WASHINGTON — A Utah Republican charges that environmental laws are delaying the effort to secure the U.S.-Mexico border and hindering law-enforcement officials from pursuing drug smugglers.
Rep. Rob Bishop, the ranking GOP member on the House Natural Resources subcommittee over public lands, says documents he obtained show Homeland Security officials are hitting environmental roadblocks in trying to erect a virtual fence near troublesome crossing areas.
In one e-mail, a Denver-based National Park Service official informed Homeland Security that placing a surveillance tower in the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona is problematic because it would violate federal wilderness laws. In another case, a Bureau of Land Management official gave border security permission to test drill near a wilderness area only if there were no endangered Sonoran pronghorn animals nearby and required that a biologist accompany the drillers.
Bishop contends that illegal immigrants are scarring wilderness on their own and the inability of border agents to use motorized vehicles in some areas has led to drug smugglers controlling a vast region of American wilderness.
“We’re putting a higher priority on wilderness than we are on border security,” Bishop says. “What is the primary goal down there? Is it border security or is it wilderness that we can’t control?”
With the U.S. cracking down on illegal immigrants coming through urban areas, Bishop says many of those crossing illegally are instead heading toward the less scrutinized areas of federal wilderness near the border — some 4.3 million acres of it.
Officials with the departments of Homeland Security and Interior insist they are working well together to protect the border and wilderness areas.
“We acknowledge that balancing the requirements of border enforcement and land preservation can at times present challenges, but we are committed to collaboration with Interior and the (Forest Service) to find workable solutions on special-status lands,” says Homeland Security spokesman Matt Chandler.
As an example of cooperation, Homeland Security is building surveillance towers in Organ Pipe but in nonwilderness-designated spots.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano noted in a letter to Bishop last month that virtual fence towers outfitted with cameras and radar are located to maximize sight lines or to monitor historical immigrant crossing areas but that environmental regulations may conflict with the strategic location of those towers.
Bishop succeeded earlier this year in inserting language into a House bill that would prevent Interior from spending any funds to block border security from its mission to deter or nab illegal immigrants. A similar amendment passed in the Senate, but when the two chambers merged their bills, negotiators watered it down to affect only areas where a fence is completed.
