Border Patrol Disasters

[GreyhoundFan]

"Right-wing group must stop building private border wall in South Texas, judge says in temporary order"

Spoiler

For nearly a year, allies of President Trump ignored seemingly every obstacle that might keep their right-wing group from building a crowdfunded wall at multiple points along the U.S.-Mexico border.

They didn’t get permits in advance. They refused government orders to stop and study their engineering. And on the banks of the Rio Grande, they began bulldozing land where, true to their group’s name — “We Build the Wall” — they plan to erect more than three miles of 18-foot steel fencing.

But a Texas judge on Tuesday issued what may be the strongest rebuke yet to the group, which is led by Stephen K. Bannon, ordering it to temporarily halt all construction because of possible harm to a nearby nature preserve.

State District Judge Keno Vasquez, of Hidalgo County, ruled that the National Butterfly Center, a 100-acre riverfront preserve in Mission, Tex., could face “imminent and irreparable harm” if We Build the Wall continues with plans to erect a “water wall” between the nature refuge and a state park.

Javier Peña, a lawyer for the butterfly center, told The Washington Post the wall could act as a dam that would redirect floodwater to the sanctuary — a popular spot for school groups and birders — and wipe out its vegetation, thus destroying the site or reducing its property value.

“You can do almost anything with your property. But what you can’t do is hurt other people’s property,” he said. “For these guys to come down and use fear and hate to destroy it [the center] for their personal gain — that’s what troubles us.”

Yet the Florida group, and its founder, outspoken military veteran Brian Kolfage, may be barreling forward anyway.

“We have many people who try to stop us legally with silly attempts, and in the end we always prevail,” Kolfage said in an email to The Post. “I would put a 50/50 chance this is fake news, and if it’s not it will be crushed legally pretty fast.”

In a video posted to Twitter on Tuesday evening, the group’s project manager — a man in a hard-hat identified only as “Foreman Mike” — said a mile and a half of land had been cleared beside the river, and steel bollards and panels would be installed within 48 hours.

“We’re going to be putting this up,” he said, asking for more donations, while pledging to have the whole project complete by Jan. 15, 2020. “We have to supercharge it now. It’s time to get really moving.”

Kolfage, a triple amputee in Florida who received a Purple Heart for his service in Iraq, first went viral last December, when he launched a GoFundMe looking to crowdfund $1 billion to privately build Trump’s border wall.

As he raised $25 million online, his campaign drew scrutiny about where all that money was going. But Kolfage, who enlisted the likes of Bannon and Kris Kobach to serve on his board, then revealed the group had hired a North Dakota construction firm to erect a half-mile of fencing on private land in Sunland Park, N.M.

In May, the town’s mayor sent We Build the Wall a cease-and-desist letter, seeking to block its construction on private land belonging to a brick company. Days later, though, the construction firm — headed by a major GOP donor and touted by Trump himself — was later allowed to finish carrying out the project.

Over the summer, Kolfage and his group set its sights on South Texas, where they again hired the North Dakota firm to erect a “water wall” on private land along the Rio Grande belonging to a sugar cane farmer.

The U.S. Army Corps typically builds on higher ground along river levees, placing steel bollards far from the ever-shifting curves of a river that has been especially prone to flooding. (The butterfly center has sued the Trump administration over its plans to extend such construction into the protected area, and a circuit court is set to hear arguments later this week.)

Unlike the federal government’s construction, Peña said Kolfage’s plans ignore the possibility of damage to neighboring properties.

“Whether you’re for the wall or against the wall, they [the government] are cognizant of the dangers that construction could cause,” he said. “These guys are just going in there to stoke everyone’s anger and fear, raise money, and then move along to the next victim.”

The International Boundary and Water Commission, a joint U.S.-Mexico agency that issues permits to build along the Rio Grande, asked the group to halt construction, submit an engineering study and remove heavy equipment from the levees, The Post’s Nick Miroff reported. The group appeared to ignore that request.

During that time, Kolfage and the butterfly center erupted into an online flame war. Kolfage accused the center of assisting cartels and partaking in insect smuggling, calling them “left wing thugs with a sham butterfly agenda.” The center took its own jabs at Kolfage on social media, sometimes including the hashtag “#LiarLiarPantsOnFire.”

Then, the butterfly center sued Kolfage and his group. Peña said the preserve’s leaders wanted to conduct a study of the fencing itself, but have been blocked from doing so until the court grants them access to the land being used by We Build the Wall.

“They’re not stopping. They’re not planning on conducting studies. They’re not concerned with what damage it would do to neighboring properties,” he said. “They just want to build the wall.”

The temporary restraining order will last at least until Dec. 17, at which point it can be extended for another two weeks and may then lead to a temporary injunction hearing.

