Legal Barrier?
Congressman Raul Grijalva sues Trump administration over border wall plans
U.S. Congressman Raul Grijalva (D-AZ03) took the fight against President Donald Trump’s proposed wall between the United States and Mexico to court last week.
Grijalva teamed up with the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity to file a lawsuit asking the federal courts to ensure that environmental laws—along with all the red tape and studies that come with them—are enforced as Trump moves forward with his plans to flaunt his hideous erection on the border.
“I really believe that a fundamental law we have in this country is NEPA, the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires transparency, process and an environmental assessment, an intense environmental assessment of any construction by any federal agency that affects public land and that affects communities, wildlife habitat, water and the terrain itself,” Grijalva said last week. “It is an appropriate and prudent step before we start talking about (spending) $22 billion, start talking about this fable that’s been created about a wall, and investing not only in money but in unintended consequences that will have negative impacts on the environment, the people who live there and all species that are part of that environment.”
Keiran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a prepared statement that the proposed border wall “will divide and destroy the incredible communities and wild landscapes along the border. Endangered species like jaguars and ocelots don’t observe international boundaries and should not be sacrificed for unnecessary border militarization. Their survival and recovery depends on being able to move long distances across the landscape and repopulate places on both sides of the border where they’ve lived for thousands of years.”
Grijalva isn’t the only Southern Arizona member of Congress to express concern about the plans for Trump’s border wall. In a break from her usual support for Trump’s agenda, Congresswoman Martha McSally (R-AZ02) is also pushing back against the proposal.
In a March 21 letter to Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly and Director Office of Management and Budget Mick Mulvaney, McSally and Texas Congresssman Will Hurd (a fellow Republican who also has a long stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border in his district) asked several questions about plans for the wall.
McSally and Hurd wrote that they “recognize the need for robust border security and infrastructure to ensure public safety and increase cross border commerce. However, we also have an obligation to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars and as such have a number of questions.”
McSally and Hurd asked how DHS will determine the areas where a wall is needed; whether DHS will consider existing manmade and natural barriers; whether Border Patrol officials, state officials, local law enforcement, ranchers and other stakeholders would have input into whether a wall is needed in different sectors along the border; and whether steps would be taken to ensure that Border Patrol agents would have some kind of ability to see what’s on the other side of the proposed 30-foot wall.
The lawmakers said in their letter that physical barriers make sense as part of a plan for preventing illegal border crossings, but “we also believe that an expenditure this large, and submitted with limited details, deserves additional scrutiny to ensure funds are being used effectively in pursuit of our shared goal of securing the southwest border.”
As a result of the letter, McSally and Hurd were hammered in a Breitbart News story headlined “GOP Leaders Dropping Border Wall Funds, Says Report.”
Citing an article in D.C.-based The Hill, the Breitbart story said that McSally and Hurd had teamed up with House Democrats and were “working around-the-clock to make sure funding for the estimated $12 billion border wall is not factored into the GOP budget.”
Elsewhere in border news, Attorney General Jeff Sessions visited Nogales last week to announce new guidelines for federal prosecutors to follow when determining whether to seek deportation of undocumented immigrants who encounter local law enforcement, including felony charges for anyone who illegally enters the country a second time; prison time for undocumented immigrants who use fraudulent paperwork to obtain a job; and charges for people who transport undocumented immigrants.
In his speech, Sessions justified the tougher approach because he said the country was under assault by criminal gangs “that turn cities and suburbs into warzones, that rape and kill innocent citizens and who profit by smuggling poison and other human beings across our borders. Depravity and violence are their calling cards, including brutal machete attacks and beheadings. It is here, on this sliver of land, where we first take our stand.” Sessions stopped his statement there, rather than finishing with the dramatic “against this filth” line that was included in his prepared remarks.
Congressman Tom O’Halleran (D-AZ01) was critical of Sessions’ new guidelines.
