A border wall, Trump's Arizona legacy
Audio 19:30
The separation wall on the border with Mexico.
© Julien Boileau
By: Marie Normand Follow |
Julien boileau
31 min
It was one of Donald Trump's flagship projects: building a separation wall on the border with Mexico.
According to federal authorities, more than 720 km of wall have emerged in four years.
Most of them in New Mexico and Arizona, where our special envoys (Marie Normand and Julien Boileau) went.
Publicity
At first glance, it does not quite have the allure of the “
big
and beautiful”
concrete building promised by Donald Trump.
No solid wall, but a metal fence.
Nine-meter high poles are planted in concrete trenches.
They are about ten centimeters apart, just enough to see Baja California, Mexico, on the other side.
These miles of wall roll by as we roll down a no-traffic track near Yuma, in southwestern Arizona, bordering California.
At the wheel of the pick-up: Jonathan Lines, former boss of the Republican Party of this state who turned Democrat in the last elections.
Under his windshield, he put a pass, prominently, to avoid the controls of the Border Patrol, the armed wing of US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the customs and protection service. borders.
It is this federal agency which is responsible for building the wall dreamed by Donald Trump.
The United States and Mexico share a border of more than 3,000 km.
The outgoing president came to Yuma three times in 2020 alone, proof of the city's strategic interest in its border security policy.
A dotted wall
Jonathan Lines, a member of the Mormon Church and father of 11, likes to recall that he has been received several times at the White House.
He was one of the relays in Arizona on the outgoing president's campaign team.
According to him, this brand new wall has many qualities.
“
It is much more difficult to go over it, to climb it, even to cut it, as the traffickers do elsewhere.
Since the wall has been there, human and drug trafficking has decreased,
”he maintains.
The elected Republican, now supervisor of Yuma County, also welcomes the cameras installed at regular intervals and underground sensors.
He hopes that all this equipment will prevent other caravans of migrants from Central America from crossing the border to seek asylum, as in 2018 and 2019. “
I am the president of the Yuma food bank.
When all these people arrived, we came to their aid.
They siphoned off all of our resources, ”he
says.
Jonathan Lines, Yuma County Supervisor, poses in front of a commemorative plaque that was placed during outgoing President Donald Trump's last visit.
It celebrates the construction of the first 300 miles of wall.
© RFI / Marie Normand
Only a few kilometers of metal fence emerged from the ground where there was nothing.
The Trump administration's wall has, in large part, been used to reinforce older buildings or replace simple barriers intended to prevent the passage of vehicles.
A few remain, especially along the territory of the Native American Cocopah tribe.
“The wall resumes at the exit of the tribal area.
The Cocopahs are a sovereign nation within the United States.
As a result, the border is very porous at this location.
Tonight, as soon as the sun goes down, you'll see people crossing over here ”.
All along the border with Mexico, several Amerindian peoples have firmly opposed construction on their ancestral lands.
The Tohono O'odhams, whose territory straddles the United States and Mexico, stepped up protests last year.
Due to the very strict measures in force in this community since the start of the pandemic, we have not been able to meet them.
Sheriff Lamb says building the wall has reduced drug trafficking.
© RFI / Marie Normand
The lack of a wall along the huge Tohono O'odham reservation is a problem for Mark Lamb, the Pinal County sheriff, nearly 200 km from the border.
With a cowboy hat on his head, he welcomes us to his office, which is overflowing with patriotic symbols.
He too is a staunch supporter of Donald Trump.
“
These Amerindian people have their own police unit, with which we cooperate.
But the border is very long and they don't have enough men.
So the traffickers come in that way and the drugs then arrive in my riding!
"
Sheriff Lamb says half of the drugs that circulate in the United States - heroin, methamphetamines, but especially fentanyl - enter through Arizona.
He insists that thanks to the new wall, foreclosures have decreased.
However, several studies show that a large part of the drug passes through official border posts.
Mark Lamb is worried, in any case, of the arrival of Joe Biden at the White House: “
He wants to reopen the borders.
If he does, we will be inundated with drugs across the country
”.
"We need Mexican workers on our farms"
This rhetoric is all the rage in Donald Trump's meetings, but it does not find the same echo everywhere in Arizona, even in the ranks of the conservatives.
We continue our journey further east, at the gateway to New Mexico.
A desert landscape, surrounded by mountains and canyons, stretches for several tens of kilometers around the village of Portal.
