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…”

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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).

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.

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.

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

It was getting late when we arrived on Highway 180 to the border of El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez. The border Patrol office is closed, so we headed to Sunland Park near a the town of Rancho Anapara, Mexico. Currently, a metal mesh fence separates the community from Sunland Park, New Mexico, while trains carrying goods cut in front of residents’ homes, disrupting the day.

On the mesa above the community, the bigger, newer wall creeps down from the desert and under the gaze of the Christ statue on nearby Mount Cristo Rey. We phoned the Border Patrol office just for formality, and informed them that we will be taking photographs along the fence. We were told that new fence is just finished and it is build on the German Normandy architecture all the way from Santa Teresa to Pancho Villa. After taking few photographs of the triple fence at Sunland, we headed to Pancho Villa for camping. It was hot at the Camping ground 90F no wind and the water from the faucet was close to 110F.

Woke up early 6:30 am the sun was already hot and dry. We had breakfast at the only restaurant in town the “Pancho Villa Cafe” . The story goes that in early morning darkness of March 9, 1916, guerrillas of the Mexican Revolution under General Francisco “Pancho” Villa attacked the small New Mexico border town and military camp at Columbus the site of what is now Pancho Villa State Park my bed room for one night.

Eggs over easy, Huevos Rancheros and black coffee, before heading back to Santa Teresa, which is a young community at the junction of New Mexico Highways 278 and 9. It is about four miles north of the Mexico border. The sun was already grilling everything from jack rabbits to human, the films were melting literally.

Douglas to Nogales – Arizona

The five-meter (18-foot) tall fence has a mesh woven so tightly that feet and fingers cannot grab hold, but it still allows people to see through. Steel pylons are set close enough to stop a truck from bursting through, and two meters of reinforced concrete underground deters any tunneling. The structure is designed to push would-be illegal immigrants and drug smugglers out into the desert where they are more easily caught, said the Border Patrol Agent.

11 am the sun was unbearable and headed straight to Douglas – Arizona via highway 9 and 80. We stopped at the Geronimo Surrender Memorial on Highway 80 just north of Apache, Arizona. The turnoff to the actual surrender site in Skeleton Canyon is just a few hundred yards south of there. We stopped at the Geronimo Surrender Memorial on Highway 80 just north of Apache, Arizona. The turnoff to the actual surrender site in Skeleton Canyon is just a few hundred yards south of there.

Douglas was founded as a smelter town, to treat the coppern ores of nearby Bisbee, Arizona. The town is named after mining pioneer James Douglas. Mayor Ray Borane says a fence will divide a community that has strong family ties across the border. Much of this dusty city along the border is separated from Mexico by a fence consisting of 12-foot vertical metal bars, spaced inches apart to prevent illegal immigrant from crossing.

Surveillance cameras are mounted on towers nearby, and Border Patrol agents posted hundreds of feet away in the desert scrub and flowering ocotillo watch for anyone who might try to scale, cut through, slip under or sneak around the fence. Though these fences are criticized for shifting would-be border-crossers to more dangerous and remote spots, the objectives is to make it harder for illegal immigrants to reach urban areas where they can slip into a car and head away from the border to find work.

The 5-mile-long border fence dividing Douglas, Arizona, and “Agua Prieta”, Mexico, is made of sheet metal and steel bars. Floodlights and surveillance cameras line the U.S. Side. Our visit here and to Douglas filled us with haunting images of a American ghetto splitting the town in half, separating families from their loved ones, workers from their jobs and farmers from their fields. I decide to skip Naco and the Minuteman Project border vigil, which has nearly shut down a 20-mile corridor of the U.S.-Mexico border to supposedly illegal Mexicans, has spawned the creation of similar civilian patrols from California to Texas. I went to Naco in 2007 , to witness for myself what was going on with the Minuteman Project (MMP), returned in 2008 to see the Minutemen building a 0.9-mile-long security fence on Richard Hodges’ ranch east of Naco.

Ms. Shawna Forde -inutemen American Defense (M.A.D)

The iron and steel fence is the latest project from the Minutemen anti-immigration activists that has placed itself at the sharp end of the immigration debate since launching a highly publicized series of border watches in 2005. Now, frustrated at what the group sees as the inaction of government, it has taken matters a step further, building its own border fence at a cost of around $1m at one of the busiest points on the line, in Naco 90 miles from Tucson.

