Resist

The “Anti-Immigration” Wall of the Tercera Nacion: Between Wealth and Poverty
Extract from a book “Des murs entre les hommes” (published at La Documentation française, 2007) translated by David Chuter.

The frontier between the United States and Mexico, 3,200 kilometres long, crosses the whole continent, from the Pacific Ocean on the West of California to the Gulf of Mexico, off Texas in the East. We have chosen to start our tour from San Diego, fourth largest city in California, and Tijuana, the fourth largest city in Mexico.
San Diego is a peaceful town by the sea, clean and colourful. Its extension, the town of San Isidro, is the main entry point to Tijuana, a sprawling city under constant development. Every day, three new housing blocks are constructed, and nearly 2,000 migrants move in: in effect, urbanisation never stops.

Tijuana - a Place of Constant Growth
At first sight, the Wall, the Cerco, does not exist. You do not notice it when you cross the frontier. But it is there, made of sheets of corrugated metal recovered from landing strips constructed in the Iraqi desert during the first Gulf War, and which over time have rusted in places. In addition, the wall itself is accompanied by a metal barrier of three metres high, topped by an electrified barbed wire fence, with a patrol track complete with radars, cameras and searchlights. It imposes through its very presence, and plays its deterrent role to perfection. We cross it at Tijuana, by the world’s busiest frontier post: 45,000 vehicles and 200,000 people pass through it every day going in one direction or the other. There are twenty lanes for those who want to cross the frontier into the United States, two for those who want to cross into Mexico. Every day, 40,000 Mexicans form endless queues to cross legally the Linea. To obtain a visa, it is necessary to have a steady job, a regular income, and to have lived in the frontier zone for more than a year.
Tijuana, a sad, modern city, without charm and without pity for all those who are so close to the “American Dream,” but who have so much difficulty reaching it. It is a city where people from all over Mexico come to work in the huge Maquiladoras - factories which handle sub-contracting and assembly, sister companies of multinationals who profit from very low salaries, exemption from customs duties, and proximity to the United States where their products are exported. In Tijuana alone there are more than five hundred of them, out of some 2,700 factories constructed along the frontier, employing more than a million people. Sometimes called Tivijuana (TV Tijuana) it is an economically wealthy city where the whole world’s televisions are made. It is an industrial and commercial centre, but also a city which knows every excess, a city of crime and drug-trafficking. To be a frontier city is also, here and there, to be an area outside the law.

Frontier Art on the Wall
The wall faces the airport, then crosses the city as far as the beach. On the US side, it creates an empty space around it - it seems to drive things away. On the Mexican side it seems to have a real power of attraction, and functions as a kind of trampoline to the other side. Facing the airport, it also functions as a means of showing committed art: Border Art as it is known. It displays things; it gives a voice to the symbols of this “life between”, its procession of pain, its hopes and its fears. Crosses nailed to the wall denounce the sad fate of the migrantes who attempted the trip and never made it back or thru: 61 dead in 1995, 149 in 1997, 358 in 1999, 367 in 2001, more than 390 in 2003 and 373 in 2004. The violence never seems to let up. Hundreds of crosses marked simply “unknown” (no identificado) or with the name of dead emigrants, with the age and the region of origin (Guerrero, Michoacan, Oaxaca, Jalisco, Vera Cruz, Puebla) or the country of origin (Guatemala, Honduras, Salvador, Nicaragua, Brazil) have been put up by unknown hands. All of them, the “victims of hope” show the terrible reality of this place.
In the city’s oldest cemetery (Pantheon No 1) you find the equivalent of the tomb of the unknown soldier for all the emigrants, that of “Juan Soldado”. It has become a place of offering and payers for all those who want to cross to the other side of the frontier. Legend has it that the spirit of Juan Soldado protects the migrantes who have prayed at the tomb, as on a compulsory pilgrimage: there is an incessant coming and going. He has thus become the patron saint of the emigrants, because he himself was killed, it is said, by a bullet in the back, while fleeing towards a better world.
The Arizona desert claimed 238 victims in 2005. Slightly more than 5000 corpses of migrants have been discovered in 14 years in the arid zones along the frontier, according to the Mexican National Human Rights Commission. The true number could be two or three times greater. But “how many still to come?” an artist has inscribed on the wall. “It is a huge tragedy” wrote the Mexican political scientist Sergio Aguayo in the newspaper Reforma “if one thinks that, during the 28 years of the Berlin Wall, 255 Germans died trying to cross it.” But, if the American Dream frequently turns into a real nightmare, there are still thousands every year who try to cross the frontier and hundreds who lose their lives there. A contemporary American Tragedy, but one which has been forgotten.

