Boundaries Don't Keep Other People Out—They Fence You In

The immigration issue is simple, people might tell you.

There are two sides to it, they'll reason: US and THEM-exico. So what better way to "solve" our problems than with a border fence delineating that obvious divide?

Take a leap over our 800-mile wall, though, and you’ll find that there are more facets to Mexico than you could ever imagine. And it makes you wonder how a single wall could ever hope to contain all the layers that define this region and those driven to leave it behind.

The border has been in the news a lot for drug trafficking violence. It doesn’t stop with images of arms-wielding cartel members, though. This integral problem has leaked into other sectors of life.

Children, for example, can be very accurate indicators of the social climate. This past week, we visited Nogales, Mexico, just a jump from Arizona, where, among other things, our group ran a kids’ camp for latchkey kids. In Nogales, many children play out graphic, narco-trafficking scenes for fun, pretending to be cartel assassins. One little boy at the camp wanted to draw “drug addiction” during art time. We’ve heard outcries about groups in Africa that train child soldiers, but no one’s ever said a word about how the “war zone” that is the border is seeping into day-to-day life, conditioning children to think drug violence and death are normal.

Yet it’s ridiculous to imagine that the children of Nogales are ruthless children or miniature soldiers. They play in their playground, their faces light up upon learning new games, they squeal happily at the thought of piggyback rides. Put a piece of paper and marker in their hands and they act as if you’ve just given them a Wii, complete with a score of games. Help them make a (misshapen) cat mask and they’ll gaze at it as if it were the most beautiful thing they’ve ever beheld. The children we worked with threw themselves into every activity with explosive energy, and sometimes I wondered if, as a kid, I was ever so in love with life.

It must be admitted, however, that these kids are “older” than children on this side of the border. The kids in the area must stay home alone while their parents work at places like maquiladoras (where most earn 67 pesos a day [that’s $5.60 U.S. dollars]). Most of the little ones must baby-sit their infant siblings while their parents work to feed them. Kids still in primary school are cooking dinner, cleaning the house, grocery shopping while their equivalents in the U.S. go to ballet class and learn to tie their shoes.

The living conditions are little better. We visited a neighborhood where maquiladora workers live—just yards from where tens of factories stand. The houses are little more than shacks, plumbing virtually nonexistent, so that the children are susceptible to all manner of illnesses. Electricity is a novelty in this neighborhood. Water isn’t safe to drink so it must be purchased with the little money earned at the giant maquilas, which are never low on water, electricity, air conditions, and all manner of “luxuries.”

For a long while, this border region and these maquiladoras have been the Mecca for those Mexicans seeking out work. But just how beneficial are the maquilas, if the wages are barely enough to buy food for the week? Is it any wonder that parents who can’t scrape by, whose children are ill with disease and malnutrition, think to cross the border and the desert to earn more than the maquilas (many with abysmal working conditions) ever plan to give them?

Would you do the same? Could you do the same? Or are they the only ones who’d think to risk their lives to give their children a better life?
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Reflections on Mexico, Pt II

You’ve crossed the border, having nearly died of thirst in the attempt. But then—you’re apprehended. Sent to a detention center. Now you're imprisoned, shackled up, but it can't be all bad, right? At least you’ll get some food in you.

Ha.

While in Nogales, our group spoke with an employee of Grupos Beta, a government-run agency that receives recently deported Mexicans/Latin Americans and helps them call home and fund transportation back. We were told that the people they see are often mistreated by BP (don’t you love that abbreviation?) and at the detention centers.

“And they feed them only with peanut butter cookies,” the man said.

I whipped my head up at that. I didn’t believe it. This guy was totally exaggerating; it was really easy to vilify the U.S. and Border Patrol, and well I knew it. Ever since the media exposure of conditions and deaths at detention centers during 2006-2007, there had been a big crackdown on ICE and humane treatment of detainees.

Outside the office we ran into a whole troupe of recently deported men and one woman. Their grievances came out slowly, and only with some prodding. How they were mocked when they told their guards at the detention center that they were hungry. “Yeah well, I’m hungry too,” the woman was told.

Some were held for several days before being deported, though there are those who spend months in detention centers. They weren’t allowed to bathe. They were held in shackles, like the men I mentioned, the ones who went through Operation: Streamline.

They were fed twice day. And for all ten, fifteen of these people, those meals consisted of peanut butter crackers.

At this point, I just didn’t want to believe it, but the thing was…I did.

“Look,” said one of the men. And he reached into his backpack and pulled out the irrefutable proof—a small packet of peanut butter crackers.

The kind you get from the vending machine. The kind your mom might have put in your sack lunch during elementary school—along with a sandwich, a juice box, and a piece of fruit, among other things. The idea of a young, active man having his hunger satiated by two packets of crackers is laughable.

All I could think at that moment was “What the hell?”

The stories continued to come out. How one man saw a BP agent hit a detainee for being impertinent. Another man crossed over when he was eight years old, 25 years ago, and was deported after being pulled over at a routine traffic stop.

He was stranded in Sonora, looked much like all the other Mexicans crowded 'round, but didn't speak Spanish. Was probably more American than many people I know.

There was a story about another man, who was being transported back to Mexico. Jokingly, he asked if they could pull over and get McDonald’s and was then told:

“You don’t have any rights here.”

Hold up. Last time I checked, migrants were tried under U.S. law, and everyone makes a whole hullabaloo about how their given their Constitutional rights, because we're a developed, sophisticated country and the American way is best. But someone needs to tell me, then, exactly which rights/processes are applicable in this process?

Does a human being, supposedly “guilty” of a victimless crime, not deserve three square meals a day? As Megan pointed out afterwards, there are serial killers and child molesters who receive those square meals. Is a hardworking family man—who happens to be found on the wrong side of an imagined line—less human than those heinous criminals?

Is this what the U.S. stands for? Peanut butter crackers and shackles?