When Congress approved the construction of a nearly 700-mile-long fence along the U.S.-Mexico border two years ago to keep out terrorists, drug smugglers and illegal immigrants, many residents in this bustling border town were certain the idea was just politics and would soon be discarded as unworkable.
When President Bush signed a measure in December to begin funding the $1.2 billion project, many here couldn’t believe the federal Department of Homeland Security was really planning to build a fence that would cut through back yards, farmlands, historic districts and even a college campus.
But this week, as the federal government began taking recalcitrant landowners to court to force them to open their properties to engineers and surveyors, the fence suddenly started to look very real indeed. And so did the rising anger felt by border residents, many of them Hispanic Americans, who fear that centuries of cross-border culture and commerce will soon be imperiled by a fence that’s as loathed here on the ground as it is loved in far-distant Washington.
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