Should Kolfage and his group continue construction anyway, a judge could call them in for a hearing and consider sanctions ranging from monetary fines to jail time, Peña said.

 

[fraurosena]

One the one hand I’m glad to see this confronting  imagery on display for all world to see (but especially those Trump loving evangelicals). On the other hand, it’s upsetting to see that it’s still necessary to confront people, because family separation and caging of babies is still ongoing and has actually been pushed to the background in media coverage, as if it has somehow become less important or, Rufus forbid, people have become desensitized to these atrocities.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Oh FFS: "Trump planning to divert additional $7.2 billion in Pentagon funds for border wall"

Spoiler

President Trump is preparing to divert an additional $7.2 billion in Pentagon funding for border wall construction this year, five times what Congress authorized him to spend on the project in the 2020 budget, according to internal planning figures obtained by The Washington Post.

The Pentagon funds would be extracted, for the second year in a row, from military construction projects and counternarcotics funding. According to the plans, the funding would give the government enough money to complete approximately 885 miles of new fencing by Spring 2022, far more than the 509 miles the administration has slated for the U.S. border with Mexico.

Trump took $2.5 billion from military counterdrug programs for border barrier construction in 2019, but this year his administration is planning to take significantly more — $3.5 billion. Trump administration officials also are planning to take $3.7 billion in military construction funding, slightly more than the $3.6 billion diverted in 2019.

The move would bring the total amount of federal funds allocated to border fencing to $18.4 billion under Trump, who made the border barrier a priority during his campaign for the presidency in 2016. He also pledged to make Mexico pay for the barrier, delighting crowds at his rallies.

The Trump administration has completed 101 miles of new barriers so far, according to the latest figures, far less than the 450 miles the president has promised to erect by the end of the year. But construction along the border — largely on land the federal government already owns — has been continuing even as legal challenges have aimed to disrupt it.

A federal district court in El Paso ruled last month that the White House broke the law when it commandeered funds for the border wall that had been authorized by Congress for another purpose. The court froze $3.6 billion the administration budgeted for new barriers.

But the Trump administration appealed that ruling, and last week the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans lifted the injunction, saying work could proceed while legal challenges to the government are pending.

The president and his administration viewed that ruling as additional encouragement to take the money again this year, according to administration officials familiar with the plans.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment Monday, and a Pentagon spokesperson declined to comment.

Jared Kushner, whose father-in-law has placed him in charge of the border wall project, had discussions last summer with top military officials about once more siphoning money from the Pentagon budget to construct the barriers. But those plans were on hold because of the legal challenges to the maneuver.

Several dozen Pentagon construction projects were delayed or suspended as a result of last year’s reprogramming of $3.6 billion, including road repairs, a waste treatment plant and school construction projects on military bases. It’s unclear if those project will be delayed again, or if a different set of repairs and improvements could be postponed.

The White House asked Congress for $5 billion for 2020 border barrier construction, and Trump’s demand led to the 35-day government shutdown a year ago. The shutdown ended with Democrats agreeing to provide just $1.4 billion in taxpayer funding and the White House turning to military budgets to obtain billions more.

Congress authorized nearly $700 billion in defense spending for 2020, a slight increase over last year’s levels.

The federal appeals court in New Orleans ruled 2-1 last week that the plaintiffs suing the Trump administration to block the use of the military funds — El Paso County, Tex., and the Border Network for Human Rights, an activist group — likely lacked the legal standing to make the challenge.

The decision came six months after the U.S. Supreme Court issued a similar ruling lifting an injunction from a federal court judge in California that temporarily blocked the administration's first attempt to reprogram military funds.

The 5th Circuit panel said the administration would be entitled to the same relief granted by the Supreme Court in that decision.

Stephanie Grisham, the White House press secretary, celebrated the court’s ruling in a statement, saying it had “lifted an illegitimate nationwide injunction,” and “in doing so has allowed vital border wall construction to move forward using military construction funds.”

“This is a victory for the rule of law,” Grisham’s statement said. “We are committed to keeping our borders secure, and we will finish the wall.”

Homeland Security officials have repeatedly moved the goal posts to scale back Trump’s ambitious construction targets, bringing criticism that they have not worked fast enough to deliver on the president’s signature promise.

During an event at the border in Yuma, Ariz., last week marking the completion of the 100th mile of barrier, acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said the administration has not fallen behind.

“I can tell you that we remain confident that we are on track to 400, 450 miles that are either completed or under construction by the end of 2020,” Wolf told reporters.

