Senate Plan to Militarize Border Draws Backlash
Republican Senators have been boasting about
spending $46 billion to enhance border security, but as the bill moves
to the House, the excess is beginning to look like a liability
Last Man Standing
Rancher: armed feds are surrounding my farm
Government vehicles and personnel outside of the Bundy ranch / Cliven and Carol Bundy
A two-decades-old battle between a Nevada rancher and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has resulted in officials armed with machine guns surrounding the ranch and forcibly removing the owner’s cattle, according to the rancher’s family.
Cliven Bundy, the last rancher in Clark County, Nev., has been fighting a “one-man range war” since 1993, when he decided to take a stand against the agency, refusing to pay fees for the right to graze on a ranch run by his family for centuries.
After years of court battles, the BLM secured a federal court order to have Bundy’s “trespass cattle” forcibly removed with heavy artillery, the family said.
“The battle’s been going on for 20 years,” Bundy told theWashington Free Beacon. “What’s happened the last two weeks, the United States government, the bureaus are getting this army together and they’re going to get their job done and they’re going to prove two things. They’re going to prove they can do it, and they’re gonna prove that they have unlimited power, and that they control the policing power over this public land. That’s what they’re trying to prove.”
Bundy said the government has brought everything but tanks and rocket launchers.
Armed men outside the Bundy ranch / Cliven and Carol Bundy
His wife, Carol Bundy, said that roughly 200 armed agents from the BLM and FBI are stationed around their land, located about 75 miles outside of Las Vegas. Helicopters circle the premises, and the airspace and nearby roads remain blocked.
“We’re surrounded,” Carol Bundy said. “We’re estimating that there are over 200 armed BLM, FBI. We’ve got surveillance cameras at our house, they’re probably listening to me talk to you right now.”
A National Park Service spokesman denied there were armed guards rounding up the cattle in a conference call on Tuesday. However, she confirmed that there was “security” in place, citing threats to the contractors who are removing the cattle.
“Contractors are here and they are in place to round-up the cattle and to bring them to the impound area,” Christie Vanover said. “As for security, there [is] security in place, but that is merely to protect the contractors.”
“As you know, we have received threats and the contractors have received threats,” Vanover said. “Our personnel here and throughout the park service and throughout the BLM have received threats, as well. So security is in place to merely protect the contractors so that we can complete this operation.”
As of Monday, officials have seized 234 of Bundy’s 908 cattle. Impounding the cattle alone could cost the government as much as $3 million.
“They just brought a load down today,” she said. “They kind of harass us as well. When we leave they follow us.”
This afternoon eight helicopters surrounded the family after they began taking pictures, according to Bundy’s daughter, Bailey. Their son, Dave Bundy, was arrested for taking pictures on state road 170, which has been closed, and is being held by BLM.
Government helicopters circle the Bundy ranch / Cliven and Carol Bundy
Carol Bundy said five officials took Dave and “threw him on the ground.”
“One put his knee on his head, the other put his boot on his head and pushed him into the gravel,” she said. “He’s got quite a bruised head. Just bruised him up pretty good.”
Environmentalists are praising the government’s forceful actions, which are being taken to protect the “desert tortoise.”
“We’re heartened and thankful that the agencies are finally living up to their stewardship duty,” said Rob Mrowka, a Nevada-based senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity. “The Gold Butte area has been officially designated as critical habitat for threatened tortoises—meaning the area is essential to their long-term survival as a species.”
“[Cliven] Bundy has long falsely believed that Gold Butte is his ranch,” added Terri Robertson, president of Friends of Sloan Canyon.
The BLM designated 186,909 acres of the Gold Butte off-limits for the “critical desert tortoise” population in 1998. Bundy had already lost his grazing permit five years earlier for refusing to pay fees for the land, which his family has ranched since the 1870s.
The “federal grazing fee” is $1.35 per “Animal Unit Month,” or the amount of forage needed per animal, each month. Bundy said he owes roughly $300,000 in back fees, while the BLM asserts he owes over $1 million. The BLM defended the removal because Bundy did not “voluntarily” give up his cattle.
“We’ve tried to do this through the legal and we’ve tried to do it through the political, and what we’re at right now, I guess we’re going to have to try to stand,” Cliven Bundy said. “We the people have to stand on the ground and get our state sovereignty back, and also take some liberty and freedoms back to where we have at least access to this land.”
“The story is a lot about the cattle, but the bigger story is about our loss of freedom,” Carol Bundy added. “They have come and taken over this whole corner of the county. They’ve taken over policing power, they’ve taken over our freedom, and they’re stealing cattle.”
“And our sheriff says he just doesn’t have authority, our governor says he doesn’t have authority, and we’re saying, why are we a state?”
“I’m a producer,” Cliven Bundy said. “I produce edible commodity from the desert forage, and all of these things are governed under state law. So, in other words, this type of government has eliminated all of our state law, eliminated our state sovereignty, and has took control over our public lands and even took control over our Clark County sheriff. They’ve taken the whole county over. The whole state, almost.”
“This is just about power of the government,” Carol Bundy said.
Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval (R.) voiced his concern about so-called “First Amendment Areas,” designated locations set up by the BLM where citizens can protest the removal.
“Most disturbing to me is the BLM’s establishment of a ‘First Amendment Area’ that tramples upon Nevadans’ fundamental rights under the U.S. Constitution,” he said in a statement Tuesday.
