We Built the Wall Read online

  In countries like Mexico, people are killed by impunity and the complicity of a state that does not meet its obligation to protect its own citizens. But there is complicity on the international level as well, where nations that boast of their welcoming, open arms make political use of humanitarian criteria, and respond to migrants with a cool pragmatism that turns to indifference and a lack of solidarity. People who live in those countries can choose to stop turning a blind eye, and begin to revise the laws and policies regarding mobility and migration—for economic or religious reasons, to save one’s life, to seek a better life—from a global perspective. What has happened recently in the United States should serve as a call to action for all those living here who still believe in the dignity and strength of the human spirit. We must revise not only the process of arrival, but the criteria by which those who come here are considered worthy to stay. We must integrate into society those who have been victims, value their contributions to their new country, and support their efforts to rebuild their lives.

  The political situation in the United States and the high visibility of migration on a global level—from Africa to Spain, from the Middle East to Germany, from Central America to the United States, from Haiti to South America—presents the ideal opportunity to redefine the concepts of citizenship and of borders, and the powers of those who govern nations without regard for the interests and will of the people. It is time to construct a new citizenship, to lay a foundation for the citizens to come, even the ones who knock down all of the walls.

  Notes

  1. The Line Between Life and Death

  1Melissa del Bosque, “Cárteles y soldados en el lugar más peligroso de México,” in Cosecha roja, August 5, 2012. Available at cosecharoja.org.

  2Although the U.S. Census gathers demographic data every five years, more recent figures for Fabens, Texas, were not available when this book went to press.

  2. Carlos Spector, Attorney-at-Law for Impossible Cases

  1I spoke with Carlos Spector on this subject in 2013 and 2014, at the beginning of Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto’s six-year term in office. In the following years, as human rights violations have continued to take place, not only in Chihuahua but in other states such as Veracruz, where several journalists have been assassinated, and Guerrero, where forty-three students of the Ayotzinapa Rural College disappeared, denunciations from the international community have grown. But that has not resulted in a lessening of impunity throughout the country.

  2U.S. Department of Justice, Executive Office of Immigration Review, Asylum Statistics FY 2012–2016, March 2017. Available at justice.gov/eoir/file/asylum-statistics/download.

  3Galia García Palafox, “La mujer más valiente de México tiene miedo,” Gatopardo 128 (February 2012). Available at gatopardo.com.

  3. Constructing a Border

  1This discussion would reemerge front and center on the political scene and in public debate in 2016 with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Although on numerous occasions experts and analysts concluded that construction of a border wall was untenable, based on a 2007 border wall initiative resulting in technical problems and budget shortfalls that prevented the project’s completion, the wall became one of the Trump campaign’s main talking points. After his inauguration in 2017, Trump had to concede that, in fact, there are technical limitations and budgetary constraints impeding construction.

  2These statistics came from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection website, but have since been deleted. The information was originally at https://www.cbp.gov/border-security/along-us-borders/border-construction/background-history-and-purpose/facts-figures.

  4. Annunciation House: The Asylum Tradition

  1Séverine Durin, “Los que la guerra desplazó: familias del noreste de México en el exilio,” Desacatos 38 (January–April 2012): 29–42. Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, Mexico. Available at redalyc.org.

  5. Political Asylum: Sheltering Arms, But Not for Everyone

  1Jeffrey Passel and D’Vera Cohn, “Unauthorized Immigrant Population Stable for Half a Decade,” Pew Research Center, September 2016. Available at pewresearch.org/fact-tank.

  2Jens Manuel Krogstad, Jeffrey Passel, and D’Vera Cohn, “5 Facts About Illegal Immigration in the U.S.,” Pew Research Center, April 2017. Available at pewresearch.org/fact-tank.

  3Department of Homeland Security, FY 2015 ICE Immigration Removals, 2016. Available at ice.gov/removal-statistics.

  4David W. Haines, Refugees in America in the 1990s: A Reference Handbook (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996); Aviva Chomsky, “They Take Our Jobs!” and 20 Other Myths About Immigration (Boston: Beacon Press, 2007).

  5Chomsky, “They Take Our Jobs!”

  6This measure was revoked in early 2017, a few days before the end of Barack Obama’s presidential term.

  7Bill Ong Hing, Defining America Through Immigation Policy (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004).

  8Aviva Chomsky, Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal (Boston: Beacon Press, 2014).

  9Sarah Gammage, “El Salvador: Despite End to Civil War, Immigration Continues,” Migration Information Source, July 2007, cited in Chomsky, Undocumented.