It was the first time an administration official had counted barriers “under construction” toward the president’s pledge to complete 450 miles by Election Day.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

So, not only did part of Agolf Twitler's vaunted border wall fall over earlier this week, but I read this last night: "Trump’s border wall, vulnerable to flash floods, needs large storm gates left open for months"

Spoiler

NACO, Ariz. — President Trump's border wall probably will require the installation of hundreds of storm gates to prevent flash floods from undermining or knocking it over, gates that must be left open for months every summer during "monsoon season" in the desert, according to U.S. border officials, agents and engineers familiar with the plans.

The open, unmanned gates in remote areas already have allowed for the easy entry of smugglers and migrants into the United States.

At locations along the U.S. southern border where such gates already are in operation, Border Patrol agents must manually raise them every year before the arrival of the summer thunderstorms that convert riverbeds into raging torrents that carry massive amounts of water and debris, including sediment, rocks, tree limbs and vegetation. Trump's wall, which features 30-foot metal bollards spaced four inches apart, effectively acts as a sewer grate that traps the debris; when clogged, the barriers cannot withstand the power of the runoff.

Because the gates typically are located in isolated areas that lack electricity, they cannot be operated from afar. That requires the Border Patrol to leave the gates open for months, increasing the need for U.S. agents to monitor the sites because smugglers and other border-crossers can enter through the large gaps and ­advance northward following stream channels and narrow canyons to avoid detection.

The flooding risks are one of the biggest engineering challenges to the president’s vision of a linear man-made structure spanning hundreds of miles of desert, canyons and mountains. But the Trump administration has said little about how it plans to manage the hydrology of the border region.

Though Trump has boasted that his new “border wall system” will be an impermeable force against illegal crossings and drug trafficking, the need for open gates is another notable weakness that smugglers and migrants can exploit to slip through the barrier and evade capture.

Smugglers have learned how to cut through the new steel bollards using common tools they can buy at hardware stores, and some have demonstrated that the wall can be climbed with handmade ladders and rope. And most of the hard narcotics that enter the United States via Mexico pass through official border crossings, hidden in vehicles and among cargo, not through the remote areas where Trump’s new barriers are being erected.

Roy Villareal, chief of the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector, which covers most of Arizona, described the addition of the floodgates as an example of how his agency has learned to adjust to the realities of the Southwest’s extreme weather and topography.

“The border is so diverse,” Villareal said. “You have to plan for water flow. . . . People think it’s just this monolithic wall, sort of like the Great Wall of China, where you drop it into place and that’s all there is to it. And that’s not the reality at all.”

John Ladd, whose cattle ranch extends along the border for about 10 miles west of tiny Naco, said the Border Patrol and the Army Corps of Engineers began installing 18-foot bollards on his property in 2008, adding “lift gates” that could be opened during the summer to allow floodwaters through.

Ladd, who supports Trump and his wall project, said his span of the border now has about 70 gates, and U.S. agents use a forklift to raise them at the beginning of every summer. They initially were designed to be hoisted by agents using the winch on their Border Patrol vehicles, Ladd said, but the gates were so heavy that “the front end of their trucks would start lifting off the ground.”

When the gates were first installed on Ladd’s ranch, smugglers would drive through the openings with loads of marijuana, he said, so the Border Patrol lowered the height of the opening to four feet. The vehicle incursions have stopped, but illegal crossings and smuggling increase along his property during the summer months when the gates are left open, the rancher said.

“They know as soon as the Border Patrol opens them,” he added, referring to traffickers in Mexico.

Veteran Border Patrol officials acknowledge that the government would be foolish to place vertical metal bars in the direct path of rivers and creeks that swell to dangerous volumes during summer storms. The U.S. southern border is crisscrossed by hundreds of drainage channels and several rivers. One Arizona river, the Santa Cruz, starts in a U.S. valley, flows through the mountains into Mexico and returns to cross the border again with more water.

Outside of the high-traffic areas, much of the U.S.-Mexico border through New Mexico and Arizona is lined with vehicle barriers that are welded from old rail tracks. Though they would stop a car or truck from crossing, they allow water and debris — as well as wildlife and people — to pass through.

Trump’s border project is replacing those barriers with the steel bollards, which act like a sieve and can impede water flow.

At several locations in Arizona where construction crews are racing to erect the structure, workers have been leaving gaps at creek beds and river channels because they do not yet have the new fencing panels with storm gates. Older vehicle barriers remain in place along those sections, the gaps akin to missing teeth.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials in Washington declined to respond to questions about how many storm gates they plan to install and where they would be located.

But Villareal and other Border Patrol officials said the storm gates, and their need to be left open all summer, amount to a relatively minor challenge that can be compensated for using technology such as cameras and sensors — along with more agents.

They also say a barrier with openings is preferable to no barrier at all, and the gaps can help them by funneling foot traffic into areas where they can concentrate their interdiction efforts.

