School opposes border fence
Barrier would cut through campus
BROWNSVILLE, Texas - The steel fence that the US government wants to build along the Mexican border would do more than slice through the University of Texas's Brownsville campus and cut off the golf course from the rest of the school.
School officials say it would make a mockery of the very mission of the university: promoting close ties between the United States and Mexico.
The university - built close to the Rio Grande on land where the United States and Mexico traded cannon blasts during the Mexican-American War 160 years ago - recruits Mexican students, offers government and business classes in English and Spanish, and turns out sorely needed bilingual teachers. It has a biological field station in Mexico and hosts educators at a Binational Conference every spring. About 400 of the 17,000 students are from Mexico, and more than half of them commute across the river to class.
The fence, if built as envisioned by the US Border Patrol, would run a mile north of the Rio Grande, the international boundary, cutting off about 180 acres of the 465-acre campus. University officials say the fence would also thwart its hopes of expanding toward the river and send the wrong message across the border.
"To slice off and fence off the 'bi' part of 'binational' violates the essence of this university," said Juliet V. Garcia, university president, whose office is situated in what was once the thick-walled, tan-brick hospital at Fort Brown, built shortly after the Civil War.
On Monday, university officials will ask a federal judge to force government officials to work with the school on alternatives to the fence, continuing a long-running legal fight that began when the Department of Homeland Security sued the school for refusing to allow surveyors onto its property.
In March, a federal judge ordered Homeland Security to consider the school's "unique status as an institution of higher learning" in minimizing the impact on the "environment, culture, commerce, and quality of life" at the university. But the two sides have been unable to agree on some kind of alternative to a fence.
In a May 27 letter to the university, US Customs and Border Protection said that in place of a fence, it would have to station Border Patrol agents every 50 yards along the 3.4-mile stretch around campus, and the salaries alone would amount to $71 million.
