Posts Tagged ‘border between the United States and Mexico’

Border crossers finding new fence painful

Thursday, February 2nd, 2012

NOGALES, AZ – The higher the wall, the harder they will fall. That’s what border crossers trying to scale the new border fence at Nogales are painfully finding out.

The imposing new border fence running through Nogales is proving to be a treacherous obstacle for suspected illegal immigrants.

Nogales 2011_v2

(New Wall 20 feet 6 inches 2011 – Old Wall 15 feet 2010)

A Nogales Police Department report says on Aug. 12, a woman broke her leg after climbing the border fence.

Two days later, officers found a second injured fence climber. And a third, suspected illegal immigrant from China fell and broke his leg on Aug 22.

Nogales Fire Department Chief Hector Robles tells the Nogales International that in addition to the height of the fence, adrenaline and miscalculations in determining the distance and angle of a fall ar potential injury factors.

By: Associated Press

photography – Maurice Sherif

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Military engineers dig in to support Border Patrol

Tuesday, January 24th, 2012

On Jan. 6, members of an Alaska-based Army airborne engineer brigade parachuted out of an Air Force plane at Fort Huachuca. Since then, they’ve been working to cut 0.7 miles of border access road through rugged terrain approximately 3 miles west of the Mariposa Port of Entry in Nogales.

Project organizers say the experience, from the parachute drop-in to the remote road-building and eventual departure on Feb. 27, mirrors the type of mission the 40 soldiers might conduct if they were deployed to a place like Afghanistan.4f1ecea5436c7.image

“This will prepare them for future deployments, especially in the areas of current contingency operations,” said Armando Carrasco, spokesman for the Department of Defense’s Joint Task Force North (JTF North), the agency that coordinated the mission.

Standing on a hilltop above the work site Friday as heavy machinery dug through a steep slope below her, mission commander Lt. Michelle Zak spoke of the difficulties of maneuvering large earth movers around the mountains, canyons and ravines of western Santa Cruz County.

“It’s been challenging, but also a great opportunity for us to train,” she said.

This effort, along with other military road-building projects that have been conducted in the county in recent years, also provides a great opportunity for agents at the U.S. Border Patrol’s Nogales Station to gain better access to some of their hardest-to-control areas.

“You’ve got to look at it as a win-win situation,” said Agent Steven Passement, a spokesman for the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector.

“One, for the unit that’s here and the units that will come, it’s real-world training experience,” he said. “And for us, we’re getting infrastructure put in place that’s going to be permanent.”

Those permanent roads, built with drainage culverts to keep them from washing out, helps agents responds faster to illegal activity in the area and provide aid more quickly to migrants in distress. What’s more, Passement said, a better road surface means less wear-and-tear on Border Patrol vehicles, and therefore less expenditures on new tires, shock absorbers and struts.

Local residents and businesses are also benefiting from the arrangement. The current group of 40 engineers is staying at a local hotel and spending some of their pocket money at local establishments.

“I know a lot of the soldiers have been out on the town, and they’ve enjoyed the tacos that come from the trucks,” Zak said.

Rancher Dan Bell, who grazes cattle in the same section of Coronado National Forest lands where the road are being built, says he’s seen an improvement in security in the area since the road-building began.

“Prior to these roads going in, there really wasn’t any way to get to the border in a lot of these areas,” Bell said. “It’s allowed (Border Patrol) to actually get down to the border and patrol the actual border rather than a larger area that they’d have to hike or go into on horseback.”

The soldiers themselves are not engaged in any law enforcement activity while on the road-building projects, Carrasco said. That duty is left up to the Border Patrol.

Environmental concerns

Since the construction is taking place on National Forest land, the U.S. Forest Service has been included in the project planning, and an environmental monitor is on hand to make sure the project stays within the construction easement, said Maj. Chris Neels, mission planner for JTF North.

