News (Noticias) Tagged ‘border fence’

U.S Rep. Bill Foster is traveling to points along the U.S.-Mexico border to shape his stance on immigration reform.

That includes his views on a full border fence. The Democrat says he’s not sure he supports a full fence, but favors security upgrades.”*

The legal showdown between opponents and advocates of the U.S. border fence will take place at El Paso’s federal courthouse, El Paso County Commissioner Veronica Escobar said Tuesday.”*

Hundreds of area residents trekked up Mount Cristo Rey on Saturday to pray for comprehensive reform of the federal immigration system and to voice opposition to the border fence.

El Via Crucis de Jesus Migrante, or The Way of the Cross of the Migrant Jesus, was led by El Paso Catholic Bishop Armando X. Ochoa. He was joined by members of the El Paso Catholic Diocese’s Justice for Immigrants Campaign, the Border Network for Human Rights, the El Paso Interreligious Sponsoring Organization and other parishes and community organizations.”*

In this political season, immigration is the issue that everyone’s taking pains not to discuss. The presidential candidates are merely paying the same lip service to border security. Congress has all but abandoned comprehensive immigration reform, and the Bush administration continues to pile all their immigration-policy eggs in the border-security basket. But that doesn’t mean nothing is happening. Homeland Security head Michael Chertoff, in an April trip to the U.S.-Mexico border, made clear his determination that 670 miles of border fence, already under construction in Arizona and California, be completed by the end of the year. The border fence project has faced embarrassments–illegal immigrants employed to build the wall, a “Virtual Fence” project that cannot distinguish humans and vehicles from livestock and bushes–but those setbacks pale in comparison to its fundamental flaws. Below, six simple reasons a fence spanning the U.S.-Mexico border is bad polic”*

The steel fence that the U.S. government wants to build along the Mexican border would do more than slice through the University of Texas’ Brownsville campus and cut off the golf course from the rest of the school.

School officials say it would make a mockery of the very mission of the university: promoting close ties between the U.S. and Mexico.”*

The number of illegal immigrants dying in the deserts of Yuma County have decreased because they are trickling through other sectors to cross the border, the Border Patrol says.

The increased manpower along the border, with the help of of the National Guard and the new 52-mile border fence, are prime reasons that illegal immigrants are being deterred from crossing through the sector, said Eric Anderson, border patrol agent at the Yuma Sector.”*

The government’s plan to build a 670-mile fence along the U.S.-Mexico border took another step forward Monday when the Supreme Court turned away a legal challenge from environmentalists.

The court’s action clears the way for U.S. officials to press ahead with the project with little worry that judges will be able to stop it.”*

The National Guard’s mission on the U.S.-Mexican frontier is to end in July, but governors of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas want the troops to stay. The Bush administration says no.

ON THE U.S.-MEXICO BORDER — Tech. Sgt. Wayne Combs of the California Air National Guard is riding aboard “Mad Max,” a military truck whose homemade platform evokes the apocalyptic film.

Ten feet above the ground, he and other Guard members are cutting and straightening posts to make the last line of U.S. fencing taller — to 16 feet — and harder for illegal migrants and smugglers to breach.”*