It is this no man's land that those who manage to cross the border clandestinely must face.
Regularly, candidates for the American dream get lost on the property of Jason Barnard, who raises some 3,000 head of cattle with his wife Candice and their three children.
“
We are about a 3-day walk from the border.
The last guy we saw arriving was almost dead,
he recalls
.
He was mentally, emotionally and physically exhausted.
These clothes were torn, in tatters.
He was hungry, thirsty and scared to death.
He was barely 19 years old and he kept asking, are we in Phoenix?
Where is Phoenix from?
".
Phoenix, the capital of Arizona, is located over 400 km from their ranch.
Jason Barnard and his family's ranch is a three-day walk from the border.
Regularly, illegal immigrants get lost on this property located at the gates of New Mexico.
© RFI / Marie Normand
Jason and Candice are conservatives.
They voted Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020, but they explain that their faith pushes them to help these illegal migrants.
He is skeptical of the usefulness of a separation wall.
"If they really wanted to, they could stop these traffickers,
" says the farmer.
“I am not necessarily in favor of hermetically closing the border.
Americans don't want to work on a farm.
I love Mexicans: they work hard, they are honest.
If we were to depend solely on American workers for our farms, it would be very difficult
”.
Here, unlike Texas, no Rio Grande, no natural barrier to mark the border between the United States and Mexico.
It was therefore in Arizona that the Trump administration wanted to build a wall as a priority.
It was also easier than in Texas, where the land is private and must be repurchased from its owners before starting work.
"Here, a large part of the land belongs to the government",
explains Randy Serraglio, member of the NGO Center for Biological Diversity, who receives us at his home in Tucson.
The defender of the environment, who has been studying the militarization of the border for more than 25 years, recalls that to build this wall, Donald Trump suspended several environmental laws in the name of national security.
He also drew from envelopes that were not originally intended for this project.
Trials are underway, but in the meantime the Supreme Court has not demanded that the work be stopped.
Here, the site is running at full speed.
These sections of wall, near Palominas, Arizona, came out of the ground in just three months.
They replace anti-vehicle barriers.
© RFI / Marie Normand
During the last months of Donald Trump's mandate, the building site was in full swing.
In Palominas, a town of 200 inhabitants located near Sierra Vista, workers sometimes worked “
day and night”,
says a local resident.
The new metal wall now winds through the Huachuca Mountains in Coronado National Park and cuts the San Pedro River in two, which originates in Mexico and flows into the United States.
“
Yet this river was the country's first nature reserve in 1988. It was so special that an entire bipartisan Congress decided to protect it,
” laments Kate Scott, founder and director of the Madrean Archipelago Wildlife Center.
Mountains carved out with dynamite
Due to the drought that has hit the county for 20 years, the San Pedro River is dry in this location.
But, the ecologist explains that during the monsoon months, the river can turn into a torrent.
As a spillway, several doors were installed on the wall.
But the system is manual and there is no gauge or sensor.
"
How will the wildlife that habitat on both sides of the border do?"
wonders Kate Scott, for whom the spotlights installed on the wall will also disorientate the animals.
According to the Madrean Archipelago Wildlife Center, two-thirds of birds in the United States follow the San Pedro River for their migration.
385 species are recorded and some do not fly high enough to pass over the wall.
This barrier is also impassable for an endangered species of jaguar.
“We also have 82 species of mammals here - it's even the largest population north of the tropics - and 43 types of amphibians.
Rare frogs, rare fish
, ”she adds.
Kate Scott, director of the Madrean Archipelago Wildlife Center, explains that the site is in full swing near the San Pedro River.
She doubts the effectiveness of the doors installed on the wall.
© RFI / Marie Normand
Here, however, three months were enough to make several kilometers of wall emerge from the earth.
We have to move quickly because President-elect Joe Biden has promised that no centimeter will be built under his tenure.
To create the path used by trucks and excavators, the mountains of these protected sites were blasted with dynamite.
Result: The bills for the sections of wall built in this part of Arizona are exploding.
Up to $ 41 million per mile, the equivalent of a mile and a half.
An invoice that is not paid by Mexico, as Donald Trump promised, but by the American taxpayer.
Stopping work, if possible, will also have a cost, and the Biden administration does not intend to destroy what has been built.
In short, detractors of the wall like Kate Scott expect to live with it for decades: “
It's just an unfair, inhuman, racist atrocity.
And we will work very hard to bring it down
”.
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