6/30/2008 2:33 PM
By: Associated Press
BROWNSVILLE -- A Texas school dedicated to nourishing U.S.-Mexico ties heads back to court today over a government plan to divide the campus with a fence.
The University of Texas at Brownsville and Southmost Texas College want a judge to force the Department of Homeland Security to work with them for an alternative to a fence.
A fence would leave 180 acres of their campus—the university golf course—in no man's land.
The judge issued an order in March that instructed both sides to look for alternatives to a security fence.
Homeland Security said it found no viable alternative. On June 6, Homeland Security informed the university that it was proceeding with the fence.
Homeland Security is racing to finish fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border by year's end.
Congress set the goal to try to curb illegal immigration and drug smuggling.
Copyright 2008 Associated Press, All rights reserved.
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I wouldn't give UT the time of day, if I were DHS. The University of Texas has consistently filed lawsuits to stop DHS from enforcing immigration laws and to the extent of joining forces with the ACLU.
ReplyDeleteNow they want something from DHS. Make me laugh.
What goes around, comes around. UT, drop your lawsuits, if you want the golf course.
The politicians who voted for the Secure Fence Act were primarily interested in the symbolism of a wall, not its substance, otherwise they would have checked to see if the original San Diego border wall had worked. In fact, it hadn’t. The Congressional Research Service concluded that the border wall “did not have a discernible impact on the influx of unauthorized aliens coming across the border in San Diego.” Recent Border Patrol statistics bear this conclusion out. Fiscal year 2007 saw a 7% increase in illegal crossings in the San Diego sector. In contrast, during the same year crossings border-wide dropped by 20%. The Del Rio sector, which like the rest of Texas east of El Paso has never had a wall, saw a 46% drop. The unwalled Rio Grande Valley saw a 34% drop, bringing illegal entries in that sector to a 15 year low. Even Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff recognized the border wall’s ineffectiveness, saying, “I think the fence has come to assume a certain kind of symbolic significance which should not obscure the fact that it is a much more complicated problem than putting up a fence which someone can climb over with a ladder or tunnel under with a shovel.”
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