Even so, environmentalists like Jenny Neeley, conservation policy director at the Tucson-based Sky Island Alliance, say they are worried about the long-term effects of border-infrastructure projects that are conducted outside of federal environmental law. Since April 2008, the Department of Homeland Security has operated under a waiver that allows it to build border fencing and related infrastructure in the U.S. Southwest without having to adhere to more than 30 environmental regulations.

“We’re extremely disappointed that none of it is subject to review under the National Environmental Policy Act because of the existing waiver along the border,” Neeley said. “Those roads are being installed without any oversight whatsoever, in terms of regulatory oversight or having to follow best practices.”

Neeley said she hadn’t seen the particular roads being built west of Nogales, but she said there have been numerous projects carried out under the waiver that have later led to erosion and flooding. She cited an example from the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, where rainwater runoff collapsed a 40-foot stretch of new border fence in August 2010 due to faulty design.

A Department of Homeland Security-sponsored public forum in December 2010 laid out the technical details and environmental analysis that had gone into the planning of the agency’s border road and fence projects in and around Nogales. Still, Greg Gephart, program manager for tactical infrastructure for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, acknowledged that the projects would be conducted under the environmental waiver.4f1ecef54d05a.image_II

“The waiver doesn’t mean we’re throwing out all environmental considerations,” Gephart said at the time. “It’s just a method that allows us to expedite the construction.”

‘Good feeling’

The 40 Army engineers currently deployed to Nogales work six days a week, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Even so, due to the terrain, theirs is the first of three phases necessary to complete the 0.7 miles of roadway.

What’s more, military units are scheduled to execute four additional engineering missions in the Nogales area in support of the Border Patrol during the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

It’s all organized by JTF North, based at Fort Bliss, Texas, which has been supporting federal law enforcement agencies along the Southwest border since 1989. Working as a liaison between law enforcement and all four branches of the military, JTF North has coordinated engineering missions that built and improved roads and installed border lighting, fencing and vehicle barriers in areas stretching from California to Texas.

The majority of the costs of the projects are paid for with Department of Defense counter-drug funds, JTF North says; the participating law enforcement agency covers only the cost of materials.

For example, Tucson-based Hertz Equipment Rental has been contracted to provide the heavy machinery for the current road effort, as well as training and maintenance. That’s all covered by JTF North, Carrasco said.

As for the price tag for the 0.7-mile road project, Carrasco estimated $400,000 for Phases 1 and 2 and $350,000 for Phase 3 – a grand total of $1.15 million.

Part of the expense includes the cost of housing the soldiers at an area hotel, which is also contracted to provide the team with a hot breakfast and dinner each day. (JTF North declined to name the hotel, citing security concerns.)

“It also creates a good quality of life for them while they’re deployed on this mission,” he said. “Obviously they work very hard, so it’s important that we also take care of them during their down time.”

As for the military engineers, they say they are greatly appreciative of the good meals and soft beds – as well as the warm, sunny weather of Southern Arizona. After all, they left their home base in the middle of the frigid, snowy and daylight-deprived Alaska winter.

Specialist Nickalous Herd, a native of Atlanta, praised the “wonderful weather, wonderful people and wonderful state” as he stood at the worksite Friday under clear blue skies and 70-degree temperatures. And while the local terrain has been a challenge to work with, Herd said, he has also enjoyed its rugged beauty.

“It is beautiful, it is extremely beautiful here,” he said.

Sgt. Everell Gustave, a native of the Boston area, said the experience of coming to a new area and working under new conditions with new equipment has been an important skill-builder for his team, which, if deployed to Afghanistan, might parachute into a remote area to rebuild roads, supply routes and airstrips.

“It is definitely a good feeling for our guys. We are getting the training that we need to be successful anywhere around the world,” Gustave said. “Helping out the Border Patrol is just a plus.”

