The Human Cost of Hardening the US-Mexico Border

this is known as the ajo corridor people die here on a regular basis if you go back to the 1994 border patrol memo they say deaths will be a deterrent mexico and the united states are not at war with each other but yet it is treated as a war zone [Music] they're just here waiting right by the door the doorway to the united states is this a refugee crisis absolutely people are fleeing for their life as in autumn we don't recognize the voter well if anyone needs to cross i have to check documents it boils my blood that we need permission from a white guy one of these all right guys we're the search and rescue group one of several search and rescue groups that operates in this area this one's called los armalidos um this overall region is known as the ajo corridor it's a corridor for migrants trying to get into the united states and basically it's deadly people die here on a regular basis because it's hot you know it's not even 8 30 in the morning and it's already very hot nobody knows exactly how many migrants have died crossing the desert north of the u.s mexico border we know that it's at least 8 000 because that's how many border patrol has found in the last 30 years but the real number is higher the desert has a way of swallowing people without leaving a trace it's like three three and a half three and a half miles at most so don't forget to drink water [Music] we've been out here for a little over five hours the temperature is now well into the triple digits we actually had to stop about a mile before our pickup spot because eloy the searcher we were with got sick and couldn't keep going so we're waiting for a couple more people from the rest of the crew to come with some more water that tells you a lot about what it's like for people who are hiking through here for five or six days at a time with no fancy hiking boots or sat phones or anything like that and we haven't found the person we were looking for either so it seems they're gonna have to come back another time there haven't always been migrants dying in the desert to get to the united states in the history of the border that's a very recent thing the line has been where it is today for about 170 years and for most of that it was guarded loosely with barbed wire or chain-link fencing and a few border patrol agents covering huge expanses of land that changed in the 90s free trade agreements like nafta opened up the border but only to businesses moving goods and money our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record number of new border guards for ordinary people crossing became harder than ever before in december with the trump presidency coming to a close we traced that evolution on a road trip along more than a thousand miles of the border we're gonna drive from southern arizona all the way to the other end of the border in matamoros mexico that journey is going to correspond to the historical movement of border security and border enforcement on the us mexico board from the stuff that's been around for 25 years or longer all the way to the stuff that is truly new and unprecedented and specific to the trump era this is downtown nogales arizona it's right on the other side of the border from nogales sonora in mexico we're gonna go meet todd miller a writer and an independent journalist who's based here in southern arizona and has spent many years documenting the very rapid growth of the border security machine so what are we looking at we are looking at the newest version of the border wall so 30 years ago this wall wouldn't have been here no it'd be a chain link a chain link fence okay with a lot of holes in it border patrol trucks have driven by what like five or six times in just the less than 10 minutes we've been standing here there's lots of technology that we cannot see and we're probably stepping on motion sensors below us if you go back to 1994 when this wall was first built the budget for border immigration enforcement was 1.5 billion dollars and then if you go to 2016 i believe the budget's around 20 billion dollars and so you're looking at the most dramatic astronomical fortification of the border that we've ever seen in the history of our country right that wasn't like a donald trump thing it wasn't even a republican thing was it no they're very very bipartisan it's a system that's beyond the political parties that's growing and it's growing and unless something drastic happens that will continue to grow moving forward the consequences of that system are immediate and intentional the idea was at the time and still is to stop people from crossing through traditional places and force them to circumvent those areas and go into places that are desolate dangerous even deadly so the fact of people dying in the desert is not like an accident no it's not in fact if you go back to the 1994 border patrol memo you'll see that they say death will be a deterrent so the idea that people were going to die because of the strategy was premeditated the border itself is only the first and most visible layer in the system that stretches for miles so we just saw the border the wall and the border patrol agents and the cameras and sensors that are along the line itself now we're moving up to the next layer which is 10 or 15 miles north of the border in the desert so what is that it's a part of what has been known as the virtual wall this tower works in tandem with that tower and then that tower works in tandem with another tower it's like a network there's a whole network of towers and these towers are equipped with cameras that can see 7.5 miles 7.5 7.5 miles night vision camera ground sweeping radar that has approximately 13 mile radius mexico and the united states are not at war with each other but yet it is treated as a war zone the next layer is a few miles up the main highway north so when we go through the checkpoint we'll get on the interstate 19 and then you'll see almost like a dome as we pass into the tarp area there will be this camera with two flashing lights and one that will hit your face and one that will hit your license plate we'll get up to the checkpoint and you'll be able to see a border patrol agent in each lane like looking in each car there's no way you can go up any road in arizona without going through one from the border so you really have to go through the border a couple times so now we're driving through south texas down along the border we're going to a place called ohinaga on the mexico side that has a sort of important place in