“Until the Minutemen came along and really raised national awareness about this there was nothing like this,” says Shawna Forde Washington state , director of (M.A.D) “Minutemen American Defense”, “This was all holes in the fence, cattle were coming through, illegal aliens were coming through. It’s been a real problem for the ranchers out here. Ms. Shawna Forde has now been arrested and charged for the May 30th, 2009 violent home invasion and murder of an alleged drug runner, a 29 year old father, and his 9 year old daughter and the attempted murder of his wife in Arivaca, Arizona. Ms.Forde is accused of being the “ring leader” in this conspiracy to take drugs and money from the residence and then murder all occupants in the home.

Ms. Forde started (M.A.D) “Minutemen American Defense” several years back when she was kicked out of a Washington based minuteman organization for fraudulent use of funds which she denied. We spent two days with her last year and wondered if Ms. Forde is a criminally-minded individual who happened to latch onto the illegal alien minuteman border-watch movement. She believed organized criminals operating at the border between the U.S. and Mexico posed one of the greatest threats to the nation’s security, drug traffickers and human smugglers.

Pima County, Ariz., detectives on Friday described Forde leading a plot to finance her Minutemen activities by robbing suspected drug traffickers. She and two others are charged with a fatal shooting of Raul Flores, 29, and his daughter, Brisenia, 9 May 30 home invasion at a suspected drug trafficker’s home in Arivaca, Arizona.

She insisted to me that after they cross the border Mexicans are taking over area’s of our cities, neighborhoods, schools with their way of life which is: corruption, lies, drug dealing, welfare fraud, stealing, no respect for Americans and disrespect for American values and society. This is truly a sad situation, the wall serves purposes that go way beyond any security needs. The wall consolidates individual’s illegal ideologies through hate and killing. The wall severs the ties of thousands of Mexicans from their homes, schools, families, towns, farms, and water.

Glenn Spencer  - American Border Patrol (ABP)

Palominas, Arizona is an historic site because right across the border, during theMexican Revolution, Pancho Villa and a force of 1000 men raided a small town east of the boot heel of New Mexico called Columbus. They killed 18 people and burned the town before they rode out. It was the only foreign military invasion on U.S. soil in modern times. (It is also the site where Coronado first crossed into present day US in 1540).

After photographing the fence, the border patrol told us about the new fence build at border monument 98 on the American Border Patrol’s ranch in Sierra Vista. The construction of the seven-mile border fence began on September 5, 2008 and was completed by Thanksgiving. Had mixed feeling since I visited the area with Shawna Forde last year. Anyway, the decision was made to see if we could located the fence. As we tried to find our way, two men in a van from the American border patrol intercepted our car. We stopped and asked for permission to access the private road to the fence , I need to speak to the boss… follow me!!

The boss is none other but Glenn Spencer -an activist who advocates greater vigilance in securing the United States-Mexico border against illegal immigration. Spencer is the founder of the American Border Patrol group based in Sierra Vista, Arizona. American Border Patrol is a private, non-governmental, organization with the stated purpose of informing Americans about the border. It is known for using small, radio-controlled aircraft and ground sensing equipment to track illegal immigrants, and then relaying that information to the US Border Patrol. For more than a decade, the group has warned of a plan by Mexicans to “invade” and “conquer” the Southwestern U.S. Spencer claims that the Mexican government is “sponsoring the invasion of the United States with hostile intent.”

In 2004, Spencer acquired a new headquarters for his group, based on 18 acres of land near Palominas, which was leased to him by a supporter. From this base, Spencer runs his Web site, occasionally flies tiny unmanned airplanes along the border, and plans to install sensors along it as well.

Separation wall

Will we ever really understand. What the “separation wall” means to the American and Mexican people. How will it add to poverty and the separation of people, communities, culture and resources both natural and commercial? The price currently is $1.2 billion dollars with lifetime maintenance costs estimated close to $50 billion.

The expenditure of building and maintaining the wall will prove exorbitant. “La Linea – H.R 6061″ (Secure Fence Act 2006) photographic book project protest the “injustice” of the increasing isolation of American and Mexican people in their towns and cities, and to bring consciousness to dismantle the “Iron wall”!

All photographs are courtesy fo Cyndy McCrossen Production.