UT-Brownsville and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security reached an agreement in a Brownsville federal court Thursday that will end plans for the construction of a border fence that would have severed the university golf course from the rest of campus.
District Judge Andrew Hanen ordered the two sides to reappear in court on Tuesday with a written agreement to the dispute.
As part of the agreement, the university will enhance an existing fence on the campus. The fence, which currently varies in height from 6 to 8 feet, will be raised to a standard height of 10 feet. Homeland Security will equip the fence with cameras and other security technology.
UT-Brownsville President Juliet Garcia said at a press conference following the hearing that the UT System has volunteered to pay the costs of raising the fence, while Homeland Security will pay for all technological enhancements.
"They want to buy the technology, they want to own it, and they want to operate it," Garcia said. "We don't want to get into the surveillance business ourselves, so they're simply going to put it on our fence."
The accessibility of the university's golf course was a crucial provision to the agreement.
"There will be absolutely no additional impediment to the golf course," Garcia said. "There will be no gate. There will be no checkpoint. There will be none of that that we had at first been concerned about."
The agreement also calls for the establishment of a center on the UT-Brownsville campus to study such border issues as alternatives to physical barriers. The center will bring in experts in the field and will be funded by external grants.
Homeland Security spokeswoman Laura Keehner said that because the agreement had only been reached in principal, she could not discuss details.
"The goal agreed upon today is to develop a project that will meet both border patrol's operational requirements but also recognize UT-Brownsville's unique status as an institute of higher learning," Keehner said. "We will continue to work collaboratively with UT-Brownsville to develop a formal agreement."
The agreement resolves a nearly yearlong legal dispute between the university and Homeland Security over the prospect of a borpus. President Garcia denied a request to survey the campus for a fence in October, saying that the fence posed environmental concerns and would violate the school's educational mission of cross-cultural relations with Mexico.
Homeland Security has a congressional mandate to construct 670 miles of fencing along the Mexican border by the end of this year. Rio Grande Valley border patrol agents identified Brownsville as a high-priority area for fence construction.
A federal lawsuit brought by Homeland Security in January for access to the campus ended in March with a settlement that called for a joint assessment of alternatives to a physical barrier. The two sides met in court again on June 30 after UT lawyers charged Homeland Security with proceeding with plans for the fence without providing the personnel for a joint assessment. After that hearing, Hanen ordered both sides to meet again to try a joint assessment for a second time.
Michael Putegnat, project manager for UT-Brownsville in the negotiations, said after the June 30 hearing, "We suddenly had access to everybody we needed."
Putegnat said within two weeks, huge progress had been made and a preliminary agreement assembled. He estimated the cost of enhancements to the fence at less than $1 million.
Putegnat said the input of local border patrol agents was essential to the resolution and helped form a bridge between the concerns of UT-Brownsville administrators and Homeland Security leaders.
"Once everybody got in the mood to solve a problem instead of fighting one another, we began to instantly make progress," he said.
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