By Nick Braune
Mid-Valley Town Crier
by permission
When I heard about a planned discussion on the Border Wall being held at the Frontera Audubon Center, I called Scott Nicol of Weslaco. He lives in Weslaco and is a leader in the No Border Wall Coalition and has helped build many events and meetings up and down the Valley over the last year.
Nicol said that he didn’t anticipate a formal agenda, but a number of people do want to get updated on the border wall situation. With activity popping up on several fronts, Nicol foresees more meetings like this, getting relevant groups on the same page. And he is right: there has been a lot of activity lately.
Two weekends ago, I joined 40 people at the Unitarian Church in San Juan for a workshop discussing different options in case border wall construction starts over the summer. A number of groups were represented: Border Ambassadors (their co-founder, Jay Johnson-Castro, woke up at 2 a.m. to drive down from Del Rio to the morning workshop), People for Peace and Justice, The Student/Farmworker Alliance, LUPE, a group of Valley Quakers (Friends), the Holy Spirit Peace and Justice Community, and others.
No special actions were planned, but the San Juan workshop included an important discussion of tactics and the spirit and history of civil disobedience. This sort of discussion was needed. If construction were to start on the wall tomorrow and I wanted to stop the bulldozers, I suppose I could run up some hill and just lie down in front of the bulldozers until someone dragged me away and the work could begin. It would perhaps delay the construction five minutes.
But real opposition to the wall will take more than a dramatic action.
The facilitators of the San Juan workshop suggested things to do before doing anything else: learn our legal rights, get our arguments straight, and make sure those we are working with are committed to the same sort of principles of non-violence as everyone else.
(I’m reminded that Labor and protest history in this country has always warned of the “provocateur,” that supposedly militant fellow who pops up, doing some extravagant action which is immediately used as an excuse for the police to step in. The provocateur usually has planned his actions with the police ahead of time.)
If real opposition to the wall is intended, we will need more than dramatic actions; we will require renewed commitment to reach broad layers, using possible court challenges, reaching the press, and doing some research. Concerning research, if there is going to be opposition to building the wall, we should find out and publicize who the greedy construction companies are, who they are connected with, how they got the contracts, etc.
A second thing going on of late: A new lawsuit has been filed challenging the constitutionality of an action by Homeland Security secretary, Michael Chertoff.
The lawsuit contends that Chertoff has unconstitutionally circumvented thirty-six Acts of Congress! Using hidden provisions in the recent Real ID Act and intending to speed up construction of the unpopular border wall, Chertoff last month waived the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, National Historic Preservation Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act, etc., etc.
Over decades, Congress wrote these thirty-six laws precisely so citizens could block construction of monstrosities like this border wall and could wield some power in disputes with the government.
Although no terrorists have come over the Mexican border to my knowledge, Chertoff justified all this suspension of law as an “emergency” measure for border security.
I asked Scott Nicol about the constitutional challenge, and he said that the new suit argues that the executive branch (Chertoff/Bush/Halliburton) cannot just annul the work of the legislative branch, violating the separation of powers and limiting our access to the courts.
Nicol says the new suit has been filed at the District Court in El Paso, where judges will be asked to declare Chertoff’s use of the Real ID Act to be unconstitutional. (Chertoff’s decree even preemptively overrules any opposition based on state or local laws as well, stopping any possible opposition from irrigation districts. Building the wall will involve a number of serious water issues.)
Nicol believes this suit does have the potential to halt construction of the wall. Although Nicol’s group, No Border Wall Coalition, is not a plaintiff, the Frontera Audubon Society is. Two wildlife refuges and the County of El Paso, and others have joined in. These plaintiffs are asking as their remedy that the border wall construction be halted. The case could go to the Supreme Court very quickly.
Some quotes from the press release announcing the lawsuit being filed in El Paso:
“In their suit, the organizations ask the court to declare section 102 of the Real ID Act unconstitutional and to prevent the Department of Homeland Security from building walls, roads, or other infrastructure on the border that do not fully comply with all of our nation’s environmental laws.”
“Jim Chapman, Board President of the Frontera Audubon Society, said, ‘To instantly dissolve 96 years of environmental laws and protection with a mere wave of the hand is nothing short of monstrous. If laws can be so easily swept aside on the border, the same precedent could be applied anywhere, from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to Yellowstone National Park. If our nation’s laws are optional, they aren’t really laws.’”
“The Frontera Audubon Society, the Friends of Santa Ana National Wildlife refuge, and the Friends of Laguna Atascosa national Wildlife Refuge are joined in this effort by a diverse group of plaintiffs along the Texas-Mexico border: El Paso County, the El Paso County Water Improvement District No. 1, the Hudspeth County Conservation and Reclamation District No. 1, the Ysleta Del Sur Pueblo, and Brownsville’s Galeria 409 owner Mark Clark. The law firm of Mayer Brown LLP will be representing them.”
Texas Civil Rights Review 
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