city:tijuana

The #GoFundMe Border Wall Is the Quintessential Trump-Era Grift

In 2012, historian Rick Perlstein wrote a piece of essential reading for understanding modern conservatism, titled “The Long Con” and published by the Baffler. It ties the right’s penchant for absurd and obvious grifts to the conservative mind’s particular vulnerability to fear and lies:

The strategic alliance of snake-oil vendors and conservative true believers points up evidence of another successful long march, of tactics designed to corral fleeceable multitudes all in one place—and the formation of a cast of mind that makes it hard for either them or us to discern where the ideological con ended and the money con began.

Lying, Perlstein said, is “what makes you sound the way a conservative is supposed to sound.” The lies—about abortion factories, ACORN, immigrants, etc.—fund the grifts, and the grifts prey on the psychology that makes the lies so successful.

Perlstein’s piece is all I could think of when I saw last night’s CNN story about the border wall GoFundMe, which seemingly has actually produced Wall. According to CNN, the group We Build the Wall says it has produced a half-mile of border wall in New Mexico. CNN was invited to watch the construction, where Kris Kobach, who is general counsel for the group, spoke “over the clanking and beeping of construction equipment.”

#Steve_Bannon, who is naturally involved with the group, told CNN that the wall connects existing fencing and had “tough terrain” that means it was left “off the government list.” The half-mile stretch of wall cost an “estimated $6 million to $8 million to build,” CNN reported.

CNN also quoted #Jeff_Allen, who owns the property on which the fence was built, as saying: “I have fought illegals on this property for six years. I love my country and this is a step in protecting my country.” According to MSN, Allen partnered with United Constitutional Patriots to build the wall with We Build the Wall’s funding. UCP is the same militia that was seen on video detaining immigrants and misrepresenting themselves as Border Patrol; the Phoenix New Times reported on the “apparent ties” between the UCP and We Build the Wall earlier this month.

This story is bursting at the seams with an all-star lineup of right-wing scammers. The GoFundMe itself, of course, has been rocked by scandal: After the effort raised $20 million, just $980 million short of the billion-dollar goal, GoFundMe said in January that the funds would be returned, since creator Brian Kolfage had originally pledged that “If for ANY reason we don’t reach our goal we will refund your donation.” But Kolfage quickly figured out how to keep the gravy train going, urging those who had donated to allow their donations to be redirected to a non-profit. Ultimately, $14 million of that $20 million figure was indeed rerouted by the idiots who donated it.

That non-profit became #We_Build_The_Wall, and like all good conservative con jobs, it has the celebs of the fever swamp attached to it. Not only #Kris_Kobach, a tenacious liar who failed at proving voter fraud is a widespread problem—but also slightly washed-up figures like Bannon, Sheriff David Clarke, Curt Schilling, and Tom Tancredo. All the stars are here!

How much sleazier could it get? Try this: the main contractor working at the site of New Wall, according to CNN, is Tommy Fisher. The Washington Post reported last week that Trump had “personally and repeatedly urged the head of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers” to give the contract for the border wall to the company owned by Fisher, a “GOP donor and frequent guest on Fox News,” despite the fact that the Corps of Engineers previously said Fisher’s proposals didn’t meet their requirements.

Of course, like all good schemes, the need for more money never ceases: On the Facebook page for the group, the announcement that Wall had been completed was accompanied with a plea for fans to “DONATE NOW to fund more walls! We have many more projects lined up!”

So, what we have is: A tax-exempt non-profit raised $20 million by claiming it would be able to make the federal government build Wall by just giving it the money for it and then, when that didn’t happen, getting most of its donors to reroute that money; then it built a half-mile of wall on private land for as much as $8 million, which went to a firm of a Fox News star whom President Trump adores.

Perlstein wrote in the aforementioned piece that it’s hard to “specify a break point where the money game ends and the ideological one begins,” since “the con selling 23-cent miracle cures for heart disease inches inexorably into the one selling miniscule marginal tax rates as the miracle cure for the nation itself.” The con job was sold through fear: “Conjuring up the most garishly insatiable monsters precisely in order to banish them from underneath the bed, they aim to put the target to sleep.”

The Trump era is the inartful, gaudy, brazen peak of this phenomenon. This time, instead of selling fake stem cell cures using the language of Invading Liberals, the grifters are just straight-up selling—for real American dollars—the promise of building a big wall to keep the monsters out.

▻https://splinternews.com/the-gofundme-border-wall-is-the-quintessential-trump-er-1835062340

Company touted by Trump to build the wall has history of fines, violations

President Donald Trump appears to have set his sights on a North Dakota construction firm with a checkered legal record to build portions of his signature border wall.
The family-owned company, #Fisher_Sand_&_Gravel, claims it can build the wall cheaper and faster than competitors. It was among a handful of construction firms chosen to build prototypes of the President’s border wall in 2017 and is currently constructing portions of barrier on private land along the border in New Mexico using private donations.
It also, however, has a history of red flags including more than $1 million in fines for environmental and tax violations. A decade ago, a former co-owner of the company pleaded guilty to tax fraud, and was sentenced to prison. The company also admitted to defrauding the federal government by impeding the IRS. The former executive, who’s a brother of the current company owner, is no longer associated with it.
More than two years into his presidency, Trump is still fighting to build and pay for his border wall, a key campaign issue. After failing to get his requests for wall funding passed by a Republican-held Congress during his first two years in office, Trump has met resistance this year from a Democratic-controlled House. His attempt to circumvent Congress through a national emergency declaration has been challenged in the courts.
On May 24, a federal district judge blocked the administration from using Defense Department funds to construct parts of the wall. The Trump administration has since appealed the block to the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals and in the interim, asked the district court to allow building to continue pending appeal. The district court denied the administration’s request.
Despite the uncertainty, construction firms have been competing to win multimillion-dollar contracts to build portions of wall, including Fisher Sand & Gravel.

Asked by CNN to comment on the company’s history of environmental violations and legal issues, the company said in a statement: “The questions you are asking have nothing to do with the excellent product and work that Fisher is proposing with regard to protecting America’s southern border. The issues and situations in your email were resolved years ago. None of those matters are outstanding today.”
Catching the President’s attention
The company was founded in North Dakota in 1952 and operates in several states across the US. It’s enjoyed public support from North Dakota Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer, who as a congressman invited the company’s CEO, Tommy Fisher, to Trump’s State of the Union address in 2018. Cramer has received campaign contributions from Fisher and his wife. A photo of the event shared by Fisher in a company newsletter shows Tommy Fisher shaking Trump’s hand.
The Washington Post first reported the President’s interest in Fisher. According to the Post, the President has “aggressively” pushed for the Army Corps of Engineers to award a wall contract to Fisher.
The President “immediately brought up Fisher” during a May 23 meeting in the Oval Office to discuss details of the border wall with various government officials, including that he wants it to be painted black and include French-style doors, according to the Post and confirmed by CNN.
“The Army Corps of Engineers says about 450 miles of wall will be completed by the end of next year, and the only thing President Trump is pushing, is for the wall to be finished quickly so the American people have the safety and security they deserve,” said Hogan Gidley, White House deputy press secretary.
A US government official familiar with the meeting tells CNN that the President has repeatedly mentioned the company in discussions he’s had about the wall with the head of the Army Corps of Engineers, Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite.
Fisher has recently made efforts to raise its public profile, both by upping its lobbying efforts and through repeated appearances on conservative media by its CEO, Tommy Fisher.

In the past two years, for example, the company’s congressional lobbying expenditures jumped significantly — from $5,000 in 2017 to $75,000 in 2018, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-profit that tracks lobbying expenditures.

When asked about Fisher Sand & Gravel’s lobbying, Don Larson, one of Fisher’s registered lobbyists, said: “I am working to help decision makers in Washington become familiar with the company and its outstanding capabilities.”
Media Blitz
As part of a media blitz on outlets including Fox News, SiriusXM Patriot and Breitbart News, Tommy Fisher has discussed his support for the border wall and pitched his company as the one to build it. In a March 5 appearance on Fox & Friends, Fisher said that his company could build 234 miles of border wall for $4.3 billion, compared to the $5.7 billion that the Trump administration has requested from Congress.
Fisher claimed that his firm can work five-to-10 times faster than competitors as a result of its construction process.
The President has also touted Fisher on Fox News. In an April interview in which he was asked about Fisher by Sean Hannity, Trump said the company was “recommended strongly by a great new senator, as you know, Kevin Cramer. And they’re real. But they have been bidding and so far they haven’t been meeting the bids. I thought they would.”
Despite the President’s interest, the company has thus far been unsuccessful in obtaining a contract to build the border wall, beyond that of a prototype.

Earlier this year, Fisher put its name in the running for border wall contracts worth nearly $1 billion. When it lost the bid to Barnard Construction Co. and SLSCO Ltd., Fisher protested the awards over claims that the process was biased. In response, the Army Corps canceled the award. But after a review of the process, the Army Corps combined the projects and granted it to a subsidiary of Barnard Construction, according to an agency spokesperson.
It’s unclear whether the project will proceed, given the recent decision by a federal judge to block the use of Defense Department funds to build parts of the border wall and the administration’s appeal.
Fisher, which has a pending lawsuit in the US Court of Federal Claims over the solicitation process, is listed by the Defense Department as being among firms eligible to compete for future border contracts.

It has moved forward with a private group, We Build the Wall, that is building sections of barrier on private land in New Mexico using private money raised as part of a GoFundMe campaign. Kris Kobach, the former Kansas Secretary of State who is now general counsel for the group, said a half-mile stretch is nearly complete, at an estimated cost of $6 million to $8 million.

In a statement, a Customs and Border Protection spokesperson said Fisher Industries has told them that the company has begun construction on private property along the border “in the approximate area of a USBP border barrier requirement that was not prioritized under current funding.”
The spokesperson added: “It is not uncommon for vendors” to demonstrate their capabilities using “their own resources,” but the agency goes on to “encourage all interested vendors” to compete for border contracts “through established mechanisms to ensure any construction is carried out under relevant federal authorities and meets USBP operational requirements for border barrier.”
In responses provided to CNN through Scott Sleight, an attorney working on behalf of the company, Fisher maintained that it’s “committed to working with all appropriate federal government officials and agencies to provide its expertise and experience to help secure America’s southern border.”
The company says it has “developed a patent-pending bollard fence hanging system that [it] believes allows border fencing to be constructed faster than any contractor using common construction methods.” It also added: “Fisher has been concerned about the procurement procedures and evaluations done by the USACE to date, and hopes these issues can be remedied.”
Relationship with Sen. Cramer
A month after attending the 2018 State of the Union address with Cramer, Fisher and his wife, Candice each contributed the $5,400 maximum donation to Cramer’s campaign for the US Senate, Federal Election Commission records show.
Fisher also donated to several Arizona Republicans in the 2018 election cycle, including giving the $5,400-maximum donation to Martha McSally’s campaign, records show.
A recent video produced by Fisher Sand & Gravel demonstrating its ability to construct the wall includes a clip of Cramer at the controls of a track-hoe lifting sections of barrier wall into place, saying “this is just like XBOX, baby.” Cramer was joined at the demonstration by a handful of other Republican lawmakers from across the country.

Cramer has been publicly critical of how the Army Corps has handled its border wall construction work, arguing that it has moved too slowly and expressing frustration over how it has dealt with Fisher. In an interview with a North Dakota TV station, Cramer said that he believes the corps “made a miscalculation in who they chose over Fisher” and that the company had been “skunked so to speak.” Cramer added that Fisher “remains a pre-qualified, high level, competitor.”