A Wall to Stop Illegal Immigration
The construction of the wall began in 1989, when the negotiations on a Free Trade Zone between the United States and Mexico began. Ever since that date, Mexicans entering clandestinely into the United States have never been legalised, and the expulsions began. Since 1994, when the Free Trade Agreement between the US, Canada and Mexico (NAFTA) came into force, the wall has progressively been reinforced and extended, and accompanied by a series of measures intended to control the flood of refugees coming from the South. Operation GATEKEEPER was then put into effect to secure and protect the frontiers of the United States through the prevention of illegal entry and by detecting and apprehending those entering without papers (the indocumentados). The same operation was repeated in Texas under the name of HOLD THE LINE, and SAFEGUARD in Arizona. More than seven billion dollars have been spent by the United States since 1994 to strengthen the surveillance of their borders. An independent Congressional organisation has even estimated the real cost of strengthening the wall at 49 billion dollars, without counting the costs of compulsory purchase of land to enable barriers to be constructed. Between now and 2030, military engineers believe that the cost of construction and maintenance of the projected fortifications will amount to 4.5 million dollars per kilometre. Could this exorbitant price really be justified for a level of security that is really a matter of chance, and a frontier that can never be totally sealed?
Since 11 September 2001, the surveillance has been intensified, and certain members of the American Congress are currently advocating the construction of a continuous, closed, “total wall” along the whole length of the frontier. Congress voted the money in 2006, as well as a law - the Secure Fence Act - for the protection of the frontiers, (a 1,200 km wall, in the most porous areas of the frontier), the struggle against terrorism (with new methods of frontier surveillance) and illegal immigration (making it a criminal offence). The Mexican President has expressed his opposition to the reinforcement of this wall. “It is impossible, in the 21st century, that one should construct a wall between two neighbouring countries, between two sister nations, between two nations involved with each other. It is a very negative signal, which says nothing positive about a country which prides itself on being democratic, and built by immigrants”. His appeal went unheeded, and the 1,200 kilometres of wall are in the final stages of construction. All that the Mexicans could do was, from 2008, to plant 400,000 trees in an attempt to hide the wall. “Our wall is a wall of life and it is in opposition to shame and hatred” declared the Governor of the State of Coahuila.

Playa Tijuana: The Wall Comes Down to the Sea
At the moment, the Cerco goes along by the airport, goes around the city, hurtles down the slopes, and climbs the hills, as far as the beach overlooked by a white lighthouse, to finish in the ocean. Only this last has overcome the wall . on the beach at Tijuana, where it buries itself in the sea. One day or one night, rusty and streaked with brown, it collapsed, allowing those wanting to emigrate to believe that the way was open. But the wall was very quickly replaced. At night, the frontier guards keep watch with the aid of powerful searchlights: during the day they patrol on horseback, on bikes or in jeeps on the empty beach on the American side. From time to time, on certain weekends, American families come to picnic in the national park which overlooks the beach: obviously enough, it is called the Border State Park.
On the other side as well, Mexican families picnic on the beach, or patronise the sellers of tacos and ice-cream who are found all along the beach. In the end, everyone lives their own life, pretending not to know that there is a wall - a world really - separating them. Some wealthy Mexicans have even had large villas built along the wall. Whether they are unaware of its existence at the end of their garden, whether they are defying it, or whether they just want some peace, is an interesting question.
More recently, the wall was rebuilt using more solid materials, making use of old railway tracks. But that does nothing to discourage the most determined of those who want to leave: they build tunnels, try to go by sea, or move under cover of fog. Those with other tastes hide themselves in cars, or get hold of false papers to pass by the main frontier post . like everyone else. Financial transfers from Mexican immigrants living in the US - the migradollars - have steadily become the second source of revenue for Mexico, after oil, and before tourism. Before the complete reconstruction of the wall in this place, the inquisitive Sunday stroller, or the rare tourist would amuse themselves by putting one foot in America, leaving the other in Mexico, thereby cocking a snook at the frontier guards watching them. You can’t do that today anymore.

