The billionaire
real estate developer that just moved into government-subsidized housing in
Washington, D.C. said during the campaign that Mexico was sending rapists and
criminals to the U.S. I’ve met with many
people here in Nogales that have just been deported from the U.S. They’ve told me, often with tears in their
eyes, that they made the risky journey to the U.S. in search of work so that
they could provide for their families back home in Mexico or Central America.
Donald Trump’s
racism and lies are very offensive and troubling, but racism and an inability
to tell the truth have a long bipartisan history in the White House and
congress. He plans to continue, and
expand, the border enforcement policies that were developed by his
predecessors.
The spouse of the
candidate that received three million votes more than Trump built the initial
Nogales Wall in 1994 – the same year that the North America Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) was implemented. Bill
Clinton worked very hard during his first year in office to push NAFTA through
congress.
NAFTA enabled U.S.
corporations to more easily establish assembly plants in Mexico where the
minimum wage is now just $4 per day. It
also enabled U.S. agribusiness to sell subsidized corn at prices so low that
Mexican farmers could not compete. Two
million farmers lost their lands in Mexico during the first 10 years of NAFTA.
Landless farmers
and impoverished workers crossed into the U.S. in order to provide for their
families and the Clinton administration responded by creating the first
national strategy for the Border Patrol: “Prevention through Deterrence.” The goal was to “Raise the risk…to the
point that many will consider it futile to attempt illegal entry… Illegal
traffic will be deterred, or forced over more hostile terrain, less suited for
crossing.” The bodies of more than 7,000
people have been recovered along the southern border since that policy was
implemented.
The president that Hillary Clinton served
as secretary of state replaced the initial Nogales Wall with a taller and
stronger wall in 2011 – at a cost of $4.1 million per mile. During that same time, the Obama
administration spent $187 million to modernize the Mariposa port-of-entry to
make it easier for hundreds of diesel trucks to cross daily with products made
in the assembly plants of Nogales.
“Free trade” agreements like NAFTA enable
capital to easily cross borders in the search for higher profit but do not
allow workers to cross those same borders in order to provide for their
families. There are nearly 100 assembly
plants in Nogales that employ 37,000 workers.
It appears that the primary purpose of the Nogales Wall is to keep workers
on the cheaper side of the wall and continuing to assemble products for U.S.
corporations.
The Obama administration also invested in
the technology used by Israel to enforce borders on the Palestinian
people. Elbit Systems was paid $23
million to construct seven surveillance towers along the Nogales section of the
border. Those towers give the Border
Patrol complete radar control of the border and feature long-range cameras and
night observation systems to detect people that are attempting to cross into
the U.S. to escape from poverty and violence.
“Because we live in an age where
terrorists are challenging our borders, we can not allow people to pour into
the U.S. undetected, undocumented and unchecked,” said the previous president during
his first campaign in 2008. He went on
to forcibly remove 2.7 million people of color from the country during his
eight years in office.
Donald Trump wants to surpass that record
set by Barack Obama. This makes it even
more necessary now to confront racism and lies, and to act in solidarity with
the people that are suffering from U.S. economic and immigration policies. My sister and me at the Trump National Golf Club of Los Angeles |