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Chertoff lies, migrants die
“Illegal migrants really degrade the environment. I’ve seen pictures of human waste, garbage, discarded bottles and other human artifact in pristine areas… And believe me, that is the worst thing you can do to the environment.”
So said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff in an AP interview today, answering charges that a proposed border fence and attendant security system would damage the borderlands environment. The Feds plan to finish 670 miles of fence by the end of next year. Chertoff is saying that if anyone goes to court to block the fence until environmental concerns are addressed, that DHS will invoke a waiver of environmental responsibility and build anyway.
Tough words, considering that the DHS, and its departmental precursors the department Immigration and Customs Enforcement (formerly the Immigration and Naturalization Service) and Border Patrol, are responsible for the migrants being in the desert in the first place.
As I wrote a year ago,
People have migrated from Mexico into the United States since the two countries first shared a border, drawn by the greater income available in the US for even menial labor. In the 1980s, US investment in the so-called maquiladora zone, prompted by the drastic devaluation of the peso in 1983, brought hundreds of thousands of workers to the northern tier of Mexican states. When those same US companies relocated their factories to Asia and other, cheaper countries, those workers were left without jobs, homes, or social services. Immigration into the US, legal and otherwise, increased as a result. But it was the destruction of the corn economy that truly swelled the ranks of the migrants. The Immigration and Naturalization Service estimated in 2000 that the number of Mexican nationals in the US illegally more than doubled over the 1990s, from a bit more than two million in 1990 to 4.8 million in 2000.
The Arizona desert is by no means the sensible place to cross the border: migrants have succumbed to its deadly arid heat for more than a century. But in 1993 the Border Patrol began a deliberate campaign of funneling migrants toward the border’s most dangerous sections as a way of dissuading border-crossers. A steel wall was erected to mark the border in San Diego, California, probably the spot on the border where unprotected migrants are least likely to die of exposure. In 1994 the Border Patrol launched Operation Gatekeeper, a campaign of massive law enforcement presence along the San Diego border with the stated purpose of driving migrants east into the desert where the Border Patrol enjoyed what the Justice Department called a “strategic advantage over would-be crossers.” Operation Gatekeeper was modeled on a similar initiative in El Paso, Texas called Operation Hold The Line. A third such campaign was launched in the Tucson-Nogales area.
The campaigns’ effectiveness in stemming migration through the target areas has been questioned. A Border Patrol employees union charged in 1996 that the INS kept falsified records on the number of migrants detained or deterred by Operation Gatekeeper. Still, no one denies that as the feds clamped down on easier entry points, migration through the outback areas of Arizona skyrocketed. Apprehensions of illegal immigrants in Arizona more than doubled between 1993 and 1995, from less than 10,000 per month to more than 25,000. In the first six months of 2006, apprehensions in the same area averaged just under 70,000 per month.
Thus the federal government funneled thousands of migrants into one of the most dangerous landscapes in the US as deliberate law enforcement policy.
Chertoff claims, absurdly and insultingly, that taking a dump in the desert, or leaving an empty water bottle and some foam shoes behind as you try to make it to Interstate 8 before your children die, is the “worst thing you can do to the environment.” Last year I saw Border Patrol agents casually drive up and over fragile stretches of desert soil, damaging a delicate ecosystem that will take thousands of years to recover, if it ever does. Why’d they do it? So that they didn’t have to back up twenty yards to a wide spot in the road to let oncoming cars pass on the two-rut. Trash is a nuisance, to be sure, and human waste can contaminate critical wildlife drinking sources. Worse still, constant human presence at water holes — and that’s sure as hell where I’d hang out if I was making the trek — seriously affects the survival of shy wildlife species such as puma and pronghorn and bighorn.
But environmentalists who let themselves be taken in by Chertoff’s lies are foolish. The border trashing in the Arizona backcountry, and in remote parts of Texas and New Mexico, is a direct result of a blatantly murderous federal law enforcement policy, a policy that claims hundreds of lives a year.
Zopilotes fatten on the unfortunate ones. The Chertoffs of the world fatten on the system that killed them.
The border is a line, nothing more. It has no environmental meaning whatsoever. The land on one side of the border is the same as the land on the other side. Wiser animals than we are do not recognize it. I’m all for inconveniencing people to aid other animals, but in this instance I think people should have the same rights as geese, as deer, as pumas.
Basta ya, pendejos. Let us go where we choose, and we will educate ourselves about how we might best refrain from damaging the planet. Counting on the Bush administration to protect the desert environment is like counting on John Wayne Gacy to run a day care center. Help like that we do not need.
The hell with your fences, Chertoff. Let people cross.
Posted by: Chris Clarke
Note: A database glitch in 2008 ate a bunch of archived comments. Don't be offended if yours isn't here, or confused if the conversation seems disjointed. Thanks!
Chris:
Thank you so much for speaking sense, in this post and an earlier one, about immigration.
It was driven home to me, on a recent trip to California, how deeply the nativism virus has got its talons into all too many of the denizens of that state—not excluding, unfortunately, old friends of mine who I had thought were much more sensible.
Everyone left, right, and center disagrees with me on this, but it seems to me that open borders (for people; the borders already are open for capital) are the only humane way to go.
Again, thank you for speaking out about this.
By: By David on 2007 10 02
Pinche migra.
By: By nina on 2007 10 02
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised by the border bs. Once you’ve drawn a line between mind and body (and interpolated a Venn circle soul), all delineations are possible.
You do suggest one unimpeachable definition of homo sapiens: the species unable to distinguish reality from fantasy.
As we become more stressed and more insane, the more frenetically we scribble invisible lines: countries on contingents which are geographic, environmental and economic units; gated communities; the Ford Explorer.
Chimps strip grasses to gather termites; we draw lines in the dirt.
Our god is Harold, and his Purple Crayon.
One can but marvel at how relentlessly we reinforce our group delusion. One minor example occurred last week, when a teenage boy was shot to death in our town park. The town shares Chicago’s street grid, and borders one of its poorest neighborhoods. All subsequent media accounts presented the facts as a litany of why we must continue to believe in the safety of the invisible line.
He was a Chicago (Chicago!) gang member. The incursion was only six (six!) blocks in. And (my favorite), he was only killed here because a passenger in the shooter’s car. Apparently gang members usually have the decency to own individual transportation, and thus chase each other on the correct side of the border.
Does anyone contemplate a more hopeful scenario of how border-mania will intersect with environmental collapse and concommitant mass movement of peoples? Will we be obverse lemmings: piled at the top of the cliff, protecting unto death the valley’s sanctity as a separate zip-code?
Sic transit Homo Deluden Delineatus.
By: By jmartin on 2007 10 02
Everytime I see a photo of the border fence, I cry.
By: By Rita Xavier on 2007 10 02
i’m glad to see you highlighting their hypocrisy. i was astounded that more people weren’t calling him on this absurd posturing… “how are we gonna make hippies hate mexicans?”
thank you.
By: By bright on 2007 10 02
=v= Damn that’s good. Pardon me if I quote you liberally.
By: By Jym Dyer on 2007 10 03
