Environmental Impact Statements for Barrier System EIS: Public Statements (January 25, 2001)

City Hall Imperial Beach, California

January 25, 2001

Reported by: Sandra O. Warren RPR, CSR No. 10831

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PUBLIC STATEMENTS

taken at 825 Imperial Beach Boulevard, Imperial Beach, California, on Thursday, January 25, 2001, at 4:00 p.m., before me, Sandra D. Warren, RPR, CSR No. 10831, a Certified Shorthand Reporter in the State of California.

IN ORDER OF INDIVIDUAL STATEMENTS:

  1. Tommie Schuette, 184 Elm Street, Imperial Beach, CA 91932
  2. Maria Castillo-Curry, ICOMOS, International Council of Monuments and Sites, 267 Church Avenue Chula Vista, CA 91910
  3. Carolyn Powers, C.A.R.E., Citizens Against Agricultural, Recreational Evictions, 2353 Atherton Avenue, San Diego, CA 92154
  4. Muriel Watson, LIGHT UP THE BORDER, 3120 Anderson Street Bonita, CA 91902
  5. Robert Beken, LA JOLLA COLONY, 8690 Aero Drive, 1339 San Diego, CA 92123
  6. Maria Baltierra, M.D., SIN BARRERAS INTERNATIONAL P.O. Box 33205, San Diego, CA 92163

[…]

MR. ROBERT BEKEN:

I think it’s critical that this expansion of the border fence be implemented. The murders in Tijuana indicate that the migrant element coming across our border are a threat to the citizens of Imperial Beach and even La Jolla. With 35 murders in Tijuana every month and the loss of two chiefs of police in just the last five years from machine gunfire tell me that we must seal this border. We have 1,945 miles of border shared with Mexico. Yet along that entire border, it is nothing but murder, crime, assault. This must stop.

I believe that present statistics show that when Poncho Villa raided Columbus, New Mexico during the Mexican civil war and killed 18 Americans, President Wilson called out the entire U.S. Army, and it was the largest military force assembled in one spot since the civil war, and the largest calvary force ever amassed in the history ot the United States. And all of this was to stop Poncho Villa from continuing his assault on 16 innocent Americans where in one day Mexicans, Poncho Villa, killed 18 Americans.

Today, in the United States, Mexicans kill more than 25 Americans each and every day yet nothing is done. The fence is not completed, over a million Mexican nationals cross our border and perpetrate crimes of unspeakable barbarity. This must stop. The border fence must be complete.