McALLEN, TX (Border Report) — A delegation of leaders from the South Texas Border city of Laredo is in Austin this week to meet with state officials and ask why the state wants to build a Border Wall.

The mayor of Laredo and seven of the city’s eight city council members have been at the Texas Capitol since Tuesday, holding many meetings on various topics affecting the community, city council member Melissa Cigarroa said Thursday.

Among the topics they discussed with state leaders were:

• State plan to build 9 new miles of state-funded border wall through Webb and Zapata counties.
• The health problems that Laredo residents are suffering from have been affected by the 17,000 18-wheel trucks that cross Nuevo Laredo, Mexico daily.
• Accommodation of migrants seeking asylum after the repeal of Section 42.
• Food deserts in low-income areas.
• Growing homeless population.
• And bringing migrants to Laredo from other frontier sectors for processing.

Cigarroa said the delegation learned that hundreds of asylum seekers were taken by the US Department of Homeland Security to the US Customs and Border Protection Station in southeast Laredo from other border cities such as Tucson, Arizona, Eagle Pass, Texas, and the Rio Grande Valley. .

“Laredo is really good at handling. So they get these migrant buses to make it happen. And this creates a strain on local resources. And you are dealing with migrants who are pregnant women or children with illnesses and may need medical attention. And so it puts a strain on some of our health services,” Cigarroa said by phone.

Laredo – a city of 225,000 – does not have a pediatric intensive care unit and has limited hospital beds at two hospitals, while hospitals in the Rio Grande Valley can be three hours away.

“Medical personnel, such as nurses and technicians, are also scarce,” Laredo’s new mayor, Dr. Victor Treviño, a doctor who previously headed the city’s healthcare, told Border Report during his inauguration in late December.

Leaders are asking for “additional resources” ahead of what they expect will be a surge in asylum seekers crossing the border if the Biden administration lifts Section 42, Cigarroa said.

In March 2020, the Trump administration enacted a public health order to stop the cross-border spread of COVID-19. Section 42 allows US Border Patrol agents to immediately deport certain migrants to Mexico, but once the order is lifted, frontier communities expect a wave of asylum seekers to cross the southwestern border.

DHS is currently transporting migrants processed at the tent complex to non-profit and faith-based organizations and shelters in downtown Laredo that help asylum seekers find transportation and provide them with food and clothing. But Cigarroa says the city has a huge homeless population and cannot handle the additional migrants if they arrive by the thousands in December from Juarez, Mexico, to El Paso, Texas.

“We have a homeless problem in Laredo that the city is actively addressing. They’re going to allocate $1 million for the facility and merge service providers. And so we want to see the best models for this,” Cigarroa said.

Members of the Laredo Housing Authority, as well as private landowners and ranchers, as well as members of the nonprofit Rio Grande International Research Center, also attended the meetings, Cigarroa said.

On Thursday, the delegation met with officials from Continuum of Care, an agency within the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs that it says is helping Laredo leaders develop a care plan to cater to the city’s current homeless.

Cigarroa said they also met with Texas Department of Public Safety director Steve McCraw, whose agency runs Operation Lone Star.

“He was really talking about a three-legged stool. So, considering that the infrastructure is one of the issues – the wall. And then the technique was another issue, and then the personnel. And he is really trying to get all three of these parts to move in order to create or secure the border, which, in his opinion, should be secured there, ”Cigarroa said.

She said the delegation had made it clear that they were opposed to building a border wall across Laredo. But she said McCraw told them that a clause in Texas’ appropriation bill that provides nearly $1 billion in fiscal 2021-2022 to build a state-funded border barrier prevents the state from taking lands as “prominent domain.” ”

They also met with Texas Facilities Commission Executive Director Mike Novak, whose agency oversees all state-funded border wall contracts. She said the delegation was concerned about the recent award of a $224 million contract on Jan. 4 to Fisher Sand & Gravel Company to build 9.4 miles along the border in Zapata and Webb counties.

Fisher Sand & Gravel is a North Dakota company owned by builder Tommy Fisher, who also built a controversial private border wall in the Rio Grande Valley that is reportedly deteriorating.

But she says Novak told her they weren’t sure exactly where the wall would be built yet.

“We have come to the conclusion that they do not yet know where these (wall) contracts will be placed,” she said.

Cigarroa says several frontier land owners in the rural and tiny towns of El Seniso and Rio Bravo have told Laredo authorities they have been approached to sell the easements to the state for about $18,000, which is the same as what many families in those towns earn. in a year. .

“It could be in Webb, or it could be in Zapata (districts). We really don’t know and it seems crazy,” Cigarroa said.

Cigarroa has long been an active member and leader of the No Border Wall Laredo Coalition, a grassroots organization that fought the federal border wall during the Trump administration.

So far, no boundary wall has been erected in Webb and Zapata counties, unlike the miles of federal and state walls that extend further west in the Rio Grande Valley.

But now Cigarroa says they are concerned that the same structure – and using the same poles bought from federal contractors – will soon be built near Laredo.

“We have communicated to the Texas Facilities Commission that we have already gone through this process where they draw up contracts without having land and the difficulty in securing that land,” Cigarroa said. “It doesn’t make sense to the Texas taxpayer because you’re allowing companies to start spending money on this contract for materials and supplies or whatever without having the land.”

A meeting is scheduled to take place at El Seniso City Hall on February 15 to inform residents about the border wall project, she said.