In an interview with CNN, Cramer said that the company has come up in conversations he has had with administration officials, including the President and the head of the Army Corps, but while the senator said that he would “love if they got every inch of the project,” he added that he has “never advocated specifically for them.”
"Every time someone comes to meet with me, whether it’s (Acting Defense Secretary) Shanahan, General Semonite, even with Donald Trump, they bring up Fisher Industries because they assume that’s my thing," Cramer said.
“One of the things I’ve never done is said it should be Fisher,” Cramer said. “Now, I love Fisher. I’d love if they got every inch of the project. They’re my constituents, I don’t apologize for that. But my interest really is more in the bureaucratic process.”
According to an administration official familiar with the situation, Cramer sent information about Fisher to the President’s son-in-law and White House adviser Jared Kushner, who then passed it along to the Army Corps of Engineers for their consideration. The source tells CNN that Kushner was not familiar with the company prior to getting information about them from Cramer.
Cramer said he does recall passing along information about the company to Kushner, but that he did not know what Kushner did with the information.
On May 24, Cramer told a North Dakota radio station that the President has asked him to examine the process of how federal border wall projects are awarded.
“We’re going to do an entire audit,” Cramer said. “I’ve asked for the entire bid process, and all of the bid numbers.” Cramer told CNN the President said he wanted the wall built for the “lowest, best price, and it’s also quality, and that’s what any builder should want.”
Asked about aspects of the company’s checkered legal record, Cramer said “that level of scrutiny is important, but I would hope the same scrutiny would be put on the Corps of Engineers.”
Environmental violations
Though its corporate headquarters are in North Dakota, Fisher has a sizable footprint in Arizona, where it operates an asphalt company as well as a drilling and blasting company. It’s there that the company has compiled an extensive track record of environmental violations.
From 2007 to 2017, Fisher Sand & Gravel compiled more than 1,300 air-quality violations in Maricopa County, culminating in the third highest settlement ever received by the Maricopa County Air Quality Department, according to Bob Huhn, a department spokesperson. That’s a record number of violations for any air-quality settlement in the county, Huhn said. The settlement totaled more than $1 million, though the department received slightly less than that following negotiations, Huhn said.
Most of the violations came from an asphalt plant that the company was running in south Phoenix that has since closed. While the plant was still running, the City of Phoenix filed 469 criminal charges against the company from August to October of 2009, according to a city spokesperson.
According to a 2010 article in the Arizona Republic, Fisher reached an agreement with Phoenix officials to close the plant in 2010. As part of the deal, fines were reduced from $1.1 million to an estimated $243,000 and all criminal charges were reduced to civil charges.
Mary Rose Wilcox was a member of the Maricopa Board of Supervisors at the time the city and county were fighting Fisher over the asphalt plant, which was located in her district. “They tried to persuade us they were good guys since they were a family-owned company. But they were spreading noxious fumes into a residential area,” Wilcox said. “We tried to work with them, but their violations were just so blatant.”
Michael Pops, a community activist who lived in the area around the plant, remembers fighting with Fisher for six years before the plant finally shut down. “The impact they had on this community was devastating,” Pops said, adding many low-income residents living near the asphalt plant were sickened from the fumes the plant emitted.
The company has also racked up more than 120 violations with the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality from 2004 until as recently as last summer, according to the department.
In 2011, Fisher agreed to a Consent Judgement with ADEQ over numerous air quality violations the company had committed. As part of that settlement, Fisher agreed to pay $125,000 in civil penalties, and that it would remain in compliance with state air quality standards. Within two years Fisher was found to be in violation of that agreement and was forced to pay an additional $500,000 in fines, according to the state’s attorney general’s office.
Legal trouble
Internally, the company has also confronted issues.
In 2011, Fisher Sand & Gravel agreed to pay $150,000 to settle a sexual discrimination and retaliation suit filed by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The lawsuit charged that the company violated federal anti-discrimination laws when it “subjected two women workers to egregious verbal sexual harassment by a supervisor and then fired one of them after she repeatedly asked the supervisor to stop harassing her and complained to a job superintendent.”
The settlement required Fisher to provide anti-discrimination training to its employees in New Mexico and review its policies on sexual harassment.
Micheal Fisher, a former co-owner of Fisher and Tommy’s brother, was sentenced to prison in 2009 for tax fraud, according to the Justice Department. Fisher pleaded guilty to “conspiracy to defraud the United States by impeding the [Internal Revenue Service], four counts of aiding in the filing of false federal tax returns for FSG and four counts of filing false individual tax returns,” according to a Justice Department release.
The company also admitted responsibility for defrauding the US by impeding the IRS, according to the DOJ. Citing a long standing policy of not commenting on the contracting process, the Army Corps declined to comment on whether Fisher’s history factored into its decision not to award Fisher a contract.

▻https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/31/politics/fisher-sand-and-gravel-legal-history-border-wall/index.html

Private US-Mexico border wall ordered open by gov’t, fights back and is now closed again

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The privately funded portion of the U.S.-Mexico border wall is now fully secure and closed again after one of its gates had been ordered to remain open until disputes about waterway access could be resolved.

“Our border wall & gate are secure again and we still have not had a single breach. I want to thank the IBWC for acting swiftly and we look forward to working with you on our future projects,” triple amputee Air Force veteran Brian Kolfage posted to Twitter on Tuesday night.

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Kolfage created We Build The Wall Inc., a nonprofit that is now backed by former Trump Administration Chief Strategist Steve Bannon. The group crowd-funded more than $22 million in order to privately build a border wall and then sell it to the U.S. government for $1.

A portion of that wall has been constructed in Texas for between $6 and $8 million. The 1-mile-long wall is located on private property near El Paso, Texas, and Sunland Park, New Mexico.

However, the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) had ordered a 33-foot gate within the private border wall to remain open – not locked and closed – over a waterway access issue, according to BuzzFeed News. The IBCW addresses waterway issues between the U.S. and Mexico.

“This is normally done well in advance of a construction project,” IBWC spokesperson Lori Kuczmanski said. “They think they can build now and ask questions later, and that’s not how it works.”

BuzzFeed reported that the IBWC said the gate “had blocked officials from accessing a levee and dam, and cut off public access to a historic monument known as Monument One, the first in a series of obelisks that mark the U.S.–Mexico border from El Paso to Tijuana.”

By Tuesday night, the IBWC said the gate would remain locked at night and issued a statement.

“The U.S. Section of the International Boundary and Water Commission (USIBWC) will lock the privately-owned gate on federal property at night effective immediately due to security concerns,” it said.

The statement continues:

The USIBWC is continuing to work with We Build the Wall regarding its permit request. Until this decision, the private gate was in a locked open position. We Build the Wall, a private organization, built a gate on federal land in Sunland Park, N.M., near El Paso, Texas, without authority, and then locked the gate closed on June 6, 2019. The private gate blocks a levee road owned by the U.S. Government. After repeated requests to unlock and open the private gate, the United States Section of the International Boundary and Water Commission (USIBWC), accompanied by two uniformed law enforcement officers from the Dona Ana County Sheriff’s Office, removed the private lock, opened the gate, and locked the gate open pending further discussions with We Build the Wall. The gate was also opened so that USIBWC employees can conduct maintenance and operations at American Dam.

The USIBWC did not authorize the construction of the private gate on federal property as announced on We Build the Wall’s Twitter page. The USIBWC is not charged with securing other fences or gates as reported by We Build the Wall. The international border fences are not on USIBWC property. The USIBWC did not open any other gates in the El Paso area as erroneously reported. Other gates and the border fence are controlled by other federal agencies.

When the proper documentation is received for the permit, USIBWC will continue to process the permit application.

Before the statement had been released, Kolfage posted to Twitter.
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mericanmilitarynews.com/2019/06/private-us-mexico-border-wall-ordered-open-by-intl-group-later-closed-locked-after-security-concerns/

An 8-year-old girl climbed an 18-foot replica of Donald Trump’s ’un-climbable’ border wall in seconds

An 18-foot replica of Donald Trump’s border wall has been scaled in a matter of seconds by novice climbers, an eight-year-old girl, and a man who returned for another attempt while juggling with one hand.

The US president described his wall as “virtually impenetrable” during a trip to the US-Mexico border in September, claiming 20 “world class” mountain climbers had told him his chosen prototype was difficult to climb.

“We had 20 mountain climbers. That’s all they do, they love to climb mountains … some of them were champions,” Mr Trump said. “And we gave them different prototypes of walls, and this was the one that was hardest to climb … this wall can’t be climbed.”

His remarks were taken as a challenge by 75-year-old Rick Weber, co-founder of Muir Valley, a rock climbing park and nature reserve in Kentucky.

“You don’t tell a bona fide rock climber something’s impossible to climb,” he told Time magazine.

Mr Weber, a retired engineer, decided to build a replica of Mr Trump’s wall using official dimensions and recent images of the structure.

He wrote in to popular climbing magazine Rock & Ice to announce a climbing competition on 11 and 12 October to coincide with Rocktoberfest, one of the largest annual gatherings of climbers in the US.

“No one in our climbing community knows any of these 20 mountaineers. I doubt if they exist,” he wrote. "More importantly, to declare something to be impossible to climb to a bona fide rock climber is to issue a challenge.

“So, I decided to build an exact replica and hold a competition.”

Ahead of the official competition, several people had already managed to climb the wall.

Among these was eight-year-old Lucy Hancock, who climbed the replica using a belay – a rope that acts as a safety measure, rather than an aid. Footage showed her scaling the majority of the wall in little more than a minute.

Erik Kloeker, a 29-year-old climbing guide and property manager at Muir Valley who told The Courier Journal he had been climbing for nine years, climbed the structure in about 30 seconds in a demonstration.

“The border wall that they’re building could be climbed pretty easily,” said Mr Kloeker, who juggled several items in one hand during repeat attempts.

Mr Trump’s border wall is being built at heights of 18-feet and 30-feet, consisting of singular pillars and a larger panel along the top.

Mr Weber told Time that as the large top panel is the same size, a climber who manages to ascend pillars of the 18-foot version would have no difficulty scaling the additional distance.

He decided to allow climbers to hold on to the side of the top panel, as he claimed such gaps existed between each section of wall in the real designs.

The retired engineer said a wall without pillars would be far more difficult to climb.

“I’m not making an argument that we shouldn’t have a secure border. I’m not doing that at all,” he said. “What I’m trying to do is to make sure that we’re not blowing a lot of money on some silly nonsense of putting up something that he thinks can’t be climbed. Because it can. And will be.”

During his September visit to the San Diego border, Mr Trump claimed hopeful climbers would “have to bring hoses and waters [sic]” to combat the large top panel of the design, which he said was designed to absorb enough heat to “fry an egg”.

Mr Trump recently denied making enquiries about creating a moat filled with alligators and snakes along the border.

Despite campaigning on the promise that Mexico would pay for the structure, the Defence Department has been forced to divert some $3.6 billion in military funding.

▻https://www.businessinsider.com/8-year-old-climbs-replica-of-trump-wall-in-seconds-2019-10?IR=T

The cost of 2 National Guard border arrests would help a homeless vet for a year

President Donald Trump’s decision to send #National_Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border has drawn a mixed response. Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey welcomed the move, while California Gov. Jerry Brown’s National Guard said it would “review” the request.

Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., had a specific complaint: He said it was a poor use of tax dollars.

“Using the National Guard to do border security is very expensive,” Gallego tweeted April 3. “For what it would cost the Guard to make just TWO arrests at the border, we could give a homeless veteran permanent housing for an entire year.”

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Guard border deployment creates issues for Pentagon

Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) have now sent two requests for assistance to the Pentagon’s new Border Security Support Cell, which was hastily established to help coordination between the Department of Defense (DOD) and Department of Homeland Security.

It’s estimated that it will cost $182 million to keep 2,093 guardsmen at the border through the end of September, which represents just more than half of the personnel approved.

The amount covers $151 million in pay and allowances for the 2,093 personnel, as well as $31 million for 12,000 flying hours for 26 UH-72 Lakota helicopters, according to a defense memo on the amount.

▻http://thehill.com/policy/defense/386617-guard-border-deployment-creates-issues-for-pentagon

#CBP #gardes-frontière #frontières

The Cal. National Guard Is Working At the Mexican Border, But Mostly Behind The Scenes

In California - a state with strong differences with the White House on immigration policy - about 400 troops are on border duty. But they’re keeping a low profile.

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Signalé par Reece Jones sur twitter, avec ce commentaire:

What are US National Guard troops doing at the border? Analyze intelligence, work as dispatchers, and monitor cameras “but not cameras that look across the border into Mexico”

L’armée américaine mobilisée pour défendre la frontière

En campagne pour les élections américaines de mi-mandat, le président Trump a focalisé son discours sur la caravane de migrants d’Amérique centrale qui fait route à travers le Mexique. Il a promis de tout faire pour empêcher ces demandeurs d’asile de pénétrer sur le territoire américain (“Personne n’entrera”), y compris de déployer “entre 10 000 et 15 000 soldats” en plus de la police aux frontières et de la police de l’immigration.

L’armée estime que seuls 20 % des migrants, soit 1 400 selon les estimations les plus hautes, iront jusqu’à la frontière qui se trouve encore à quelque 1 300 kilomètres et plusieurs semaines de marche, rapporte le Los Angeles Times. Le chiffre de 15 000 hommes correspond à peu près au nombre de soldats déployés en Afghanistan, observe le même quotidien. Les militaires envoyés à la frontière peuvent se poser des questions sur le sens de cette mission, comme l’illustre ici le dessinateur Chappatte.

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U.S. Troops’ First Order at the Border: Laying Razor Wire

Soldiers fill local hotels, joke about finding ways to keep busy.
On Monday morning in this border town, about a dozen U.S. Army soldiers unfurled reams of razor wire on top of a wrought-iron fence alongside a bridge to Mexico.

The soldiers from the 36th Engineer Brigade at Fort Riley, Kan., who wore helmets but didn’t appear to be armed, are among thousands of troops deployed in recent days to the southwest U.S. border as part of Operation Faithful Patriot.

Around border crossings throughout Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, military personnel have filled up hotels and delivered trucks packed with coils of razor wire as they begin to support U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers.
The personnel were sent in advance of the anticipated arrival of thousands of Central Americans, including children, traveling in caravans currently several hundred miles south of the nearest U.S. border crossing.

At the DoubleTree Suites Hotel in McAllen, Texas, the bar did brisk business Sunday night as soldiers who had changed into civilian clothes chatted over drinks. Some joked about needing to find ways to keep soldiers busy during their deployment.

The Anzalduas International Bridge, where the Kansas-based troops were working, is used only for vehicle traffic to and from the Mexican city of Reynosa. The wire was placed on top of fences at least 15 feet high along each side of the bridge that sat several dozen feet above an embankment.

Outside the port of entry where vehicles from Mexico are stopped after crossing the bridge, shiny razor wire recently placed around the facility glistened in the afternoon sun.

Migrants seeking asylum who cross the border illegally generally don’t come to the port, but swim or wade across the Rio Grande and turn themselves in to Border Patrol agents.

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Near another bridge connecting Hidalgo, Texas, to Reynosa, a concertina wire fence was recently erected along the river edge, a placement more likely to impede illegal migrants who arrive on foot.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials have determined where the military placed razor wire, Army Col. Rob Manning, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters Monday during a briefing.

It is part of an effort previously announced by Air Force Gen. Terrence J. O’Shaughnessy, commander of the U.S. Northern Command, to “harden the points of entry and address key gaps.”

Near the Donna-Rio Bravo International Bridge about 22 miles southeast of McAllen, troops on Monday were working on what looked to be a staging area to prepare for coming work. Two armed military police officers stood guard, opening and closing a gate as flatbed trailers carrying heavy military trucks and transports with troops inside arrived. At least one tent apparently intended to house troops was in place Monday.

