A stretch of the border wall near Columbus, New Mexico along State Road 9. (Photo by Patrick Lohmann / Source NM)
The U.S. government this week set aside environmental protection laws in order to speed up border wall construction along approximately 20 miles of New Mexico’s border with Mexico.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Tuesday signed a waiver of various federal laws to expedite border wall construction in southwestern New Mexico. She also signed two similar waivers for areas in neighboring Arizona on Tuesday and Thursday.
Taken together, the waivers allow the federal government to speed up construction of physical barriers and roads along approximately 36 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border, the agency said in a news release on Thursday.
The waivers “ensure the expeditious construction of physical barriers and roads, by minimizing the risk of administrative delays,” DHS said.
The New Mexico waiver lifts the legal requirements of 24 separate federal statutes, including the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, just to name a few.
“Trump is recklessly casting aside the foundational laws that protect endangered species and clean air and water to build a wildlife-killing wall through pristine wilderness,” Laiken Jordahl, Southwest conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity, told Source NM on Friday.
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham told Source NM on Friday in a statement that she has serious concerns about the waivers, saying they bypass protections for endangered species, cultural heritage sites and Native American artifacts.
“New Mexico’s archaeological resources and sensitive ecosystems could face permanent damage without proper environmental review,” Lujan Grisham said. “While we understand border security concerns, the federal government should engage with state officials before waiving decades of established environmental protections.”
The New Mexico waiver designates an area in southwestern New Mexico as “an area of high illegal entry,” divided into three sections.
The DHS news release states that the sections of the border where the laws have been waived total approximately 8.5 miles, but that figure is inaccurate, according to Jordahl, who has traveled to every part of the U.S.-Mexico border as part of his work.
“It is extremely frustrating how difficult they make these waivers to track,” he said. “Instead of using simple [latitude and longitude] coordinates, they pick landmarks that are almost impossible for the public to map. I believe they may have made an error in their locations in the waiver.”
One section starts at a point on the border just south of Antelope Wells in Hidalgo County and extends one-tenth of a mile east, according to International Boundary and Water Commission data. Jordahl told Source NM he found the same measurements using his own map of the border. This section is already walled off, and so DHS is likely adding another layer of wall, he said.
Another section begins at a point on the border just south of Wamels Draw, a valley in Luna County, and extends approximately 7.5 miles east. This section of the border already has vehicle barriers, but is not walled off yet, Jordahl said.
Building a border wall along this particular stretch would be the most environmentally damaging by far, Jordahl said, because it would threaten the movement and migration of Mexican gray wolves.
“We’ve seen Mexican gray wolves in this area; we’ve seen them cross the border,” he said. “We’ve also seen them push up against the border wall in New Mexico, wander along it for days and then ultimately have to turn around, being unable to cross.”
Jordahl said his organization’s focus lies on Arizona’s two waivers and potential wall construction, which would also threaten wildlife.
“Throwing taxpayer money away to wall off the Santa Cruz River and San Rafael Valley would be a death sentence for jaguars, ocelots and other wildlife in the Arizona-Sonora borderlands,” he said. “This is happening while border crossings are at the lowest level in decades. We’ll fight this disastrous project with everything we’ve got.”
The third section starts at a point on the border west of Santa Teresa and extends approximately 12.4 miles, over Mount Cristo Rey, to the Rio Grande near El Paso. This section already has older mesh border walls, and DHS may be installing newer walls there, Jordahl said.
The sections of the border described in the waiver lie in the same general area as the New Mexico National Defense Area, a newly created military buffer zone which the U.S. government is trying to use — along with novel criminal charges — to discourage people from crossing the border.
Gov. Lujan Grisham, in the statement provided to Source, urged meaningful consultation with state and local officials before the federal government begins construction that “could cause lasting harm to our communities and environment.”
“New Mexico’s natural and cultural resources deserve consideration in this process,” she said.
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