Grupo Beta: Assistance to Migrants
At Tijuana, we met Grupo Beta, unarmed men and women in orange tee shirts who come to the help of emigrants who are starving or dying of thirst, wounded or lost, without ever taking sides. They know the wall like the backs of their hands, and have progressively gained the respect of the people-traffickers, the coyotes, (also called the polleros). The Group was created in 1990 by the Mexican government. These men and women can talk forever about the emigrants, their stories, their misfortunes, their strokes of luck. Francisco, around fifty, a former policeman, is one of these men: he has worked for four years for Grupo Beta and has never regretted leaving the police to do so. He particularly remembers a 52-year old Mexican man who tried every evening to slip unnoticed past the American frontier guards to rejoin his wife and children who were living in the United States. He tried every evening for eight months. One night he actually succeeded, and even managed to send a message to the local section of the Grupo Beta, to tell them how happy he was finally to be on the right side of the frontera.
But the men you find along the wall are not all migrantes. There are also drug addicts who live in terrible circumstances, frequently near the drains, or drug peddlers for whom the migrantes are the perfect victims. Some points are easier to cross than others, but those are not the ones, in spite of what one may think, which are chosen by those seeking to emigrate. Francisco still cannot understand why. It is rumour, or sometimes the success of others, which makes a crossing-point popular. Sometimes, it is the American authorities who let people pass. Depending on the seasons, or just on how they feel, they turn a blind eye. The wall is not an impossible obstacle. For Francisco, that really demonstrates that the American authorities want to limit immigration, not stop it altogether. Ultimately he cannot really understand that such a wealthy country can be so reluctant to accept these immigrants, who, in most cases, moreover, are only looking for seasonal work. And that is at the heart of the paradox of the wall since 1994. The United States has finally put an end to the immigration of those who wanted to return to their country of origin with a small nest egg, and the guarantee of being able to go back to work there again a little later. In the past Mexicans wanted only to stay temporarily, now they want to make a permanent break.
In Mexico, the frontier wall is considered mainly an American problem. For the Mexican authorities, it’s the frontier with Guatemala which is the real problem. Indeed, they refuse to spend public money to protect and maintain the “Northern frontier”. This state of affairs does not, however, prevent a certain amount of cooperation between the two countries. In June 2008, the United States decided to allocate Mexico 400 million dollars a year in the Merida Initiative to help in efforts to stop the traffic on drugs. Migrants are less and less welcome in Tijuana: the authorities pursue the illegals even into the churches.

La Casa de Migrantes de Tecate
After Tijuana, Tecate is the next frontier town. Here, the terrain is often so irregular, because of the many canyons, that there are gaps in the metal wall. These gaps are patrolled by the frontier guards in their white cars with green stripes. We met four would-be emigrants at the Case de Migrantes, a Catholic refuge where migrants in distress can find shelter and a meal. All of them have been arrested and expelled by the Border patrol, and are shaken by the experience they have undergone. The “trip” is undertaken in small groups of three or four, at night, among insects, pumas and the other type of “coyotes” - the real ones, this time.
Saul, 18 and on the verge of tears, has just returned from this adventure, which was interrupted when the people-trafficker abandoned them after five hours of walking. Nonetheless, glowing with faith, he will try again in several days. Once he has reached the United States, he will look for any kind of job, earn money and build a house; this will be the fulfilment of the American Dream which, for him, is still on the other side of the wall. For Jésus, a 38-year old father of three, who has left his children in the state of Sonora, the adventure is over without a doubt: after his experience of the “American Dream” in Yuma, in Arizona, which was more like “a kind of slavery: not even a cigarette break during working hours” he has no wish to cross the frontier again, unless he can “live in dignity”. Antonio; 27, and Noel, 30, want to try again: they will earn more than in Mexico! It’s a dilemma shared by all of the migrants: “die slowly at home, or die under the illusion of changing your personal situation and that of your family”.
The number of expulsions has increased by more than 20% since 2008. That year, according to the American Office of Immigration and Customs, the United States expelled foreigners to around 190 countries, and organised 4,000 flights to repatriate them. As many as 700 immigrants are expelled each day to Tijuana alone. But “whereas in the past we received many young people who had tried to go North, leaving their parents behind, these ways we are obliged to receive distressed fathers, whose parents have stayed in the US” says one of the monks in the House of Migrants in Tijuana.

