in the Morning to ten at the gate, then the small border traffic between Mexico and the United States begins. On the Mexican side, the people are already for an hour queue at the border crossing, on the American however, it is still quiet. A load of the Border Patrol past the car rumbles, pulling a trailer with two horses.

3000 miles away in Washington, President Donald Trump and Democrats about the construction of a wall on the border to Mexico. Here in Nogales, a small town in the South of Arizona, is this wall for years a reality. Where the term wall is not entirely accurate. The American Nogales is separated from its namesake sister city in the Mexican state of Sonora by a fence: a massive construction consisting of vertical steel tubes filled with concrete, five to seven meters high.

The fence runs straight through the center of the city, he will follow the Terrain over hills and through valleys and ends several miles beyond the district boundaries out there in the desert. It was up to Trump, would provide a large part of the American-Mexican border with such a steel fence.

You can see in Nogales right well, that such a fence to hinder cross-border living together, but not finished. Nogales/Arizona (20000 inhabitants), and Nogales/Sonora (300000 inhabitants) are closely intertwined. Many people members of the family on both sides. And the legitimate cross-border traffic works: Every day, tens of thousands of people and vehicles cross in Nogales, the border. Mexican citizens need entry Visa, which distribute the US authorities, but to the inhabitants of the border area quite spacious.

The result is that some of the Mexican families send their children every Morning across the border in U.S. schools. The Mexicans come to shop in the USA or to go to the doctor, Americans are going to Mexico to eat there.

“Some sort of physical barrier we need.”

The steel fence makes the uncomfortable, it prevents but. And self-inhabitants, which keep the little bit of Trump and his wall plans, are of the opinion that the fence was necessary. “Some sort of physical barrier we need,” says a businessman who wishes to remain anonymous. “Only because of the drugs.” In February, the U.S. border police found during an inspection in Nogales in a load of 115 kilograms of the deadly drug Fentanyl and 180 kg of Crystal Meth – the car is hidden under the cucumber. An open border would be an invitation to the Mexican drug cartels.

Nevertheless, the inhabitants of Nogales resist, if their Mexican neighbors, Trump will only be shown as a criminal. “There was already the fear that the whole debate over the wall, poisoned the climate here,” says the business man. This didn’t happen fortunately. “But it’s not good to hear something about his neighbors.”

last fall, at the climax of the Congress election campaign, sent Trump the army to Nogales. The soldiers attached to the American side, rolls of barbed wire on the border fence. Since then, the wire is hanging there, nasty and shiny – a martial, but largely superfluous demonstration of power, as even the border police to confirm. “Larger groups of illegal immigrants, the fence keeps out anyway,” says an official who pushes it to the border guard. “And the young men, the climb still on the fence, push the barbed wire sticks to the side.”

The other world in El Paso

That a border fence just not all immigration solves problems, you can watch 500 miles East of Nogales, in the Texas town of El Paso. Also there is a steel separating fence the US and Mexico. Nevertheless, the Transitions of migrants will overrun formalities, especially of families from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala to escape the poverty and crime in their home country.

The Border Patrol takes every day, thousands of migrants on the southern border in custody. And El Paso is the epicenter. Since there are no accommodations for so many people, the border police under a freeway overpass. Some of them are released after the Review easy in the United States – a practice that Trump actually finish wanted.

However, while the fence in Nogales, larger groups of migrants, he is in El Paso, one of the reasons for the onslaught of immigrants. This is because of the fence in Nogales directly on the border line. To enter the state territory of the USA, you have to overcome it.

On the southern border of the USA there is indeed a crisis – a humanitarian.

In El Paso is Grande the border at the Rio. The fence is standing but a few meters from the Northern Bank of the river located on U.S. territory. The migrants Wade through the Rio Grande and then on to the narrow strip of land between the fence and the Bank, which already belongs to the United States voluntarily by the Border Patrol to take up. Then you make a request for asylum. The request must be reviewed by a court, which can take months or years. Until then, the asylum must not in the United States to stop and disappear. The criminal gangs which earn money with the smuggling of people in the USA a lot of money to know.

On the southern border of the United States so there is actually a crisis. However, it is not a crisis of the kind that the President, Trump summons – criminal hordes that need to be blocked by a wall, but a humanitarian. Thousands of migrants, among them hundreds of children and young people, are locked in a reception camp, where you may barely be supplied. The chief of the U.S. customs and border protection Kevin McAleenan, sent a dramatic appeal to Washington. His authority is in need of help, otherwise it will be a tragedy.

(editing Tamedia)

Created: 28.03.2019, 19:54 PM