“I have no problem with getting the felons out of the country,” O’Halleran said. “But some of these people that they’re taking out of the country, they have children that are Americans, and they have not had a violent felony conviction. Here we are, taking mothers away from their children. That’s not acceptable. I was a Republican at one time, and we used to run on the value of family, and keeping families together.”
The televised edition of Zona Politics with Jim Nintzel airs 6:30 p.m. Fridays on the Creative Tucson network, Cox Channel 20 and Comcast Channel 74. This week’s guests are Tucson City Councilman Steve Kozachik and Tucson Metro Chamber President and CEO Mike Varney. The TV show repeats Sunday mornings at 9 a.m. The radio edition of Zona Politics airs at 5 p.m. Sundays on community radio KXCI, 91.3 FM, and at 1 p.m. Saturdays and 11 a.m. Sundays on KEVT, 1210 AM. Nintzel also talks politics on The John C. Scott show at 4 p.m. Thursdays on KEVT, 1210 AM.
This article appears in Apr 20-26, 2017.
Ah, the old red tape parade. No wonder most people can’t stand environmentalists.
Good god what an idiot. He is stupid to think he can stop the wall that prevents the illegals for coming over and voting for him.
If you look closely you can see the remains of last nights dinner in his beard.
Transparency, complying with established rules, regulations and laws you do realize you are talking about Donald Trump, right?
I suggest you step outside your politically-correct liberal bubble and start paying attention to the new reality encompassed by the post-fact, climate-change and science denying, nouveau barbarian horde that is occupying Washington intent on dismantling, purging and “decontaminating” anything and everything that came into contact with the former administration.
“Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted, it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in which instinct has learned nothing from experience.”
George Santayana (1863 -1952) “The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 1905”
You’re going to have liberals walking into walls trying to figure that out.. Good job.
Mr Grijalva need look no further than Venezuala to see how socialism ends, and it is not well. Once an oil rich country, able to develop all types of social safety nets has collapsed into poverty and the people are rioting in the streets.
They have become the “new” Greece. Take a good look at socialism. Don’t turn away. This is the new Democratic Party.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/06/09/world/social-issues-world/dumpster-diving-hunger-venezuela-economy-tanks-76-people-poverty-line/#.WPkAFarQe70
I see that you have a thing for crusty beards honey! You should get together with your friend azpaul and play beard buddies. You guys can play guessing games where you try to see the remains of last nights dinner and walk into walls trying to figure that out. Good job sweety.
Honey? Sweetie? Sorry, but I don’t swing that way.
Isn’t it funny how Grijalva and fellow travelers are never concerned about the environmental impacts of drug smuggling and illegal immigration across the unsecured border?
– Migrants and smugglers dump an estimated 2,000 tons of trash and human waste in the borderlands every year – most of it in areas where it is very difficult to remove. (See https://legacy.azdeq.gov/obep/waste.html).
– Migrants and smugglers had cut an estimated 1300 miles of wildcat trails in the borderlands as of 2006. (See https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/opini).
-Illegal aliens and smugglers regularly set wildfires, both to summon aid or to distract CBP, destroying hundreds of acres of vegetation a year. In fact, migrants are suspected of causing many of southern Arizona’s most devastating fires of the last few years (Horseshoe 2, Monument, etc.). (See http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/arizona).
Would a wall have some environmental impact? Sure. But so would doing nothing. Let’s try to keep some perspective on both sides of the issue.
12 dead in Caracas today from food riots. Socialism failing once again Tucsonans. Please try to pay attention.
Beard Buddies rejoice!
See what I mean? That made sense.
“If you look closely you can see the remains of last nights dinner in his beard.” There is a pack rat colony in there also, i could not see them,but, i seen cactus, so they are in there somewhere!
Mr. Nice Guy? Seriously?
NO!
Raul’s picture next to “skinny”, now that’s irony.
The wall will never be built. Anyone who doesn’t know that is not paying attention. You could start with the budget that was just released.