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24 images Created 30 Mar 2018

The Southwest Border

The southwest border of the United States, akin to a continental socio-economic fault line, separates two worlds. To the south is Latin America, which for centuries has borne the brunt of harsh colonial interference. Foreign intervention and exploitation have deprived many Latin American countries of regular peaceful transitions of power, something virtually unknown north of the border in the US and Canada. Social, political and economic upheaval regularly drive migrants and asylum seekers to the US border in hope of a better life. Many never survive the quest, falling prey to organized crime or succumbing to the harsh elements of the borderlands.

Since the 1990’s, the southwest border has become one of the most heavily barricaded borders in the world. NAFTA planners, knowing their 1994 trade agreement would ruin the livelihoods of millions of Mexican farmers, proposed a metal border wall to stem the flow of migrants northward. After 9/11, investment in border control grew exponentially. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) and ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) now form a security juggernaut in the US. The ever longer and higher border wall now works in tandem with a “virtual wall” of cutting-edge high-tech surveillance equipment positioned along the 3,000-km border. The same phenomenon is occurring elsewhere: the number of border walls in the world has quadrupled since 1990.

And then there is legislation. The Trump Administration, for example, has proposed or implemented a steady stream of shocking anti-immigrant policies, most contested in the courts and some eventually abandoned. While the Trump Administration’s policies are extreme, US immigration practices in previous decades have left 12 million undocumented immigrants living in fear of deportation from the US, without access to citizenship or the basic services and rights enjoyed by US citizens. Mexican border cities from Tijuana to Matamoros have been flooded with deportees, their lives turned upside down since being expelled from the country they called home. Over the years, a nation-wide network of activists, solidarity and legal organizations have fought back, helping migrants and calling for comprehensive immigration reform.

