By Sonya Kumpuckal
[Editor’s Note: While the Lone Star Chapter blog primarily focuses on events in Texas, the efforts to stop Trump’s border wall is a multi-state (and international) effort, so we invite our readers to learn about the shared struggle and be in solidarity with our neighbors in New Mexico (and across the borderlands regions).]
Even a girl originally from Chicago like me can appreciate the uniqueness of a place like the American Southwest. And it's also very clear to me that border walls forever damage these places - places that so eloquently represent a melting pot of people and wildlife.
To protect the communities and environment of the border southwest, more than 400 people gathered at All Against the Wall on Saturday, June 2. It was at the construction site of Donald Trump's newest wall of hate - a 20-mile, $73 million monstrosity at Santa Teresa just west of El Paso. We rallied in opposition to Trump's thinly-veiled monument to white supremacy. Instead of bigotry, we built love and stronger communities through song, spoken word, marching, dance, and of course, voter registration!
Trump's Department of Homeland Security (DHS) waived 25 laws along the 20-mile project area at Santa Teresa. DHS used a Bush-era loophole to exempt itself from laws that protect clean air, clean water, public participation, Native American graves, religious freedom, and much, much more. It is unfair that border residents, be they people or wildlife , don't get the same protections that the rest of America can count on for health, safety, freedom of religion, and environmental protection.
Each time I see wall construction happening in Santa Teresa, I am frightened. I’m met with bulldozers, trash, and the building of an eye-sore fence-like structure - the very concrete beginnings of Donald Trump’s border wall. If you try to visit a border wall construction site, you may be met by a masked private security guard carrying an AR-15, as we were a few weeks ago, or by the army of Border Patrol vehicles, cameras, checkpoints, and armed agents that borderlands residents have to deal with every day.
That is not the kind of militarized environment that any of us want our children and future generations to grow up in. Saying Southwest lands are special is an understatement. They are cultural, ecological, and historical havens in their own right. Wildlife like the Mexican gray wolf depends on international connectivity with our Mexican neighbors as well as corridors to roam and increase their range. The same applies to the jaguar and ocelot - critically endangered species living in our region who would suffer in the face of a border wall. Even worse, the people - our neighbors and own communities - would be the ones paying the highest price for this wall.
The way Trump and his supporters paint the borderlands is incorrect, offensive, and could have irreversible effects on the spaces so many people and creatures depend on. We’ve seen the damage of border walls before Trump, but his motivation to expand it in such a big way will prove detrimental. What started as racist and inflammatory sound bites of an “America first” campaign has somehow convinced Congress to allot nearly $2 billion of taxpayer money to this dangerous reality. We must hold leadership - both Right and Left - accountable for the damage they’re inflicting on people and places in the borderland states.
The enthusiastic crowd at the All Against the Wall event demonstrated that border residents are united in opposition to the militarization of our border. Yet over the last two decades, the United States has militarized the southern border region with little regard to its negative impact on our communities, wildlife, and environment. With increased flooding and damage caused from walls that already exist, Americans and Mexicans are still paying the costs of this damage - some that can never be truly repaired or forgotten. It’s clear we are being subjected to blatant disregard and disrespect for human life and sacred lands. The barriers that separate us physically and metaphorically warrant the need for all communities to come together in resistance to this destructive and divisive border wall.
I urge you to contact your U.S. Senators – be they Independent, Democrat, or Republican, and tell them the wall is not the answer. It’s a waste of money and an insult to American values. Contact information for your two U.S. Senators and one U.S. Representative is posted on govtrack.us and more information about Southwest Environmental Center is at wildmesquite.org.
Sonya is the Border Campaign Coordinator for the Southwest Environmental Center in Las Cruces, New Mexico.