Ev Meade, director of the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego, says many are under the false impression that the border is “open,” due to the lack of a physical wall along 2,000 kilometers of land.

In addition to aerial technology, Meade says the treacherous mountain ranges along the Sonoran Desert with Arizona already serve as deadly natural barriers.

“It’s a searing desert with mountain ranges that aren’t precisely parallel, meaning that it is very difficult to know where you are.”

Seaborne crisis

Where the land ends in southern California, the Pacific Ocean begins.

While the majority of migrant deaths in the United States are due to lack of water, officials are increasingly concerned about those resulting from seaborne excursions.

As Morones notes, “coyotes” or smugglers who send migrants north provide no necessary precautions before pushing them out to sea.

“They cross in little fishing boats called ‘pangas,’ – they don’t cross [by the shore] and just show up over here. They go a couple hundred miles north, and they show up in San Clemente,” he said. “The smugglers don’t provide life vests, the boats are made for two people and they put 15 people on them. They flip over and the people die.”

A place to reunite

As waves break on the rusting border structure, there is one place on the far west coast where immigrants can “see” their relatives. Friendship Park is run by the U.S. Border Patrol on weekends.[xyz-ihs snippet=”Adsense-responsive”]Through holes one centimeter in diameter, families separated for years attempt to touch by the fingertips.

One family, from Michoacan, Mexico, traveled four hours by plane so that they could see their son, Alejandro Moreno, a resident of California, who lacks the legal documents to travel home and return to his studies.

It was the second such reunion for the family in 14 years. Moreno’s sister burst into tears.

“My heart breaks,” she said. “But there’s no other way. We have to persevere.”

But Moreno, once resigned to the possibility of never seeing his mother again, now takes a different outlook.

“I know some people don’t ever see their parents,” he said. “But this gives me hope that maybe one day I can hug her.”

Arturo Martinez contributed to this report.

Source: VOA

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