Homeland Security waives environmental laws to build more border barriers in San Diego

The Department of Homeland Security issued a waiver Tuesday allowing the federal government to bypass environmental laws in order to fast-track construction of more barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border in the San Diego area.

The waiver comes as unauthorized border crossings have been hitting record lows and while the U.S. immigrant population is declining for the first time in 50 years. The Trump administration has issued similar waivers to construct other segments of the border wall this year, including a 350-foot section at Smuggler’s Gulch, near where the Tijuana River crosses into San Diego.  

The waiver will allow the federal government to bypass more than two dozen laws including the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. Previous presidential administrations have used the waivers, authorized by Congress in 2005, to expedite building various sections of the wall along the border.

Environmentalists and advocacy groups say the waiver is inhumane and will further harm migratory species and damage sensitive habitat.

“Skipping over environmental reviews poses continued threats for wildlife and for people on both sides who will have to deal with cleaning up messes in the future,” said Mark West, director of the Sierra Club San Diego.

In the document, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem cites an “acute and immediate need to construct additional physical barriers and roads” near the border of the United States.”

The waiver mentions Border Patrol apprehensions in the San Diego region from 2021 to July 2025. The dates include a period when crossings were at a historic high, but does not mention that the July numbers hit a historic low.

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond by the time of publication to inewsource’s request for its response to concerns over potential impacts of waiving the environmental protections.

Laiken Jordahl, the southwest conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity, called the waiver a “senseless attack on the wildlife and communities of California’s borderlands.”

“The Trump administration is declaring a bogus emergency and tossing aside decades of hard-won environmental protections to fast-track wall construction,” Jordahl said.

The advocacy group Earthjustice called a waiver issued earlier this year a waste of money, and raised alarms that it would cause damage to the ecosystem which is host to a biodiversity hotspot of endemic plants.

Members of the Kumeyaay tribe temporarily blocked previous efforts to expand the border wall in 2020, raising concerns that construction was taking place over ancestral burial grounds.

Erick Meza, Sierra Club’s borderlands coordinator, critiques the inclusion of drug apprehension numbers cited in the waiver as justification for expedited construction. He points out that a majority of those apprehensions take place at ports of entry and are rarely linked with migrants.

He says the waiver marks a dangerous precedent.

“We’re just allowing this administration,” Meza said, “unchecked destruction of our protected public lands. This is all without any scientific reviews. There is no public input, there is no accountability in any way.”

Al Otro Lado, a humanitarian organization that provides legal support to migrants on both sides of the border, has seen firsthand the dangers of pushing migrants further into the wilderness. The group was present when crossings in the Jacumba Springs region spiked and its members witnessed the impacts of the rugged terrain and weather on migrants seeking asylum.

“This new wave of border fence construction will continue to push future migrant crossing to even more dangerous regions and terrain,” said James Cordero, the water drop coordinator for the group.

“The ecological and human harm is irreversible.”