Many Migrants in the Sonora Desert
Further east still, we travel through Mexicali, the only frontier-town which is also the capital of a Mexican state, Baja California. It is also the only Mexican city to have a China Town (amounting to 6% of the population), which recalls the time when there were more Chinese than Mexicans (fourteen to one in 1920). Here, the wall looks quite different. Near the frontier post, it looks nasty, perverse, “transparent”, because it is constructed of railroad tracks, which allow you to see through, to the clean, prosperous and peaceful life on the other side, at Calexico. Near to the poorer quarters, it is once again made of corrugated metal, as far as the exit from the town. The wall then continues as far as Yuma and San Luis de Colorado, the entry point into Arizona, where, once again we see murals on the wall, this time of a more childish nature. The heat becomes more and more oppressive.
After that, another kind of wall begins, but just as implacable: the desert. There is no need for railway tracks, or corrugated metal. The desert does the job by itself. So the frontier is marked only by a symbolic wire fence, a metre high, or a wooden barrier. Only wild animals can move around freely. The wall becomes almost invisible. Heat and dryness are a bastion all by themselves.
And yet it is through the desert that most of the migrantes want to come. The militarization of the frontier between Tijuana and Mexicali has, in effect, caused the migrant flows to be displaced towards the east. Increased surveillance in the cities is pushing the migrants to attempt the crossing in the immensity of the Arizona and Texas desert. The best known and most highly-regarded place is Sasabe. All those intending to make the trip, whether Mexicans or from other Latin American countries (they are thus called OTMs - Other Than Mexicans) take a mini-bus (collectivo) in the town of Altar. For ten dollars, the bus takes two and a half hours to travel the stony 98km of road as far as Sasabe. Half-way, it stops at a Grupo Beta post. There, between 9am and 6pm, Juan Luis and Julio hand out packets of mineral salts, a booklet describing the dangers of the desert, and a list of useful contacts in the United States, including Consulates and the Embassy, if they were ever to arrive. Grupo Beta records all of them: name, age, origin. Once arrived at Sasabe, they divide into groups of 15 or 20, guided by a coyote, to cross the desert from East or West. If the crossing is successful, the human trafficker is obliged to take them to an American town of their choice: that is included in the price of about 1,500 dollars per person (3,000 including the provision of forged papers).
Often, the migrants want to go to a place where the majority of the people from their community already live: emigration functions essentially through networks. Most of those who try to cross are men, but there are also women and a few children. In addition, Mexican law forbids the separation of mothers and children. During the months of February and March, where the temperatures in the desert are at their most reasonable, some 3,000 migrants take these mini-buses to begin this risky adventure, through the thorny scrub which clings to their clothes, with only the burning sun by day and the benevolent moon by night for company. In total, according to the Pew Hispanic Centre in Washington, more than 700,000 Mexicans try to cross the frontier illegally every year.
The desert remains a mystery, an unacceptable black hole, for Washington. That is why electronic sensors have been progressively installed to track every movement. Recently, drones equipped with infrared cameras have been introduced into the region. Even more recently, in May 2007, surveillance towers thirty metres high have been installed in the Sasabe region. These are slender metal pylons from which hang cameras and radars capable of covering forty-five kilometres of frontier. Taken together, these constitute a kind of “virtual wall” which the Border Patrol believes will allow them ultimately to capture nearly 95% of migrants. This virtual wall, known officially as the Border Security Initiative, and launched in 2006, is expected to cost 6 to 7 billion dollars, although some officials in the Department of Homeland Security cite figures as high as 30 billion dollars. But as things stand the programme is confronted by a number of obstacles, including technical ones, and has yet to demonstrate real technical feasibility. This strengthening of controls of all types is also useful in the fight against the drug traffic (whose value is reckoned at 25 billion dollars) and the Mexican cartels. The danger of a merger between migrant and trafficker is not very distant.
The danger can also come from highway bandits (bacadores) who haunt different places where they can steal the little that the migrants have, and rape the women. Confronted with all these dangers, the migrants cannot even count on the solidarity of their companions in misfortune. These days, it’s everyone for himself. Sasabe is an infamous frontier town, with its transit hotels and its strip-clubs, where drug addicts wander the streets, and where even the Grupo Beta dare not go by day, and even more by night. In this world of ordure, there is only one clean, bright corner: the frontier post . of the United States. It is in this same area that, on the American side, groups of citizens have banded together to keep watch on the frontier or to come to the migrants’ aid.