By Jonathan Clark Nogales International

copyright © Nogales International

Images By Jonathan Clark

Nogales International
Phone number: (520) 375-5760
Address: 268 W. View Point Dr.
Nogales, AZ 85621

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Ag Commissioner Declares War on the Border

Monday, January 23rd, 2012

Lately it seems that Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples would rather have the Texas Department of Agriculture become a wing of the U.S. Department of Defense than a Texas state agency. Not long ago, Staples commissioned an $80,000 “strategic military assessment” of the Texas border. The Ag Commissioner released the 182-page tome, written by two retired generals, yesterday in a press conference at the Texas Capitol. Texas_Plate_26

If you hadn’t heard, Staples is running for Lieutenant Governor in 2014. For the past year, the Ag Commissioner has been beating the war drums and burnishing his border security credentials. Last March, he unveiled a fancy, new taxpayer-funded Web site called “Protect Your Texas Border” which offers such highlights as night-vision surveillance chases of drug traffickers along the Rio Grande and a video interview with a Texas Ranger who proclaims: “We are in a war and I am not going to sugarcoat it by any means. We are in a war, and it is what it is.”

The Web site also hosts a forum where visitors are encouraged to share their views on securing the border. The forum was dinged by the press, however, after a number of posts advocated for vigilante justice offering such gems of advice as “Killem all!!!! They are destroying or great country.”

Now, we have Staples’ “military assessment” advocating for greater militarization of the border, which sets a dangerous precedent and adds to the growing campaign by the GOP to turn Mexico into Afghanistan. In the report written by retired Generals Barry McCaffery and Robert Scales drug cartel operatives are referred to as “narco-terrorists” and U.S. border counties are referred to as the “sanitary tactical zone” where military operations can push back the “narco-terrorists.” The generals applaud the Texas Department of Public Safety’s “comprehensive military-like operational campaign against narco-terrorists” and suggest that Texas serve as the national model for the nation-wide militarization of the border.

“Five years of state operations have yielded valuable lessons and insights that can improve the border security operations of states and U.S. federal agencies. Below are insights shared by senior leaders within the Texas DPS who consider their operations in the war against narco-terrorism to be a model for how war might be prosecuted in a wider, multi-state and national campaign. They accede to the face that much of their effort was derived from experience in recent campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan…”Texas_Plate_6

The only problem is this isn’t a war and U.S. border counties — last I checked — are still considered part of the United States and civilian territory. They also boast crime and murder rates far lower than cities such as Washington, D.C., according to FBI crime statistics.

Despite this fact, GOP leaders are pushing ahead at both the federal and state level to turn the border region into a theater of war. After 9/11, Congress gave the Department of Homeland Security the right to set up internal checkpoints within 100 miles of the international borders where they have the ability to stop people, question them and ask them to prove their citizenship. Now, Staples and other politicians are calling for more militarization which will inevitably deteriorate further U.S. citizens constitutional rights.

Texas_Plate_28

I don’t want to understate the growing security crisis in Mexico. It does have an impact on the United States. But a military-only solution doesn’t address the underlying factors that are fueling organized crime’s takeover of Mexico – namely poverty, impunity, government corruption and the U.S’. multi-billion dollar drug market.

It’s a purely cynical and political move to only push for militarization and not address the myriad social, economic and political issues fueling the crisis in Mexico. For Republican candidates such as Staples issues such as combating poverty, immigration reform or revising our outmoded drug laws are not politically expedient. They just don’t draw GOP Primary voters to the election booths like armored cars or boots on the ground, which is a shame for both the United States and Mexico.

by Melissa del Bosque

Published on: Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Melissa del Bosque has a Masters in Journalism from U.T. Austin and a M.P.H. from the Texas A&M School of Rural Public Health.  She spent five years in the Texas Senate as a communications director. Her work has been published in Time magazine and the NACLA Report on the Americas.

Follow @MelissaLaLinea on Twitter.

