Pain won’t stop migrants scaling border wall

San Ysidro – Horrific fractures, punctured lungs and a traumatic miscarriage: Jay Doucet has seen the severity of his patients’ injuries worsen as more migrants fall from a growing border wall in their bid to evade a pandemic-imposed legal blockade.

To the already imposing obstacles for people trying to enter the US on its southern border, the Covid crisis added another: a quick-fix health rule called Title 42 that allows authorities to remove anyone simply because they might be carrying the disease.

And with no legal route into the country, migrants have been taking their lives in their hands.

“You and I wouldn’t jump from a 30-foot wall, but they would,” says Doucet, head of trauma at UC San Diego Health.

In 2019, the wall that straddles parts of the border between the US and Mexico was raised, fulfilling a campaign promise of then-president Donald Trump.

The increase, from 5.4m to 9m, was almost instantly noticeable for Doucet and his colleagues.

In the two years before the height increase, they saw 67 significant injuries; in the two years since, that figure has hit 375.

They have dealt with 16 people who have died after falling from the wall in that time.

“We have clear evidence that these higher walls do not stop migratory flows, but they do cause more serious injuries,” says Carlos Gonzalez Gutierrez, Mexican consul in San Diego, who has been called to help hundreds of Mexicans hospitalised in the city.

The “wall” – which for the most part is a fence – runs through hills and dunes, out into the waters of the Pacific.

If it is imposing from afar, up close it seems enormous.

“I don’t know how I got up, it was all very fast,” said one migrant.

The woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity, fled Colombia with her family because of threats of violence.

Her terrifying climb over the wall was a success.

Her daughter was not so lucky, falling and badly fracturing her ankle.