Militias and Good Samaritans
Since 2005, the Minutemen, a group of armed citizen volunteers - 9,000 in the whole country, divided into sections in every state - have decided to do what their State can only partially accomplish, in their view; keep watch over the frontier. Their name refers to the militias created during the War of Independence, they were supposed to be capable of deploying “in a minute”. In Arizona, the Minutemen have established their base camp at King’s Anvil Ranch (with the agreement of the owner) on the road to Sasabe. They come from all over the country to participate in the surveillance of the frontier: most of them are retired; some take time off to come to “serve their country”. Dave, a retired individual from Benton County in Tennessee, drove a day and a night at his own expense to join his colleagues and participate in this expedition. For the rest of the year, he tells his fellow citizens about the situation, and tries to lobby his Governor.
The Minutemen form the third line of defence of the frontier, after the physical and virtual walls and the security forces, such as the National Guard and the Frontier Police. As night falls, they deploy, once a month and every day between April and October, at a distance of 50km from the frontier, in the middle of the desert. Well equipped, they survey the horizon and listen for noises in the desert: they are the extra “eyes and ears” of the frontier guards. These groups present themselves as a kind of Neigbourhood Watch organisation. They do not accept illegal immigration and the absence of control over the migrantes. “We have nothing against immigration, but we want to know who is coming into the country.” Their fear is that terrorists and traffickers of all types may mingle with the emigrants, and so threaten the country. “The Southern frontier is the weakest, and it is becoming impossible to control.” So they see themselves as playing a precautionary role, these “ordinary people” as they style themselves. They are all armed, but they observe strict rules of engagement, which mean that they cannot stop or detain just anyone. If accused or racialism or extremism, they reply that “at night in the desert, you can’t see the colour of a person’s skin.”
As well as the Minutemen, they are other groups, whose objective is rather to come and help migrants: the Human Borders, and No More Deaths - with its slogan “humanitarian aid is never a crime” are the best known of these groups. Like the militia groups, their members work as volunteers to do things the Government is not doing. Created in June 2000 by Pastor Hoover, Human Borders now counts 8,000 volunteers. They have installed 83 water stations in the desert outside Tucson, in the areas where a large number of migrants have been reported.
These stations are easily recognisable by a blue flag nine metres high, and each has two barrels containing 250 litres of water, generously provided by a soft drinks company. Five times a week during the hottest part of the year, and twice a week for the rest of the time, the volunteers from Human Borders fill these reservoirs, some on state property and some on private ranches. They take the opportunity to repair barrels which have been deliberately damaged, and to clean up the rubbish or the abandoned personal effects of the migrants or the coyotes. It is there that one realises that there is life in all this dry immensity.
Human Borders also receives funding from the State, for its own purposes, since in contributing to a reduction in the number of deaths, it also saves the State money: every dead body found costs 1500 dollars in autopsy, enquiry and burial fees. Pastor Hoover also lobbies in favour of a reform of immigration policy: “We want the United States to be better.” For him “the wall is not working. It is an insult to Mexico, the United States and the American people. You can’t have closed doors in an open society.” Watching the frontier cannot resolve the problem, when nearly 43% of the legal migrants have managed to get hold of false papers. For him, the Minutemen do not understand the reality of the situation.

