U.S. Border Fence Divides Texas City

A steel border fence that the Homeland Security Department began building almost two years ago in Texas roughly a quarter-mile north of the Rio Grande has left many Texas landowners in a vague area that isn't quite Mexico's territory, but isn't quite Texas either. While the border fence divides Mexico and the U.S. in almost every other region where it stands, in Brownsville, Texas, it divides parts of the city. Government authorities built the fence to help thwart illegal immigration and drug trafficking. Today immigrants cross the Rio Grande via a dam that serves as a footbridge, where they are met by Border Patrol agents on the river side of the fence. But residents in Brownsville are worried that U.S. Customs and Border Protection might reposition its agents behind the border fence, where many of the town's people now reside, leaving their homes more vulnerable. "It's a no man's land," said one woman from Brownsville. "They said they were going to build a fence to protect all the people. We were just lost in the draw."