Chertoff: Allow fencing or lose land

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration has warned landowners along the southern border that it will seize their property if they refuse to cooperate with federal efforts to build a fence meant to slow illegal immigration.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said he would give landowners 30 days to indicate if they will allow federal officials on their land to survey whether it is suitable for fencing. If they decline, he said Friday, he would turn to the courts to gain temporary access.

If the agency determines the land is appropriate for fencing and landowners refuse to cooperate, the department will turn to the courts to get title.

"The door is still open to talk, but it's not open for endless talk," Chertoff said of the time-frame landowners have in which to respond.

He added, "We won't pay more than market price for the land."

Chertoff said access to 225 miles of noncontiguous land, most of it in Texas and Arizona, was essential to meeting the administration's goal of building 370 miles of border fencing by the end of 2008.

Reaction was swift.

"I tell you, on this one issue, the Farm Bureau, the United Farm Workers, Democrats and Republicans, white, black, brown, everybody is against the border fence. It just doesn't make sense," said Juan Salinas, the county judge of Hidalgo County in Texas.

Salinas, chief administrator of the local government, said objections stem from economic, cultural and environmental concerns. "We've been trying to talk to them about using other ways," he said. "It's a disappointment that, again, the Department of Homeland Security is not listening to local taxpayers."

Chertoff also said his agency has given conditional approval to an experimental, 28-mile combination of technology and physical fencing in Arizona that allows border agents to detect intrusions and to see what or who has crossed onto U.S. land. Cameras in the system are so powerful that they can distinguish between cattle and people from 10 miles away and can show whether those people are toting packages or guns.

Border agents will test the system in the next 45 days and determine how it can be improved before a decision is made about whether to expand it.

The fencing projects are part of a larger administration effort to improve enforcement at the border and within the country and repair some of the political damage that immigration has done to President Bush and his party. Bush vigorously supported the failed immigration bill that would have given some legal status to immigrants in the United States without valid papers.

The president's stance left many GOP voters angry about his support for what opponents of the bill called amnesty. The issue also bitterly divided Republicans, many of whom said enforcement should be the government's first, even sole, response.

To appease conservative critics within his party and bolster support for broader change, Bush approved a plan in 2006 that authorized 698 miles of fencing on the border with Mexico.

Homeland Security contacted 600 owners and held town-hall meetings in border communities to explain the fence. The agency mailed about 150 letters Friday.

The agency has encountered most resistance in Texas, where much of the land along the border is privately owned. Ranchers and farmers complain that the fence would cut off their access to the Rio Grande, the only regional source of fresh water. Business groups say fencing will slow cross-border traffic crucial for local economies. Salinas said many Americans work and volunteer on the Mexican side of the border or have family there. "What kind of message are we sending them?" he asked.

Chertoff said two-thirds of Texans who were approached agreed to give Homeland Security access to their land, one-quarter did not respond and about 10 percent refused.