Nogales, a Town Divided
At kilometre 1,300, Nogales is a town cut in two, just like Berlin in the Cold War. Founded in 1880, it is one of the oldest frontier towns in Mexico. Rich Nogales on the American side, poor Nogales on the Mexican side; it’s a unique situation on the American continent. One and the same town, separated by corrugated metal and a pink concrete wall topped with wire. On the Mexican side, crosses are nailed to the wall once more, and metal sculptures are stuck to it. Messages are inscribed there: “Walls are the scars of the world,” “Down with the wall!” To allow drugs and immigrants to pass through, the Mexicans have excavated dozens of tunnels under the wall, which terminate discreetly in abandoned houses on the other side. A town divided also means families separated. Each Mexican family living on the “good side” has parents on the other side.
Outside the town, the wall pauses again, replaced by a low barrier made of old rails driven into the ground in the shape of Xs, surrounded with barbed wire. In this region, some 300 migrants attempt to cross the frontier every day. Most of them are arrested by the frontier guards.
After the National Park of the Sierra Vista and Tombstone, are the American town of Douglas, and the Mexican town of Agua Prieta, in the middle of a thorny desert. Here, the wall extends into the desert, and the Americans are in the midst of reinforcing it. But that does not prevent migrants from crossing, attempting to force their way through a little sandy trail, which seems to go on forever. Then, one arrives bit by bit in the State of New Mexico. The town of Palomas is the only frontier post between New Mexico and Mexico itself. Americans come here often, particularly to stock up on medicines, have their teeth attended to and buy alcohol: all things which are a lot more expensive in America.

El Paso: three barriers to commerce
At kilometre 2,100, we find El Paso, on the frontier between New Mexico, Texas and Chihuahua. Here, it is the shopping centre around which the town has developed: when people do business, they tend to be peaceful! On the Mexican side, at Ciudad Juarez, there is just as much commercial spirit. This city holds the record for purchases made in Mexico, and has the greatest concentration of American expatriates (around 30,000).
But between these two cities, which have the same economic vision, the wall, yet again, is everywhere. Here, it takes the form of one or two metal barriers, supplemented by a deep artificial canal, all watched by large numbers of infrared cameras, and illuminated by a battery of searchlights like those used in stadiums. On the Mexican side, the frontier is marked by the Rio Bravo, which, since the construction of the canal by the Americans, is no more than a polluted little stream. This is the best-equipped part of the barrier, and successful crossings are extremely rare. Curiously, once you leave the town, the canal is the only barrier for several kilometres further. A little further on, the desert takes over once more, as the mountains of the Big Bend National Park become visible on the horizon.

