Before the Wall: Life Along the U.S.

Jan 22, 2024

By AZAM AHMED, MANNY FERNANDEZ and PAULINA VILLEGAS FEB. 8, 2017

President Trump’s executive order to begin the construction of a wall between the United States and Mexico has left many wondering what it will mean for them and the future.

For nearly 700 miles along the American border with Mexico, a wall already exists.

It passes through the silt deserts of Sonora, where cacti grow like organ pipes. Farther east, heavy steel X-frames cut through the flat miles of sun-bleached grass like battlefield markers. In Texas, the red-tinged beams that make up parts of the border fence are cold, hard and rough to the touch. In Tijuana, two fences – one old, the other more recent – plunge all the way into the ocean, where waves corrode the stanchioned metal.

CALIFORNIA

ARIZONA

NEW MEXICO

Phoenix

San Diego

TEXAS

Houston

El Paso

Austin

Currently fenced

sections of border

Tucson

Ciudad

Juárez

Tijuana

San Antonio

Nogales

PACIFIC

OCEAN

U.S.

MEXICO

BAJA

CALIFORNIA

GULF OF

MEXICO

Guerrero

Chihuahua

Hermosillo

Brownsville

Hidalgo

SONORA

COAHUILA

CHIHUAHUA

Reynosa

Monterrey

NUEVO

LEON

TAMAULIPAS

CALIFORNIA

ARIZONA

NEW MEXICO

Phoenix

San Diego

TEXAS

Houston

El Paso

Austin

Currently fenced

sections of border

Tucson

Ciudad

Juárez

Tijuana

San Antonio

Nogales

U.S.

MEXICO

BAJA

CALIFORNIA

Guerrero

Chihuahua

Hermosillo

Brownsville

Hidalgo

SONORA

COAHUILA

CHIHUAHUA

Reynosa

Monterrey

NUEVO

LEON

TAMAULIPAS

CALIFORNIA

ARIZONA

NEW MEXICO

Phoenix

San Diego

TEXAS

El Paso

Currently fenced

sections of border

Houston

Ciudad

Juárez

Tijuana

San Antonio

Nogales

U.S.

MEXICO

BAJA

CALIF.

Guerrero

Brownsville

Chihuahua

SONORA

Hidalgo

COAHUILA

CHIHUAHUA

Reynosa

NUEVO

LEON

TAMAULIPAS

ARIZ.

N.M.

CALIF.

TEXAS

Currently

fenced

El Paso

Tijuana

Ciudad

Juárez

U.S.

Brownsville

Nogales

MEX.

Hidalgo

Guerrero

Reynosa

The border spans 1,900 miles across four states – California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas. Where a fence already stands, the surrounding dirt and grass tell the stories of those who try to cross it, those who patrol it and those who live next to it.

There are old cell phones between the beams. Wind-torn plastic bags with toothpaste and toothbrushes inside. Discarded clothing. Scattered sunflower seeds, spit out by Border Patrol agents sitting in their vehicles as they watch, and watch, and watch.

About 40 miles past Ciudad Juárez, the wall of metal mesh abruptly ends, like a half-finished thought. The remaining border is marked by the Rio Grande. But hundreds of miles in rural Texas, including Big Bend National Park, are unfenced and lack any man-made barriers or walls whatsoever.

Tijuana

BAJA

CALIF.

Nogales

In Tijuana, two border fences run the length of the city: one of corrugated metal rusted by time, and another, a few hundred feet away, of dense metal fencing draped in concertina wire.

The walls sweep past homes, highways and parks before plunging into the ocean. One resident recalled a few migrants drowning in the surf while trying to cross, subsumed by the waves.

Roberto Ramírez

Tijuana, Mexico

Build two walls, or three walls, it’s not important. Those who want to cross will cross.

Roberto Ramírez, 46, remembers when there was no wall – merely cables running between wooden posts to casually mark the division. Children played soccer in the open fields while parents planted cucumbers and tomatoes. Now, with two walls, he wonders what the point of another would be. The desperation that forces migrants to seek opportunity in the United States won’t be stopped with physical barriers, he says, no matter how big – or how numerous – they are.