President Trump ordered the deployment last month after the first caravan made its way into Mexico. He had described the impending caravan’s arrival as an “invasion.”

The Pentagon said Monday that more than 5,000 troops are at or would be on their way to the U.S.-Mexico border by the end of the day, with about 2,700 in Texas, 1,200 in Arizona and 1,100 in California. Eventually, nearly 8,000 will be deployed, according to a U.S. official. Officials from the Department of Homeland Security have said the troops won’t be used to enforce immigration laws but will provide backup for Border Patrol agents and Customs and Border Protection officers.

At the Vaquero Hangout, an open-air bar within eyesight of the Anzalduas bridge, a flag declaring support for the U.S. military hung from the rafters. It was business as usual on Sunday evening. Some patrons watched the Houston Texans’ NFL game, while others were focused on a live band, George and the Texas Outlaws.

A few folks briefly took notice of flashing lights from a U.S. Customs and Border Protection vehicle parked on the bridge as the soldiers lay down razor wire, an effort they would continue the next day.

▻https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-troops-first-order-at-the-border-laying-razor-wire-1541509201
#fil_barbelé #barbelé

Pentagon to begin drawdown of troops at border: report

The Pentagon is planning to begin a drawdown of troops at the southern border as soon as this week, the Army commander overseeing the mission told Politico on Monday.

Army Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan told the news outlet that the 5,800 active-duty troops sent to assist Customs and Border Protection at the U.S.-Mexico border should be home by Christmas.
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“Our end date right now is 15 December, and I’ve got no indications from anybody that we’ll go beyond that,” said Buchanan, who is overseeing the mission from Texas.

Buchanan said engineer and logistics troops, which make up the largest parts of the deployment, will begin returning home soon.

According to Politico’s report, some troops will begin leaving the area before the so-called migrant caravan arrives at the border.

The news of the troops’ return comes as critics call President Trump’s request to send thousands of troops to the border a “political stunt.”

Trump before Election Day stoked fears over an approaching group of Central American migrants heading towards the southern border, which he referred to as an “invasion.” He requested the deployment of thousands of troops to the border in a support mission just before Nov. 6.

Some lawmakers have accused Trump of wasting resources and manpower on the mission, as reports have emerged that the troops are restless and underutilized.

Thousands of participants in the caravan over the weekend reached Tijuana, Mexico, where they were met with vast protests. Some of the protesters are echoing Trump’s language, calling the group a danger and an invasion, The Associated Press reported.

Most of the members of the caravan are reportedly escaping rampant poverty and violence in their home countries.

▻https://thehill.com/policy/defense/417503-pentagon-to-begin-drawdown-of-troops-at-border-report

–-> commentaire sur twitter:

Just 3 weeks after deployment, Trump’s Pentagon is sending the military home from the border. They’ve served their purpose as the GOP’s 11th hour campaign force. Now we’re stuck with a hundred miles of trashy concertina wire and a $200 million bill.

▻https://twitter.com/LaikenJordahl/status/1064644464726048768

Troops at U.S.-Mexican border to start coming home

All the troops should be home by Christmas, as originally expected, Army Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan said in an interview Monday.

The 5,800 troops who were rushed to the southwest border amid President Donald Trump’s pre-election warnings about a refugee caravan will start coming home as early as this week — just as some of those migrants are beginning to arrive.

Democrats and Republicans have criticized the deployment as a ploy by the president to use active-duty military forces as a prop to try to stem Republican losses in this month’s midterm elections.

The general overseeing the deployment told POLITICO on Monday that the first troops will start heading home in the coming days as some are already unneeded, having completed the missions for which they were sent. The returning service members include engineering and logistics units whose jobs included placing concertina wire and other barriers to limit access to ports of entry at the U.S.-Mexico border.

All the troops should be home by Christmas, as originally expected, Army Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan said in an interview Monday.

“Our end date right now is 15 December, and I’ve got no indications from anybody that we’ll go beyond that,” said Buchanan, who leads the land forces of U.S. Northern Command.

The decision to begin pulling back comes just weeks after Trump ordered the highly unusual deployment.

In previous cases in which the military deployed to beef up security at the border, the forces consisted of part-time National Guard troops under the command of state governors who backed up U.S. Customs and Border Protection and other law enforcement agencies.

But the newly deployed troops, most of them unarmed and from support units, come from the active-duty military, a concession the Pentagon made after Trump insisted that the deployment include “not just the National Guard.”

Buchanan confirmed previous reports that the military had rejected a request from the Department of Homeland Security for an armed force to back up Border Patrol agents in the event of a violent confrontation.

“That is a law enforcement task, and the secretary of Defense does not have the authority to approve that inside the homeland,” Buchanan said.

The closure earlier Monday of one entry point along the California border near Tijuana, Mexico, was only partial and did not require more drastic measures, Buchanan said.

“About half of the lanes were closed this morning, but that’s it,” he reported. “No complete closures.”

Other ports might be closed fully in the future, he said, but he did not anticipate any need to take more drastic measures.

“If CBP have reliable information that one of their ports is about to get rushed with a mob, or something like that that could put their agents at risk, they could ask us to completely close the port,” Buchanan said. “You understand the importance of commerce at these ports. Nobody in CBP wants to close a port unless they’re actually driven to do so.”

The troop deployment should start trailing off as engineer and other logistics troops wind down their mission of building base camps and fortifying ports of entry for the Border Patrol.

Army and Marine engineers have now emplaced about 75 percent of the obstacles they planned to, including concertina wire, shipping containers, and concrete barriers at ports of entry. “Once we get the rest of the obstacles built, we don’t need to keep all those engineers here. As soon as I’m done with a capability, what I intend to do is redeploy it,” Buchanan said. “I don’t want to keep these guys on just to keep them on.”

Logistics troops, too, will be among the first to head home. “I will probably ask to start redeploying some of our logistic capability,” Buchanan predicted. “Now that things are set down here, we don’t need as many troops to actually build base camps and things like that, because the base camps are built."

Among the troops who will remain after construction engineers and logisticians start departing are helicopter pilots, planners, medical personnel, and smaller “quick response” teams of engineers who can help Border Patrol personnel shut down traffic at their ports of entry.

In contrast to the speed of the deployment in early November and the fanfare surrounding it, the withdrawal promises to be slower and quieter — but Buchanan expects it to be done before Christmas.

“That doesn’t mean it’s impossible,” he added. “But right now, this is a temporary mission, and we’re tasked to do it until the 15th of December.”

▻https://www.politico.com/story/2018/11/19/troops-us-mexico-border-come-home-1005510

Trump’s Border Stunt Is a Profound Betrayal of Our Military

The president used America’s military not against any real threat but as toy soldiers, with the intent of manipulating a domestic midterm election.

A week before the midterm elections, the president of the United States announced he would deploy up to 15,000 active duty military troops to the United States-Mexico border to confront a menacing caravan of refugees and asylum seekers. The soldiers would use force, if necessary, to prevent such an “invasion” of the United States.

Mr. Trump’s announcement and the deployment that followed (of roughly 5,900) were probably perfectly legal. But we are a bipartisan threesome with decades of experience in and with the Pentagon, and to us, this act creates a dangerous precedent. We fear this was lost in the public hand-wringing over the decision, so let us be clear: The president used America’s military forces not against any real threat but as toy soldiers, with the intent of manipulating a domestic midterm election outcome, an unprecedented use of the military by a sitting president.

The public debate focused on secondary issues. Is there truly a threat to American security from an unarmed group of tired refugees and asylum seekers on foot and a thousand miles from the border? Even the Army’s internal assessment did not find this a very credible threat.

Can the president deny in advance what could be legitimate claims for asylum, without scrutiny? Most likely, this violates treaty commitments the United States made as part of its agreement to refugee conventions in 1967, which it has followed for decades.

The deployment is not, in the context of the defense budget, an albatross. We are already paying the troops, wherever they’re deployed, and the actual incremental costs of sending them to the border might be $100 million to $200 million, a tiny fraction of the $716 billion defense budget.

Still, we can think of many ways to put the funds to better use, like improving readiness.

It’s also not unusual for a president to ask the troops to deploy to the border in support of border security operations. Presidents of both parties have sent troops to the border, to provide support functions like engineering, logistics, transportation and surveillance.

But those deployments have been generally in smaller numbers, usually the National Guard, and never to stop a caravan of refugees and asylum seekers.

So, generously, some aspects of the deployment are at least defensible. But one is not, and that aspect is the domestic political use — or rather, misuse — of the military.

James Mattis, the secretary of defense, asserted that the Defense Department does not “do stunts.” But this was a blatant political stunt. The president crossed a line — the military is supposed to stay out of domestic politics. As many senior military retirees have argued, the forces are not and should not be a political instrument. They are not toy soldiers to be moved around by political leaders but a neutral institution, politically speaking.
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Oh, some might say, presidents use troops politically all the time. And so they do, generally in the context of foreign policy decisions that have political implications. Think Lyndon Johnson sending more troops to Vietnam, fearing he would be attacked for “cutting and running” from that conflict. Or George W. Bush crowing about “mission accomplished” when Saddam Hussein was toppled. Those are not the same thing as using troops at home for electoral advantage.

Electoral gain, not security, is this president’s goal. Two of us served in the military for many years; while all troops must obey the legal and ethical orders of civilian leaders, they need to have faith that those civilian leaders are using them for legitimate national security purposes. But the border deployment put the military right in the middle of the midterm elections, creating a nonexistent crisis to stimulate votes for one party.

When partisan actions like this occur, they violate civil-military traditions and erode that faith, with potentially long-term damage to the morale of the force and our democratic practice — all for electoral gain.

The deployment is a stunt, a dangerous one, and in our view, a misuse of the military that should have led Mr. Mattis to consider resigning, instead of acceding to this blatant politicization of America’s military.

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/11/19/opinion/19adamsWeb/merlin_146577069_9f20f0d5-e5b5-48fe-ba09-4d6a8def0bd3-superJumbo.jpg?quality=90&auto=webp#.jpg

The Military Is ’Securing’ a 1,900-Mile Border with 22 Miles of Razor Wire

“#Operation_Faithful_Patriot” is nothing more than a very expensive, politically motivated P.R. campaign.
Skim through the Pentagon’s media site for Operation Faithful Patriot—the fittingly ridiculous name for the deployment of some 7,000 American troops to various spots along the Mexican border—and you’ll see lots of razor wire.

There are photos of American troops laying razor wire (technically known as concertina wire) along the California-Mexico border. Of wire being affixed to the top of fences and to the sides of buildings. Everywhere you look on the Pentagon’s site, you find wire, wire, and more wire. Photos of soldiers carrying rolls of unused wire, snapshots of forklifts bringing more of the stuff to the border, and even videos of wire being unrolled and deployed. It’s thrilling stuff, truly.

The message is not subtle. President Donald Trump might not have convinced Congress to blow billions for a fully operational border wall, but good luck to any immigrant caravan that happens to stumble into the thorny might of the American military’s sharpest deterrents.

The focus on concertina wire isn’t just in the Pentagon’s internal media. The Wall Street Journal dedicated an entire Election Day story to how troops in Granjeno, Texas, had “unfurled reams of razor wire on top of a wrought-iron fence alongside a bridge to Mexico.” Troops stringing wire also appeared in The New York Post, The Washington Post, and elsewhere.

There is so much concertina wire deployed to the southern border that if it were all stretched out from end to end, it would reach all the way from Brownsville, Texas, on the Gulf Coast to....well, whatever is 22 miles west of Brownsville, Texas.

Yes. Despite the deluge of photos and videos of American troops are securing the southern border with reams of razor wire, Buzzfeed’s Vera Bergengruen reports that “troops have deployed with 22 miles of the wire so far, with 150 more available.”

The U.S.–Mexico border is roughly 1,950 miles long.

The wire doesn’t seem to be getting strung with any sort of strategic purpose, either. That WSJ story about the troops in Texas hanging wire from a bridge says that the “wire was placed on top of fences at least 15 feet high along each side of the bridge that sat several dozen feet above an embankment” while the bridge itself remains open to vehicle traffic from Mexico. If there is a goal, it would seem to be making the border look more prickly and dystopian while not actually creating any sort of barrier.

It’s no wonder, then, that the troops deployed to the border are confused about why they are there. On Wednesday, when Defense Secretary Jim Mattis visited some of the troops stationed near McAllen, Texas, he was met with lots of questions and provided few answers.

“Sir, I have a question. The wire obstacles that we’ve implanted along the border....Are we going to be taking those out when we leave?” one of the soldiers asked Mattis, according to Bergengruen. Another asked Mattis to explain the “short- and long-term plans of this operation.”

“Short-term right now, you get the obstacles in so the border patrolmen can do what they gotta do,” Mattis responded. “Longer term, it’s somewhat to be determined.”

Even at a time when most American military engagements seem to be conducted with a “TBD” rationale, this feels especially egregious. Mattis did his best on Wednesday to make the effort seem like a meaningful attempt to secure the border, while simultaneously admitting that he does not expect the deployed troops to actually come into contact with any immigrant caravans. Lately he’s been talking about how the deployment is supposedly good training for unconventional circumstances.

It’s becoming increasingly obvious that Operation Faithful Patriot—a name so silly that the Pentagon has decided to stop using it—is nothing more than a very expensive, politically motivated P.R. campaign. Of the 39 units deployed, five of them are public affairs units. There seems to be no clear mission, no long-term objective, and no indication that the troops will add meaningful enforcement to existing border patrols.

As for all that wire? It doesn’t really seem to be working either.

https://media.reason.com/mc/eric.boehm%40reason.com/RazorWire856.jpg?h=225&w=300#.jpg

▻https://reason.com/blog/2018/11/19/the-military-is-securing-a-1900-mile-bor
#Faithful_Patriot #barbelé

v. aussi :
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/748944
Janvier 2019... l’histoire se répète...