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Pretty Ugly – Critique of “The American Wall Project” -by Jim Lewis

Wednesday, July 6th, 2011

Maurice Sherif’s photos of the border wall are undoubtedly beautiful. And that’s precisely the problem.

The first notable thing about the border wall between the United States and Mexico is that the damned thing exists. Unless you live in the most southwestern reaches of America, you may have assumed, as I did, that the whole thing was merely a proposal, one of those preposterous ideas that are floated in Washington by politicians hotdogging for their constituents, only to be shot down by saner minds. But no, there is a wall, or rather, there are several walls, intermittently covering more than 600 miles of the 1,954-mile-long boundary between the U.S. and Mexico, including most of California’s and Arizona’s borders and much of New Mexico’s. (South Texas residents, a formidably independent bunch, have slowed its progress across our state, though some cities, like Brownsville, have been unable to stop the wall from slicing through their community.)

Otay Mountain Negative. California 2010

Almost all of it has been built by the Department of Homeland Security in the past four years, under the aegis of the Real ID Act, which granted the Secretary of the DHS an absolute, monarchical freedom to barricade our borders in whatever manner he chose, unhampered by the established laws of the land, including those covering environmental protection, clean air and water, and historical preservation. Starting at the Pacific Ocean, then—or, more accurately, about 450 yards into the ocean, presumably to deter swimmers, but not really strong swimmers—the wall runs over hill and dale, gouging a path through wildlife preservations, Indian reservations, and many poor neighborhoods (though at least one golf club managed to secure a waiver). In some places it’s little more than reinforced hurricane fencing with barbed wire on top, but in most others it’s an imposing structure built of slabs of concrete or steel that extend as high as 25 feet. It has cost over $2 billion to build thus far, and it’s expected to top out at more than $6 billion, not counting future costs for upkeep. An expensive project, and what’s more, ugly, unnecessary, and ineffective. And so we have The American Wall(MS Zephyr Publishing, distributed by the University of Texas Press), a forthright attack on the entire project, composed of two volumes, the first presenting nearly one hundred photographs by the French photographer Maurice Sherif, the second containing seven essays about the wall. The whole thing comes in a slipcase and retails for $150.

If you’re like me, you’ll read the essays first, and while you probably won’t find yourself any more cheerful when you’re done, you’ll almost certainly be better informed. They’re prefaced by a monody from the essayist Charles Bowden, a longtime observer of life and death along the border, and a brief statement from Sherif. Then comes a series of dismaying facts, presented without embellishment.

Anthropologists Miguel Díaz-Barriga and Margaret E. Dorsey focus on South Texas, where the wall is seen as an eyesore, an encroachment, and a crude obstacle to communities that have traditionally enjoyed fluid relations with their Mexican neighbors. What’s more, they point out, most of it has been built in urban areas and small towns, forcing illegal immigrants to cross the border in harsh and isolated regions, thereby increasing the number who die along the way. University of Texas law professor Denise Gilman neatly sums up the many ways in which the wall violates American legal precedents and international human rights law. Scott Nicol, an activist with No Border Wall and the Sierra Club, details how it threatens animal species whose existence depends on their ability to roam the lands around the Rio Grande. The last essay is an unfortunately homiletic performance by a doctor named James Tryon, but it’s followed by an exceptionally useful timeline, put together by the researcher Martha Davidson. There you will learn, for example, that barricading the border is utterly irrelevant to about half of all illegal immigrants, who come to the U.S. on legitimate visas and simply stay when they run out, and it’s little more than a speed bump for many of the rest (in four years, the wall has been breached well over three thousand times).

Border Wall California 2010

Volume one, which is the impetus for the entire publication, is more of a mixed bag. To be sure, Sherif’s photographs are beautiful, and they’ve been printed in quadratone black and white, an elaborate process that produces an unusually rich tonal range. Together with the translucent negative borders that frame them, this gives the pictures a plush, dreamy quality. Taken as a whole, it’s obviously a deluxe production. And just as obviously, it’s all wrong.

