Homeland Security Won't Explain Why the Mexican Border Wall

[dbackjon]

As the U.S. Department of Homeland Security marches down the Texas border serving condemnation lawsuits to frightened landowners, Brownsville resident Eloisa Tamez, 72, has one simple question. She would like to know why her land is being targeted for destruction by a border wall, while a nearby golf course and resort remain untouched.

Tamez, a nursing director at the University of Texas at Brownsville, is one of the last of the Spanish land grant heirs in Cameron County. Her ancestors once owned 12,000 acres. In the 1930s, the federal government took more than half of her inherited land, without paying a cent, to build flood levees.

Now Homeland Security wants to put an 18-foot steel and concrete wall through what remains.

While the border wall will go through her backyard and effectively destroy her home, it will stop at the edge of the River Bend Resort and golf course, a popular Winter Texan retreat two miles down the road. The wall starts up again on the other side of the resort.

"It has a golf course and all of the amenities," Tamez says. "There are no plans to build a wall there. If the wall is so important for security, then why are we skipping parts?"

http://www.alternet.org/story/77320

Just 69 miles north, Daniel Garza, 76, faces a similar situation with a neighbor who has political connections that reach the White House. In the small town of Granjeno, population 313, Garza points to a field across the street where a segment of the proposed 18-foot high border wall would abruptly end after passing through his brick home and a small, yellow house he gave his son. "All that land over there is owned by the Hunts," he says, waving a hand toward the horizon. "The wall doesn't go there."

In this area everyone knows the Hunts. Dallas billionaire Ray L. Hunt and his relatives are one of the wealthiest oil and gas dynasties in the world. Hunt, a close friend of President George W. Bush, recently donated $35 million to Southern Methodist University to help build Bush's presidential library. In 2001, Bush made him a member of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, where Hunt received a security clearance and access to classified intelligence.

Over the years, Hunt has transformed his 6,000-acre property, called the Sharyland Plantation, from acres of onions and vegetables into swathes of exclusive, gated communities where houses sell from $650,000 to $1 million and residents enjoy golf courses, elementary schools, and a sports park. The plantation contains an 1,800-acre business park and Sharyland Utilities, run by Hunt's son Hunter, which delivers electricity to plantation residents and Mexican factories

[dbackjon]

Also...
Besides these personal tragedies, Eagle Pass Mayor Foster says there is another tragedy in store for the American taxpayer. A 2007 congressional report estimates the cost of maintaining and building the fence could be as much as $49 billion over its expected 25-year life span.

"They are just going to push this problem on the next administration, and nobody is going to talk about immigration reform, and that's the illness," Foster says. "The wall is a Band-Aid on the problem. And to blow $49 billion and not walk away with a secure border -- that's a travesty."

[Appaholic]

This border wall is so fucking stupid....isn't there a wall in San Diego the press uses as a backdrop that constandtly has Mexicans climbing over it? A physical wall will not do jack shit to stem the flow and virtual wall in conjunction with a militarized border will do a heluva alot more.....physical wall just leads to the kind of BS cited in this story.....

[dbackjon]

This border wall is so f**k[*] stupid....isn't there a wall in San Diego the press uses as a backdrop that constandtly has Mexicans climbing over it? A physical wall will not do jack shit to stem the flow and virtual wall in conjunction with a militarized border will do a heluva alot more.....physical wall just leads to the kind of BS cited in this story.....

Agree 100%. This is a boondoggle of the highest degree. Wasted Billions of dollars, and the problem is not solved, or even close to it.

[Appaholic]

This border wall is so f**k[*] stupid....isn't there a wall in San Diego the press uses as a backdrop that constandtly has Mexicans climbing over it? A physical wall will not do jack shit to stem the flow and virtual wall in conjunction with a militarized border will do a heluva alot more.....physical wall just leads to the kind of BS cited in this story.....

Agree 100%. This is a boondoggle of the highest degree. Wasted Billions of dollars, and the problem is not solved, or even close to it.

Thanks DB.....BTW, who sent you my picture to use in your avatar?

[dbackjon]

Agree 100%. This is a boondoggle of the highest degree. Wasted Billions of dollars, and the problem is not solved, or even close to it.

Thanks DB.....BTW, who sent you my picture to use in your avatar?

citdog. He has a large collection of them.

[Appaholic]

Thanks DB.....BTW, who sent you my picture to use in your avatar?

citdog. He has a large collection of them.

He would.....

[SuperHornet]

After what I saw on Fox News this morning, I'm not so sure that a wall will work. Seems that several subterranean tunnels have been discovered between San Diego and Houston underneath the border. Apparently, these tunnels were used to smuggle drugs. One could easily imagine illegals jumping across with their drug-running buddies. One could also imagine similar tunnels as yet not found.

Why are we bothering with a bulkhead when they're already going underneath?