[Infowarrior] - US citizenship to be checked in event of a storm

[Richard Forno]

  May 15, 2008, 11:34PM
U.S. citizenship to be checked in event of a storm
Agents to watch those in the Valley who board buses to flee a hurricane

By LYNN BREZOSKY
San Antonio Express-News

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro/5784300.html

BROWNSVILLE — Ending speculation about the fate of the Rio Grande  
Valley's undocumented immigrants during a hurricane evacuation, U.S.  
Customs and Border Protection has confirmed it will check the  
citizenship both of people boarding buses to leave the Valley and at  
inland traffic checkpoints.

Those determined to be in the country illegally will be taken to  
detention centers away from the hurricane's path and later processed  
for deportation.

"It's business as usual at the checkpoints," said Dan Doty, spokesman  
for CBP's Rio Grande Valley sector. "We'll still check everybody."

Locals responded with predictions of humanitarian disaster.

"We can't wait to see the helicopter photos of us sitting on roofs,"  
said the Rev. Mike Seifert, a priest and activist based in a colonia  
outside Brownsville. The many area families with one or more  
undocumented members would just refuse to evacuate, he said.

"Imagine," Seifert said. "We're all in an uproar, everybody's in an  
enormous hurry, there's just a narrow window of opportunity and you  
get to the place with the buses and the Border Patrol's checking  
people. You're not going to go."

In the disastrous wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005,  
officials in the Valley have pondered the politics of mass evacuation,  
illegal immigration and the checkpoints that filter northbound traffic  
every day.

After Hurricane Rita threatened the Houston area, clogging highways  
for miles, drying up gas pumps and creating chaos, emergency  
management officials set out to improve planning.

State Director of Homeland Security Steve McCraw in 2006 said the  
highway checkpoints should be closed if the Valley needed to evacuate.  
U.S. 77 parallels the coast and could be underwater once hurricane  
rains or flooding hit. Even if all the lanes on U.S. 281 are dedicated  
for northbound traffic, that's the main route for a population that  
now tops a million people.

Krista Piferrer, a spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Perry, said Thursday the  
state's stand on the issue had not changed.

"The governor's office prefers that the Border Patrol not use  
checkpoints during times of evacuation for obvious reasons," she said.  
"It will slow down traffic and create problems. ... During times of  
emergency our priority No. 1 is safety and we continue to hold on to  
the same belief."

At a recent discussion with reporters, Hidalgo County Judge J.D.  
Salinas said he didn't expect the Border Patrol to publicize a policy  
on the checkpoints for fear of inviting a free-for-all for illegal  
traffic.

The unofficial word, he said, was that agents recognized they'd have  
to be more lax amid a disaster.

But Tuesday, a reporter photographing a mock evacuation for the Rio  
Grande Guardian Web site saw Border Patrol agents rehearsing  
citizenship document checks of people boarding buses.

CBP's Doty confirmed this was the planned procedure and said those  
determined to be undocumented immigrants would be taken to separate  
shelters, likely detention centers in Laredo or San Antonio. He said  
the highway checkpoints would stay open.

Document checks are not mandatory at the checkpoints; it's up to an  
agent to assess travelers and determine whether to ask for papers.  
Doty said that even with the checks, 120,000 people could be evacuated  
within 80 hours.

"Our agents, they do it so often, they know what to look for," he said.

Doty could not say what would happen if children in a vehicle were  
citizens but parents were not, or if everybody but an elderly  
grandparent had a green card.

"We try to keep families together, but I can't put a U.S. citizen in a  
detention center," he said.

Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos said locals would have to work with  
federal directives, but said document checks would hamper an evacuation.

lbrezosky at express-news.net