From day one, Donald Trump’s border wall has been a catastrophic disaster. It served as the centerpiece of his 2016 and caused the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.
And for what?
According to a new report by the Government Accountability Office, it has caused a tremendous amount of cultural and environmental damage all along the 450 miles it stretches across. This section of the wall, built during the Trump administration has caused great harm to water, endangered species, and Native American cultural sites. This includes Monument Hill, a memorial in Arizona that for generations, has been used for religious ceremonies that are important to many Indigenous communities.
Tragically the site was “irreparably damaged when contractors used explosives to clear the way for expanding an existing patrol road.” The Tohono O’odham Nation suffered a separate tragedy and representatives of the tribe reported to the GAO that a sacred burial site near Quitobaquito Springs was destroyed as contractors cleared a large swath of land there.
But what did anyone in the Trump administration care, these were all brown and red people after all. And we know how Trump felt about this.
The report also notes the following:
- Construction disrupted the flow of water and thus exacerbated flooding.
- Clearing land for the wall “damaged native vegetation.”
- Clearing land without reseeding it made it easier for “invasive species to take root.”
- Due to the construction work, some ponds in the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge in Arizona “are now void of water, which makes it difficult to maintain water levels in other ponds that have threatened and endangered fish species.”
- “The barrier system has…substantially elevated the risks of the ocelot’s extinction in the US.”
- A large construction staging area built in Arizona’s Pajarito Mountains caused silt to drain “down the side of the mountain and, according to Forest Service officials, is beginning to fill a human-made pond, threatening to eliminate it as a drinking source for cattle and wildlife. Moreover, the entire mountainside is in danger of collapse, according to a Forest Service official.”
In a statement to Politico, [1] Representative Raúl Grijalva, who requested the report, said, “This racist, political stunt has been an ineffective waste of billions of American taxpayers’ dollars—and now we know it has caused immeasurable, irreparable harm to our environment and cultural heritage as well.”
For our wildlife and our Indigenous people, this has been a terrible tragedy. Shameful and disgusting. My partner and I have spent much time in Arizona and Texas and I observed instances of the border patrol arresting immigrants. There is a sad totality to this and the immigrants’ faces showed sad acceptance but it was depressing for me as well because I knew they were fleeing circumstances that were already intolerable. When we have met immigrants crossing in the mountains of Arizona we have given them water. If I were still there today, I’d still give them water even though it is illegal now in many places.
And this situation is about to get worse and may never get better because Republicans are suddenly gung-ho over Trump’s stupid wall all over again. They have now added funding to expand Trump’s monstrosity as part of their list of spending demands. Some GOP reps have even suggested they plan to shut down the government if they don’t get it.
I hope the Biden administration puts its collective foot down on this but I’m not optimistic about this. The administration is doing all it can to fund Israel [2] to keep on killing innocent people in the Gaza Strip and for some reason, there’s recently been very little information about whether this administration is doing anything to stop the separation of children from their parents at the border. And this is something that was front and center while Biden was campaigning.
I wish I had better news about the border wall but I don’t. It was a disaster to begin with and it will continue to be a disaster if more of it is built.