Free Republic

WASHINGTON — After several years of fighting the U.S.-Mexico border fence, a coalition of Texas elected officials is working with the Obama administration on ways to improve border ports and facilitate trade while fighting drug smuggling. The Texas Border Coalition's involvement with policymaking comes after a bitter tangle with the federal government over construction of the fence that Congress and the White House approved, but border business leaders and human rights groups opposed. “We've got to work together,” said Chad Foster, Eagle Pass mayor and the coalition's chairman. “But that is where the wheels came off the cart — when...

AUSTIN -- A coalition of municipal and county officials along Texas' 1,200-mile-long border is challenging Gov. Rick Perry's statements that property owners and local law enforcement are being overwhelmed by smugglers and gangs from Mexico. "Your remarks, if accurately reported, create a public impression of lawless hordes overrunning the border region and do not reflect our collective experience," Eagle Pass Mayor Chad Foster, chairman of the Texas Border Coalition, said in a letter to Perry. "While each of our communities has their own unique issues, being overwhelmed by criminal elements from Mexico is not one of them." Foster made the...

McALLEN, Texas - South Texans whose land is being taken for the U.S.-Mexico border fence are getting another chance to discuss the project with federal officials. Even with construction on some sections of the fence moving forward and more than 230 condemnation cases making their way through federal courts in the Rio Grande Valley, U.S. Customs and Border Protection is offering to talk privately with landowners. David Pagan, the agency's state and local liaison, said in a prepared statement Wednesday that affected landowners can contact the assistant U.S. attorney assigned to their case to request a private meeting or possibly...

Texas Border Coalition Members to Meet During Global Border Security Conference on Border Alternatives at Technology Expo AUSTIN, Texas, May 13 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- With security technology highlighted at the Global Border Security Conference & Expo as its backdrop, members of the Texas Border Coalition will meet May 21 to discuss issues that directly affect the Texas-Mexico border region and build on strategies to recommend technological alternatives to erecting a physical border fence, which coalition members say will cede privately owned land to Mexico and disrupt economic development in the region. Eagle Pass Mayor Chad Foster, chairman of the Texas Border...