BORDER SECURITY REQUIRES MORE TRUST, NOT HIGH WALLS
On the Mexican side of Friendship Park stands a lighthouse. On the U.S. side of Friendship Park, almost equal in height, stands a security camera. It’s a staggering visual metaphor that tells the history of this park at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Customs and Border Protection has begun constructing a new border wall through Friendship Park, a wall it believes will strengthen national security despite the opposition of community and state leaders.
But California State University San Bernardino researcher Kimberly Collins pointed out the fallacy of this reasoning in an article in the Journal of Public Management & Social Policy more than five years ago: “What seems to rarely be considered is that borders can also increase insecurity, as they close people off from each other and decrease levels of trust and cooperation. The European Union and a reduction of borders came to be partly because of the two great wars during the first half of the 20th century. The hope was to improve economic growth by moving beyond war and increasing cooperation by creating economic bonds.”
You see this attempt to create economic bonds at the San Diego-Tijuana border with the recent United Nations Human Settlements Programme conference that invited binational stakeholders, including CBP officials, to discuss new border crossings and economic development. The San Diego Union-Tribune reported this month that among the reasons the conference was held here were “the steps taken to innovate in the area of cross-border mobility, which is important to drive development while taking climate change into account.”
There’s a nauseating amount of irony about CBP — an organization the United Nations has condemned for its appalling treatment of refugees — being invited to this conference while preparing to build a new border wall that continues a trend of militarizing the border and funneling migrants into deadly areas.
CBP’s vision statement is “Enhancing the nation’s security through innovation, intelligence, collaboration and trust.” Building a new wall in brazen neglect of the local community erodes innovation, intelligence, collaboration and trust. CBP claims in its core values to be “guided by the highest ethical and moral principles,” but how moral is it to build deadly barriers without providing any evidence of their efficacy?
The ideals of Friendship Park get in the way of CBP’s current and historically failed policy. So it continues to ignore us and build walls that have caused hundreds of injuries since 2019.
When stakeholders like the Friends of Friendship Park aren’t given a seat at the table where decisions are made about the future of the park, important aspects of security are omitted and we are left with the same increase in militarization that has gradually turned our park into a prison.
Since the park’s inauguration in 1971, there have been grassroots efforts to honor its original vision. People have played volleyball, practiced yoga, danced salsa, read poetry, played music, performed religious ceremonies and built a binational friendship garden of native plants that honors the native flora, fauna and people who called this region home for 12,000 years. All of this has been gradually stamped out over the last 30 years.
Even the garden was destroyed on the
U.S. side in 2020. The current construction plans would destroy it again — this time on both sides. The Friends of Friendship Park call on President Joe Biden to keep his campaign promise of “not another foot of wall constructed under [his] administration” and to listen to members of his own party, like Rep. Juan Vargas, D-San Diego, who stands with us.
According to local architect Jim Brown of Public Architecture, “friendship and cooperation is the best and only true means of security on the border.”
Brown has a long-term vision for an 80-acre binational park which celebrates our partnership with Mexico instead of vilifying it. He recently worked with the Friends of Friendship Park and several other renowned architects to create an interim design that doesn’t include massive walls that endanger lives and erode trust.
Brown envisions genuine innovation at the border, describing the park as “a celebratory embodiment of our aspirations that included a strengthened partnership with Mexico, the U.S. and Canada. It includes a pier extending into the Pacific that houses plazas, hotels, places to meet, play and celebrate our shared cultures. It will be a place of dialogue and communion. It will stand as a symbol of our shared future and mutual respect.”
The new proposal will be exhibited as a part of World Design Capital 2024 in the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego’s Downtown gallery.
Why not invest in a plan that is safer, cheaper and designed to create greater community? Why not invest in a plan that inaugurates a future that decreases violence and cultivates friendship?
First, we need to save this park by stopping the impending walls planned by CBP. Please visit actionnetwork.org/petitions/ dont-finish-donald-trumps-borderwall.com to sign the petition to President Biden and visit friendshippark.org for ways you can help.
The ideals of Friendship Park get in the way of CBP’s current and historically failed policy. So it continues to ignore us and build walls that have caused hundreds of injuries since 2019.
is a writer and researcher and a supporter of Friendship Park who lives in Bankers Hill. is a longtime member of the Friends of Friendship Park and founder/coordinator of its Binational Friendship Garden of Native Plants. He lives in Tijuana.