Photo by Joseph Yaroch, Southern New Mexico Progressives
When I came onboard at Sierra Club, I spent a day in Sasabe, Arizona, where the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge hugs the U.S.-Mexico border and shows off its mountainscape and magnificent wild scenery. Buenos Aires is protected land and a place both locals and tourists treasure.
Border communities like Sasabe reap the benefits of the unparalleled, natural richness our American Southwest landscapes bring. And residents share a beautiful culture and way of life that has existed for centuries.
But the way these places are being painted by those more interested in political points than facts is disgraceful. What we hear about the border-- from our president and through fear politics-- is grossly exaggerated and extremely harmful. Our southern border region is home to 15 million people living in counties in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. There are millions of more people in cities across the border, too. The communities, including cities like San Diego and El Paso, are among the safest in the country according to the FBI.
As someone on Capitol Hill everyday, I fear that the President has tipped the scales away from what is true. The danger? Communities of people and special places are in his path of destruction. The reality is that the environmental and human cost of border walls and heightened militarization is being underestimated-- all while a manufactured and very real humanitarian crisis is inflating.
The wall and cruel treatment of immigrants-- like detention, deportation and stripping of protected status-- is unnecessary and will provide no national security benefits.
It’s time we recognize the truth about border communities and life on the border. We cannot allow threats to people's’ livelihood and destruction of our environment go unchecked. Sierra Club stands in complete solidarity with border communities in the fight for respect, safety and justice.
