border - as Trump declared months ago. The family seperation policy implemented long ago combined with the luring of illegals to our borders has created a crisis. A crisis exacerbated by the Democrats blocking well over a dozen times efforts to increase resourses at the border not only for detering entrance but for processing and caring for immigrants as well.