truth-out.org By Candice Bernd 4/19/2018
A new segment of Trump's "big, beautiful wall" is already destroying big, beautiful tracts of land and native wildlife -- and potentially human lives -- as construction broke ground last week.
The Trump administration is hailing a new bollard-style wall prototype being constructed along a 20-mile stretch at Santa Teresa near New Mexico's state line with Texas as a "serious structure" that neither humans nor animals can get past.
Construction on the $73 million wall segment is expected to take a little over a year, and will replace existing vehicle barriers as part of a first phase of "border enhancements" toward a more invulnerable wall.
US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Acting Deputy Commissioner Ronald Vitello told reporters in late March the administration would put $1.6 billion of congressional appropriations for 2018 into the first phase of the border wall project: constructing or replacing nearly 100 miles of wall structures along the southern US border.
The segment currently under construction is going up in an undeveloped, remote area comprised primarily of federal lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management in a Chihuahuan mixed desert and thorn-scrub ecoregion providing habitat for a wide diversity of species. The landscape, however, has proved deadly for vulnerable migrants trekking north with little or no provisions.
The tract is also close to the newly designated Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument established under President Obama in 2014. Following an executive order signed by Trump last April to review recently designated national monuments for potential nullification or downsizing, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke recommended that the Department of the Interior work with the Department of Homeland Security to assess "border safety risks" in the Portrillo Mountains.
The Center for Biological Diversity has sued over the Santa Teresa project, arguing in federal court that the Trump administration overreached its authority in waiving dozens of environmental laws to expedite construction. The administration is using a provision of the 2005 REAL ID Act that allows the secretary of Homeland Security to waive a majority of regulations to construct border barriers or security projects without congressional oversight.
More:
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/44195-as-new-border-wall-breaks-ground-environment-and-immigrant-advocates-push-back
