Chertoff Forum Misses the Point: Public Service is About the Public
by Cynthia Martinez on February 25, 2008 in Opinion
I grew up in the Rio Grande Valley border cities of McAllen and Edinburg, Texas. When I was a child, my parents would take me across the border into Mexico every weekend. I pride myself on being from a border town as much as I pride myself on being a Texan.
So when I saw that the HKS Forum would feature Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, I tuned in from my office in Austin, expecting him to discuss the construction of a wall along the border to stop undocumented immigrants from entering the country.
I hope many watching him that night were as uncomfortable with his speech as I was. Chertoff was not just wrong on policy, but on the very definition of public service.
Lately, there’s a bitter taste in my mouth whenever Secretary Chertoff’s name is mentioned. Since January, he has sued more than 50 landowners in the Rio Grande Valley who have refused to give the Department of Homeland Security access to their land for the construction of the wall. The legal aid agency at which I work represents several of those landowners, and I know their cases well.
Chertoff’s assertion that the border wall’s benefits outweigh its costs is wrong. The wall won’t work. It will be a horrible waste of resources, manpower and money. Twenty-foot walls mean 21-foot ladders. We in border communities care about border security more than anyone else - it affects us first. And we have a better sense of what will succeed.
My main concern, however, is with Chertoff’s characterization of his work as that of a public servant. A good public servant doesn’t act based solely on policy analysis. A good public servant stands up in opposition to policy that does more harm than good, particularly when the community it affects opposes it.
According to Chertoff, landowners oppose the wall because they are worried about it ruining their views and keeping their cows away from the river. Believe it or not, we on the border are not just simple farming folk who run around with cows and chickens all day. We are a community of farmers, laborers and educated professionals who take pride in our history, cross-border relationships and environment. Every now and then, one of us even earns a degree from the Kennedy School.
Chertoff’s false characterizations are indicative of a deep and growing problem in the public policy field. Too often, overpaid and overeducated officials sit at shiny tables in top-floor conference rooms and make policies with little knowledge of the communities they impact. So it is with the border wall, which technocrats decided to build without any input from border communities or the landowners who would be forced to give up their land.
Sometimes numbers don’t tell the whole story. Being a public servant isn’t about doing what is practical, but about doing what is right. It means realizing that the policies you advocate for or against affect real people who can’t be summed up or understood by supply and demand graphs, cost-benefit analysis or STATA output.
If Chertoff understood that, he’d learn about the Jaime family, and how the wall threatens to cut them off from their only supply of water. He’d know about the Garcia family who, if current plans persist, will need a passport just to get into their backyard.
If Chertoff were to hear these stories and understand these communities, he might finally grasp that this is more than a simple “not in my backyard” problem. This is a not in anybody’s backyard problem.
The landowners who oppose the wall are likely fighting a losing battle. But they are fighting. And with the help of local politicians, lawyers and activists, they are starting to be heard.
When it comes to teaching public policy, the Kennedy School often places too much emphasis on the policy and not enough on the public. HKS would be well served by inviting the people who live along the wall to address the Forum one night. They are the real public servants in this situation. We could all stand to learn a lot from them.
Cynthia Martinez (MPP ‘07) is the Communications Director for Texas RioGrande Legal Aid.
Photo: Local Alpine, Texas man protests construction of the border wall. Credit: Amanda Chisholm, Texas RioGrande Legal Aid.
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