The Rio Grande Instead of the Frontier Wall
In this desert of mountains, scraped out and grooved by the erosion of the Rio Grande, the frontier towns are no more than small isolated villages. Communication routes are rare on either side. Nonetheless, at the entry to the National Park, there is the small town of Lajitas, a resort spot for the well-off. The shops are as expensive as in the fashionable districts of New York, San Francisco or Dallas. Also to be found there are a luxury hotel, a 3-star restaurant, where the fish is specially flown in, brand-new apartments and a golf course .. right in the middle of the desert. This luxurious-looking town has, in fact, been through a drama every bit as silent as are the streets at 40 degrees in the shade. Until 11 September 2001, it was one and the same community with the little Mexican town opposite.
Before the attacks on the World Trade Centre, the Rio Grande was the destination for many boating trips. The whole area remembers these times, where nothing except a river a few metres wide separated the inhabitants on either side. Today, many people don’t realise that crossing this river could attract a penalty of 5,000 dollars, and up to a year in prison. The two towns, so close to each other, can no longer communicate. In times gone by, Mexicans came to work on the American side, without worrying about administrative rules. Ever since, those who have succeeded in getting through have no other choice but to stay on the American side. On the Mexican side, living conditions have deteriorated. The nearest town is more than 90 kilometres away, although it would be so simple to do the shopping on the American side, five minutes’ walk away. Some people do try to make the crossing, in the intervals between the passages of the Border Patrol. And crossing over the river in the town is relatively easy. Upstream, the river is riddled with shifting sandbanks; downstream, the banks become wider and turn into proper canyons, as far as the city of Laredo. These natural ramparts constitute another kind of wall. But even there, a wall is being built, in spite of the opposition of the mayor of the town, who cannot understand why it is necessary to forbid people who contribute 40% of the local economy from coming into the town.
Between Laredo and Nuevo Laredo, the river can be crossed once more, in spite of the currents and the banks covered with weeds and bamboo. In this region too, nearly 300 emigrants try to cross the frontier illegally every day, often in groups of five. Of these three hundred, it is estimated that 75 manage to install themselves permanently on the American side. When the emigrants are captured by the security forces, they are sent back to the other side (Al Otro Lado) of the frontier, but a long way away from the place where they were arrested. It’s a punishment, a kind of double penalty. When these expulsions take place, they are generally carried out immediately, because the American authorities have few if any transit centres. So in the region of Mac Allen, for example, nearly 15000 emigrants are set free every month, because there are no proper facilities to receive them. They just have to promise to appear before a judge in thirty days. Unsurprisingly, only 18% of them keep their promise. In addition, the Border Patrol is not authorised to inspect places of work near the frontier: it’s too “political” one of them tells us. The attitude of the American authorities is contradictory, to say the least. Those who get through are scarcely bothered, unless, of course, they commit a crime. That is a real temptation. Moreover, the American authorities cannot keep families in administrative detention centres. There does indeed exist a voluntary repatriation programme: the United States finances the plane tickets, while Mexico makes arrangements to charter the aircraft. But the programme is largely unsuccessful. However, since December 2005, migrants who are taken for questioning are condemned to between 15 and 180 days in prison.

The Frontier Police and a Flood of Illegal Immigrants
The Border patrol, created in 1924, is the poor relation of the American Homeland Security services, even if it has tripled in size since 11 September 2001. Its personnel had already increased from 980 to 2,000 agents for the sector of San Diego alone, between 1994 and 2002, out of the 9,500 deployed along the length of the frontier. Thanks to a law of October 2006, there are now 1800 to patrol the frontier, and this number is intended to increase. The Border Patrol is only one of fifty or so security agencies: the Immigration and Nationalisation Service, the FBI, the National Guard, the Army, and so on. The frontier guards are mostly deployed along the southern frontier: there are few along the frontier with Canada. The police dogs trained to sniff out drugs hidden in a car or a lorry are now also trained to find explosives and chemical products. In 2003, the customs officers seized only 150 tonnes of Marijuana. The Director of the frontier post accepts that “we only find drugs and contraband. We look for terrorists, but all we find are illegal immigrants and drug traffickers.”
In 2003, more than a million people were arrested along the length of the frontier - a figure 21% greater than the year before, in spite of the wall. In 2007, just in the Tucson sector, which covers 10% of the frontier but accounts for 40% of the arrests of illegal immigrants and seizures of drugs, 318,000 illegals were arrested. It is estimated that for every illegal immigrant arrested, three get through. In total, there are 11.8 million illegal immigrants in the United States, or which more than 6 million are Mexicans. Most of them have arrived since 1994: 3.6 million between 1995 and 1999, 3.1 million between 1999 and 2004. Each year, more than half a million immigrants still arrive illegally in the United States. Steel walls, a cruel desert, the Canyons of the Rio Grande, multiple security agencies - nothing can prevent this forgotten tragedy, the powerlessness of an all-powerful America.
So does the wall really serve any purpose? The more so since, because of the application of a quota of 75,000 a year, legal immigration from Mexico is lower than illegal immigration? It is a complete paradox. The greatest flow of immigrants in the world is of Mexicans towards the United States. The frontier zone is a hive of activity. There is a strong social and cultural interdependence, and the American economy benefits greatly from the immigrants. They take the jobs Americans will not: they pick strawberries and oranges, pack meat, clean supermarkets and offices, wash-up in restaurants, work in the rubbish dumps. So instead of building a wall, why not give these people temporary work visas, to allow them to cross the frontier legally, as they did in the past?
Has the wall become an end in itself? Today, it is supposed to protect the American public from illegal immigration: yesterday it was the terrorist menace, tomorrow drugs. Visible, costly, it gives politicians and the general population the illusion of action against various threats: the initiatives, proposals, and operations follow each other, without any real success or long-term effects.
The dominant discourse is that of security, and the discourse and the measures implemented are mutually reinforcing. This situation only exists on the US-Mexican frontier: the northern frontier with Canada is under much less surveillance. The southern frontier can therefore be seen to designate not only a territory, but also an identity. For many Mexicans the frontier is an “imaginary line” which can be crossed and re-crossed at will, but for most Americans it is a physical barrier which protects them from the “other”, from the unknown, from poverty, from threats. Some Americans, though, seem to be looking for a different kind of security: the security of their society, defined as: “the preservation, albeit with an acceptable degree of evolution, of traditional models of language, culture, association, religious and cultural identity and customs.”
After Laredo, the river becomes more and more an estuary. The Rio Grande becomes an almost impassable natural barrier after Mac Allen. The migrantes prefer to travel on foot and confront the dangers of the desert, rather than to swim, and risk being carried away by the swirling currents of the river. And fewer and fewer migrants attempt to cross this part of the frontera. What is more, the frontier is watched particularly closely, especially since 2000, and the inauguration of the Secure Border Programme.

