The nation's top homeland security official says she has the right to build new sections of border wall — even though it could wipe out the jaguar in Arizona.
A lawyer for DHS head Kristi Noem says the 1996 Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act authorizes her agency to construct physical barriers and roads along the border.
Her plans include 27 miles of 30-foot-high barriers to replace existing vehicle barriers, which don’t block wildlife movement. Two environmental groups that are suing over Noem’s plans call that stretch of border “a critical lifeline” connecting jaguars to breeding populations in Sonora.
They argue the wall would be the death knell for jaguars in the U.S. and want the judge to declare that Congress acted illegally in giving Noem total discretion to build without guidance or limits.
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Activists started occupying the cottonwood tree at the end of July, hoping to save it after the other three were felled. They hoisted a wooden platform high into its branches, and camped on private land right next to it. -
The standoff began Oct. 5, when Border Patrol agents swarmed a protest camp situated in and around a cottonwood tree slated for removal to make way for two steel border walls — the last of a border-hugging grove on the U.S. side that was estimated to be as much as 250 years old. -
As of next week, around 1,500 cattle will cross into Arizona from Mexico each day, even as active cases of New World screwworm top 100 in the Mexican state of Sonora. -
His comments come after the Arizona Sheriff’s Association accused his office of refusing requests for assistance from Border Patrol. -
An inspection at a Mexican military checkpoint in San Luis Río Colorado resulted in the arrest of two people and the seizure of more than a ton of white powder.
