Editorial: A questionable swap

Tuesday, Nov. 27, 2007 | 7:14 a.m.

In its latest step to press ahead on construction of a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, the Homeland Security Department has negotiated a federal land swap to sidestep environmental protections and acquire sensitive land inside a national wildlife refuge.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff negotiated a swap with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to obtain 5.8 acres inside the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge. The deal allows fence construction to move forward without regard to damage to wildlife or habitat.

The REAL ID Act of 2005 gave Homeland Security the authority to bypass environmental reviews in order to build a 700-mile fence along the U.S.-Mexico border in areas between the Pacific Ocean and Texas.

Chertoff has since exercised that authority three times - including twice this year in stretches of sensitive land in southern Arizona that include acreage inside a national conservation area. Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., has asked Chertoff to explain in detail by Wednesday why the waiver was needed in that particular stretch.

Meanwhile, Chertoff continues his end-run around environmental protections - this time by crafting a backroom land deal that Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman Jose Viramontes has called a "win-win."

The Homeland Security Department gets its fence and the Fish and Wildlife Service will "acquire valuable land," Viramontes told The New York Times in a recent story.

This "valuable land" has not yet been identified, the Times reports. So Americans can't decide on its value for themselves. Rather, the public is supposed to rely on the assurances of two agencies that created this dubious deal.

We need to secure our borders, but allowing federal agencies to ignore environmental laws does not make our nation more secure. That is why Congress must remove the authority in the 2005 law that allows the Bush administration to run roughshod over our nation's protected lands.