« La propagation de la violence à la suite d’une intervention de police est liée aux conditions socio-économiques, et cela doit être intégré à une nouvelle manière de #faire_de_la_police

pfiou

Contre la propagation, on a vu récemment des cas de persécutions policières répétées à l’encontre d’utilisateurs d’une des armes utilisables par les pauvre, les réseaux sociaux, qui (plus qu’en 2005) documentent les interventions et menées policières.

#média #contrôle

Hormis la fin très républicano-compatible, le film « Banlieue 13 » décrit assez fidèlement les conditions de #relégation que subissent toute les populations qui logent dans ces zones géographiques, lesquels se fixent comme des tiques sur la périphéries des villes gentrifiées. Welcome to Tijuana. (Tequila, sex o marihuana ...)

#murs #USA #frontières

US Border Patrol eyes murals painted by deported veterans on Mexico border wall

An #upside-down American flag - a national distress signal - is painted on the south side of the US-Mexico border wall near San Diego as a symbol for the plight of deported veterans. Hector Lopez, a deported veteran in Tijuana who helped paint the mural, said U.S. Border Patrol called him in April and ordered him to remove it.

https://www.stripes.com/polopoly_fs/1.525824.1525732204!/image/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_900/image.jpg

Street Artist JR Installs Massive Face of a Child on Mexican Side of US Border Wall

https://pbs.twimg.com/card_img/1143719147550990337/V-kwVHhc?format=jpg&name=600x314#.jpg

Street artist JR continues to use his art for social commentary with his latest installation on the Mexican side of the US/Mexico border wall. JR and his team constructed an enormous wood support for one of his signature posters, which shows a small child peering over the wall.

Organized together with renowned curator Pedro Alonzo—known for his previous work with Os Gemeos, Shepherd Fairey, Banksy, and Swoon—the piece uses a human face to strike a chord about immigration between the United States and Mexico. Given President Trump’s recent announcement to rescind DACA, which protects undocumented immigrants who were brought to America as children, the subject is all the more timely and powerful.

This isn’t the first time the French artist has used his art to explore the topic of immigration. In 2015, his Ellis Island street art project revealed what life was like for immigrants entering the United States in the 19th century. And, of course, he first gained international attention in 2005 with his wheat pasted photographs of rioters in the Les Bosquets suburb of Paris. These powerful images focused attention on issues of how first and second generation immigrants were integrated—or not—into Parisian society and the tensions it created.

At its core, JR’s work is about faces, and how if we look at one another without prejudice, the world would be a better place. His work on the separation wall between Israel and Palestine was envisioned with this goal in mind. Pasting Palestinian portraits on the Israeli side and Israeli portraits on the Palestinian side, he proved that people couldn’t distinguish one from the other.

Here, with his latest project, JR once again proves that he’s not afraid to tackle difficult topics. And maybe, by looking at this small child curiously peeking into the United States, further dialogue about what it means to immigrate and the relationship between these neighboring countries with be explored.

“I think there is no such thing as art trying to change the world,” JR shared in our exclusive interview. “But being an artist and creating art in tons of different contexts, no matter what the mood is and sometimes against the codes that stand around you, is a way of breaking society and changing the world—just by trying.”

JR and curator Pedro Alonzo are holding an open discussion on the artist’s practice and how immigration figures into his work on September 7, 2017 at 8 pm in Los Angeles at Blum & Poe.

▻https://mymodernmet.com/jr-street-artist-mexican-border-wall

Je ne suis pas sur de l’intérêt, mais je suis peut-être insensible à ce genre, mais je reconnais que c’est une vision originale d’une part et une sorte de belle œuvre d’art d’autre part. En tout cas, merci @philippe_de_jonckheere

ce n’est pas la première œuvre du « data artist » Josh Begley
▻https://seenthis.net/recherche?recherche=josh+begley
▻https://seenthis.net/sites/1051027

@reka

Je ne suis pas sur de l’intérêt, mais je suis peut-être insensible à ce genre

Par genre , tu veux sans doute parler de visualisation de données et ou de cartographie expérimentale. Je tâcherai de me souvenir lors de prochains signalements que ce sont là des sujets pour lesquels tu n’a pas d’ intérêt !

Et donc je tague pour que que tu puisse prendre tes jambes à ton cou la prochaine fois

#data_visualisation #carto_experiment (c’est pas souvent que je tague, mais là cela me fait rire)

@fil effectivement. J’étais tout content de constater que la petite flèche ne pointait pas quand j’ai fait le copié-collé de l’URL. normalement je devrais supprimer mon signalement, mais le commentaire de @reka le rend désormais tellement précieux à mes yeux. Par ailleurs cette autre vidéo de Josh Begley signalée hir par @unagi et qui reprend toutes les unes du New York Times depuis 1850 est très belle également.

oui, very sorry, je voulais pas faire un crime de lèse-majesté artistique :) (et je ne prendrai pas mes jambes à mon cou) je voulais simplement dire que c’est original et éventuellement estétoque, mais on ne voit pas grand chose. A part ça j’ai du respect pour l’artiste qui a réalisé d’autres projets très intéressants.

Ce défilement rapide d’images, ça fout un peu la gerbe. Mais c’est peut-être aussi l’idée sous-jacente qui a motivé cette œuvre. #no_borders

@reka

on ne voit pas grand chose

C’est bien là que je pense que nous ne sommes pas d’accord. Les choses que je vois moi dans cet effort qui n’est pas seulement esthétique : la frontière en question est interminable (best of luck). Dans un premier temps, c’est un trait tout droit comme peuvent l’être les frontières d’un état comme le Colorado dont la carte est hyper fastoche à dessiner, puis dans un deuxième temps, c’est le bordel, c’est le dessin méandrique du Rio Grande qui ringardise un peu les boucles de la Seine. C’est tellement le bordel qu’à certains endroits, c’est le Mexique qui est au Nord et les Etats-Unis qui sont au Sud. Enfin c’est un tel voyage qu’il traverse une diversité géographique dont on n’a pas nécessaireent idée en Europe, et le plus drôle également c’est qu’il y a de nombreux endroits où il semble y avoir des villes de part et d’autre de la frontière qui ne doivent, dans la réalité ne faire qu’une seule ville. Le titre met sur la voie aussi de penser que cela ne va pas être hyper comodede construire un mur là où il y a un fleuve (et quel !). Bref je trouve que l’on voit et qu’on apprend beaucoup de chose à la lecture de ce qui est, avant d’être une oeuvre vidéographique, un exercice de visualisation de données (lesquelles sont aussi objectives que possible puisque ce sont des photographies prises par satellite).

C’est une carte qui bouge, mais c’est une carte non ?

@philippe_de_jonckheere, ton fleuve « à boucles », tu le préfères en tresses ou en anastomoses ? Parce que le Rio Bravo, à côté de ce qu’a pu être le Rhin, c’est du quasi linéaire ;-)

Tu peux regarder sur les thèmes rectification du Rhin ou correction du Rhin (avec le côté scolaire de la correction : faut filer droit !) Je ne sais pas s’il y a une vue d’ensemble, mais on trouve quelques zooms sympas.
Un peu sur WP[fr] ▻https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correction_du_Rhin_Supérieur, quelques un en plus dans sa version WP[de], par exemple la confluence du Neckar (il y a une version 3000x3000)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a8/Rheinkarte.JPG/757px-Rheinkarte.JPG

ou sur l’Histoire de l’Île du Rhin
▻http://www.conservatoire-sites-alsaciens.eu/fr/histo-idr

http://www.conservatoire-sites-alsaciens.eu/medias/photos/idr/blodel-1838.jpg

http://www.conservatoire-sites-alsaciens.eu/medias/photos/idr/blodel-1872.jpg

sinon, je suis assez d’accord avec @reka : ça va trop vite !

La chose que je perçois, outre la variété des environnements que tu mentionnes, c’est tantôt l’homogénéité complète des deux côtés, notamment quand tu vois des amibes se balader dans une boîte de Petri, tantôt la délimitation violente entre deux environnements.

Tu me diras, on peut aussi se le faire tout seul comme un grand en faisant défiler gg:maps. Et ben, justement, c’est un truc que j’ai déjà fait sur plusieurs bouts de cette frontière avec plusieurs niveaux de zoom…

Je rebondis sur le propos de @philippe_de_jonckheere :
C’est vrai que ce peut être une belle « leçon de choses » sur la géographie humaine de ces lieux (que je ne connais pas). Mettre en pause la vidéo serait un moyen de s’en faire une meilleure idée. Ce que j’ai constaté, c’est la présence de nombreuses habitations modestes du côté mexicain alors que dans son pendant états-unien, on voit surtout des terrains vagues, des terres agricoles ou des installations industrielles. Un peu comme si la population mexicaine attendait que s’entrouvre une porte providentielle qui lui permettrait de s’engouffrer vers une" terre promise". J’ai essayé de visualiser le trajet de la frontière avec Google Map en zoomant à 200 m d’altitude. C’est flagrant pour la ville de Tijuana.
La frontière raconte une drôle d’histoire de séparation des destins et elle matérialise deux administrations étatiques, l’une (le Mexique) ayant renoncé à assurer le bien-être de ses communautés et l’autre (les États-Unis) voulant se protéger de ces communautés en attente d’une « vie meilleure » en les tenant à distance et en niant leur droit à l’existence.

C’est moins précis, mais une autre vision néo-artistique de la frontière ... :

https://dl.dropbox.com/s/kvun5ufrnbq39mf/maquiladoras%20mexique.jpg?dl=0

Pour moi c’était un peu moins saccadé en téléchargeant le film en haute def (avec youtube-dl) plutôt que streaming.

@simplicissimus Le Rhin est un fleuve impressonnant (dont je peux me vanter de l’avoir traversé à la nage, à Bâle nuitamment, il y a très longtemps, en 1986), tes cartes sont très suprenantes en effet.

Je me demande si, au choix, je surinterprête et surestime grandement cette vidéo en tant que travail cartographique ou tout du moins de visualisation (et qu’est-ce que j’entends par là m’est sans doute très personnel et sans doute biaisé par l’endroit d’où je parle, pour ainsi parler), ou si, chers amis cartographes, pour lesquels je nourris à la fois admiration et amitié, vous n’êtes pas devant une manière de point aveugle vous concernant : vous ne voyez pas qu’il s’agit quasiment du travail d’un confrère finalement.

Sur l’argument de cela va trop vite, il me semble que si cela allait moins vite, cette vidéo serait interminable et serait rarement regardée de bout en bout, or c’est une expérience nécessaire, celle d’aller d’un bout à l’autre de la frontière. J’imagine que pour aller moins vite on pourrait filmer de plus haut, mais alors on perd quelque chose aussi.

Enfin, il me semble que le but pédagogique est atteint : bon courage avec ce mur !

@reka : Ce ne serait pas un dessin de @odilon, cette représentation ?

@sombre : perdu, c’est du @reka de novembre 2009
▻https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/cartes/maquiladoras
(oups, l’adresse qu’il faut pas mettre !…)

Argl ! J’avais cru. Bon, sinon, un article d’il y a bientôt huit ans, il y a prescription, non ?

ah oui, il faut qu’on publie ce projet sur visionscarto.net très vite (avec le dossier complet qui va avec d’ailleurs, pas seulement la carte, il y a tout un outil méthodo et des esquisses préparatoires, et un texte qui n’a pas - heureusement - été publié dans le diplo).

Sinon, non, les délits des crapules qui dirigent actuellement le diplo sont totalement imprescriptibles !

Border fence meets a wall of skepticism in Tijuana, where residents say U.S.-Mexico ties transcend any physical barriers

▻http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-ln-trump-visit-border-prototypes-20180312-story.html

Nouveau tag: #effet_Tur-Tur #Tur_Tur #Tur-Tur

Vigilantes Not Welcome : A Border Town Pushes Back on Anti-Immigrant Extremists

In late August last year, 39-year-old Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer exited La Gitana bar in Arivaca, Arizona, took out his phone, and started recording a video for his Facebook page: “So down here in Arivaca, if you like to traffic in children, if you like to make sure women and children have contraceptives before handing them off to the coyotes to be dragged through the desert, knowing they’re going to get raped along the way, if you’re involved in human trafficking or dope smuggling, these individuals have your back.”

Meyer, who had a trim red beard, dark sunglasses, and a camouflage American flag hat, aimed his cellphone camera at a wooden awning on a small white bungalow across the street from La Gitana, panning between two signs with the words “Arivaca Humanitarian Aid Office” and “Oficina De Ayuda Humanitaria” in turquoise letters.

The video went on for nine and a half minutes, as Meyer, the leader of a group called Veterans on Patrol, which had more than 70,000 followers on Facebook, talked about stopping border crossers and searching abandoned mineshafts for evidence of trafficked women and children. Every couple of minutes he would return to the aid office.

https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/20190408_arivaca_07.jpg https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/20190408_arivaca_05.jpg

“If you’re ever down here in Arivaca,” he told his audience, “if you want to know who helps child traffickers, if you want to know who helps dope smugglers, if you want to know who helps ISIS, if you want to know who helps La Raza, MS-13, any of ’em, any of the bad guys, these people help ’em.”

The claims were false and outrageous. But Meyer had an audience, and people in town were well aware of how media-fueled anti-­immigrant vitriol and conspiracies could spill over into real-world violence. It had happened there before.

Arivaca sits just 11 miles north of the Mexico border in a remote area of the Sonoran Desert. For about two decades, anti-immigrant vigilante groups have patrolled the region to try to remedy what they perceive as the federal government’s failure to secure the border. In 2009, the leader of one of these groups and two accomplices murdered two residents—a little girl and her father—during a home invasion and robbery planned to fund their activities. Meyer’s video brought that trauma back and was quickly followed by a series of incidents revolving around various vigilante groups, La Gitana, and the humanitarian aid office. When I visited in mid-September, the town was clearly on edge. “If we don’t do something about [the situation], we’re going to have bodies here again,” Arivaca’s unofficial mayor, Ken Buchanan, told me.

