border wall – Turtle Talk

The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), just issued an Early Warning and Urgent Action regarding the discriminatory impact of the construction of the border wall on indigenous peoples leaving in Texas. The petition was prepared by students at the Human Rights Clinic in collaboration with Dr. Margo Tamez (citizen of the Lipan Apache Band of Texas; Faculty of Indigenous Studies at the University of British Columbia Okanagan), in coordination with the Lipan Apache Women Defense, an Indigenous Peoples’ Organization (IPO), and members of the Lipan Apache Band.

Here is the letter from the UN CERD to the United States: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cerd/docs/early_warning/USA1March2013.pdf

It is accessible at the bottom of this page, under the United States, 2013 ‘E’. > http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cerd/early-warning.htm

Supreme Court Denies Cert in Border Wall Case

June 16, 2009Matthew L.M. Fletcher

From NewsPirates (cert petition here):

The Supreme Court has refused to hear a challenge to the completion of the border fence between the US and Mexico, Fox News reports. Environmental groups, an Indian tribe, and the city of El Paso brought the challenge, contending that a fence will cut off access to the Rio Grande for religious, cultural, and municipal purposes. The Obama administration had encouraged the court to reject the case.
The petitioners also objected to the fence because its authorization, under then-Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, required Congress to waive federal, state, and local laws applying to the agency. “If allowed to stand,” the petitioners’ brief stated, the “order would constitute an unprecedented expansion of agency authority to preempt state and local law without clear congressional authority and without any oversight by any court.