Photographing policies is of course impossible, but their impact is very visible: landscapes lined with steel walls and surveillance towers, border police, refugee camps, water barrels in barren landscapes, graveyards and other signs can be found throughout the border region. In this project, the story told by the land is enriched by the testimonials of those caught up in the drama that plays out on the southwest border every day of the year.
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  • March 21, 2018 – Tijuana : Next to the Pacific Ocean stands the first 19th century monument marking the US-Mexico border. Behind it a wall and surveillance technology from subsequent centuries.
    SWB_01.jpg
  • March 23, 2018 – Tijuana : Miguel was smuggled to safety in the US when he was 7 years old. Undocumented and unable to afford university, he became a sales representative. At 34, he was arrested for driving without a license and deported to Mexico. At the time of this portrait, he was doing temporary janitorial work in Tijuana.
    SWB_02.jpg
  • March 19, 2018 - Boulevard, California : Many parts of the border wall consist of 5-meter-high vertical steel bars which make climbing and breaching difficult.
    SWB_04.jpg
  • March 23, 2018 – Tijuana : Rocky Hernandez came to the US as an infant, went to school, fought for the US Army in the Vietnam War, then opened a barbershop. In his 60's he was jailed after receiving a series of DUI’s. According to his testimony, he was then blindfolded by ICE agents, taken to the Mexican border and told "Now you're going home." He was 71 years old at the time.
    SWB_05.jpg
  • March 21, 2018 – Tijuana : The border wall plunges into the Pacific Ocean between Tijuana and San Ysidro, California.
    SWB_06.jpg
  • December 5, 2018 – Tijuana : Asylum seekers from Central America scramble for food, clothing and diapers distributed by a San Diego-based non-profit, the Coalición de Hondureños en el exterior.
    SWB_10.JPG
  • March 18, 2018 - Ocotillo, California - Designed to stop illegal vehicle crossings, the "Normandy" barrier is made of recycled railway tracks and extends from Calexico to the Jacumba wilderness.
    SWB_07.jpg
  • March 17, 2018 - San Diego, California : Volunteers listen to speeches by the solidarity organization Border Angels prior to walking in the Jacumba Wilderness to learn of the perils of migration in the US desert.
    SWB_11.JPG
  • March 22, 2018 - Tijuana : Tents line a shelter established by the non-profit Movimiento Juventud 2000 to house deportees from the US, migrants from Central America and others in need of shelter.
    SWB_12.jpg
  • December 6, 2018 - Tijuana : A young Honduran man from the 2018 Central American Caravan seeks shelter from the rain in his makeshift shelter next to the US border wall.
    SWB_13.JPG
  • March 22, 2018 - San Ysidro, California : The 9-meter-high concrete and steel prototypes for Donald Trumps's border wall project were tested by US Special Forces for their ability to prevent breaching, digging and climbing.
    SWB_09.jpg
  • December 2, 2018 - Tijuana : His friend sleeping next to him in the street, 20 year-old Bryan left Honduras with a migrant caravan. He cited Honduras' violence and bleak future as reasons for leaving. Honduran gangs frequently recruit young men. Refusal to join can mean death. Bryan has one year left in high school.
    SWB_14.JPG
  • November 19, 2019 - Highway 281, Brooks County, Texas : A road sign stands as a warning to human smugglers in the region of the US-Mexico border with the highest rate of human smuggling.
    SWB_16.jpg
  • November 21, 2019 - Matamoros, Mexico : The western edge of the largest refugee camp on the US-Mexico border in 2019. Under the Migrant Protection Protocols ("Remain in Mexico" policy) of the Trump administration, over 50,000 asylum claimants were sent back to Mexico in 2019 to await decisions concerning their claim, forcing them to live in tents along the border, or give up and return home to the danger they fled. The policy violates US law and international obligations on returning refugees to persecution. In the first 10 months of the policy, only 11 people received asylum, 0.1 % of 10,000 completed cases.
    SWB_18.jpg
  • November 18, 2019 - Matamoros, Mexico : Ricardo* stated that his father, a Mennonite pastor in Honduras, had been working to calm tensions between warring gangs. When he began freeing young men from the clutches of gangs, removing their tattoos and involving them in community service, the gangs murdered his sister's family. One child survived the attack and later recognized one of the killers at the funeral. Ricardo knew then that his  family was in danger. His extended family is now in southern Mexico, while he attempts to claim asylum in the US for his own family. The US has only accepted 0.1% of asylum claims since implementing its Remain in Mexico policy in January 2019. A 2019 report by Doctors Without Borders stated that more than two-thirds of migrants fleeing Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador left their home countries after a family member was murdered, disappeared or kidnapped. (* fictitious name)
    SWB_19.jpg
  • November 21, 2019 - Matamoros, Mexico : Asylum seekers from Mexico and Central America wash their clothes in the Rio Grande under the Gateway International Bridge which leads to Brownsville, Texas. Because of the Trump Administration's Migrant Protection Protocols, more popularly known as the "Remain in Mexico" policy, asylum seekers are barred from the safety of the US until their claims are accepted, a process that takes months, forcing migrant families to live in tents along the border, or give up and return home to the danger they fled. Neither of the American or Mexican governments offered basic food, security, sanitation or medical services to the approximately 2,000 migrant families living in tents.
    SWB_20.jpg
  • November 21, 2019 - Matamoros, Mexico : Carla* stated that her father began receiving death threats in Nicaragua when he assisted with the organizing of mass protests against the Ortega Government in 2018. Two months later, as the family was celebrating Father's Day, masked men arrived at his home and shot him in the back, then in the head, and wounded several other family members. The family lived in terror over the next year as agents continually threatened them. Carla and her husband arranged to pay a smuggler $11,000 US and began a harrowing voyage through Central America and Mexico to claim asylum in the US for themselves and their young son. The rest of her extended family has fled to other countries. Carla has been too afraid to make contact with them. A 2019 report by Doctors Without Borders stated that more than two-thirds of migrants fleeing neigboring Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador left their home countries after a family member was murdered, disappeared or kidnapped.<br />
(* Fictitious name)
    SWB_22.jpg
  • November 20, 2019 - Los Indios, Texas : The US Border wall winds its way around the edge of a farmer's field just north of the Rio Grande.
    SWB_23.jpg
  • November 17, 2019 - Brownsville, Texas : The US border wall runs through the back yards of residents living just north of the Rio Grande on South Oklahoma Road, west of Brownsville.
    SWB_24.jpg
  • November 22, 2019 - Brooks County, Texas : Water barrel containing 4-liter jugs of water for lost migrants on FM 3066, a road in Brooks County. The water is strategically placed in the region by the South Texas Human Rights Center to save the lives of migrants lost in the dense and disorienting landscape. Migrants smuggled into the US often get lost and die from dehydration, snakebites or other tragic mishaps. The Brooks County Sheriff's Office has found human remains on average once a week since keeping records in 2009.
    SWB_28.jpg
  • November 22, 2019 - Brooks County, Texas : The body of a migrant photographed by the Brooks County Sheriff's Office in November, 2019. According to officers on the scene, the woman was traveling in the brush to try to circumvent the Falfurrias Border Patrol Checkpoint. Her brother reported that she had collapsed and was not breathing. He performed CPR and was able to bring her back. He carried her until he could no longer do so and called the Sheriff's office when he realized she had died. The woman's body was the 43rd found in Brooks County in 2019. Records in the Sheriff's Office dating back to 2009 reveal that, on average, human remains of migrants are found once a week in the county, a region of punishing disorienting landscapes where migrants get lost and die either from dehydration, exhaustion, snakebites or other tragic mishaps.
    SWB_30.jpg
  • March 18, 2018 - Holtville, California : Since 1994, there are approximately 7,000 documented cases of migrants dying crossing the harsh landscape of the US-Mexico border, trying to avoid walls and Border Patrol. Specialists estimate the true number to be at least three times higher. The remains of hundreds of migrants are buried in a small cemetery in Holtville.
    SWB_32.jpg
  • March 18, 2018 - Holtville, California : One of the many anonymous headstones in the migrant cemetery in Holtville which bear the simple markings of John or Jane Doe.
    SWB_33.jpg
  • December 1, 2018 - Tijuana : An abandoned bible lies in the mud in the Benito Juarez Sports Complex, next to the US border wall, where 6,000 migrants from the Central American Caravan set up camp in 2018 after fleeing violence in their home countries.
    SWB_34.JPG