LAREDO, Texas - Former U.S. Border Patrol agent Daniel Perales spent hours over the years crouched at the mouth of the Zacata Creek, a tributary of the Rio Grande, listening for the snap of carrizo cane as border crossers from Mexico arrived on the northern banks.
Daniel Perales, birder and president of Monte Mucho Audubon Society Chapter, who is a retired border patrol agent and opposes the border wall, talks about he impact of it yards away from the Rio Grande in Laredo, Texas, U.S., September 19, 2020. REUTERS/Veronica G. Cardenas
“It’s not necessary. You don’t need a wall here,” said Perales, adding that cameras and patrol roads were sufficient. In Webb County, CBP has issued contracts worth $1.05 billion to three construction companies to build approximately 69 miles of a 30-foot steel bollard wall, as well as construct roads and adding cameras and other surveillance technology.In an August press release, CBP officials said the Laredo wall is necessary to “impede and deny illegal border crossings and the drug and human smuggling activities of transnational criminal organizations.
Webb County is 95% Hispanic and many residents have family connections to Mexico. Business owners depend on cross-border trade. Some ranchers trace their property rights back to the 18th century Spanish land grants. The ancestors of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas formed their ties to the territory well before then.
Araiza is one of the founding members of the Laredo No Border Wall Coalition, a loosely organized group that seeks to halt the project. “No one wants to build a wall around their homes if they don’t have to, but there’s a need for that security,” said Hector Garza, president of the National Border Patrol Council’s local union chapter.The proposed border wall in Texas primarily cuts through private land, generating opposition and some alliances among occupants and landowners large and small.
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