Almost everything about the pictures suggests a will to elegance that’s inappropriate to the matter at hand. Back in the day, black and white film was the standard for both newspapers and art photography. But that changed in the seventies and eighties, and now it looks deliberately archaic and somewhat effete—the photographic equivalent of wearing spats, or using the word “shall.” By the same token, the distorted strips at the edges of Sherif’s photographs indicate that he shot on large-format film, using a discontinued stock called Polaroid Type 55—an expensive and unwieldy process, useful mainly for large reproductions but somewhat pretentious otherwise. Moreover, by printing beyond the boundary of the negative, Sherif proves that he didn’t crop the photos, in accordance with an outmoded notion of authenticity that insists that “real” photographers frame their pictures through the camera rather than in the darkroom. It’s all very precious, “artistic” in the worst way.

As a result, Sherif’s pictures make the wall seem quite lovely as it wends abstractly across the landscape. In his opening statement he asks how “the United States became such an egregious violator of basic human rights.” Yet not one of his images shows a human being; the lives that the wall has degraded have been shut out of the pictures as well. What’s left looks like an art project—something by Christo, say, or a Richard Serra sculpture blown up to enormous scale. But the wall is not a work of art. It’s a crude and wasteful boondoggle. It should have been shot to reflect as much.

To be fair, Sherif has merely fallen victim to one of the commoner paradoxes of the medium: It’s very difficult to take a good picture of an ugly thing—to preserve its ugliness in a photograph that is estimable and compelling. The camera tends to glamorize whatever it sees, making the silkiest images out of those things we should find most revolting. Many photographers have exploited this phenomenon—Sebastião Salgado comes to mind, with his epic and hyper-refined treatment of miserable conditions around the world—and many have been admired for it. But I find it meretricious at best and vile at worst, and in this case it yields an especially cruel irony. As a photo book, The American Wall is very much like the American wall: too big, too expensive, and oblivious to the needs of the people it’s meant to serve.

Read an Excerpt: The American Wall: From the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico Copyright (c) 2011. Courtesy of the University of Texas Press. Buy it from University of Texas Press.

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Hysteria, of course, has become a feature of the American diet.

Sunday, January 30th, 2011

About 11.8 million people live in the US-Mexico border area. Approximately one-quarter of the population in the US counties bordering Mexico live at or below the poverty line. This is over double the rate of the national average (12 percent) of the US population living in poverty. Furthermore, the unemployment rate in US counties on the southern border is 5.6 percent compared to 4.7 percent in the rest of the country. Mexican border states have an average poverty rate of 28 percent, significantly below the Mexican national average of 37 percent. (Sources: Environmental Protection Agency; Pan-American Health Organization/World Health Organization; Inter-American Development Bank; CIA World Factbook)

The border area in the United States consists of 48 counties in four states. Approximately 300,000 people live in 1,300 colonias in Texas and New Mexico. Colonias are unincorporated, semirural communities characterized by substandard housing and unsafe public drinking water or wastewater systems. Communities on the Mexican side of the border generally have less access to basic water and sanitation services than border communities in the United States. (Sources: Environmental Protection Agency; Pan-American Health Organization/World Health Organization)

Two of the 10 fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the United States, Laredo and McAllen, are located on the Texas-Mexico border. Estimates indicate the population of many border cities will double in 30 years. The population along the Texas border region is increasing at twice the rate of Texas as a whole. (Source: US Census Bureau)

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Stimulus plan includes “virtual Wall”

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

One of the many unnoticed projects included in the massive “$800,000,000,000″ economic stimulus plan is “$100,000,000″ for Boeing Inc. to resume work on the troubled “virtual fence”, the “$8,000,000,000″ 2006 plan to construct a highly sophisticated electronic barrier along the U.S. border with Mexico.

