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March 18, 2008 -- In September 2006, amid mounting concern over illegal immigration and border security, congress approved - and President Bush signed - a measure to build 700 miles of new fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border. Supporters promoted the law as a security-minded kickoff for a more comprehensive overhaul of immigration laws.

Current Department of Homeland Security plans route the fence through private and public lands in south Texas. In Brownsville, politicians, landowners and activists have come out against legislation, calling it insensitive to the needs of border communities.

In mid-March 2008, a group of activists walked 115 miles of the U.S.- Mexico border to protest plans to build 70 miles of border fencing in the Rio Grande Valley between Roma and Brownsville, Tex. According to organizers, nearly 200 people joined the “No Border Wall Walk” for varying lengths of time; about a dozen teachers and students walked the entire distance. Under hot sun on the seventh day of the nine- day walk, the group danced, sung, and chanted their way from Progreso to Los Indios, Tex., a distance of 12 miles.

Among the walkers was Matthew Webster, a ninth-grade teacher in Brownsville, who helped organize the protest. An Irish-American from Pennsylvania, Pa., he moved to South Texas a year and a half ago to teach in the 91 percent hispanic community.