El Paso

Ciudad

Juárez

Nogales

SONORA

Like a metal curtain, the wall cuts through the undulating hills of Nogales, a border town where long lines of traffic, both of vehicles and people on foot, make the daily trek from side to side.

The wall here is made of tall steel beams in rows. The current version is new enough that teenagers still remember its construction. Outside of town, the wall slices through the vacant and arid countryside. From a hilltop, the vista is one of division, separating communities on either side.

Jose Pablo Sanchez Carillo

Nogales, Mexico

Through each year of my life, this wall has grown. I don’t know, it seems like the distance between us just keeps growing.

José Pablo Sanchez Carillo, 18, lives directly beside the wall in the Buenos Aires neighborhood, where he grew up. He bristles at the idea that Mexico will be forced to pay for a new wall. On a recent day, he sat outside with friends, talking about President Trump’s promise to bill Mexico for it. “This guy is supposed to be a billionaire, right?” he asked. “Why the hell can’t he pay for it himself, then? He’s the one who wants it.”

El Paso

Ciudad

Juárez

CHIHUAHUA

Guerrero

Through deserts, mountains and golden pastureland, the border wall transforms from 20-foot hulking metal panels, to battered sheeting along desolate stretches of sand, to X-shaped barriers on the open plains. At times, it disappears in the knuckled ridgelines of border mountains.

About 40 miles outside of Ciudad Juárez, a midpoint along the border, the border fence halts abruptly. Many towns have been emptied by crime and drug trafficking. Elsewhere, rows of wheat and alfalfa fill the farmland along the edge of Mexico. If a new wall comes, farmers wonder what will happen to their fellow Mexicans, and even to Americans who rely on migrant labor.

Catarino Nuñez

Ciudad Juárez, Mexico

If the president of the U.S. throws out all of the Mexicans, who will harvest the fields?

Catarino Nuñez, 74, was working his land, preparing to irrigate a field of wheat. He inherited the land from his father, and has worked it for most of his adult life. He recalls when the wall went up behind his parcel, and the effect it had on migration and labor. Migrants passing by on the way to work American fields stopped and helped with his harvest. Now, finding the extra help has grown harder.

El Paso

TEXAS

Ciudad

Juárez

Guerrero

In this city of 680,000, the border fence juts up against neighborhoods, playgrounds and $400-a-month apartments. It is a two-story wire-mesh structure atop a concrete slab, with layers of older chain-link fencing in front of it. After school, the ice cream van makes its rounds parallel to the fence on Charles Road.

Mannys Silva Rodriguez

El Paso

We’re so used to seeing people crossing over that we just see them and say, ‘Oh, O.K.’

Mannys Silva Rodriguez, 58, and her husband were in their backyard in a neighborhood known as Chihuahuita when their dog started barking one recent afternoon. As they watched, a group of people on the other side of the border fence hooked a ladder to it and climbed up. Then, three men and a woman used one of the fence beams to slide down while Ms. Rodriguez and her husband, Miguel, worked on their son’s pickup truck.

“We could see them jumping over,” she said. “We’re so used to seeing people crossing over that we just see them and say, ‘Oh, OK.’”

Ms. Rodriguez has lived here her entire life. “At first, we were opposed to it,” she said of the current wire-mesh fencing, which was built around 2008. “We were so used to all of the greenery from the Rio Grande and the canal. We had the trees and then this came up. We didn’t like it at first. But then we got used to it.”

Guerrero

COAHUILA

Hidalgo

Brownsville

Reynosa

A small, colonial town, Guerrero sits on the edge of the Rio Bravo. Though the town has been named a Pueblo Magico — a designation granted by the federal government for its historic preservation and charm — a sense of fear lingers on the streets, thanks to an increase in criminal activity along the border. Residents say armed men and gang members have appeared suddenly in the past five years, seizing farmland.

Enrique Cervera

Guerrero, Coahuila, Mexico

I am actually glad he is building that wall, because maybe it will help undermine all those illegal activities.