Shortly before making his video, Meyer had been sitting in La Gitana with several volunteers from Veterans on Patrol. Megan Davern, a 30-year-old meat cutter with work-worn hands and long brown hair, was tending bar. She had heard that a rancher living along the border was having issues with a vigilante group trespassing and flying drones over his property.

“I walked into the bar at four o’clock one day to start a shift, and I saw this big group of people in fatigues with empty gun holsters and a drone on the table, and I felt it was probably them,” Davern recalled.

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Davern had heard the group’s name before and quickly did some internet research, reading highlights as the men drank. The group was founded to provide support to homeless veterans. Then, in May 2018, Meyer—who is not a veteran and has a criminal history—claimed he had discovered a child sex trafficking camp at an abandoned cement factory in Tucson. The camp, he said, was part of a pedophilia ring, and on his Facebook page he shared posts linking it to the Clintons, George Soros, and Mexican drug cartels.

Meyer, who showed up for rancher Cliven Bundy’s 2014 armed standoff with authorities in Nevada and was present during Bundy’s sons’ occupation of an Oregon wildlife refuge in 2016, declined an interview request. But the story he was spreading mimicked right-wing conspiracies like Pizzagate and QAnon, and though Tucson police investigated and debunked his claims, Meyer gained tens of thousands of social-media followers. With donations of supplies and gift cards pouring in from supporters, he vowed to gather evidence and save the women and children he claimed were being victimized.

Davern watched as Meyer and the other Veterans on Patrol volunteers left La Gitana and started filming the first video. Toward the end of the video, she stepped out of the bar to confront them. “We’ve been hearing about you for a long time,” she said, as Meyer turned the camera on her. “I’d appreciate if you don’t come in anymore.”

Banning Veterans on Patrol, Davern told me, was an easy decision: “We have a strict no-militia policy at the bar because of the history of militia violence in this town.”

Arivaca is a quirky place. To start with, it’s unincorporated, which means there’s no official mayor, no town council, no police force. The 700 or so residents are an unlikely mix of miners, ranchers, aging hippies, artists, and other folks who stumbled across the odd little community, became enchanted, and decided to make it home. A single road runs through it, linking an interstate highway to the east and a state highway to the west. The next town is 30 minutes away; Tucson is 60 miles north.

There’s no official mayor, no town council, no police force…The next town is 30 minutes away.

Jagged hills covered in scraggly mesquite spread in every direction until they meet towering mountains at the distant southern horizon. The vast landscape swallows up the dividing line with Mexico, but the presence of the border looms large.

By the early 2000s, a federal policy called Prevention Through Deterrence had pushed border crossers from urban areas to more hostile terrain like the desert around Arivaca. Migrant deaths skyrocketed, and Arivaca eventually became a staging ground for volunteers caching water and food in the desert. Some settled down, and residents opened the humanitarian aid office in 2012.

The border crossers also caught the attention of vigilante groups, many of which had formed in the late ’90s in Texas and California, and which ranged from heavily armed paramilitary-type organizations to gangs of middle-aged men sitting on lawn chairs with binoculars. “They realized that ground zero was really on the Arizona border,” said Mark Pitcavage, who researches right-wing extremism at the Anti-Defamation League.

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One group known as the Minutemen started organizing Arizona border watches in 2005. “It was a big deal in the press,” said Heidi Beirich, a hate group expert at the Southern Poverty Law Center. Beirich credits the Minutemen with helping mainstream the demonization of undocumented migrants, calling the media-savvy group “probably the thing that started off what ultimately becomes Donald Trump’s anti-­immigrant politics.”

But by 2007, the organization was splintering. One spinoff, Minutemen American Defense (MAD), was led by a woman named Shawna Forde, a name that no one in Arivaca would soon forget.
“The whole town has those emotional scars.”

Just before 1 a.m. on May 30, 2009, Forde and two accomplices murdered nine-year-old Brisenia Flores and her 29-year-old father, Raul, in their home. They also injured Brisenia’s mother, Gina Gonzales, before she drove them away by grabbing her husband’s gun and returning fire.

Raul Flores was rumored to be involved in the drug trade, and Forde, a woman with a long criminal history, had devised a plan to rob his home and use the money to finance MAD.

The murders shook Arivaca. “The whole town has those emotional scars,” Alan Wallen, whose daughter was friends with Brisenia, told me.

The day that Meyer filmed that first Facebook video in Arivaca, Terry Sayles, 69, a retired schoolteacher with a long-standing research interest in far-right groups, was at his home in Green Valley, some 45 minutes away. Sayles had been following Veterans on Patrol since the cement plant conspiracy theory first surfaced. When he saw Meyer’s video outside La Gitana, he called the bar with a warning. “You guys know that you’re on Facebook?” he asked.

“Oh, great,” Davern remembered thinking. Until then, she hadn’t realized Meyer’s video was online. “I didn’t know what the ramifications would be. Were people going to come into my work and harass me? Threaten me with violence? Were they going to find out where I live?”

Around the time of Davern’s confrontation outside the bar, La Gitana put up a sign saying that members of border vigilante groups were not welcome inside. It didn’t mention Veterans on Patrol but instead singled out another group: Arizona Border Recon (AZBR).

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Tim Foley, the leader of AZBR, had moved to Arivaca in the summer of 2017. Before starting the group in 2011, Foley, who has piercing blue eyes and leathery skin from long hours in the sun, worked construction jobs in Phoenix until 2008, when the financial crisis hit. “Everything fell apart,” he told me over the phone.

Foley said that after years of seeing immigration violations on work sites go unpunished, he went down to the border and decided to dedicate himself to stopping undocumented crossers. The Southern Poverty Law Center considers AZBR a nativist extremist group, but Foley now says his main mission is gathering intelligence on Mexican drug cartels.

Just before I visited Arivaca, Foley was in Washington, DC, speaking at “The Negative Impact of Illegal Alien Crime in America,” a rally hosted by families of people killed by undocumented immigrants. Other speakers included former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who is also a Trump pardon recipient; presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway; and Rep. Steve King, a Republican from Iowa with a history of racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric.

A few days after Meyer filmed his video, a BearCat armored vehicle—the kind used by SWAT teams—came rolling into Arivaca. It had a mock .50-caliber machine gun affixed to a turret on its roof and belonged to the Utah Gun Exchange, a marketplace and media company based near Salt Lake City with a mission to build what one of its co-owners, 46-year-old Bryan Melchior, described as “web platforms that allow free speech and that promote and protect the Second Amendment.”

Before coming to Arivaca, the group had followed survivors of the Parkland high school shooting around the country during the teens’ “March for Our Lives” tour. But after President Trump threatened to shut down the government over funding for his border wall, Melchior shifted his attention. “Ultimately, we came here to tell stories from the border, and that’s what brought us to Arivaca, because there are some outspoken public figures here. Tim Foley is one of them,” Melchior told me.

Melchior, stocky with a scruffy salt-and-pepper beard and an ever-present sidearm, and his crew decided to get dinner at La Gitana. Davern was tending bar and asked the group what they were up to. When Melchior said they were a media company in town to tell border stories and that they were in touch with Foley, “the whole thing went to hell in a handbag,” he recalled.

Davern said she left their initial conversation feeling optimistic that the Utah Gun Exchange’s platform could be a good avenue to reach a different audience with information about what life was actually like at the border. But when she found out it had a channel called BuildTheWallTV, she changed her mind.

Melchior was down by the border when somebody sent him a picture of a new sign in La Gitana’s window listing the Utah Gun Exchange and Veterans on Patrol as groups that were not welcome. He later went into La Gitana with an open container of alcohol from a store across the street to ask about the sign. The interaction did not go well.

The next day, Meyer came back to town ready to film again. Playing to an audience watching in real time on Facebook Live, he walked up to La Gitana, showed the signs hanging in the window, and knocked. “Do you stand by your convictions to tell tens of thousands of supporters [that they’re not welcome]?” he asked the bartender working that day.

“Sure. Absolutely,” she replied.

Meyer went on to say that Veterans on Patrol was going to build a wall around Arivaca to make it part of Mexico. He then walked across the street to again film the humanitarian office: “This town’s made it apparent they don’t want us. They’d rather have the illegals crossing over. They’d rather help traffic the children and the women.”

To many Arivaca residents, it felt like things were building toward cataclysm. “People are terrified,” Davern told me. “These people come to town and they’re threatening. Extremely threatening.”
To many Arivaca residents, it felt like things were building toward cataclysm.

So they called a town meeting. It was held on September 9, and about 60 people came. Terry Sayles, the retired teacher from Green Valley, was there. He suggested that the town report Veterans on Patrol’s page to Facebook. The residents set up a phone tree in case they needed to quickly rally aid—local law enforcement is at least an hour away. Kelly and a couple of others formed a neighborhood watch of sorts. “We had a strategy that we had rehearsed so that if in fact there was some attempt by somebody to do harm, we could de-escalate it in a hurry and quietly defuse it,” he said.Arivacans weren’t so much concerned about Foley, Meyer, or Melchior, but about their followers, who might see their inflammatory videos and posts about Arivaca and take matters into their own hands. “Our greatest fear was some person incensed at the thought of this community engaged in sex traffic would come out here and have a shootout at our local tavern,” Dan Kelly, a Vietnam War veteran who lives in Arivaca, told me.

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One of the most important things, though, was channeling the spiraling fear into a productive reaction. “We worked hard to separate the emotional response to it and try to look at it logically and coldly,” Kelly said. “The visceral side, the emotional side, was the impetus to get organized and take a rational response.”

Their containment approach worked. A couple of days after the meeting, Veterans on Patrol’s main Facebook account was taken down, stripping Meyer of his audience. The Utah Gun Exchange eventually packed up and left. Many people had refused to talk to the outlet. “Arivaca is the most unwelcoming town I’ve ever been to in my life,” Melchior complained to me.

In January, Melchior was charged in Utah with felony drug and weapons possession. Meyer also faces legal trouble, some of it stemming from videos he took of himself trespassing on private property around Tucson. He currently has several cases pending in the Pima County court system.

“There’s been significantly less obvious militia activity in Arivaca, which I contribute to a victory on our part,” Davern told me during a recent phone call. “There’s a lot less fear going around, which is great.” Town meetings continued for a while but have stopped for now. But to Davern, as long as Tim Foley is still in town, the issue isn’t resolved. “That person needs to leave,” she said, describing him as a magnet for conflict. High Country News detailed an incident in early March when locals eager to keep the peace dissuaded a group of reportedly self-described anarchists who had come to town to confront him.

Foley knows what Davern and others in Arivaca think about him but insists there’s a silent majority in town that supports his presence. “They can keep calling me the bad guy. I already know I’m not, or else I still wouldn’t be walking the streets,” he told me. “I’m not moving. I’m staying in Arivaca. They can keep crying for the rest of their lives. I really don’t care.”

Even at the height of their fear, a question hovered over the town’s residents: Were they overreacting?

It’s a question more people across the country confront as they wake up to the reality of right-wing extremism and violence. When I was in Arivaca, the answer was clear to Clara Godfrey, whose nephew Albert Gaxiola was Shawna Forde’s accomplice in the Flores murders. He and Forde had met at La Gitana. “We can never say, ‘We didn’t know,’ again,” Godfrey told me. “If anything happens, we have to say, ‘We knew, and it was okay with us.’”

▻https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/04/immigrant-vigilantes-arizona-border-arivaca

Commentaire de Reece_Jones sur twitter :

A truism of borders: the people who live there hate the way people in the interior politicize and militarize their homes.

▻https://twitter.com/reecejhawaii/status/1116404990711492608
... ce qui me fait penser au fameux effet Tur_Tur !

Wouaw ! Merci pour la découverte ! C’est drôle parce que très rapidement ça m’a fait penser à l’album / documentaire « Hecho en Mexico » et à ce moment là je vois apparaitre Residente, ex Caille 13 que j’avais aussi beaucoup entendu au Mexique et à qui on doit le magnifique morceau « Latinoamérica » (featuring Totó la Momposina, Susana Baca and Maria Rita)...

