Undaunted by Trump’s wall, Mexicans vow they’ll get over it
TIJUANA: Eladio Sanchez is unimpressed by the eight border wall prototypes looming over his house in Tijuana, Mexico, almost within spitting distance of where US President Donald Trump will visit today.
At age 30, he has already snuck over the border several times, and doesn’t expect Trump’s wall will have much effect on undocumented migrants like him.
Pointing to the only prototype with an angular barrier at the top – a concrete structure built by Texas Sterling Construction Company – Sanchez says that one might slow him down a little more than the others.
But, he said: “You can get over it anyway. It’s just a little more complicated. But people are always looking for a way to get over – out of necessity, not because we want to.”
In Tijuana, Trump’s visit to the prototypes looks like just the latest slap in the face from a man who launched his presidential campaign calling Mexican immigrants “criminals” and “rapists” and has since driven US-Mexican relations to their lowest point in recent memory.
It’s as if “he wants to come just to tell us he’s here, that he’s going to do what he promised with the wall,” says Sanchez, who lives in a small grey house in a poor neighbourhood that juts up against the border, across from Otay Mesa, on the outskirts of San Diego.
Sanchez has watched the barrier between the United States and Mexico grow over the years, blocking his view of the mountains more every time.
It started with a fence built during the Bill Clinton administration, then was beefed up with barbed wire.
“They just keep adding more, making it taller,” he said from his rooftop.
From there, he has an unimpeded view of the hulking prototypes, which stand about 9m-tall and cost US$ 300,000 ( RM1.169mil) to US$500,000 (RM1.95mil) each.
If Trump gets his way, whichever prototype or prototypes win will snake across much of the nearly 3,200km border.
The cost is estimated at up to US$20bil (RM78bil). Trump’s insistence that Mexico will foot the bill is a source of national outrage.
Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto reportedly cancelled plans for a visit to Washington recently over the issue – the second time he has done so.
“He firmly repeated what all Mexicans have always said: We will never pay for a wall on the border,” said Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray.
An estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants live in the United States, many of them Mexicans or other Latinos.
“They are the proof that it’s possible to get through. More Mexicans are getting through all the time,” says Sergio Tamai, the founder of immigrant advocacy group Angels Without Borders. Tamai runs a shelter for migrants in the border city of Mexicali, which sits across from Calexico, California.
Migrants, says Tamai, will always find a way.
“The desert. The mountains. Human traffickers. You can’t take away that desire to cross and to build a better life for your family.”