the history of the music of this region mario munoz is an accordionist one in a long line of musicians he plays musica nortena which means literally music from the north [Music] [Applause] its cousin on the other side in texas for a long time the genres were tightly intertwined part of a single cross-border culture that existed because people moved constantly back and forth across the line [Music] but over the years as the border hardened the styles diverged along with the people who played and listened to them so but that was the 80s before the us built its machine on the border because it's so hard now people don't go back and forth so much they cross once and they stay or they don't cross at all uh [Music] is [Music] we're on our third day of driving we're making our way through texas so everything we've seen up until now is stuff that predated trump what we've seen is the machine that trump inherited what trump did when he took over was he started pulling the levers to try and make the effects of that machine as severe and as strict as possible even though this was a particularly trumpian project how much can we actually expect it to change because the history of enforcement on this border is one where each president even if they moderate it even if they have different motivations even if they tweak it here and there they all expand and add to the machine no president has ever taken away from it no president has ever shrunk the machine before trump came along it was possible for people who were seeking asylum to arrive at the southern border legally enter the country and then pursue their asylum claim while in the united states trump effectively put an end to that when trump shut the door on asylum seekers some of them went home others paid smugglers to cross illegally but tens of thousands decided to wait in matamoros they formed a camp that at times held more than 2 000 people [Music] [Music] a since trump left office joe biden has relaxed some of his restrictions but only slightly it's still nearly impossible to seek asylum at the border and yet people keep trying people have been moving from one place to another for the whole of human history since long before governments invented borders to try to stop them that's why when people need to move borders don't ever really stop them they only make the journey more dangerous and sometimes borders can also displace people who don't want to move that's what happened back in arizona in sonora to an indigenous people known as the tohono autumn or people of the desert they've lived in both the u.s and mexico since long before either was a country when the border was drawn it cut through their territory matias valencuela esteban was born and raised in mexico but educated on the tohono autumn reservation in the u.s even though they live in mexico matthias is the only one in the family who speaks spanish their language is awesome [Music] for many years the border didn't affect their daily life until it did so this is the border this fence is the u.s mexico border and we're on the mexico side and only autumn people are allowed to use this crossing we followed matthias and his parents who live on the mexico side here to the border itself so they can meet and catch up with their friend david garcia who's an autumn who lives on the arizona side girlfriend [Laughter] border patrol is anyone needing to cross is anyone needing to cross or you're just talking okay well if anyone needs to cross i have to check documents but otherwise you're welcome [Laughter] the autumn used to cross freely at various points along their 75-mile stretch of border now they're forced to travel long distances and funneled through this gate how do you feel about this border how do you feel about about this you know to tell you the truth it boils my blood that we need permission from a white guy that's my homeland creator's home is right there that's where creator lives that mountain that mountain that's why we're guild so that's a special sacred place to us so in order for us if we want to go and do ceremony there or pay our respects we have to ask permission from a white guy do you think of yourself as american no i am author yeah i'm not mexican i'm in home as a member of the community as an author indigenous person uh we don't recognize the border what is it about this being mexican territory and that being united states territory we still don't understand that we don't comprehend that because that was not something that is uh taught to us as children we're not taught to own things and what does that do to a culture and a people over the course of many years it divides us it's a division in the mind and the mindset of our own autumn believing this borders here okay well it's the autumn in mexico and it's the autumn in arizona home we're all the same the hardening of the border caused many autumn on the mexico side to move to the u.s permanently those who stayed were gradually isolated from their culture the land on the u.s side is protected by a reservation but on the mexico side it's not and as their numbers have dwindled ranchers have encroached on their land how many people on the mexico side is it that speak autumn fluently still three six that's 11. and are you the youngest of the 11 people the youngest so if you were to leave mexico you were to leave this side what would that do to the language the culture it would die out with the elders the language would die the culture would die nobody will sing songs is the fact that the reservation exists on the other side of the line does that solve the problem is the culture being preserved and taken care of and continued on the reservation side a lot of the elders on the reservation have been assimilated into the white man's culture some of them feel ashamed to speak the language talking the border does affect as far as the language and the people because of this mindset that living in the united states and not just not just the all of them but also everybody everybody in the world thinks that going into the united states is uh something good the american dream is what everybody's looking for and that's exactly what happened with the autumn if so many families on the mexico side have decided to cross into the united states why haven't you why is this family still here but he [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] you

Channel: VICE News

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Id: Lz5LiX05gAU

Length: 22min 42sec (1362 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 29 2021