Border land security bill scary stuff
The U.S. House of Representatives is
considering a dangerous bill that should have all of us in Montana
— and especially those of us in the northern tier — on high alert.
It’s called the National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act
(House Resolution 1505 if you want to look it up), and it gives the
federal government sweeping new power to shut down our public
lands.
The National Security and Federal Lands
Protection Act is exactly the kind of big government Montanans
don’t tolerate, and all of us should be up in arms over the very
prospect of this bill. It infringes on our constitutional rights in
the name of freedom — much like the controversial REAL ID Act. In
fact, this bill builds off of REAL ID. What exactly does the bill
do?
It gives the Department of Homeland
Security authority to seize immediate control of all public land,
undermining all rights we have on those lands. DHS could shut down
any recreational activities, grazing, hunting, fishing, logging
projects — you name it.
DHS would be allowed to do whatever it
wants to gain what it determines to be “operational control” of any
of our international borders. That means bureaucrats could build
roads, fences and even buildings wherever and whenever they want —
without public input or due process, even if it impacts private
land.
The bill waives 36 public land and
environmental laws on all federal, state and private lands “within
100 miles of the international land and maritime borders of the
United States.” If you look at a map of Montana, that’s the entire
top third of our state. It’s the entire Hi-Line, most of the
Missouri River and the Flathead Valley, all of Glacier National
Park and the Bob Marshall Wilderness, several national forests and
five of the seven Indian nations in Montana.
The bill would give unprecedented power
to the secretary of Homeland Security. Under the bill, the
secretaries of Interior and Agriculture, who oversee forest service
and BLM lands, “shall not impede, prohibit or restrict activities
of the secretary of Homeland Security.”
And the bill exempts these activities
from court review. Now that’s what you call a federal land grab. No
wonder the lawmakers behind this bill are quietly trying to push it
through Congress.
If they get their way, the federal
government would have incredible power to stop timber sales on
forest service land. DHS could prevent us from snowmobiling or
fishing or hunting in our forests. DHS could prevent grazing on the
CMR Wildlife Refuge. Bureaucrats could kick all cattle off of BLM
land. It would be able to shut down Glacier National Park
indefinitely.
The Department of Homeland Security
would also have the right to ignore all tribal protections for
sacred sites. Why? The laws protecting these sites could be
ignored.
I’m not the only one concerned about
the National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act.
Constitutional scholar John Leshy says the act “is the most
breathtakingly extreme legislative proposal” he has ever seen
because “it would effectively arm 200,000 Department of Homeland
Security employees and their contractors with unilateral power to
do what they want, without any advance notice, check or process,
over vast areas of federal land.”
Scary stuff. What can you do? Contact
our representatives in Congress. Tell them we can’t afford H.R.
1505. As a Hi-Line county commissioner, I know full well that we
need to improve security on Montana’s northern border. But we must
do it without trampling our rights or taking away our freedoms.
That’s just not the Montana way.
Vic Miller is a county commissioner for
Blaine County.