The Fence: National Security, Public Safety, and Illegal Immigration along the U.S.–Mexico Border

Epilogue

Epilogue Updated Epilogue to the Paperback Edition H urricane Alex, the first hurricane of the 2010 season, slammed into the borderlands in the late hours of June 30th. The category-two storm spared those attempting to cap the British Petroleum oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, site of the largest spill in U.S. history, but thousands in northern Mexican cities and towns, like Matamoros, were not so lucky. Olga Rivera Garcia’s aunt, by then in her eighties, was lucky. Decades earlier she had moved with her family to Matamoros because the Mexican border offered a higher standard of living than Guanajuato, where she was born and raised. Just before Hurricane Alex, Olga’s aunt had finally returned to Guanajuato because it was her real home. Olga and Carlos were also thinking of moving. Carlos was looking for a change, and Olga considered taking a leave of absence from her job at the university. In 2010 CBP was still growing. Carlos and Olga talked it over for three months. Carlos’s Epilogue 302 new job offer in Customs promised a different set of responsibilities along with better job opportunities in the future. But Olga and Carlos would have had to move from their quiet street in Brownsville to Montreal. At the last minute Carlos turned down the Canadian job. One big reason was their oldest daughter who, after earning her Ph.D. in clinical pharmacology , was finally moving back to the Valley from Dallas. Another was that Olga’s doctor had a new diagnosis for her chronic illness and had begun a new course of treatment that might ease Olga’s daily pain. “Carlos knows it would be hard for me in Montreal with the winters there,” Olga explained. “I’m not used to the cold. As it is, the new medication seems to be working better.” Hurricane Alex spared Cameron and Hidalgo counties in 2010. At least at first. Hurricane Alex dumped two feet of rain in parts of northern Mexico, including three of the four river basins of the Rio Grande. Three weeks after Alex dodged South Texas, floodwaters from the hurricane were released into the Rio Grande from Falcon Dam near Zapata and upriver at Amistad Dam near Del Rio. The residents of some of the poorest river communities in the Valley, including Los Ebanos, Roma, La Grulla, and Sullivan City, were quickly inundated. Neighborhoods in low-lying areas in Zapata and Rio Grande City were also evacuated. The overall impact of the release of water upon Mexican communities is not yet known. In late July FOS Omar Sanchez showed me the completed border wall at the new Donna International Bridge, then at Progreso and Pharr. The currents of the raging Rio Grande, fueled by Hurricane Alex, roiled against Judge Salinas’s hydrowall—designed to be part levee, part barrier to border traffickers and costing in excess of one hundred million dollars. Hurricane Alex was the first real test of the hydrowall’s ability to protect the homes of Valley residents from floodwaters. Not since Hurricane Beulah in the 1960s had floodwaters risen so high. The Hidalgo hydrowall seemed to do its job in 2010. That is, except for Los Ebanos and Sullivan City, which lay squarely within Hidalgo County but were nevertheless inundated because no part of the levee’s budget had been apportioned to them. Even though work had stopped on the hydrowall, construction was far from complete in 2010. Ryan J. Scudder, Patrol Agent in Charge of the Weslaco CBP station, told me then that approximately sixty gates in the hydrowall were still not in place. In fact all along the new hydrowall there were twenty-foot gaps with no barriers to prohibit the crossing of undocumented workers or any kind of contraband. Scudder assured me that the absence of gates was not a real problem. Epilogue 303 The other good news Scudder shared was that “the money has already been appropriated for the gates. We definitely have the money.” The bad news was that the Army Corp of Engineers had not finished the design or engineering of the hydrogates. Mr. Scudder explained that the engineering for the new gates was very complicated. “How long until the gates are in place?” I asked Patrol Agent in Charge Scudder. “One to three years.” When I returned in October 2011, I put the same question to another agent at the...