  10Michael McBride, “Migrants and Asylum Seekers: Policy Responses in the United States to Immigrants and Refugees from Central America and the Caribbean,” International Migration 37, no. 1 (March 1999).

  11Hing, Defining America Through Immigation Policy.

  12Chomsky, Undocumented.

  13Ibid. In 1997 the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central America Relief Act (NACARA) was passed in an attempt to clear the backlog of asylum cases, offering permanent residency to certain applicants from the region. Unfortunately the act sped up the process only for Nicaraguans and Cubans, while leaving Guatemalans and Salvadorans in limbo.

  14Another measure of this type, a palliative that provides only temporary relief, was announced in 2012 by President Barack Obama. Faced with insufficient support in the Republican-majority Congress for the DREAM Act, which would have granted permanent legal status to young undocumented immigrants who had been brought to the United States as children, the president passed a measure known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) through an executive action, without Congressional approval. Under certain criteria very similar to those of the DREAM Act, young immigrants were granted temporary status for two years, during which time they could receive temporary documents, including a work permit. But, just as with TPS, DACA beneficiaries do not have the option of applying for permanent residency or a pathway to citizenship.

  6. Giving Up Freedom to Save Your Life

  1The visit to the detention center recounted here took place in February 2015, before CCA changed its name to CoreCivic in October 2016. The current name of the company is used throughout the text.

  2In April 2017, New York was the first state to establish a budget of $4 million to provide legal representation to undocumented immigrants. These funds are administered by the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project (NYIFUP). See Vera Institute of Justice, “New York State Becomes First in the Nation to Provide Lawyers for All Immigrants Detained and Facing Deportation,” April 7, 2017. Available at vera.org/newsroom/press-releases.

  3Maria M. Odom, Annual Report 2015, Citizenship and Immigration Services, USCIS, June 2015. Available at dhs.gov.

  4Ibid., 4.

  9. Impunity

  1Charles Bowden, Murder City: Ciudad Juárez and the Global Economy’s New Killing Fields (New York: Nation Books, 2010).

  2Sandra Rodríguez Nieto, La Fábrica del crimen (México, D. F.: Temas de hoy, 2012).

  3Ibid.

  4Ibid.

  10. Seeking Justice from the Other Side

  1Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, “Transfers of ICE Detainees from the Southwest Key Juvenile Center – Hacienda del Sol,” Syracuse University, 2015. Available at trac.syr.edu.

  11. Back to Life

  1In June 20
15, a year and a half after this conversation, the mayor of Guadalupe at the time, Gabriel Urteaga Núñez, told the newspaper Norte de Ciudad Juárez that the population of Guadalupe was down to 1,500 people. In 2005, before Felipe Calderón took office, it had been 10,000.

  12. The Never-Ending Wave

  1Diego Enrique Osorno, La guerra de los Zetas (New York: Vintage Español, 2013).

  2Mario Zúñiga Núñez, “Responsabilidad de Estados Unidos en el origen de las pandillas,” in El faro, June 26, 2017. Available at elfaro.net.

  3Ibid.

  4Ibid.

  5U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “Statement of Thomas Homan, Executive Associate Director, Enforcement and Removal Operations, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Department of Homeland Security, Regarding a Hearing on ‘The Unaccompanied Children Crisis: Does the Administration Have a Plan to Stop the Border Surge and Adequately Monitor the Children?’ Before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary,” February 23, 2016. Available at judiciary.senate.gov.

  13. “We Don’t Want You Here!”

  1The minor’s name has been changed, and the name of her country of origin was omitted from legal documents to protect her identity.

  2Immigration Law Pocket Field Guide. “Nonimmigrant Clasifications”, p. 53. LexisNexis, Charlottesville, VA. 2014.

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Halftitle Page

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  Part One: The Border 1. The Line Between Life and Death

  2. Carlos Spector, Attorney-at-Law for Impossible Cases

  3. Constructing a Border

  Part Two: Exile and Asylum 4. Annunciation House: The Asylum Tradition

  5. Political Asylum: Sheltering Arms, but Not for Everyone

  6. Giving Up Freedom to Save Your Life

  7. The Business of Locking Up Migrants

  Part Three: Impunity 8. Preserving Memory

  9. Impunity

  10. Seeking Justice from the Other Side

  Part Four: Here We Are 11. Back to Life

  12. The Never-Ending Wave

  13. “We don’t want you here!”

  Epilogue

  Notes