Chetoff waives court decision temporarily to halt border fence

Construction of two miles of border fencing in the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area will resume following DHS secretary Michael Chertoff’s decision Monday to invoke a waiver which exempts border fences from any law. Chertoff’s move brought an end to a legal challenge from two environmental groups that prompted a federal judge to bring construction to a halt on 10 October. That restraining order would have expired Wednesday. Instead, construction will resume soon, although the department didn’t disclose the exact date. Arizona Star’s Brady McCombs writes that DHS was confident it would have prevailed had the legal process continued, but said it could not afford to waste any time. The Border Patrol apprehended 19,000 illegal border crossers in the area in the recently completed fiscal year 2007, a significant increase from 2006. The agency’s Tucson Sector, which stretches from the western edge of New Mexico to the eastern edge of Yuma County, has been the busiest stretch of U.S.-Mexican border for illegal immigration since 1998.

The use of the waiver, by the way, marks the first time DHS has invoked it in Southeastern Arizona. The decision drew the ire of environmentalists and opponents of the waiver provision granted to DHS secretary in the REAL ID Act of 2005. Chertoff used to waiver to waive a record nineteen laws, said officials with Defenders of Wildlife. Sean Sullivan, executive committee member of the Sierra Club Rincon Group, which covers Southeastern Arizona, said he was not surprised, but said he was deeply disappointed considering the ecological significance of the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area. Home to hundreds of species of birds, mammals, amphibians, and reptiles, and the last remaining free-flowing river in Arizona, the San Pedro has earned international recognition as a rare treasure. In 1988 Congress established a forty-mile stretch of the upper river as the nation’s first Riparian National Conservation Area. DHS plans to erect barriers across the approximately two miles of border in the conservation area. The proposal calls for 4- to 6-foot-high vehicle barriers made of old railroad rails in the riverbed and washes and 12- to 14-foot-high pedestrian fences along the rest of the conservation area. This would extend thirty-plus miles of nearly continuous barriers that begin east of Douglas. DHS officials have defended their environmental assessment and refuted the dire predictions from environmentalists. The department has agreed to work with a Fish and Wildlife biologist to monitor area wildlife; remove temporary vehicle barriers from the riverbed each monsoon season; and take steps to prevent the introduction of invasive weeds to the area.