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Subject: County officials meet with DHS officials

Date: Wednesday, February 27, 2008 11:13:17 AM

County officials meet with DHS

officials
By ALLEN ESSEX/Valley Morning Star
2008-02-27 00:00:00
An early Tuesday closed-door meeting with federal officials about plans to build a
border fence produced more questions than answers, Cameron County officials said.

Commissioners Court members also said they were disturbed about the public and
news media being excluded from the session.

“Our intention was to have it here at 10 o’clock in the morning on Tuesday, but that
kind of got changed around by the Department of Homeland Security, who said they
preferred to not have a public meeting. So consequently they changed it to 8:30
a.m. at the Border Patrol headquarters (in Harlingen),” County Judge Carlos Cascos
said.

Cascos said he was the only county official able to attend the entire two-hour
meeting and that commissioners had to take turns sitting in.

Federal officials were not pleased that he had invited officials of Brownsville,
Harlingen, San Benito and other smaller cities in the county, but allowed those
elected leaders to attend, Cascos said.

“I made the decision, do we just not meet with them or do we continue this open
dialogue with them,” Cascos said.

Representatives of the county, cities and “members of the public” who were there
were allowed to ask questions and federal officials seemed to answer with as much
candor as they could, he said.

“There were some questions they thought they could not answer because they are
still waiting for information,” the judge said.

Precinct 4 Commissioner Edna Tamayo of Harlingen said, “I was impressed with the
number of people who were there. The one thing I was concerned about is, what
will be the effect on irrigation districts.”

Cascos said that although border security is a federal responsibility, the state of
Texas did make a $110 million appropriation to improve border security. But the
federal government is also responsible for maintaining river levees, he said.
Cameron County officials recently proposed to participate in building a concrete wall
along existing levees similar to what is being done in Hidalgo County. A levee wall
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would not only protect against flooding from hurricanes and other disasters, but also
serve as an effective barrier against terrorists and undocumented immigration,
officials have said.

“I don’t think this court needs to make a decision today or next week, but hopefully
prior to the middle or end of March whether we’re going to pursue this levee wall
concept,” he said.

Precinct 2 Commissioner John Wood of Brownsville said he is greatly concerned that

federal officials intend to start building the fence in the Cameron County area in
June, but don’t seem to have studied a lot of the engineering problems they will
encounter, such as the long-planned Rio Grande weir project.

“It’s still confusing. They hardly know anything,” Wood said. “A lot of their answers
didn’t make any sense. They still don’t have a map.”

Cascos said one reason that federal officials don’t have a map of the border wall
route is because they are continuing to have a dialogue with local officials about
issues like where to locate the wall.

He was glad to hear federal officials have toured areas such as the University of
Texas Brownsville-Texas Southmost College campus, the Brownsville East Loop route
and other areas that may be greatly impacted by the wall, the county judge said.

Planning for the wall “has a long way to go,” Cascos said. He has recommended that
federal officials start over and conduct a full environmental impact statement and
slow down their schedule instead of pushing to complete the wall before the end of
2008.

Precinct 1 Commissioner Sofia Benavides of Brownsville complained to Cascos that

she was not able to participate in the meeting at all and was not able to make any
comments to federal officials about objections to the border wall or fence that will
greatly impact her precinct.

Precinct 3 Commissioner David Garza of San Benito said he was only able to listen in
to part of the meeting, but what he heard didn’t make sense.

“A floating wall? That’s very much an absurdity.”