As a result of the technical problems, the Department of Homeland Security put the virtual Wall project on hold in 2008 after spending billions to make technology take the place of a physical fence. In total, DHS built only 28 miles of virtual Wall in a pilot project.

Get the Flash Player to see the wordTube Media Player.

The debate over constructing Walling on the US-Mexico is not new

The Clinton administration, for example, passed legislation in the mid-90s that called for Walling around the major US metropolitan centers on the border.

Yet, the extent of the inflow of illegal immigration (roughly 500,000 annually) as well as the growing Hispanic demographic in the United States has caused many people to view a more extensive walling system as increasingly urgent.

The Wall is intentionally placed in the least dangerous border crossings, while leaving open treacherous routes. Given the strong desire to cross, many will attempt to make these crossing fatally. Hundreds die each year already. Hundreds more could be expected. After the construction of the San Diego fence, many illegal immigrants began crossing through the Arizona desert, which caused many of San Diego’s border agents to move out there. According to T.J. Bonner, the president of the National Border Patrol Council, the main union for Border Patrol agents, “Tucson now has 2,600 plus agents. San Diego has lost 1,000 agents. Guess where the traffic is going? Back to San Diego. San Diego is the most heavily fortified border in the entire country, and yet it’s not stopping people from coming across.

From west to east, the border city twinnings and border crossings include the following:

  1. San Diego, California (San Ysidro) – Tijuana, Baja California (San Diego-Tijuana Metro.) (I-5 and Mexico 1 highway)
  2. Otay Mesa, California – Tijuana, Baja California (California State Route 905 and Boulevard Aztecas)
  3. Tecate, California – Tecate, Baja California (California State Route 135 and Mexico 3 highway)
  4. Calexico, California – Mexicali, Baja California
  5. Calexico, California (Eastern border checkpoint) – Mexicali, Baja California
  6. Andrade, California – Los Algodones, Baja California
  7. San Luis, Arizona – San Luis Río Colorado, Sonora (US 95 and Mexico 2 highway)
  8. Lukeville, Arizona – Sonoita, Sonora
  9. Sasabe, Arizona – Altar, Sonora
  10. Nogales, Arizona – Nogales, Sonora
  11. Naco, Arizona – Naco, Sonora
  12. Douglas, Arizona – Agua Prieta, Sonora
  13. Antelope Wells, New Mexico – El Berrendo, Chihuahua
  14. Columbus, New Mexico – Puerto Palomas, Chihuahua
  15. Santa Teresa, New Mexico – San Jerónimo, Chihuahua
  16. El Paso, Texas – Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua
  17. Fabens, Texas – Práxedis G. Guerrero, Chihuahua
  18. Presidio, Texas – Ojinaga, Chihuahua
  19. Heath Canyon, Texas – La Linda, Coahuila (closed)
  20. Del Rio, Texas – Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila
  21. Eagle Pass, Texas – Piedras Negras, Coahuila
  22. Laredo, Texas – Colombia, Nuevo León
  23. Laredo, Texas – Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas
  24. Falcon Heights, Texas – Presa Falcón, Tamaulipas
  25. Roma, Texas – Ciudad Miguel Alemán, Tamaulipas
  26. Rio Grande City, Texas – Ciudad Camargo, Tamaulipas
  27. Mission, Texas – Reynosa, Tamaulipas
  28. Hidalgo, Texas – Reynosa, Tamaulipas
  29. Pharr, Texas – Reynosa, Tamaulipas
  30. Progreso Lakes, Texas – Nuevo Progreso, Tamaulipas
  31. Los Indios, Texas – Matamoros, Tamaulipas
  32. Brownsville, Texas – Matamoros, Tamaulipas.

