Bishop: Environmental rules impeding border security

Rep. Rob Bishop charges that environmental laws are delaying the effort to secure the U.S.-Mexico border and hindering law enforcement officials from pursuing drug smugglers. The Utah Republican, the ranking GOP member on the House Natural Resources subcommittee over public lands, says that documents he obtained show Homeland Security officials are hitting environmental roadblocks in trying to erect a virtual fence near troublesome crossing areas. In one e-mail the congressman highlighted, a Denver-based National Park Service official informed Homeland Security that placing a surveillance tower in the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona is problematic because it would violate federal wilderness laws. All but 5 percent of that monument is designated as wilderness. In another case, a Bureau of Land Management official gave border security permission to test drill near a wilderness area only if no endangered Sonoran Pronghorn animals were nearby and that a biologist must accompany the drillers. Bishop contends that immigrants are scarring wilderness on their own and the inability of border agents to use motorized vehicles in some areas has led to drug smugglers controlling a vast region of American wilderness. "We're putting a higher priority on wilderness than we are on border security," Bishop says. "What is the primary goal down there? Is it border security or is it wilderness that we can't control?"...read more