When men, women and children are detained, after crossing the border without documents, the mixed feelings appear on their sunburned faces and filter through their surprised eyes. The expression of frustration, fear and, after a few sighs, the relief of knowing they are alive … to try again.
But other thousands have left their lives torn between dust, walls and bushes, exchanging hopes for tears in the desert. It is a continuous tragedy with enormous contrasts: while some civil organizations still seek to identify anonymous remains and distribute water tanks in the desert to quench the thirst of those who venture, at the same time thousands of people believe that they must proceed with firmness using all possible means , including violence to detain migrants.
They are the inheritors of the racist thinking of Arpaio and henchmen.
The border is a scar in the cities and a knife in the desert, covered with spikes, which is alleviated only by some bridges.
Ultimately a wound that must be healed. Over time, the wires became metal walls, bordering migrants in search of more dangerous paths, both through the desert and due to traffickers. Trump’s proposed wall of ignominy led to more deaths at the expense of American taxpayers, and his policy to prevent asylum seekers from staying on the other side of the border led to a humanitarian crisis in the world’s most powerful nation, putting in it shows the violence that detained children, separated families, those killed in the desert with hundreds of thousands of deportees, with the same surprised, frustrated brown faces filled with sighs.
Although the arrival of Joe Biden opened a window of fresh air by suspending the emergent deportations and rescinding the zero tolerance policy of his predecessor, the key to the new immigration policy, in which the United States and Mexico now seem to coincide, is to place to people in the center of attention, with a humanistic approach and a long-term perspective. The steps taken by the new administration in offering the regularization of the migrants who live there and the willingness to work on the social causes of migration are encouraging, but the road will be arduous.
Thus, while Kamala Harris made a tour that brought her to Mexico, the response from her adversaries was immediate: the Republican Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, said that his administration would build a new border wall. It is not clear if the governing entity has the competence to do so, but the political effect is clear: to stir up the current that demands a heavy hand. Indeed, when visiting the town of Del Rio, he offered the construction and announced that he would give more details in the next few days. It is yet another chapter in the tensions between Biden and Abbott who have clashed over the handling of the thousands of unaccompanied minors who have crossed the line.
The governor has opposed using funds to address the problem that he claims the President must solve. It will be recalled that when migrant children filled the detention facilities run by the Border Patrol, the Biden administration responded by opening temporary facilities at a Dallas convention center, a San Antonio sports stadium and other sites by entrusting the vice president with the matter. .
Perhaps never, like now, Mexico and the United States have the opportunity to take solid steps to solve a joint challenge, order migration and turn death shadows into legal hope. Extremist announcements of new walls are part of political demagoguery.
Violent rhetoric feeds hatred and separation, distancing the human sense that the treatment of immigration issues requires. No wall is a solution. When many more bridges are built over the steel plates and barbed wire, integration will bear fruit on both sides of the world’s busiest border.
Meanwhile, we must continue to express ourselves against the irrational violence of the walls of death.
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