#Calle_13 (con Totó la Momposina, Susana Baca, Maria Rita y Gustavo Santaolalla): Latinoamérica (Entren los que quieran, 2010)
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkFJE8ZdeG8

Hecho en México Soundtrack (2012)
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCCuZ7YXaWY

00:00:00 Tiempo e híbridos / Un rezo universal (Rubén Albarrán, Jose Bautista, Antonio Carrillo)
00:04:51 ¿Qué es ahora? (Mono Blanco, Carla Morrison, Mü, Sergio Arau, Luis Rey Moreno Gil)
00:09:31 México 2000 (Rojo Córdova, Cuarteto Latinoamericano)
00:12:00 Yo libre porque pienso (Residente Calle 13, Randy «El Gringo Loco» Ebright, Tito Fuentes, Paco Ayala)
00:15:37 El caminante del Mayab (Los Tres Yucatecos)
00:18:15 En mi vida secreta (Adanowsky)
00:22:13 El mexicano del sur (Ariel Guzik, Humberto Alvarez, Fernando Guadarrama, Eduardo Farrés)
00:25:01 Fronteras / We got the fucking love / Los Ilegales / Tan Lejos de Dios (Ali Gua Gua, Pato Machete, Los Tucanes De Tijuana, El Haragán, Emmanuel del Real)
00:32:36 El muy muy (Amandititita, Don Cheto, Los Macuanos)
00:37:17 Sembrar flores (Los Cojolites)
00:41:28 ¿Quién lleva los pantalones? (El Venado Azul, Banda Agua Caliente, Gloria Trevi, Instituto Mexicano Del Sonido)
00:48:09 Medley / Obsesión / La última noche (Las Maya Internacional)
00:50:39 Me gusta mi medicina (Original Banda El Limon De Salvador Lizarraga, Amandititita, Kinky, Mü, Juan Cirerol)
00:56:30 El mensajero (Carla Morrison, León Larregui)
01:01:08 Mis propios ojos (Alberto Paz, Multi Culti, Los Macuanos, Noicaruk)
01:03:40 Antes y después de la vida (Julieta Venegas)
01:08:06 Canción de las simples cosas (Chavela Vargas)
01:09:40 Cuándo llegaré / Mustak (Natalia Lafourcade, Emmanuel del Real, Yajvalel Vinajel, Slajem K’op)
01:14:14 Bajo una ceiba (Alejandro Fernández)
01:19:06 ¿Quién soy? (Sonidero Meztizo, María Moctezuma, Marlene Cruz Ramírez «Mare»)
01:24:39 Nana Guadalupe (Lila Downs, Lupe Esparza, Natalia Lafourcade)
01:30:44 Bolom Chon (Yajvalel Vinajel)
01:34:09 ¿A qué le tiras cuando sueñas, mexicano? (Lupe Esparza, Original Banda El Limon De Salvador Lizarraga, El Venado Azul)

A mettre sur la compilation de chansons contre #Donald_Trump
►https://seenthis.net/messages/727919

#murs #frontières #barrières_frontalières #USA #prototype #projet

Arizona company building Trump border-wall prototype has checkered environmental record

On Aug. 31, 2017, U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced winning construction contracts for President Trump’s proposed wall between the United States and Mexico. U.S. Customs and Border Protection

▻http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/border-issues/2017/09/17/fisher-sand-gravel-building-border-wall-prototype-checkered-environmental-record/643189001
#prototype

As border wall prototype construction starts, Arizona geographer speaks up

PHOENIX – Leaving behind violence and poverty, a Central American family travels thousands of miles by foot, train, and bus. Once they finally arrive at the U.S. border, they have one more difficult decision to make: carry a bag full of marijuana and cross the desert with some help, or risk their life and cross alone.

▻https://cronkitenews.azpbs.org/2017/09/28/border-lecture

Trump said he’ll pick a border wall design himself. Turns out, he can.

Experts on government contracting said Tuesday that as head of the executive branch, the president has the authority to direct an agency to award a contract to a particular bidder, though they strongly advise against it.

▻https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2017/09/26/trump-said-pick-border-wall-design-turns-can

’Another brick in the wall’: 8 prototypes of Trump’s US-Mexico border wall are put on display in San Diego - as seen from Tijuana

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Eight Ways to Build a Border Wall

SAN DIEGO — They all stand neatly in a row: eight large panels on a barren dirt patch just a few hundred yards from the San Diego border with Mexico. Unveiled in late October, these are the prototypes for the border wall President Trump has vowed to erect on the southern border. Later this year, the federal government will test the panels for strength and effectiveness.

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Trump’s border wall through the eyes of an architecture critic

As for their looks? This was the most surprising thing of all. When I first caught sight of them from the SUV, I worried about making even basic distinctions among them. They looked virtually identical. But as I spent more time in this odd open-air architecture gallery, it became clear that the aesthetic spectrum the prototypes covered was very wide.

The one furthest east, by #Fisher_Sand_&_Gravel, was the idea of a wall stripped to its essence, suggesting a kind of accidental minimalism, a section of a Peter Zumthor facade after a trip through the federal bureaucracy. Made of three panels that matched almost perfectly the color of the dirt at its feet, it was the simplest of the group and also — at $365,000 — among the least expensive to produce.

A very different sensibility was evident in the slab designed by #ELTA. Its bottom half was concrete, its upper half metal. The concrete section (though only on the side facing the U.S., per the official guidelines) was painted white and blue, as if it were covering a split-level ranch house outside Phoenix.

Also in this decorative vein was the concrete wall by #Texas_Sterling_Construction, which featured a white faux-brick pattern stamped into its American side. The argument these two walls made was pragmatism à la HGTV: that any piece of construction could be humanized, even made cheerful, with some measured, cost-effective ornament.

What the prototypes didn’t resemble, in any practical sense, was a wall. (A swatch of fabric is not a shirt; a lone panel from an umbrella won’t keep you dry when it rains.) It wasn’t just that they suggested Potemkin slices, architectural stand-ins to match the human ones Trump’s campaign invited to the news conference kicking off his White House bid.

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Is Donald Trump, Wall-Builder-in-Chief, a Conceptual Artist?

That’s the intriguing possibility put forth in an online petition Tuesday that seeks to have the group of eight prototypes for Mr. Trump’s controversial Mexican border wall designated a national monument.

▻https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/arts/design/is-donald-trump-wall-builder-in-chief-a-conceptual-artist.html

Should Donald Trump’s border wall prototypes be considered #art?

Swiss-Icelandic artist #Christoph_Büchel claims that the significant cultural value of the president’s structures should be recognized – not everyone agrees

▻https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/jan/12/should-donald-trumps-border-wall-prototypes-be-considered-art

Art Industry News: Artists Condemn Christoph Büchel’s Trump Border Wall Project + More Must-Read Stories

Plus, a new survey seeks to promote salary transparency in the art world and a business tycoon renames his Picasso painting.

▻https://news.artnet.com/art-world/art-industry-news-february-7-2018-1217951

Photographie trés intéressante.

The New Coyote Trail : Refugees Head West to Bypass Fortress Europe

Europe’s closing borders and the death toll in the Mediterranean are forcing asylum seekers to look further afield. An investigation into the migration routes out of Latin America into the U.S. and Canada finds Africans, Afghans and Iraqis enduring great risks.

▻https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/articles/2017/12/19/the-new-coyote-trail-refugees-head-west-to-bypass-fortress-europe
#réfugiés_afghans #réfugiés_irakiens #Canada #Equateur

From Cameroon to US-Mexico border: ’We saw corpses along the way’

Kombo Yannick is one of the many African asylum seekers who are braving the longer Latin America route to the US.

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More Migrants From Far-Flung Lands Crossing US-Mexico Border

The young man traversed Andean mountains, plains and cities in buses, took a harrowing boat ride in which five fellow migrants drowned, walked through thick jungle for days, and finally reached the U.S.-Mexico border.

Then Abdoulaye Camara, from the poor West African country of Mauritania, asked U.S. officials for asylum.

Camara’s arduous journey highlights how immigration to the United States through its southern border is evolving. Instead of being almost exclusively people from Latin America, the stream of migrants crossing the Mexican border these days includes many who come from the other side of the world.

Almost 3,000 citizens of India were apprehended entering the U.S. from Mexico last year. In 2007, only 76 were. The number of Nepalese rose from just four in 2007 to 647 last year. More people from Africa are also seeking to get into the United States, with hundreds having reached Mexican towns across the border from Texas in recent weeks, according to local news reports from both sides of the border.

Camara’s journey began more than a year ago in the small town of Toulel, in southern Mauritania. He left Mauritania, where slavery is illegal but still practiced, “because it’s a country that doesn’t know human rights,” he said.

Camara was one of 124 migrants who ended up in a federal prison in Oregon after being detained in the U.S. near the border with Mexico in May, the result of the Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy.

He was released October 3, after he had passed his “credible fear” exam, the first step on obtaining asylum, and members of the community near the prison donated money for his bond. He was assisted by lawyers working pro bono.

“My heart is so gracious, and I am so happy. I really thank my lawyers who got me out of that detention,” Camara said in French as he rode in a car away from the prison.

Camara’s journey was epic, yet more people are making similar treks to reach the United States. It took him from his village on the edge of the Sahara desert to Morocco by plane and then a flight to Brazil. He stayed there 15 months, picking apples in orchards and saving his earnings as best he could. Finally he felt he had enough to make it to the United States.

All that lay between him and the U.S. border was 6,000 miles (9,700 kilometers).

“It was very, very difficult,” said Camara, 30. “I climbed mountains, I crossed rivers. I crossed many rivers, the sea.”

Camara learned Portuguese in Brazil and could understand a lot of Spanish, which is similar, but not speak it very well. He rode buses through Brazil, Peru and Colombia. Then he and others on the migrant trail faced the most serious obstacle: the Darien Gap, a 60-mile (97-kilometer) stretch of roadless jungle straddling the border of Colombia and Panama.

But first, he and other travelers who gathered in the town of Turbo, Colombia, had to cross the Gulf of Uraba, a long and wide inlet from the Caribbean Sea. Turbo, on its southeast shore, has become a major point on the migrant trail, where travelers can resupply and where human smugglers offer boat rides.

Camara and about 75 other people boarded a launch for Capurgana, a village next to the Panamanian border on the other end of the gulf.

While the slow-moving boat was far from shore, the seas got very rough.

“There was a wave that came and tipped over the canoe,” Camara said. “Five people fell into the water, and they couldn’t swim.”

They all drowned, he said. The survivors pushed on.

Finally arriving in Capurgana after spending two nights on the boat, the migrants split into smaller groups to cross the infamous Darien Gap, a wild place that has tested the most seasoned of travelers. The thick jungle hides swamps that can swallow a man. Lost travelers have died, and been devoured, boots and all, by packs of wild boars, or have been found, half out of their minds.

Camara’s group consisted of 37 people, including women — two of them pregnant, one from Cameroon and one from Congo — and children.

“We walked seven days and climbed up into the mountains, into the forest,” Camara said. “When it was night, we slept on the ground. We just kept walking and sleeping, walking and sleeping. It was hard.”

One man, who was around 26 and from the African nation of Guinea, died, perhaps from exhaustion combined with thirst, Camara said.

By the sixth day, all the drinks the group had brought with them were gone. They drank water from a river. They came across a Panamanian man and his wife, who sold them some bananas for $5, Camara said.

Once he got out of the jungle, Camara went to Panamanian immigration officials who gave him travel documents enabling him to go on to Costa Rica, which he reached by bus. In Costa Rica, he repeated that process in hopes of going on to Nicaragua. But he heard authorities there were not so accommodating, so he and about 100 other migrants took a boat around Nicaragua, traveling at night along its Pacific coast.

“All we could see were the lights of Nicaragua,” he said. Then it was over land again, in cars, buses and sometimes on foot, across Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico, all the way to the U.S. border at Tijuana. He was just about out of money and spent the night in a migrant shelter.

On May 20, he crossed into San Ysidro, south of San Diego.

“I said, `I came, I came. I’m from Africa. I want help,”’ he said.

He is going to stay with a brother in Philadelphia while he pursues his asylum request.

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▻https://www.voanews.com/amp/more-migrants-far-flung-lands-crossing-us-mexico-border/4651770.html?__twitter_impression=true
#parcours_migratoire #nouvelle_Méditerranée

For African migrants trying, and dying, to reach north America, the Darién Gap is the “new Mediterranean”

https://www.equaltimes.org/local/adapt-img/1440/10x/local/cache-gd2/47/7ec0b9cc1d8166c74f83120c25ffd1.jpg?1575869456#.jpg

By the time Basame Lonje made it out of the jungle, he was beyond exhausted. The 35-year-old from Cameroon had gone four days out of seven without food, surviving each day on a single biscuit. He drank from rivers flowing with debris and death, carrying the corpses of an unknown number of people who have perished in the Darién Gap, a remote stretch of jungle between Colombia and Panama known as the most dangerous in the world. “I barely survived,” Basame says. “People had sores on the soles of their feet and they had nobody to carry them. They were left there. Do you know what it means to walk for days?”

As a result of tough migration policies in traditional destination countries in Europe, Basame is one of thousands of so-called‘extracontinental migrants’ taking the desperate decision to try and traverse the American continent in the hope of seeking asylum in the United States or Canada. In previous times this route was used almost exclusively by central American migrants. More recently it has seen a surge in migrants from African countries like Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Eritrea, Mauritania, Nigeria, Ghana and Burkina Faso, as well as people from Asian and Middle Eastern countries such as India, Pakistan, Syria and Nepal. Mexico authorities apprehended around 3,000 Africans and some 12,000 extracontinental migrants in total in 2018, according to the Migrant Policy Unit of Mexico’s Interior Ministry. Most are escaping a mix of conflict, political repression and crumbling economies.

They fly to visa-friendly countries such as Ecuador, Brazil and Guyana, before navigating their way up north to Mexico, sometimes with the help of smugglers, other times with the aid of social media posts of those who have gone before them. They spend thousands of dollars on flights and bus tickets for journeys that can take months.

Basame was a teacher back in Cameroon but says he fled the bloody conflict that has been raging in parts of his country since 2016 after he was abducted by armed groups fighting for the secession of the English-speaking parts of the country. His crime? Daring to hold classes.

New migration regulations have rolled out swiftly and unpredictably since Trump took office in January 2017. Military troops were deployed to the border in October 2018, when some 7,000 people from central America fleeing gang violence and poverty approached on foot. In January 2019, the Migration Protection Protocols (MPP), known as ‘Remain in Mexico’ went into effect: as a result, asylees that arrive in the US via Mexico are now sent back to wait while their cases are processed, instead of being released on parole in the US as prescribed by US law. Rights organisations point out that sending asylum seekers back to Mexico, where they often face deportation, is a violation of the 1951 Refugee Convention.

This February, Trump declared a state of emergency and accessed emergency funds to begin construction of a physical wall between the US and Mexico. He has also pursued agreements with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras under which all migrants who pass through these countries must first seek refuge and be rejected in them before placing claims in the US. The agreement disregards the fact that not only do these countries lack the capacity to process large-scale asylum claims but that many people are fleeing violence and poverty from these same countries.

