DfDeportation's Blog

Border mayors, Colorado lawmaker fight over 'no border' comments

 

Web Posted: 05/02/2008 11:13 PM CDT

 

By Lynn Brezosky
Express-News

 

BROWNSVILLE — Members of the Texas Border Coalition are sparring with Colorado Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo over his muttered suggestion that if politicians think a border fence will disrupt the region's multiculturalism, the best place for it might be north of Brownsville.

Tancredo sent a letter to Brownsville Mayor Pat Ahumada and Eagle Pass Mayor Chad Foster on Thursday “clarifying” the comment, which came during a congressional field hearing Monday at the University of Texas-Brownsville, which could lose land to the fence.

Tancredo and U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., strong proponents of the fence, were at odds with Democrats on the panel who said the fence will be an ineffective blight for a region that thrives on social and economic ties with Mexico.

“Securing the border is not a local issue,” Tancredo wrote to Ahumada. “Local communities have expressed multiculturalist sentiment by suggesting that ‘there is no border' between the U.S. and Mexico, and refusing to cooperate with federal authorities over the congressionally approved border fence.

“This is a matter of national importance, and the American public should not be asked to sit back and allow a handful of local governments and their friends in the ‘open borders' lobby to exercise veto power over something that impacts not only our national security, but our national sovereignty.”

Ahumada and Foster responded Friday by accusing Tancredo of misquoting them and suggested Tancredo take Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff's advice to “grow up.”

Chertoff made the comment during a January interview with the Associated Press. He was referring to critics of new documentation rules at border crossings.

“We have never said, ‘there is no border,'” the mayors wrote. “The Rio Grande ... has been our border since the agreement to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. To ascribe that quote to us, even by inference, in your tirade is ridiculously juvenile.”

Their letter ends, “Best wishes in your post-congressional career.”

Monday's hearing was led by U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., who has sponsored legislation to repeal authority given to Chertoff to waive environmental and land use laws that could delay construction of the fence.