References:

  1. National Immigration Forum
  2. US Chamber of Commerce[16]
  3. American Immigration Lawyers Association
  4. American Farm Bureau
  5. National Association of Homebuilders
  6. Catholic Charities USA
  7. Associated Builders and Contractors
  8. United Auto Workers
  9. Families First, a conservative religious organization.
  10. Federation for American Immigration Reform FAIR
  11. Weneedafence.com - A project of the Let Freedom Ring Foundation, advocating constructing a “multi-element fence” along the US-Mexico border, similar to the Israeli fence.
  12. The Minuteman Project – “a citizens’ Operation monitoring immigration”.
  13. You Don’t Speak for Me, a Latino American group that favors border security and the enforcement of immigration laws.
  14. Debatepedia
  15. Border Angels

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The American Wall

Thursday, October 1st, 2009
The fence between the United States and Mexico
The anti-immigration wall of the Tercera Nación
Wall Facts
Date of construction: beginning in 1994
Length: 1,200 km
Material used: wire mesh, corrugated iron, barbed wire
Garrison: 12,000 border patrol (18,000 when completed)
Communities concerned: Mexicans, Latin Americans and Americans
The border between the United States and Mexico, 3,200 km long, crosses an entire
continent, from the Pacific Ocean on the Californian coast to the Gulf of Mexico in
east Texas. The fence, built by the United States in 2006 along a portion of this
border, doesn’t appear to exist at first sight, but it is there, made of recovered
corrugated steel sheets, rusted by time. Three metres high, topped by electrified
barbed wire, it is lined with a parapet walk overhung by radars, cameras, projectors,
ground sensors, and supplemented by unmanned aircraft and the latest surveillance
technologies.
A tradition dating back 100 years
Between 1830 and 1860, the new boundary between Mexico and the U.S. saw
Mexico lose some two million square kilometres of territory. At the end of the 19th
century, Mexican peasants began coming to offer their labour, first in large farms in
California, then from the 1920s in the emerging U.S. industry. In 1965, the abolition of
bilateral agreements prohibited the back-and-forth travel of Mexican seasonal
workers. The influx of illegal migrants began to increase, raising the issue of
clandestine immigration and its regulation. In 1994, as a free trade agreement had
already been signed between the United States, Canada and Mexico, the United
States decided to strengthen their border and stop illegal immigrants.
On 26 October 2006, U.S. President George W. Bush promulgated the Secure Fence
Act, aimed at reinforcing surveillance of the border with Mexico and combating illegal
immigration. Totalling 1,200 km in length, representing one-third of the border, the
fence should be completed by the end of 2008, and will cross the Arizona desert.

Wall Facts

Date of construction: beginning in 1994

Length: 1,200 km

Garrison: 12,000 border patrol (18,000 when completed)

Communities concerned: Mexicans, Latin Americans and Americans

The border between the United States and Mexico, 3,200 km long, crosses an entire continent, from the Pacific Ocean on the Californian coast to the Gulf of Mexico in east Texas. The wall, built by the United States in 2006 along a portion of this border, doesn’t appear to exist at first sight, but it is there, made of recovered corrugated steel sheets, rusted by time. Three meters high, topped by electrified barbed wire, it is lined with a parapet walk overhung by radars, cameras, projectors, ground sensors, and supplemented by unmanned aircraft and the latest surveillance technologies.

Nogales-000200010

-first generation wall 2006-

A tradition dating back 100 years Between 1830 and 1860, the new boundary between Mexico and the U.S. saw Mexico lose some two million square kilometers of territory. At the end of the 19th century, Mexican peasants began coming to offer their labour, first in large farms in California, then from the 1920s in the emerging U.S. industry. In 1965, the abolition of bilateral agreements prohibited the back-and-forth travel of Mexican seasonal workers. The influx of illegal migrants began to increase, raising the issue of clandestine immigration and its regulation. In 1994, as a free trade agreement had already been signed between the United States, Canada and Mexico, the United States decided to strengthen their border and stop illegal immigrants.

On 26 October 2006, U.S. President George W. Bush promulgated the Secure Fence Act, aimed at reinforcing surveillance of the border with Mexico and combating illegal immigration.

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