Trump’s wall met with skepticism, unease on US-Mexico border

Ramirez’s response echoed the mood along the border that was a combination of resentment, defiance — and business as usual. A crew of labourers was actually building a fence on the border as Trump made his announcement. On a cold morning in the desert, the workers installed concrete blocks on which the 22-foot steel fence will stand between the town of Sunland Park, New Mexico, and Ciudad Juarez in Mexico. The project has been underway for several months.

In Tijuana, a high school student went to a stone monument dedicated by both countries in 1848 as a sign of the friendship between the U.S. and Mexico. The monument once stood on the border but now is in Mexico, a few feet away from a giant wall of towering steel bars that lead into the Pacific Ocean.

The student, 17-year-old Brandon Dzul, said talk of another wall stirred up painful memories of his 34-year-old uncle who died in the desert six years ago after being abandoned by smugglers.

“He just had the American dream, you know, to make a better life,” he said. “I think now we aren’t going to be able to get in even with a visa.”

Nearby, about 150 people gathered in tents outside a 40-bed migrant shelter that has been overwhelmed since May, when large numbers of Haitians began stopping in the Mexican border city on their way to the United States. Many moved to Brazil after Haiti’s 2010 earthquake and went north after jobs dried up in the South American country.

Haitians generally turn themselves in to U.S. inspectors at San Diego’s San Ysidro port of entry, the nation’s busiest crossing, making no attempt to jump the fence or evade authorities. They were released on humanitarian parole until September, when the U.S. ended special treatment for Haitians and began deporting them just as they do people from other countries.

U.S. authorities lack resources to process Haitians quickly enough, leading Mexican authorities to create a ticketing system that leaves them waiting in Tijuana for weeks. Migrant shelters are full, forcing many to sleep on the streets.

Fences and other barriers already blanket about 700 miles of border, much of it in California and Arizona. In San Diego, they helped to virtually shut down what was the busiest corridor for illegal crossings in the 1990s. It’s now one of the most fortified stretches of landscape on the 2,000-mile divide between the two countries.

Border Patrol sector chiefs were asked in November to identify areas where the fence could be expanded, though Trump and his advisers have yet to detail their next steps. Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council and a member of Trump’s transition team, supports building a wall in strategic locations and reinforcing existing barriers in certain areas but not where there are natural obstacles, like the Rio Grande river in Texas.

“We do not need a Great Wall of China from California to Texas,” Judd said in an interview last week.

Away from the border, Trump drew support from his base. Tammy Allen, a 52-year-old supporter who splits time between Florida and Virginia, applauded Trump’s interest in curbing the number of refugees coming to the U.S. and building a wall.

“A lot of countries do. Why not us? Something has got to be done,” she said.

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Associated Press writer Michael Kunzelman in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

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This story has been corrected to show that Trump supporter Tammy Allen splits time between Florida and Virginia and isn’t from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Elliot Spagat And Julie Watson, The Associated Press

by Canadian Press

Trump’s wall met with skepticism, unease on US-Mexico border

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