Critics say proposed border fence was less about security than about the politics of illegal immigration.
For 82 years, college students have walked freely back and forth across the U.S.-Mexican border on the site of a 465-acre campus that once was an Army cavalry base on the extreme southeastern tip of Texas. The winding Rio Grande River provides a scenic backdrop for an 18-hole golf course and scattered academic halls.
But the idyllic atmosphere at the University of Texas at Brownsville (UTB) and its related Texas Southmost College was almost shattered this summer by increasingly bitter politics over illegal immigration. A unit of the Department of Homeland Security, created after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, planned to erect an 18-foot-high, solid border fence — including a 50-yard-wide “dead zone” where people are not permitted — right through the school. If opposed, the government threatened to use eminent domain powers to condemn the land.
Proposed by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection service, the prison-style barrier would have chopped up the golf course and, in practical terms, placed part of the campus on Mexican territory. Students would have had to bring passports and go through border checkpoints just to attend some classes.
The effort was part of the Bush administration’s pledge to build 370 miles of pedestrian fencing and 300 miles of vehicle barriers on the United States’ southern, 1,952-mile-long border this year. While proponents say tighter borders are needed to protect the United States from terrorist attacks, the measures are seen as ways to satisfy political critics who claim undocumented workers are overrunning the United States.
Locally, the proposed fence was seen as a direct affront to the 17,000-plus UTB student body; many of whom are of Mexican ancestry, and about 400 are Mexican citizens. UTB prides itself on its diversity and focus on cross-cultural issues such as improving health care in border areas.