“To that end, I have advised the BLM that such conduct is offensive to me and countless others and that the ‘First Amendment Area’ should be dismantled immediately,” he said. “No cow justifies the atmosphere of intimidation which currently exists nor the limitation of constitutional rights that are sacred to all Nevadans. The BLM needs to reconsider its approach to this matter and act accordingly.”
Sandoval also said his office has received numerous complaints about the BLM’s conduct, including road closures and “other disturbances.”
The Arizona-Mexico border fence near Naco, Ariz., March 29, 2013
But as the bill moves to the House, the excess is beginning to look like a liability. The deal, which helped pass the Senate rewrite of U.S. immigration laws, is unlikely to sway House Republicans who insist on securing the border before some 11 million undocumented immigrants can begin the naturalization process. And it is alienating allies who are vital to immigration reform’s chances in the House, including a prominent Latino advocacy group and at least one Democratic Representative.
In an unexpected wrinkle, even authorities on the border are balking, saying the influx of agents could create more problems than it would solve. “The majority of the sheriffs I’ve talked to are not in favor of an additional 19,000 border-patrol agents,” says Donald Reay, executive director of the Texas Border Sheriff’s Coalition, whose members are still weighing the Senate bill. Reay has concerns about where the agents would be stationed and the time it could take to perform background checks on so many new hires.
(MORE: In Historic Vote, Senate Passes Bipartisan Immigration Bill)
Shawn Moran, vice president of the National Border Patrol Council, says the union doesn’t support the spike in guards. “There’s nowhere to put them,” Moran says. “We’re just starting to get a handle on the 21,000 agents we have.” Noting the struggle to pay for salaries, guns, gas and office space for its existing members, Moran worries the sprint to recruit, hire and train new agents would result in a lower-quality force. “What we fear is that the agency would cut corners again in terms of the hiring and training. That would be a nonstarter for us.”
To win over a mere handful of Republicans, the Senate forked over $38 billion on top of its existing proposal to beef up the border. The plan, crafted by Corker and North Dakota Republican John Hoeven, would add about 20,000 agents and erect 700 miles of fencing along the 1,900-mile line between the U.S. and Mexico. “This was not done for policy reasons,” says Doris Meissner, director of U.S. immigration policy at the Migration Policy Institute and a former Immigration and Naturalization Service commissioner under President Clinton. “It was dictated by politics.”
To rally support for the measure, Hoeven argued that it would satisfy lingering concerns about security and enforcement. “The American people want a comprehensive immigration-reform plan with tough border enforcement,” he explained. “They want to know that 10 years from now, we won’t find ourselves in this same position, having to address the same problem.” But opponents of the surge say the debate in Washington, waged largely in abstractions, has ignored the realities of life on the border.
(MORE: Self-Interest Could Sink Immigration Reform)
The number of agents stationed there has already quintupled over the past two decades, while spending on enforcement is 15 times higher than in 1986, the last time Congress overhauled U.S. immigration policy. Border cities are among the safest in the U.S. Illegal crossings have dipped in many notorious trouble spots. “It’s overkill,” says Tony Estrada, the sheriff of Santa Cruz County, nestled against the Arizona border south of Tucson. “Additional personnel is not going to solve the problem. Maybe it will diminish it, but illegal immigration and drugs are going to continue.”
The original Senate bill, which allotted $8 billion for security measures, was expected to curb illegal immigration about 25%, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The CBO predicts the Corker-Hoeven amendment to further limit illegal crossings, potentially halving the flow of undocumented immigrants. Whether these reductions are worth the amendment’s $38 billion tab is another question — and one supporters were able to duck. The cost will be covered, they argue, by the $135 billion the CBO projects the bill to save by 2023 through greater revenues produced by a larger legal labor force, including more-skilled immigrants earning higher wages.
While the push to double the number of border agents has done little to neutralize House Republicans’ objections, it has incensed some of the bill’s supporters on the left. Filemon Vela, a House Democrat from Texas, quit the Congressional Hispanic Caucus last week over the group’s implied support of the Senate bill. Vela did not respond to interview requests from TIME, but said in a floor speech that the beefed-up border presence would hamper the local economy and damage border communities.
(MORE: Immigration Bill Faces Tough Odds in the House)
The surge also prompted Presente.org, a Latino advocacy group that counts some 300,000 members, to withdraw its support for the Senate bill. “The bill has crossed the line,” Arturo Carmona, the group’s executive director, tells TIME. “We were willing to compromise on a right-of-center bill. At this point, it’s gone.”
“There’s no reform in this reform. We’re expected to just shut up and vote for it,” says one official with a liberal immigration-reform advocacy group. “Democrats think that if [immigration reform] passes, they win. And if it loses, they win, because they get to slam Republicans.” Barack Obama has presided over a higher rate of deportations than any President in history, the official notes, arguing that the bill’s lurch to the right jeopardizes Democrats’ support among a Latino community that is tired of being taken for granted.
“The whole deal is crafted on their backs,” says Adam Isacson, an expert at the Washington Office on Latin America, a policy group that studies human rights, social justice and security issues. Isacson argues that a beefed-up border-patrol presence could increase migrant deaths and abuse without stanching the flow of drugs or illegal immigrants into the U.S. “This has very little to do with what was good migration or border policy,” he says. “It was what could buy off the Republicans. This, it turns out, was the price.”
The tab could grow even steeper as the debate shifts to the House, where Republicans want even stronger border-security triggers. “They put the legalization of 11 million people ahead of security. The legalization happens first, and then the security happens second,” Idaho Republican Raúl Labrador said on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. “I think the American people are not going to stand for that.”
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