The Frontier, a Third Nation
The frontier zone which separates Mexico and the United States constitutes an entity in itself. It is a third zone, a third country, the Tercera Nacion, with 13 million inhabitants. Some call it “Mexamerica.” It’s a buffer area more than a line, which encroaches on the territory of two countries, and where the people resemble each other and the patterns of life complement each other. The towns are linked culturally. The influence of Spanish continues to grow. At Laredo and Nuevo Laredo, for example, the National Days are celebrated in the two towns, and they even share the same baseball team, Los Tecolotes de Los Dos Laredos. The towns on both sides tend to depend on each other. In spite of the barriers, the inhabitants go from one to the other, from the other to the one, live in one, work in the other. The Mexican town depends on tourism from the American town, which itself depends on the labour of the former; both depend on their mutual trade. Each adopts elements of the other’s way of life, and reinterprets them in their own way. The towns are often closely linked, but the wall accentuates the contrasts between them. The insecurity of one is opposed to the peace of the other, the poverty of one envies the wealth of the other. The frontier region is at once a meeting place and a point of convergence for many conflicts. Some are everyday conflicts, provoked by illegal immigration and drug trafficking (from Mexico to the United States) and arms trafficking (in the opposite direction). Some of the conflicts are more structural, such as the problems linked to the redistribution of water.
One of the longest frontiers in the world, and one of the most frequently crossed, legally and illegally, is, in fact, the centre of a hybrid culture, a third culture, neither American nor Mexican, where the First World encounters the Third World. White Anglo-Saxons eat tacos and breakfast burritos, whilst Mexicans feed themselves with pizzas and hamburgers, all available without crossing the frontier. It is also the territory lost by Mexico in the mid-19th century, but progressively reoccupied since. Mexicans or Mexican-Americans who live in California, in Arizona, New Mexico or Texas are the descendants of those who, at the time of the Annexation by the United States of the northern half of Mexico, became overnight American citizens. As they quite correctly say: “it’s not we who have crossed the frontier, but the frontier which crosses us.” Since that time, these Chicanos have been joined by millions of migrants, legal or illegal, of whom several hundred thousand continue to swell the ranks every year, escaping poverty and unemployment. So you hear talk today of the Hispanic Reconquista of the United States. The Latinos, two thirds of whom are Mexicans, represent today one tenth of the American population, and their influence is increasing. And 92% of Mexicans seeking to enter the United States illegally succeed in doing so, sooner or later, with or without the wall.