“At the end of the day, you still need an individual to monitor and make that arrest,” Villareal said. “What’s been tested, and seems to work well for us, is opening them up at the beginning of monsoon season, and at the end of monsoon season, closing them back down. Which means for the patrol agent in charge of that particular area, he or she has to deploy manpower to cover that area when the gates are open.”

The storm gates are different from the much larger vehicle gates the government installs along the Rio Grande in Texas to allow farmers, U.S. agents and others access to land that becomes cut off from the rest of the United States by the barrier. Those gates can be quickly opened and shut and do not need to remain open to manage flooding.

White House officials this month acknowledged that they are preparing to divert an additional $7.2 billion from this year’s Defense Department budget for wall construction, money that will allow the administration to complete nearly 900 miles of new barriers by 2022.

If that plan goes forward, it probably will include new barriers in mountainous areas where the force of floodwaters is even greater and engineers would need to install even more storm gates through canyons and creek beds.

In 2011, a 40-foot span of mesh-style border fencing collapsed in Arizona’s Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument after storm debris became trapped against the structure, causing floodwaters to back up.

“They came in and installed gates, but it was a challenge for the Border Patrol,” said Lee Baiza, who was the park superintendent at the time. “How do you man those gates during weather events?”

Baiza said the president’s border barrier project is likely to exacerbate the risk of damage, because the crews building the structure and the adjoining road have loosened and disturbed soil, rocks and plant life, all of which can be picked up and carried away in sudden rushes of water.

“It’s a fragile environment, so if you go drive across that country, you will loosen up the soil and brush,” Baiza said. “The more activity, the more it gets run over, the more debris you create.”

Another section of border barrier toppled in 2014 near Nogales, Ariz., when U.S. agents failed to open the floodgates in time, sending mud and stones into nearby homes. And in 2008, two people in the Mexican city of Nogales, just across the border, were killed in catastrophic flash floods that inflicted millions of dollars in damage, with some of the blame falling on a Border Patrol project that placed bars into cross-border culverts with the intention of blocking illegal crossings.

The gates have created logistical problems for U.S. officials, who must physically lift and lower the gates with the changing of the seasons. In the fall, Border Patrol crews sometimes struggle to close the gates on Ladd’s Arizona ranch, he said, because the openings accumulate rocks and sand during the summer.

Despite what border officials said about sensors, Ladd said agents have told him they cannot leave sensors in the stream channels and canyons while the gates are open because they, too, risk being swept away by flash floods. He said he has not seen an increase in summer patrols, either.

The San Pedro River, which starts in Mexico and flows north into Arizona at the edge of Ladd’s property, meanders for much of the year or dries up. But its sandy flood plain is as wide as a football field.

At the site where it crosses the border west of Naco, Border Patrol agents must remove everything in the river’s path, even the permeable vehicle barriers, to prevent them from being swept away.

“There’s no way you can put a bollard fence in here,” said Lai­ken Jordahl, an environmental activist with the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity. On a recent afternoon, he counted 18 cottonwood trees next to the river at the border crossing that appeared to be tagged for removal, some of which were mature. “They’re trying to take every inch they can,” Jordahl said.

Crews were preparing to install new barriers, but border officials haven’t said what type of gates they will use at the river.

“This is a wildlife superhighway,” Jordahl said, listing the species that traverse the border through the stream channels: antelopes, deer, coyotes, bears, bobcats, ocelots, javelina.

On a bright January day, the river’s cool waters ran just a few inches deep, but the San Pedro’s latent power was visible a little higher on the riverbank. A tangle of logs, mud and other flood debris was snarled against a tree, 10 feet above the river channel.

 

[fraurosena]

If this is true then I am beyond appalled. These are actual nazi practices. It is unconscionable, intolerable and utterly contemptible. These poor, poor women.

So much for being pro life.

Edited September 15, 2020 by fraurosena

[fraurosena]

I hesitated posting this, because this extra information is distressing and makes your blood boil. 

 

[laPapessaGiovanna]

I don't know, seems like additional investigation and more sources are needed. If, and it's a big if, the alleged story is corroborated then it would be an unspeakable horror and while I don't expect anything good from this administration's ICE, I don't want to take this at face value before an actual investigation finds proof. If that happens then...I don't even know...this is so evil...

[GreyhoundFan]

6 hours ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

I don't know, seems like additional investigation and more sources are needed. If, and it's a big if, the alleged story is corroborated then it would be an unspeakable horror and while I don't expect anything good from this administration's ICE, I don't want to take this at face value before an actual investigation finds proof. If that happens then...I don't even know...this is so evil...

I agree with you about the need for more investigation, but after four years of this administration, it wouldn't surprise me if it was true. It sounds right up Stephen Miller's alley.

[GreyhoundFan]

Continued here:

 

Edited September 16, 2020 by GreyhoundFan