Cumulatively, these policies have seen thousands of people waiting in shelters in US-Mexico border towns like Tijuana and Matamoros where conditions are deteriorating. A ‘metering’ system sees US customs officials attend to about three people daily. Mexico’s northern towns are also notorious for violence, and migrants are vulnerable to exploitation by drug cartels and human traffickers.
Externalising borders

In July 2019, Mexico signed an agreement with the US after President Trump threatened to impose trade sanctions if migration flows were not brought to a minimum. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador agreed to deploy 6,000 troops from the newly-formed National Guard to police its borders, adopting the US border militarisation strategy and sealing Mexico’s fate as President Trump’s outer wall.

Since then, Mexican immigration officials have stopped issuing exit permits to extracontinental migrants arriving at the southern border, trapping many like Basame in a country they have no desire to stay in. With fewer people able to reach the US, Mexico – a transit country – is becoming an unintentional final destination. Although Mexico has refused to sign a third safe country agreement with the US, it has been forced to field over 60,000 asylum claims – double the number received last year. It has been estimated that 60 per cent of these applications are made in Tapachula.

With no work permit, and even if he had one, with few opportunities available to him as an African migrant and a non-Spanish speaker, Basame is clear about his options: “Mexico can’t give me that.”

But Mexico’s immigration agency has denied his application for a visitor’s visa that would help him move north. Officials are only issuing permanent residency cards, a document that he fears will affect his asylum claim in the US.

By 09.00, hundreds of men and women from over two dozen countries were waiting in the blistering sun. Their voices were a cacophony of languages – Spanish, English, Portuguese, French, Tigrinya and Haitian Creole – clashing with the wails of hot, hungry children hanging from their parents. Migrants of Asian origin are mostly absent from these daily crowds: since Mexico deported 310 Indian migrants in an “unprecedented” move this October, they have been keeping a low profile for fear of suffering a similar fate.

An immigration officer appeared behind the gate, looked at the crowd and shook his head in frustration. A fight broke out when the gates opened as people rushed to get in. Despite his punctuality, Basame was not seen that day.
“My friends died there”

Narrating his long, treacherous journey from Cameroon to Mexico, Basame tells Equal Times that after fleeing the captivity of armed rebels this March, he headed to Nigeria before deciding to try to reach the safety of the US. He wanted better opportunities than Nigeria could offer and feared the rebels could easily reach him there. First, he took a flight to Ecuador, then by bus he moved through Colombia. In the north-western town of Capurgana on the Colombian-Panamanian border, he met fellow Cameroonian migrants, as well as Haitians and Cubans. As they prepared to enter the Darién, villagers living at the mouth of the jungle warned them: “If you start this journey, you must finish it, otherwise it is bad news,” alluding to the dangers of the wild animals, poisonous insects and armed kidnappers marauding inside the impenetrable rainforest that breaks up the Pan-American Highway.

Basame spent seven days in the dense thickness of the Darién, battling the rain and cold, moving from morning until nightfall with nothing but a bag of clothes and some snacks. “You do not stop in the Darién. You keep moving,” he says. He walked with a group of other migrants. Many didn’t make it out of the jungle due to exhaustion. Others were swept away in the fast-moving rivers. “My friends died there,” Basame remembers soberly. One of his worst memories is of walking past the corpse of a dead baby left in a backpack.

Basame is one of the lucky ones. After reaching Panama, exhausted and starving, he regained his strength before moving up through Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala. After crossing the Suchiate River into Mexico by raft, he arrived in Tapachula in July. He spent a week at an immigration detention centre there before he was given an exit permit to leave the country.

It wasn’t until he got pulled from a bus to Tijuana by the National Guard that he realised that he could not legally leave Tapachula unless he was heading south, back to Guatemala. The US-Mexico deal took effect on 10 July and he was amongst the first people stranded by Mexico’s new regulations. Basame’s permit would force him back through the jungle of death he had barely survived.
Death and disease in Mexico

Judeline Romelus sits with her friends in Tapachula’s main square watching as they braid the hair of her 10-year-old daughter, Mariska. Nearby, Ghanaian and Guinean flags announce African food at restaurants, alongside Mexican and Honduran colours. Haitians and Africans give locals a trim in makeshift barbershops.

But the general atmosphere of warmth masks the apprehension many locals feel. Despite being in one of the country’s poorest regions, Tapachula has tried to bear the weight of its new migrant population but some people are concerned that government agencies and NGOs are focusing their attention on these new arrivals when the needs of the locals are also many.

Like Basame, Judeline and Mariska are stranded. Judeline applied for a humanitarian visa so that she can travel north with her daughter, but she must wait for her appointment in February 2020. The 28-year-old mother packed her bags and left Haiti three months ago. Economic stagnation and recent political unrest have caused many to flee the small Caribbean nation. “There are no opportunities in Haiti and I cannot work,” she says, even with a diploma. Judeline says she is looking for a better life in the US where friends are waiting for them in Florida. She relies on their monthly remittances of US$50 to pay for the small room the mother and daughter share.

The unsanitary living conditions in overcrowded shelters such as these have caused a spike in health problems. “Women are presenting diseases related to sexual and reproductive health,” says Claudia León, regional head at Jesuits Refugee Service, a humanitarian non-profit providing legal and psychosocial assistance to refugees. Many were assaulted in the Darién. “The situation is critical. They have no clean water to wash with and those who are pregnant are at risk.”

Migrants of all nationalities are suffering from invisible illnesses too. A spokesperson for the medical humanitarian NGO Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) says it is dealing with many cases of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and trauma. Poor living conditions coupled with the memories of the treacherous journey to Mexico and the general uncertainty is causing some to self-harm. “We are in an emergency,” says León. “I have seen people outside the immigration centre hurting themselves because they are in such extreme conditions.”

The desperation to get to the US has led to the exploration of dangerous alternative routes. A boat smuggling Cameroonian migrants capsized off the coast of Mexico in October, killing one man. “We knew him,” one migrant tells Equal Times at the restaurant where the deceased once frequented. But even as they recall his tragic passing, another man says that he is also considering taking the same route to the US.
“The new Mediterranean”

All across the world, tough policies on migration are forcing the most vulnerable migrants and refugees to go underground and seek the services of smuggling gangs and human traffickers. Like the US, Europe has enforced stringent measures to stem migration flows. An increase in anti-immigrant sentiments from far-right, populist governments in the US and Europe in particular sees leaders like Trump and Hungary’s Viktor Orban routinely employ rhetoric that fuels racist anxieties and emphasises the building of walls to prevent a ‘migrant invasion’.

In 2016, Turkey signed an agreement with the European Union and a bilateral agreement with Greece to keep some three million refugees fleeing the Syrian war from crossing the Aegean Sea into Greece. The agreement saw the European Union send back anyone who crossed without documents after 20 March 2016.

A similar agreement between Italy and Libya in 2017 was extended this November. Italy is training and funding the Libyan Coast Guard to stop African and Middle Eastern migrants on the Mediterranean and return them to Libya, a country at war.
Interception numbers have dropped from 181,000 in 2016 to only 8,000 this year, according to UNHCR. Thousands are held in detention centres run by armed factions battling for control since the Arab uprisings of 2011. African migrants have been enslaved, tortured and sold. They have also been caught in the crossfire of the battle for Tripoli. In July, a bomb fell on one detention centre, killing 44 people.

The number of asylum claims in Mexico keeps rising and is expected reach 80,000 by the end of the year. Although most Africans initially refused to seek asylum in Mexico, more people are applying, particularly from Cameroon. The number of asylum claims from Africa is currently around 500.

The influx of migrants and refugees has split Mexico politically, with many accusing President Obrador of yielding to President Trump and rescinding on human rights promises he made when he campaigned last year.

Human rights organisations condemn the US and Mexico’s strategies. “Those seeking safety want the same thing any of us would want if we were in their shoes,” says Isa Sanusi, of Amnesty International in Nigeria. “Mexico and the US must ensure that these migrants from Africa and other parts of the world are not denied the rights guaranteed to them by international law.”

For now, Basame is stuck between a rock and a hard place. Even if he had the money, it would be too dangerous for him to go home, and yet he currently has no way out of Mexico. As he struggles to stay afloat, his hopes are fading fast. “I’m running out of cash and I’m running out of patience. I’m sick and I don’t have anywhere to live,” he says. “How will I survive?”

▻https://www.equaltimes.org/for-migrants-trying-and-dying-to?lang=en

Es cosa suya: entanglements of border externalization and African transit migration in northern #Costa_Rica

Starting from the idea that border externalization – understood as the spatial and institutional stretching of borders – is enmeshed with the highly contextual humanitarian and securitarian dynamics of migrant trajectories, this article addresses the reach of border externalization tentacles in Costa Rica. Although Costa Rica does not formally engage in border externalization agreements, it is located in a region characterized by transit migration and transnational securitization pressures. Moreover, externalization efforts across the Atlantic have contributed to a relatively new presence of so-called extra-continental migrants. Given these circumstances, we aim to interrogate the ways in which border externalization plays a role in Costa Rica’s discourses, policies and practices of migration management. We do so by analysing a migrant reception centre in the northern Costa Rica border region, and by focusing on African transit migration. Our analysis is based on exploratory field research at the centre as well as on long-term migration research in Central America. Building on these empirical explorations and the theoretical notions of mobility regimes, transit and arterial borders, the article finds that Costa Rica’s identity as a ‘humanitarian transit country’ – as enacted in the migrant reception centre – both reproduces and challenges border externalization. While moving towards increased securitization of migration and an internalization of its border, Costa Rica also distinguishes itself from neighbouring countries by emphasizing the care it extends to African migrants, in practice enabling these migrants to move further north. Based on these findings, the article argues for a deeper appreciation of the role of local-regional histories, perceptions, rivalries, linkages and strategies of migration management. This allows for a better grip of the scope and shape of border externalization across a diversity of migration landscapes.

▻https://comparativemigrationstudies.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40878-019-0131-9

New contested borderlands: Senegalese migrants en route to Argentina

This article sheds novel, light on how Senegalese men and women adapt to European border governance by finding new ways to ‘look for life’ (chercher la vie) in Latin America, as an alternative to the perilous clandestine routes to Europe. The article follows how Senegalese migrants’ mobility to Argentina has evolved over the last two decades. It particularly focuses on the migrants’ journey to Argentina and explores the migrants’ accounts of their experiences en route and compares them to how different intersecting state-driven national and supranational migration policies become entangled in their mobility. By analytically focusing on the changing migration infrastructure and the different forms of friction the migrants encounter and respond to while moving, the article shows how the risk and uncertainty along the journey increasingly mirror the struggles which African migrants face at EU–African borderlands, and thus how similar features of global mobility regimes seem to be reproduced along this new route from West Africa to Latin America. In this way the politics and hierarchies of mobility are brought to the fore. Yet the article also points to how migrants find new openings and ways to contest the hindrances that aims to stop them as they move through these newly traversed borderlands.

▻https://comparativemigrationstudies.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40878-018-0109-z
#migrants_sénégalais #Argentine #Sénégal

#Nogales wary about executive order to start building border wall

NOGALES, ARIZONA – As President Donald Trump signed executive orders in Washington to build a wall and increase enforcement of the U.S.-Mexico border, Carlos Santa Cruz’s small section of fence behind his house was quiet and serene. A landscaper in Nogales and Rio Rico, he has lived right next to the border for 37 years and has seen the changes that have come with different presidential administrations.

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Au pied du mur

Donald Trump veut construire un mur « impénétrable, beau et solide » à la frontière Sud des Etats-Unis. Sur les 3200 kilomètres de démarcation avec le Mexique, un tiers est déjà « barricadé ». Voyage dans un monde de migrants, de trafiquants et de séparations. En pleine canicule.

Notre périple avait commencé à Phoenix, la capitale de l’Arizona, avec une petite angoisse. Malgré des contacts répétés avec un porte-parole de la Border Patrol – « Vous savez qu’avec la nouvelle administration il faut entre quatre et six mois pour obtenir l’aval de Washington pour passer une journée avec nous ? » –, toujours pas de rendez-vous fixé avec Vicente Paco. Notre interlocuteur était parti en vacances, apparemment sans transmettre le dossier à son collègue, beaucoup moins coopérant. Et puis, soudain, le coup de fil attendu : Vicente Paco !

Rendez-vous a été donné à #Nogales, sur le parking d’un centre commercial. On file vers la ville, direction sud. Cinq heures de route, avec des cactus à n’en plus finir, une ferme d’autruches, un coyote écrasé et un serpent à sonnette au sort pas plus enviable.

Nogales ? L’arrivée dans la ville n’est pas des plus chatoyantes. De larges routes, des hôtels de chaîne, les mêmes que l’on retrouvera tout au long du périple, des fast-foods. On retrouve l’agent, comme prévu, sur un parking, sous une chaleur suffocante. Il est pile à l’heure. Les règles sont strictes : interdiction de monter dans sa Jeep sans le fameux sésame de Washington. On le suit donc avec notre voiture. « Elle est solide ? Il va falloir grimper un peu. » En route !

Le Mexicain qui chasse les Mexicains

La voilà, la fameuse barrière rouillée qui coupe Nogales en deux. « Vous voyez les traces plus claires sur ces piliers ? glisse Vicente Paco. C’est là où des migrants ont glissé pour descendre côté américain. » On se trouve sur un petit monticule où viennent de passer trois biches. De l’autre côté de la barrière qui s’étend à perte de vue, c’est le Mexique.

