I JUST TRAVELED TO WASHINGTON TO LOBBY FOR A NEW APPROACH
The Biden administration appears to have survived the immediate political aftermath of the lifting of Title 42. Two weeks ago, national media outlets sent reporters and photographers in unprecedented numbers to San Diego and other border towns, chronicling the distress of many hundreds of would-be asylum seekers who were abandoned by federal authorities between the two walls on the border. An anticipated wave of unauthorized crossings never quite materialized, however. Notorious for their short attention span, these outlets have moved on to other stories.
But the border will continue to bedevil President Joe Biden, as it did his predecessors, because the political class in Washington remains utterly bereft of both political courage and political vision when matters relating to the border are put before them. For over 30 years, presidents from both parties have invested billions of dollars in a common strategy of “hardening ” the border in hopes of “deterring ” unauthorized crossings. This strategy has succeeded in rerouting some patterns of northward migration, but it has failed to alter the fundamental “push” and “pull” factors that drive migrants from around the world to seek entry in the United States.
As president, Donald Trump exploited this systemic and bipartisan failure by doubling down on the strategy, demonizing migrants and embracing a “big, beautiful wall” on the border as the virtual logo of his presidential campaigns. Sadly, President Biden seems determined to invest yet more capital — both political capital and hard-earned taxpayer dollars — in this very same political brand. Right now the Biden administration is building two new 30-foot MAGAstyle border walls right here in San Diego, at the historic and iconic location of Friendship Park. Federal contractors will lower the height of just one of the walls to 18 feet for a span of just 20 yards, amounting to just 2 percent of the total construction project.
On Tuesday, I was part of a five-member delegation of community leaders who went to Washington and met with highranking administration officials. We showed them live-streamed images of Friendship Park, where the first of the new walls is now being erected. We explained to them the potential inherent in this unique site, the potential to serve as both a symbol of and platform for transnational friendship. We also cautioned them that if President Biden allowed this construction project to be completed, he would be responsible for turning Friendship Park into a site of perpetual dispute and a symbol of United States disregard for border communities and the people of Mexico.
We concluded our meeting by requesting that these officials do something that is well within their power to do. We requested that they bring directly to President Biden our appeal to halt immediately this misguided and unnecessary project.
The coming days will tell whether President Biden summons the political courage to break from the same strategy that has resulted in 30 years of political gridlock, a gridlock in which the only thing that our politicians can agree on is that we have “a broken immigration system.” We will soon know whether he will embrace Friendship Park as a place where new possibilities for U.S.-Mexico relations can be piloted and explored.
If he does not, this paraphrase of the ancient biblical proverb will once again have proven true: “Where there is no political vision in Washington the peoples and places of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands perish.”
We requested that these officials do something that is well within their power to do.
Fanestil is the convener of the community-based Friends of Friendship Park coalition, a project fiscally sponsored by Via International, a San Diego nonprofit. He lives in La Mesa.