How Trump closed the border

(Spain)

U.S. President Donald Trump has built his border wall, said Lorena Arroyo, but it’s not the physical barrier that he promised. Through a series of executive orders, brutal policies such as the separation of migrant children from their parents, and the bullying of Central American nations to accept would-be asylum seekers, Trump has choked off legal as well as illegal immigration. At first, Trump did try to erect a physical barricade, building some 370 miles of new wall—much of which replaced old fencing—along the 1,900-mile Mexican-U.S. border. This construction has done little except damage the environment and divide

the indigenous communities that straddle the border. Far more has been achieved through an overhaul of U.S. policy. The Trump administration “disempowered immigration judges,” packed appeals courts with partisan appointees, and then rewrote the rules to dismiss asylum claims filed by people fleeing gang violence and domestic abuse. But the most dramatic change is the Remain in Mexico policy, under which tens of thousands of asylum seekers awaiting hearings have been forced to stay in squalid Mexican camps rather than being let into the U.S. In a very real sense, the wall has been built, and Mexico is paying for it.