By Laredo (TX) Mayor Raul Salinas
June 2, 2008

For years, my predecessors, Mayor Saul Ramirez and Mayor Betty Flores, have traveled to Washington and also to the U.S. Conference of Mayors Annual Meetings to share with mayors all the challenges we face on the border, serving as the nation’s receiving and shipping department, as well as being the country’s first line of homeland security. Along with Ramirez and Flores, I have been proud to belong to the Conference of Mayors because nowhere has our message about the importance of the Texas/Mexico border been as readily received as it has been here, with my fellow mayors of America.

An example of that occurred last year in Los Angeles, where I was proud to author the resolution that established the Conference of Mayors’ position that called on Congress and President Bush’s Administration to develop a long term and holistic solution to the nation’s immigration and homeland security challenges.

With this history in mind, I contacted the Conference of Mayors’ staff to see if this column was available to respond to a Lou Dobbs’ CNN show on which I appeared on May 16. Dobbs aired a one-sided story on the border fence, in which he ridiculed the work of the Texas Border Coalition (TBC), a group of concerned Texas border mayors, county judges, and economic development centers, business and community leaders, who represent collective interests in our border cities. The story implied that members of this group were only involved in the fight against the border fence because we sought to serve our own self/business interests. This could not be farther from the truth.

The TBC, which includes numerous USCM members, focuses on more than just the border fence. We focus on issues such as transportation, health care, infrastructure, education and more. These issues impact the lives of our constituents. For instance, my community is the nation’s busiest inland port; we now handle more commerce than all the other southern border trade routes combined. Laredo has grown to be the fourth largest customs district in the country – trailing only Long Beach, New York and Detroit. If you lined up all the trucks that travel through our community in a year, they would circle the globe at the equator almost twice. We handle approximately 13,000 trucks every work day,

But it is not just Laredo that handles 13,000 trucks a day. Nuevo Laredo, my neighbors to the south for over 150 years, is an extension of the cultural, historical, and business ties that have defined the two cities as one community – Los Dos Laredos. And now someone wants me to place a fence in the middle of this community like a 21st Century version of Berlin.

Let me make it clear. Neither the TBC nor I are opposed to the nation securing its border. We think such security is an imperative. (This should come as no surprise since so many of us have dedicated our lives to law enforcement. In my case, I served five years as a Capitol Hill Police officer and more than 20 years as an FBI agent.) We just believe there are better ways to achieve it.

For instance, rather than divide my community in two, we have proposed to the Department of Homeland Security that we widen the Rio Grande River and build up the river bank on the US side. The result would be a physical barrier higher than anything the DHS is suggesting, but like many of you that have pursued waterfront development; our barrier would serve as the base of our Riverwalk. The net result of inviting local input would be to a superior barrier that with enhanced security; not an offensive wall that divides me from my neighbors to the south.

The TBC believes that the press and Washington would do well to heed USCM’s policy that advocates local officials always be consulted on the best ways to address local challenges. The border fence is just the most recent example. The media has refused to capture the essence of our border population and our cross border culture. Had they examined the issue through the eyes of a border resident, they would have seen how detrimental a border fence would be when installed within our border cities. I, and the other members of the Texas Border Coalition, support a comprehensive border security and an immigration reform plan that allows the residents in many of our and your communities a true path to citizenship. We can not solve illegal immigration without a true immigration reform plan. We must keep our border safe, but a border wall is not the answer.

Below is Conference of Mayors policy on Comprehensive Immigration Reform.