Officials in Arizona decry razor wire
NOGALES, Ariz. — Officials in a small Arizona border city are decrying the installation of new razor wire that now covers the entirety of a tall border wall through downtown.
The city council in Nogales, which sits on the border with Nogales, Mexico, passed a resolution Wednesday night asking the federal government to remove all concertina wire installed within the city limits.
Otherwise, Nogales Mayor Arturo Garino said, the city will sue.
The vote came one day after President Donald Trump made his case to the American people about the need for a border wall and how he has ordered 3,750 troops to prepare for what he called a “tremendous onslaught” of would-be immigrants. It also follows the weekend installation by U.S. troops of more horizontal layers of the wire along the existing border fence.
Concertina wire has become the most visible sign of Trump’s anxiety. Soldiers have installed concertina at or near several official crossings at the border. In late November, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said the military had sent 36 miles of concertina for use in California, Arizona, and Texas.
At the start of November, soldiers in Texas installed lines of wire coils below a major bridge near Mcallen.
Nogales, a city of about 20,000 people, is a fraction of the size of its Mexican counterpart, but its economy is largely reliant on Mexican shoppers and cross-border trade. Illegal crossings in that area have dropped steeply in the past several years.
The council’s resolution says the razor wire would harm or kill anyone who scales the wall and
“is only found in a war, prison or battle setting” and should not be in downtown Nogales.
“Signage in Spanish and English has been put in place warning individuals of these dangers and prohibiting access,” according to a Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman.
In its statement, the CBP said the wire was added after a request “for additional support in high-risk urban areas commonly exploited by criminal smuggling organizations.” It did not say who made the request.
The mayor said he is most concerned that children and others could be injured now that the wire reaches the ground. The downtown area is also residential, and there are homes that stand a few feet from the border fence.
“Aesthetically pleasing, it’s not. It’s very bad. It’s not good for business, it’s not good for what we’re trying to create, a businessfriendly community here in Nogales,” Garino said.
In September 2017, the San Diego City Council adopted a resolution that said Trump’s walls would be “damaging symbols of fear and division that will increase tensions with Mexico, one of the United States’ largest trading partners and a neighbor with which communities such as San Diego in the border region are inextricably linked culturally, physically, and economically.”
Over 1.6 million arrests were made by just about 9,200 agents nationwide in 2000. But those figures tapered off as the government dramatically increased staffing and resources like more surveillance technology and tall, steel fencing. By last fiscal year, about 19,000 Border Patrol agents made 310,000 arrests.
Back in Washington, Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi struck starkly different tones Wednesday in their border-security standoff. Trump announced a campaign rally for Monday in El Paso, a Texas border city that he says exemplifies the need for a wall, and Pelosi said she’d back any bipartisan deal congressional bargainers produce.
Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, tweeted that the rally will be held “less than 1000 feet from the successful border fence that keeps El Paso safe!”
In his State of the Union, Trump cited El Paso as once having extremely high rates of violent crime. He asserted that with its wall, “El Paso is one of the safest cities in our country.”
In fact, El Paso has never been considered one of the nation’s most dangerous cities. In 2005, the city had a murder rate of 2.5 for every 100,000 residents, compared with a national rate of 5.6. By 2010 after the wall was built, El Paso’s murder rate had dropped to 0.9 for every 100,000 residents, compared with a national average of 4.8.
Congresssional negotiators have until Feb. 15 to reach agreement on border security or potentially face a renewed government shutdown. House-senate bargainers say their talks have become increasingly substantive and some lawmakers — including Pelosi — expressed hopes that negotiators might produce an accord as soon as Friday.
“If they come up with a bipartisan agreement, I’m happy to support it,” Pelosi, D-calif., said, adding that she hoped Trump would take “the same hands off” approach.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell, R-KY., has given bargainers a green light to seek a deal that he’s said he hopes Trump would find “worth signing.”