Border Mayors Refuse To Allow Homeland Security On Land For Border Fence

Given that most of the major metro dailies typically ignore the Rio Grande Valley–even as the border fence becomes an hotter and hotter topic–I was surprised to see some version of this story in four of the state’s major dailies this morning:

Mayors along the Texas-Mexico border have begun a quiet protest of the federal government’s plans to build a fence along the border: Some are refusing access to their land.

Mayors in Brownsville, Del Rio and El Paso have denied or limited access to some parts of city property to Department of Homeland Security workers assigned to begin surveys or other preliminary work on the fence Congress has authorized to keep out illegal immigrants. Eagle Pass has denied a request from federal officials to build a portion of the wall within its city limits.

This is totally priceless. It’s especially priceless because these Texas cities are, from all accounts, pushing around the federal government as they tell the Feds, “not in my backyard” with regard to that stupid border fence.

Note this as well:

Brownsville Mayor Pat Ahumada said Tuesday that he refused two weeks ago to sign documents granting federal workers permission to begin work if it was to be on city property. Del Rio granted limited access, and El Paso allowed workers only on its outskirts, said Monica Weisberg Stewart of the Texas Border Coalition, a group that represents local officials.

“This is exercising our rights. This is our property,” Ahumada said. “We are not going to make it easy for them.”

Ahumada is, technically, correct. It is the cities’ property. But, the federal government is…how best to put this: all powerful.

As expected, litigation is a likely next route, but I expected the Feds would be the ones doing the litigating. The cities, however, may be the first ones to court:

Brownsville, a city of about 170,000 people across the Rio Grande from Matamoros, Mexico, said it was also considering suing the federal government to prevent the fence’s construction on city property. City leaders met with attorneys Tuesday night about that possibility but decided to wait two weeks before making a decision.

“If we have to, we’ll take it all the way up to the Supreme Court,” Ahumada said about a potential lawsuit.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Brad Benson said the federal government hasn’t come up with a response but said it expected some land owners to refuse.

Of course, the Feds will likely use litigation to attempt to compel the cities to cooperate.

For all of those people who are in a panic–and should be–about the border wall, I think the picture being painted here is that we may not see a border wall for a decade or more. And, by that time, hopefully a Democratic president will be in office and we will have a more legitimate solution to the immigration problem.

I say that we won’t see this border wall for a decade (or ever) for several reasons, all related to the litigation. First and foremost, can you imagine how many lawsuits in how many federal judicial districts there will be over this thing? Seriously, if every county and municipality on the border from Texas to California, and every border state were to sue the feds you’d have at least 100 separate lawsuits–enough for a class action, I suppose.

And, if the feds sue or countersue the cities and counties that won’t allow them access to their lands, how many more lawsuits will there be?

The cases would take years to get to trial; you’d probably have dozens and dozens of economists, sociologists, and similar expert witnesses called to denounce the border wall, and Homeland Security would call its experts on how all those alleged “terrorists” cross over from Mexico. There’d be an appeal to the circuit appeals court, and then an appeal to the Supreme Court.

The more I think about this, the more I think that this “class action” concept against the border wall would be a good idea. It would literally gum up the works for years and, if a favorable judge issues just the right injunction, nothing will happen until a trial is conducted.

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