photo by Jonathan Salinas
The ecological fate of Arizona, New Mexico, and California hangs in the balance as judges decide whether to overturn or uphold a national emergency declaration that President Trump declared in February. The declaration would allow the Executive Branch to raid the military’s budget for billions of dollars and use them for border wall construction.
Although it is not South Texas that is on the federal government’s chopping block this time around, the precedent of allowing diverted military funds to be used for border wall construction without congressional consent would put millions of borderland residents at exponentially heightened risk of environmental and societal catastrophe.
At risk are public lands like the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, home of the endangered Sonoran pronghorn, the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, the San Pedro River, and the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge. These pearls of nature host endangered wildlife and could be decimated by border wall construction. This would undermine years of cooperative conservation efforts by the US and Mexico, jeopardize wildlife, and damage this country’s national heritage. If monies shifted around during a national emergency are allowed to be used for border walls without congressional approval, then the same tactic could be used along the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Corridor and the Rio Grande itself, which runs through Texas and New Mexico.
Border wall construction, the government has unsuccessfully argued in court, is intended to prevent illegal drugs from entering the country. But all that the erection of steel bollards and clearing of endangered species habitat would actually accomplish is further militarization of the southern US border, bringing misery to the lives of working people on both sides and causing irreparable harm to our aesthetic and recreational rights.
Those of us fighting the border wall in South Texas are defending the little remaining biodiversity along the Lower Rio Grande delta, which to us is both a community and a national treasure. Since 1979, the Friends of the Lower Rio Grande Valley Wildlife Corridor have worked to maintain this stretch of native habitat which reaches from Falcon Dam to the Gulf of Mexico. It’s critical habitat for a rich variety of migrating wildlife species, and the region itself hosts 17 species that are federally listed as endangered or threatened. Past attempts by the federal government to target nature reserves that sit along the corridor have been unsuccessful. But that could change if walls are allowed to be built under the pretext of a national emergency.
Also along the Lower Rio Grande Valley Wildlife Corridor is Starr County’s limestone landscape, which sits along the tiny towns Chapeno and Salineño. I canoed there this spring with friends who are also fighting the border wall—Laiken Jordhal of the Center for Biological Diversity, Stefanie Herweck, and Betty Perez of the local Sierra Club. Diverse gravels found along the river in South Texas, such as chert, chalcedony, and quartzite, accompany the limestone landscape in the Lower Rio Grande.
Photo by Jonathan Salinas
We paddled in awe. White pelicans and neotropic cormorants wheeled past us downstream towards the dam. On a shallow strip of the Rio Grande, we clearly saw freshwater shells that lined the riverbed. Laiken and I went for a dip near an island between both sides of the river during a break. The limestone shelves formed miniature rapids, which Betty, our guide, said were the only "rapids" along the entire corridor. The Montezuma cypress tees -- which line the banks of the Rio Grande, are hundreds of years old, and are endangered by border walls -- “are a remnant population, leftovers of the kind of growth that used to be all along the river,” Stefanie told us as she paddled underneath one.
Residents on both the US and Mexican sides of the river also took occasion to enjoy our collective environment and common property by fishing and kayaking. Even the Border Patrol agents who had hassled us earlier that day were caught enjoying the view at another part of the river. We must do all we can do to protect our environment. Our brothers and sisters along the border feel the same way.
“The unimpeded views, in all directions, are centrally important to my enjoyment of this landscape,” said Roy Armenta in a declaration as part of our lawsuit. “A wall will make us feel like we’re in a prison, incarcerated in our own lands.”
According to Customs and Border Protection’s own figures, the vast majority of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, and fentanyl, in the first 11 months of the 2018 fiscal year, was interdicted at legal crossing points. Additionally, the US government has never demonstrated that border barriers decrease the amount of illicit drugs that enter the country. Far from making already-safe communities “secure,” border militarization only criminalizes and punishes innocent residents who are trying to enjoy the environment, while giving powerful government agencies the impunity to do it.
“The position that when Congress declines the Executive’s request to appropriate funds, the Executive nonetheless may simply find a way to spend those funds ‘without Congress’ does not square with fundamental separation of powers principles dating back to the earliest days of our Republic,” wrote Judge Haywood Gilliam, California District Judge, whose injunction against construction in Arizona and California is now being weighed in the Ninth Circuit Court.
Constitutional and civil rights of border residents have been chipped away systematically for the sake of border wall construction over the past three decades. Instead of following the legal process to carry out this construction, the Department of Homeland Security chooses to waive dozens of bedrock environmental laws that protect wildlife and communities.
To allow the federal government use of military funds for such disastrous projects would worsen an already grave situation and open up the majority of US residents who live within 100 miles of a US land border, including the East and West coasts, to the imminent and eventual danger of ecological devastation to border walls. Our courts should defend the many millions of borderlands residents whose rights this country’s judicial system is entrusted to defend when making its decision on the president’s national emergency.