Pubdate: Mon, 16 May 2011
Source: Independent  (UK)
Copyright: 2011 Independent Newspapers (UK) Ltd.
Contact:  http://www.independent.co.uk/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/209
Author Guy Adams

THE TOWN ON THE WRONG SIDE OF AMERICA'S DRUGS WAR

A huge fence runs thousands of miles along the border with Mexico to 
keep migrants and narcotics out. Trouble is, it also cuts off half of 
Brownsville, Texas. By Guy Adams

Like many a proud Texan, Pamela Taylor likes to mark her turf. So on 
any given day, she makes sure passers-by can see the Stars and 
Stripes and the Lone Star Flag of her native state fluttering atop 
the poles that stand in her front garden.

Ms Taylor has lived in the southern-most city of Brownsville, Texas, 
since just after the Second World War, when she left the UK to join 
her late husband John, a US soldier who had been based near 
Birmingham. With that in mind, she also flies a Union Jack. "I hang 
it lower than the American flags," she says, "because it's a smaller 
part of my heritage."

Lately, though, there's been a distinctly surreal flavour to Ms 
Taylor's colourful display of patriotic identity. About 350 metres 
from her porch, an imposing metal fence looms into view. It is 
supposed to divide the US from Mexico, but by a cruel twist of fate, 
the 83-year-old grandmother's family home has ended up on the "wrong" 
side. Four years ago, amid the seemingly endless hand-wringing over 
the flow of drugs and illegal migrants across their southern border, 
Washington politicians voted to erect a tall fence that would stretch 
thousands of miles from San Diego, on the Pacific coast, to 
Brownsville, on the Gulf of Mexico. The best-laid political schemes 
do not always work out as planned, though. When government engineers 
arrived in Ms Taylor's neighbourhood, their plan hit a snag: the 
Mexican border follows the meandering Rio Grande in this area. And 
the river's muddy banks are too soft and too prone to flooding to 
support a fence.

As a result, this corner of south-eastern Texas had its barrier 
constructed on a levee that follows a straight line from half a mile 
to two miles north of the river, leaving Ms Taylor's bungalow - along 
with the homes and land of dozens of her angry neighbours - marooned 
on the Mexican side. "My son-in-law likes to say that we live in a 
gated community," she says, explaining that to even visit the shops 
she must pass through a gate watched over by border-patrol officers. 
"We're in a sort of no man's land. I try to laugh, but it's hard: 
that fence hasn't just spoiled our view, it's spoiled our lives."

Ms Taylor's domestic situation demonstrates - despite sound bites 
from politicians (Barack Obama last week gave a major speech on the 
issue) - there are no simple fixes to America's great immigration debate.

In total, roughly 50,000 acres of sovereign US land is now on the 
wrong side of the fence, most of it in Texas. Lawmakers believe that 
is a fair price to pay for the political benefits of being seen as 
"tough" on immigration.

But to many locals, Ms Taylor included, the headline-prone barrier - 
which cost $7m a mile (UKP4.3m) - is an expensive white elephant.

"First of all, it doesn't work," she says. "Anyone with a rope and a 
bucket can just climb on over. Second, they've used it as an excuse 
to reduce border patrols. Thirdly, it's left people like me 
unprotected. While the officers are guarding the fence, any drug 
smugglers can just walk up to my front door."

Like many of her neighbours, Ms Taylor has been forced to turn her 
home into a mini-fortress, with alarms and motion sensors and a small 
arsenal of firearms in strategic positions around the house. "We're 
never safe," she says. "You just try to avoid living in fear."

It was not always like this. For most of the almost 70 years she has 
lived there, Brownsville has been on the frontline of America's 
immigration debate. But in the old days, things were less 
confrontational. Families heading north from Mexico would camp 
overnight in surrounding cotton fields. "We'd wake up in the morning, 
and the migrant workers would have built a fire and made tortillas," 
Ms Taylor says. "On occasion, they'd bring me breakfast."

Ms Taylor once found a woman on her porch in the process of giving 
birth (she called an ambulance and helped care for the woman until 
help arrived). Another time, she found an exhausted Hispanic man 
asleep in her armchair (he apologised, saying he had decided to use 
her bathroom to shave and brush his teeth).

But from the mid-1990s, with the growth of Mexico's drug trade, 
security declined. Ms Taylor's car was stolen several times. One 
morning, she found a package containing 50lbs of marijuana in her 
flowerbed. "I turned it in to the sheriff," she says. "I'm a cancer 
patient and when I told my doctor, he said I should have used the stuff."

Since the fence went up, crime has further spiralled. "I'm a gung-ho 
Texan. I've brought up four kids here and I've made this place my 
life. But there are times, since the barrier went up, when it hasn't 
felt like home."

Down the road, she has erected a protest banner. "We're part of 
America," it says. "We need representation and protection, not a fence."

You hear a similar sentiment across Brownsville. Roughly eight in 
every 10 of the city's 170,000 inhabitants are Latino and most speak 
Spanish as a first language. Every street corner seems to have a taco 
stall and the local economy relies heavily on imports from factories 
south of the border.

Most locals rue the divisive tone of the current immigration debate. 
The city's former mayor, an attorney named Eddie Trevino, who 
describes himself as a "very right-wing Democrat", says the furore 
over the fence demonstrates the extent to which the US immigration 
system needs a complete overhaul.

"Nobody's in favour of illegal immigration," Mr Trevino says. "Let me 
be unequivocal about that. We don't want anybody violating our laws.

"But the reality is that our laws are antiquated and need to be 
updated to make sense in the world in which we live. It made no sense 
to build this fence, other than making people in other parts of the 
country feel better and feel a false sense of safety. It's like the 
old joke: build a 12ft fence and you'll be having a huge demand for 
15ft ladders."

Even the city's white, Republican-leaning minority is opposed to the 
border fence. The well-mown greens of a local golf course are on land 
that now sits on the "wrong" side, while fields and orchards farmed 
by generations of landowners have been sliced in two by the metal barrier.

"I'll say right off the bat that I'm a conservative - I believe in 
hard work and I believe our border needs to be secure," says Debbie 
Loop, whose 15-acre citrus farm is on both sides of the fence. "But 
when they signed this fence into law, nobody stopped to think Texas 
isn't Arizona or California. Our border does not run dirt to dirt. 
Any idiot could have told them that. My grandchildren now live on the 
wrong side. Who is going to protect them? Who protects me when I'm in 
my orchards after dusk? I just want to work hard and earn a living. 
But they've changed this place forever."

This week, Mr Obama signalled his intention to bring the immigration 
debate into play in next year's presidential elections, travelling to 
El Paso, on the other side of Texas from Brownsville, to unveil plans 
to create a "path to citizenship" for the roughly 12 million 
undocumented workers thought to be living illegally in the US.

With his speech - aimed to court the growing Latino demographic that 
now numbers about 50 million people - he entered into 
electoral-campaign mode. Mr Obama emphasised that his administration 
has deported more immigrants than that of any of its predecessors. 
And he ridiculed Republican lawmakers who have endorsed building 
ever-larger barriers along the border.

"Now they're going to say that we need to quadruple the border 
patrol," Mr Obama said, reaching out to the large and growing 
demographic of Latino voters.

"Or they'll want a higher fence. Maybe they'll say we need a moat. 
Maybe they'll want alligators in the moat. They'll never be satisfied."

The joke might have played well in the next day's news pages - but in 
Brownsville, they were not laughing.

"Let him come here and say that," was Ms Loop's response.

"Round these parts, people like alligators a whole lot more than politicians."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom