On visit, NC group finds no Biden ‘open border.’ Instead they see a war on migrants
The idea that President Joe Biden tolerates an “open border” policy on the U.S. border with Mexico is a familiar Republican claim, but that is not what activists from North Carolina and Washington-D.C. found on a trip to both sides of the border last month.
The group of seven, five from North Carolina and two from the nation’s capital, visited the border at Douglas, Ariz., and Agua Prieta, in Sonora, Mexico.
What they saw wasn’t migrants pouring in unchecked thanks to a careless U.S. policy. What they saw was a border bristling with concertina wire, cameras, motion detectors and walls three-stories high. They were told how migrants break their ankles after dropping from the top of the walls.
Gail Phares, a former Maryknoll nun who led the Witness for Peace group to the border at the invitation of migrant aid groups there, said the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) of the 1990s transformed the border.
“We went to learn about what was happening at the border but also to look at what’s happening with immigration and what’s possible. Up until 1994, people came and went through that border. They would come to work and they would go back. With the passage of NAFTA, the U.S. militarized the border. So it has changed drastically and rapidly,” Phares told me when I interviewed the group’s members last week.
The visitors saw how the U.S. Border Patrol has sealed many illegal entry points and how the U.S. immigration system, overwhelmed for lack of judges, staff and adjustments in old laws, can’t accommodate all who want to enter legally. In the face of those obstacles, migrants are increasingly taking more dangerous paths to enter the U.S. illegally by walking through the desert or being smuggled inside vehicles driven by human traffickers.
As a result, more migrants are dying. Nine drowned last week crossing the rain-swollen Rio Grande near Eagle Pass, Texas. In June, 53 migrants died in a sweltering, locked tractor-trailer abandoned in San Antonio by smugglers. Hundreds die every year from the hazards of crossing the desert.
“There’s really a war at the border that (Americans) don’t know about, that we didn’t know about until we went there,” said Mary Rider, a social worker and co-founder of Charlie Mulholland Catholic Worker house in Garner.
Rider added, “We’re people who have been interested in this and helping (migrants) here as much as we can. Gail has devoted her life to working on the various horrible situations in Latin America, but I would say we didn’t have any idea of how bad it was.”
Elizabeth Johnson of Durham said her visit left her with one overwhelming impression: “Just the horror of the 30-foot wall and knowing that people are dying there to try to have a normal life.”
Others spoke of encountering migrants who were in tears from being denied a chance at a better life and others terrified of being sent back to places where they are in danger from gangs.
Rider said, “The people we met were not the picture that’s painted to the mainstream audience. They are poor people. They want to take care of their families. They’re not coming to take your job or mine. For the most part, it’s poor people who are unable to feed their families, or who live with incredible danger through no fault of their own.”
Instead of fixing the immigration system, the U.S. is spending billions of dollars to stem the pressure created by a broken one. But the U.S. is losing more than money at the border. It is denying its heritage as a nation of immigrants and shutting out workers the U.S. needs.
The campaign issue in this November’s election shouldn’t be about the “open border.” It should be about Americans opening their eyes. What the Witness for Peace group saw at the border – rising militarization, desperation and death – is something all in the United States should see and want to see end.
Associate opinion editor Ned Barnett can be reached at 919-829-4512, or nbarnett@ newsobserver.com
