If you recall, a couple of weeks ago, US Customs and Border Protection wanted to use the herbicide imazapyr, Habitat, to defoliate the carrizo cane along a 1.1-mile stretch of the Rio Grande riverbank. Once news spread like wildfire, Mexican government and Texas border officials and environmentalists began protesting over the concern about possible side effects of the defoliant. As a result, Border Patrol decided to halt the aerial spraying.

Major thanks should go to the Houston Chronicle’s Dane Schiller and Jim Newkirk. Dana for reporting this story and Jim linking my original post in the Chronicle’s Blog Watch section. That article immediately preceded the national media picking up on the issue. So thank you Houston Chronicle, without that article, the Border Patrol would probably be spraying right now.

There seems to be more good news. According to the Laredo Morning Times, Laredo City Council decided to reverse themselves and nix the aerial spraying of carrizo cane. LMT also reported that they also made a motion that would forbid the use herbicide’s all together.

According to Border Patrol, they said they had already taken aerial spraying off the table. The spraying of the Lower Rio Grande Valley with the herbicide would have broken an international environmental agreement, La Paz Agreement, that was signed by then-President Ronald Regan and the President of Mexico. The Agreement is a pact between the United States and Mexico to protect, conserve, and improve the environment of the border region of both countries. The agreement defined the region as the 62 miles to the north and south of the international border.

Carrizo cane, scientifically known as Arundo donax, is a giant reed native to the Mediterranean. The Spanish brought it to the US to control erosion in California’s stream beds. Since then, it has become a noxious weed, with large campaigns aimed at eradicating it.

Herbicidal warfare is a form of warfare in which the objective is to destroy the plant-based ecosystem of an area for the purpose of destroying plants which provide cover to an enemy. In the current “War on Immigrants and Drugs” the Department of Homeland Security and Border Patrol were not using imazapyr because they were concern about the ecological effects the carrizo cane had on Laredo, they had one goal in mind – simply to eradicate the plant because they felt the plant provided cover for undocumented immigrants.

Prior to Janet Napolitano becoming the new Homeland Security Secretary, Michael Chertoff had waived over 20 federal laws and overturned court orders to make sure the construction of the border wall would be complete. The laws waived included environmental acts, historic preservation acts and the entire Administrative Procedures Act. Chertoff cited his authority to do so under Section 102(c) of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act.

All of this was to curb illegal immigration. Last July, presidential candidate Barack Obama took a stage in Berlin and told the crowd that a wall erected between people would best be knocked down.

The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christians and Muslims and Jews cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.

Today, the Obama Administration reversed itself when it comes to pushing for comprehensive immigration reform this year. Two weeks ago, Vice President Joe Biden told a group of Central American leaders comprehensive immigration reform was not top priority because of a slumping economy and soaring unemployment. However, today the Obama Administration has decided they will.

Mr. Obama will frame the new effort — likely to rouse passions on all sides of the highly divisive issue — as “policy reform that controls immigration and makes it an orderly system,” said the official, Cecilia Muñoz, deputy assistant to the president and director of intergovernmental affairs in the White House.

The Border Wall is part of the immigration debate. Despite pleas from some Democrats, activists, and local communities to halt construction until the wall’s impacts can be better examined, the Department of Homeland Security under President Obama has so far maintained the same border fence policies as the DHS under President Bush.

The military use of herbicides in Vietnam began in 1961, and reached a peak from 1967 to 1969. Agent Orange was part of the so-called “Rainbow Herbicides,” the group of herbicides that contained dioxins that were meant to destroy jungle canopy. As result of this herbicide warfare, 4.8 million Vietnamese people were exposed to Agent Orange, resulting in 400,000 deaths and disabilities, and 500,000 children born with birth defects.

While scientists are still undecided on the health effects of imazapyr, we should not disregard the findings from iprivate study commissioned by the Alaska Community Action on Toxics. In a December 2008 press release by Forest Ethics, they noted that imazapyr “has been shown to increase the number of brain and thyroid cancers.” Even more frightening, imazapyr is considered to be “harmful to aquatic organisms” and recommended that imazapyr should “not allow to enter the aquatic environment” according to the Physical and Theoretical Chemistry Laboratory of Oxford University.

There are “proven” alternatives to herbicide that could be used to accomplish the same objective without harm to the environment. A couple of years ago, Biopact, a Brussels-based group, reported that a Florida-based company, Biomass Investment Group (BIG), embarked on a project to use Arundo donax as the energy crop.

The biomass will be converted into bio-oil, a heavy fuel oil, via a fast-pyrolysis process (for more on this process see the EU/IEA Biomass Pyrolysis Network). This carbon-neutral oil will then be used in a power plant that will provide electricity to some 80,000 Floridian households.

It would seem logical in this “Green” era, we would utilize companies like this to our advantage. It would not only create much needed jobs, these “noxious weeds” can be used as a renewable resource.

We might have won this battle for now, but the struggle for a fair and humane immigration policy still wages on.

Related posts

• Laredo’s ‘Agent Orange’ Controversy (19)
• Imazapyr: Laredo’s “Agent Orange” (2)
• Guest Blogger Char Miller: Caning the Border Patrol (1)
• Reconquista!: A Nativists Creation (14)
• It Was Bound to Happen, National Guardsmen Shoot Up a Family Gathering (6)

Tags: border, Border Patrol, herbicides, Homeland Security, imazapyr, Immigration, pesticides, Texas |  Print This Post |
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