The Border, a country all unto its own
For more than four decades, the late political activist Carlos Guerra used to drive the Texas-Mexican border from Matamoros on the southernmost tip of the…
In this Sept. 6, 2012 file photo, cotton farmer Teofilo Junior Flores drives his truck along the U.S.-Mexico border fence that passes through his property in Brownsville, Texas. If Congress agrees on a comprehensive immigration reform bill, it will probably include a requirement to erect fencing that would wrap more of the nation’s nearly 2,000-mile Southwest border in tall steel columns. But the mandate would essentially double down on a strategy that the Customs and Border Protection agency isn’t even sure works. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)
For more than four decades, the late political activist Carlos Guerra used to drive the Texas-Mexican border from Matamoros on the southernmost tip of the state, up through the Rio Grande Valley and westward all the way to El Paso.
Sometimes he would extend his sojourn through the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts, the Colorado River Delta and west across southern Arizona to California and where Tijuana meets the Pacific Ocean.
It is our DMZ, Guerra told me on one of those trips we made together, comparing the border to historic demilitarized zones where treaties or agreements between nations or military powers forbid military operations or involvement.
Carlos had been a Chicano movement founder of La Raza Unida party in Texas, a Democratic party activist and later a columnist at the San Antonio Express-News before his death in 2010.
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If he were here today, though, Guerra might be stunned to learn that this DMZ has become the center of an international calamity involving thousands of unaccompanied Latino children who have been turned into modern-day cultural dogs of war, triggering a political and humanitarian crisis.
In this fiscal year to date, some 52,193 unaccompanied minors have been taken into custody crossing into the border and into the U.S.-Mexico DMZ illegally — a 99 percent increase over 2013, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency.
In Texas Rio Grande Valley alone, 37,621 unaccompanied minors entering the U.S. illegally have been apprehended so far this year, an increase of 178 percent over last year.
No one, though, is asking how many thousands of children havent been apprehended because border officials, by their own words, admit that the number of apprehensions of those entering the U.S. illegally pale in comparison to the actual number who try and succeed.
Thats because the 2,000-mile long border its actually 1,954 miles from the tip of Texas at the Gulf of Mexico to Tijuana is not just long, mysterious, lonely, hot and dangerous.
Its also virtually impossible to adequately and effectively patrol, short of sending the 1st Cavalry Division of the U. S. Army there. It also underscores how ludicrous the politically expedient term of securing the border really is, and that its an absolute joke to anyone who knows the size and challenge posed by the border.
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On one of our last border trips almost a decade ago, Carlos and I learned just how much more difficult it was to keep the United States-Mexico border secure than we ever imagined.
We were introduced on that trip to the protected lands and rare species along the border that we hadnt known about, and that much of the border in South Texas lies in what are considered national wildlife refuge areas, protected lands overseen by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
In turn, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has severe restrictions on what Border Patrol agents can and cant do on these protected lands, even though they are in the heart of the border.
Thats because the mission of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is to protect the rare species on those lands, such as the southern yellow bat, the speckled racer snake, and the hundreds of species of beetles whose habitats are on the protected lands.
The Arizona-Mexico border is one of the areas where many unaccompanied minors have been crossing the border to come live in the U.S. (AP Photo/Matt York)
It doesnt take much understanding as to why the majority of those trying to illegally enter the U.S., for whatever their reason, choose to come across the border using these protected lands.
For the most part then, it is private ranchers and landowners with property adjacent to these protected lands who work closely with border agents in permitting them to roam freely on their land.
It all means that securing the border is a futile undertaking, says University of California at San Diego immigration expert Wayne Cornelius, whose studies indicate that 97 percdnt of the people who try to cross the border eventually succeed, despite all the obstacles.
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If they dont succeed on the first try, says Cornelius, they almost certainly will succeed on the second or the third try.
Think of the border then like one of those supermassive mysterious black holes that scientists often talk about but which remain a political enigma of an unknown world no one understands.
It all makes some sense of why President Obama has steadfastly insisted that he isn’t interested in taking a trip to the border, saying such a visit was unnecessary to deepen his understanding about the thousands of unaccompanied children entering the country.
There’s nothing that is taking place down there that I am not intimately aware of or briefed on, Obama told reporters in Dallas during his two-day Texas trip for fund-raising but no visit to the border and the thousands of children it has drawn from Mexico and Central America.
This isn’t theater, he said. “This is a problem. I’m not interested in photo ops. I’m interested in solving a problem.