Enrique Cervera, 78, the town chronicler in Guerrero works at an archive in City Hall. He recalled a time when Americans came to visit their relatives on Christmas, trips that ceased as violence began to increase in the area. As a historian of sorts, he takes the vow to build a wall in stride, at least when compared to past hostilities with the United States – such as the Mexican-American war, when his nation lost swathes of territory to its northern neighbor.

Guerrero

Hidalgo

Brownsville

Reynosa

TAMAULIPAS

Reynosa is a place where illegal immigration, drugs and weapons converge. Numerous stores have shut down, and though the main international crossing is busy at all times of day, many residents say the movement across the border has slowed ever since a turf war between cartels struck the city.

Nightclubs used to be full of Americans, and dentists and medical practices were once filled with American patients, residents say. That has changed, but many people here still have relatives, friends or children who live or work in the United States.

Agustín Ramírez

Adalberto Josúe Argüelles, Mexico

There would be very very few of us over there if the borders were as protected and surveilled as they are today.

Agustín Ramírez operates tractors in the corn fields on the outskirts of Reynosa. He says he used to be a migrant smuggler and lives a little more than half a mile away from the Rio Bravo, the border with the United States. “We use to swim this river all the time in the old days,” he said. “No one cared. No one was watching. That all has changed. Now they catch everyone.”

TEXAS

Guerrero

Hidalgo

Brownsville

Reynosa

At the edge of this town of 13,000, the border fence lines the Old Hidalgo Pumphouse, a decommissioned water-irrigation facility that is now a museum and birding center. One afternoon behind the pumphouse, teenagers on hoverboards sped by on the biking trail, as residents ordered teriyaki chicken at the nearby Rock & Roll Sushi.

Selena Aguirre

Hidalgo, Tex.

This is basically saying, ‘Don’t come here. You’re not welcome here.’

Selena Aguirre, 20, a student at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, stood on the biking trail, pondering the fence here. It was not a cohesive barrier but a jumble of obstacles – a chain-link fence stretching out in the distance on one end, a towering steel-beam fence directly behind the pumphouse with a vehicle-entry gate and an old concrete chest-high wall at the other end.

“It’s a metaphor,” Ms. Aguirre said as she stood in front of the steel fence. “This isn’t a wall and it’s not really a fence.” She pointed to the chain-link fence and the concrete wall on either end. “That’s a fence and that’s a wall. This is neither. This is basically saying, ‘Don’t come here. You’re not welcome here.’ It’s a barbaric way to take care of a situation.”

TEXAS

Guerrero

Brownsville

Hidalgo

Reynosa

Here in the southernmost point on the border with Mexico, the fence serves as the backdrop of everyday life. It forms the back of bus stops and cuts alongside schools and an old golf course. One day in this city of 180,000, two horses grazed in a rural area while tied to the fence’s steel beams – with the border fence as a hitching post.

Tony Zavaleta

Brownsville, Tex.

The fact that the construction and the investment of billions of dollars is going to begin again is almost laughable.

Tony Zavaleta, 69, drove his pick-up truck here on a dirt road. He stopped and looked out toward an empty spit of overgrown brush and trees, with a border fence – a line of vertical spikes atop a solid concrete base. This used to be his late father’s land, until the federal government seized it to build the fence during the Bush administration. His family was paid $3,500 for roughly three acres.

“They put the border wall right through the middle of it,” he said. “The federal government didn’t ask me. They could have made a call, sent a letter. No, they just sued us. It’s not a good feeling.”

Mr. Zavaleta is opposed to Mr. Trump’s wall. “The fact that the construction and the investment of billions of dollars is going to begin again is almost laughable,” he said, adding that he preferred the current transparent fencing to any potential solid wall. “When you have a solid wall, there’s no question that you have the feeling of being boxed-in.”

By By Tamir Kalifa, Niko Koppel and Samantha Quick

From El Paso to Brownsville, Tex., here are scenes of daily life against the backdrop of the existing border fence.

Produced by Craig Allen, David Furst, Troy Griggs and Derek Watkins

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