Silhouette svelte et regard volontaire, Vicente Paco, 35 ans, la main gauche toujours posée sur son taser, porte l’uniforme vert de la Border Patrol depuis 2010. Dans sa famille, tous se battent pour la sécurité des Etats-Unis, précise-t-il avec fierté. « Mon grand-père a fait la guerre de Corée, mon père le Vietnam et j’ai moi-même servi pendant quatre ans dans le Golfe. Ce sont les attentats du 11 septembre 2001 qui m’ont poussé à m’engager dans la Navy. » Aujourd’hui, sa tâche principale consiste à traquer les migrants clandestins en plein désert de Sonora et à les déporter. Un Mexicain qui chasse les Mexicains ? « Mon père est devenu Américain, je le suis aussi. Je suis né au Mexique, mais je suis arrivé aux Etats-Unis à l’âge de 12 ans, légalement », rectifie-t-il. Il ajoute, le regard noir : « Quand je porte l’uniforme, je suis là pour appliquer la loi et servir les Etats-Unis, rien d’autre ne compte. »

Ici, la barrière s’étend sur 4 kilomètres et fait entre 5 et 8 mètres de hauteur, selon les endroits. Un avant-goût du mur « beau et grand » que Donald Trump veut ériger tout le long de la frontière. Le président américain évalue les coûts de sa construction à 12 milliards de dollars, un rapport du Département de la sécurité évoque le chiffre de 21 milliards. Donald Trump espère envoyer l’essentiel de la facture au président mexicain. « Jamás ! » lui a rétorqué ce dernier.

Un tiers des 3200 kilomètres de frontière sont déjà barricadés. Grâce au Secure Fence Act (2006) signé par George W. Bush dans le sillage des attentats du 11 septembre 2001. Avec l’élection de Donald Trump, la chasse aux clandestins est montée d’un cran. Le président dit vouloir s’en prendre avant tout aux « bad hombres », auteurs de viols, de trafic de drogue et autres délits graves, mais depuis son élection, un homme présent sur sol américain depuis trente ans peut désormais être déporté pour avoir conduit sans permis.

A Nogales, la barrière est presque intimidante. Dès qu’on s’éloigne un peu de la ville, elle se transforme en barricade anti-véhicules, plus basse, dont le but premier est d’empêcher les trafiquants de forcer le passage avec leurs pick-up. La zone est ultra-sécurisée. Tours de contrôle, caméras infrarouges et appareils de détection de mouvements au sol permettent à Vicente Paco et à ses collègues d’être alertés à la seconde du moindre passage illégal. Sans oublier les drones et les hélicoptères. Impossible de se promener dans la ville plus de dix minutes sans tomber sur une des fameuses jeeps blanches à larges bandes vertes de la Border Patrol.

Vicente Paco s’appuie contre le « mur ». « Avant 2010, on ne pouvait pas voir à travers. C’était dangereux. Nos agents étaient parfois la cible de jets de pierres. » Il tait un drame pourtant omniprésent dans la ville. Le 10 octobre 2012, José Antonio Elena Rodriguez, un Mexicain de 16 ans, a été tué par un agent. Lonnie Swartz était du côté américain. Visé avec ses coéquipiers par des pierres, il a tiré à travers les barreaux. Dix balles ont touché José Antonio, qui s’est vidé de son sang, côté mexicain. En 2014, sa mère, excédée par la lenteur de l’enquête, a porté plainte. Le procès ne cesse d’être repoussé.

Vicente Paco patrouille seul dans sa Jeep. Dans le secteur de Tucson, détaille-t-il, la Border Patrol dispose de 4000 agents pour surveiller 421 kilomètres de frontière. Ils ont arrêté 64 891 individus d’octobre 2015 à octobre 2016 (415 816 sur l’ensemble du pays). 7989 étaient des mineurs, la très grande majorité (6302) non accompagnés. En 2000, ces chiffres étaient dix fois plus élevés : 616 300 arrestations recensées dans le secteur de Tucson et 1,6 million sur le plan national.

A sa ceinture, un pistolet, un taser, des menottes, un bâton télescopique, un couteau et des jumelles. A-t-il déjà fait usage de son arme à feu ? « Je ne vais pas répondre à cette question. Tout ce que je peux dire, c’est que le recours à la force est parfois nécessaire. »

L’effectif des gardes-frontières est passé en quelques années de 10 000 à 21 000 agents. Donald Trump a promis d’en engager 5000 de plus. Les salaires sont attractifs, les conditions de retraite également. Des points indispensables pour limiter les cas de corruption et de collaboration avec les cartels.

Vicente Paco l’avait dit tout de go : pas question de parler de politique. Il préfère raconter les migrants pourchassés en ville, décrire la partie mexicaine comme un enfer contrôlé par les trafiquants – « N’allez pas côté mexicain seule ! » – et évoquer les 115 tunnels rebouchés par ses collègues. Des souterrains surtout utilisés par les trafiquants de drogue, qui se montrent toujours plus inventifs. Quand ils n’utilisent pas des migrants comme mules, il leur arrive de recourir à des catapultes géantes et à des drones. Ils se moquent des barrières. D’ailleurs, ici à Nogales, la plupart des habitants lèvent les yeux au ciel à la seule évocation du mur de Trump. Personne n’y croit vraiment.

Nogales côté mexicain, le contraste

Le lendemain, après quelques tacos de carne asada et une agua fresca de melón, on file, à pied, découvrir « l’autre Nogales ». Pour aller au Mexique, rien de plus simple. Pas de queue et même pas besoin de montrer son passeport. Nogales côté mexicain ? Le contraste est saisissant : marchés folkloriques, petite place où les habitants se racontent leur vie, procession funéraire qui avance au rythme d’une batterie endiablée. Et des cliniques dentaires à profusion, très prisées des Américains. Rien à voir avec cette ambiance pesante des patrouilles de gardes-frontières côté Arizona. C’est du moins la toute première impression qui s’en dégage. Car les cartels de la drogue contrôlent la ville. Et dans les foyers d’urgence, les migrants arrivés jusqu’à la frontière – beaucoup viennent d’Amérique centrale – et ceux qui ont déjà été refoulés ont une tout autre image de Nogales-Sonora. Celle d’un rêve brisé.

Un nom résonne en particulier. Celui de Guadalupe Garcia Aguilar. C’est le premier cas de déportation fortement médiatisé depuis que Donald Trump a édicté son décret sur la migration illégale le 25 janvier. Arrêtée en 2008 à Phoenix alors qu’elle travaillait avec un faux numéro de sécurité sociale, elle a été libérée six mois plus tard grâce à l’ONG Puente. A une condition : se présenter chaque année devant des fonctionnaires du « ICE », acronyme de Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Un moment source de stress.

Le 8 février, elle s’est donc pliée à ce contrôle de routine. Mais la guerre lancée par Donald Trump contre les clandestins « criminels », y compris ceux qui ont commis de petits délits ou sur lesquels pèsent des soupçons, lui a fait craindre le pire. Elle avait raison. Guadalupe n’est pas ressortie du bâtiment officiel, là où sa famille et des membres de Puente l’attendaient en chantant « No está sola ! ». Elle a été embarquée dans une camionnette, menottée, et déportée vers Nogales, la ville par laquelle elle était arrivée il y a 21 ans. Ni les cris « Libération, pas déportation ! » ni la tentative d’un homme de s’accrocher à une roue de la camionnette n’ont pu empêcher son expulsion. La voilà séparée de son mari et de ses enfants, restés aux Etats-Unis.

« Depuis que Donald Trump est au pouvoir, ce genre de drames est fréquent. Les passeurs ont par ailleurs augmenté les prix pour les migrants », souligne Sergio Garcia, avec son accent chantant. Journaliste, il travaille comme porte-parole pour la municipalité de Nogales-Sonora. La corruption est très présente des deux côtés de la frontière, dit-il, et la guerre contre le narcotrafic est « una farsa ». « Comment expliquez-vous que la frontière du pays le plus puissant du monde soit ainsi contrôlée par des groupes armés et des cartels ? Les Etats-Unis ont tout intérêt à ce que le trafic de drogue subsiste. »

Il est temps de retourner côté américain. Passé les petites tracasseries habituelles et le tampon dans le passeport que l’agent peu aimable ne trouvait pas – il était pourtant bien visible –, restait la dernière question : « Et là, vous transportez quoi, dans ce sac ? » Moi, sans me rendre tout de suite compte de l’absurdité de la situation : « Oh, juste trois crânes ! » Le douanier a vite compris qu’il s’agissait de têtes de mort en céramique richement décorées, un classique de l’artisanat local. Ouf.

Avec Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kid et deux trumpistes

Après Nogales, on met le cap sur El Paso, au Texas, et son pendant mexicain, Juarez. Et pour aller à El Paso, un petit détour par Tombstone s’imposait. C’est là que s’est déroulée, en 1881, la fusillade d’OK Corral, le fameux règlement de comptes entre Wyatt Earp, ses frères, Doc Holliday et une bande de coriaces hors-la-loi. On s’y croirait encore. Dans cette bourgade de cow-boys, les habitants vivent à 100% du tourisme. Alors ils font l’effort de s’habiller en vêtements d’époque. Ils le font presque avec naturel. Et puis, il y a des passionnés, capables de commenter pendant des heures, dans deux musées très bien faits, le moindre objet ayant appartenu à Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kid ou Big Nose Kate. On a beau ne pas être passionné par les histoires de westerns, on ne ressort pas tout à fait indemne de cette ville-musée à l’atmosphère si particulière. Est-ce le fait d’avoir dormi dans le bordello de l’époque, dans la chambre de « Scarlet Lady » ?

Retour à la réalité le lendemain, réveillés par un cri de coyote. Direction la maison de Moe pour le petit-déjeuner. Un sacré personnage, Moe. Tout comme Jane, qui prépare les œufs brouillés et le bacon.

Des trumpistes purs et durs. « Trump est merveilleux, il veut nous remettre au cœur des préoccupations », souligne Jane. « Ce mur avec le Mexique est nécessaire. Ceux qui viennent illégalement profitent de notre système. Ils acceptent des bas salaires et, surtout, ne dépensent rien aux Etats-Unis ! » Moe acquiesce. Mais il préfère raconter ses souvenirs d’après-guerre – il était à Berlin en 1953 pour le plan Marshall – et nous montrer sa collection de quartz. Dont un avec une tête d’alligator fossilisée. Jane poursuit sur sa lancée : « Le Mexique doit s’occuper des gens qui veulent émigrer : c’est un pays riche en ressources minières, ils devraient avoir le même niveau que nous. » Elle l’assure, tous les touristes qu’elle a rencontrés à Tombstone trouvent Trump « très bien ».

Après la visite de #Tombstone, la ville « too tough to die » [trop coriace pour mourir], on continue sur El Paso. Six heures de route en prenant des chemins de traverse. On croise un panneau « Proximité d’une prison, prière de ne pas prendre d’auto-stoppeurs », traverse des vergers de pacaniers (noix de pécan) et une ville qui s’appelle Truth or Consequences.

De El Paso à #Juarez

#El_Paso, bastion démocrate dans un Etat républicain, est, comme Nogales, opposée au projet de mur de Trump. La ville est aujourd’hui considérée comme l’une des plus sûres des Etats-Unis. Ici, la barrière court sur une courte distance. Par endroits, elle s’arrête abruptement, ou présente des « trous », comblés par des jeeps de la Border Patrol postées devant. Un « mur » mité, en somme.

On part rejoindre Juarez à pied. Cette fois, il faut payer 50 cents pour traverser le pont qui enjambe le Rio Bravo. Comme à Nogales, pas de passeport à montrer. De l’autre côté, la ville est très animée, mais avec une forte présence policière. Les agents patrouillent en groupes, à pied, en jeeps et en quads. En tenue de combat, épais gilet pare-balles et armés jusqu’aux dents. Parfois le visage masqué. Là encore, on nous fait comprendre qu’il vaut mieux éviter de s’aventurer dans certains quartiers. On avait d’ailleurs hésité à venir à Juarez. La ville traîne une sale réputation : elle a pendant longtemps été considérée comme la plus dangereuse du monde, minée par une guerre des cartels de la drogue. La « capitale mondiale du meurtre », surtout de femmes. Mais, la veille, deux margaritas ont fini par nous convaincre d’y faire un saut. Ou plutôt le barman José, qui les préparait avec passion. Depuis que l’armée mexicaine est intervenue en 2009 pour tenter de neutraliser membres de cartels et paramilitaires, Juarez n’est plus autant coupe-gorge qu’avant, nous avait-il assuré. Les sicarios, ces tueurs liés aux cartels, font un peu moins parler d’eux.

Lui-même est arrivé illégalement aux Etats-Unis, il y a vingt ans. « J’étais avec mon oncle. A l’époque, on m’avait juste dit de dire « American ! » en passant la douane. Je l’ai fait – je ne connaissais aucun autre mot en anglais – et j’étais aux Etats-Unis ! C’était aussi simple que ça. Les temps ont beaucoup changé », lâche-t-il dans un grand éclat de rire.

Cette fois, le retour côté américain est plus compliqué. Une douanière fronce les sourcils en voyant notre visa de journaliste. Elle abandonne son guichet et nous dirige vers une salle, pour « vérification ». Zut. On doit déposer nos affaires à l’entrée, s’asseoir – des menottes sont accrochées à la chaise – et attendre de se faire interroger. Une situation désagréable. Un agent à l’allure bonhomme se pointe, visiblement de bonne humeur. Il n’avait qu’un mot à la bouche : tequila. « Quoi ? Vous rentrez du Mexique et vous n’avez même pas acheté de tequila ? » Un piège ? On bredouille qu’on n’aime pas trop ça. On ne saura jamais si c’était un test ou pas. Prochaine étape : Tucson, et surtout Sells, le chef-lieu de la tribu amérindienne des Tohono O’odham.

Le dilemme de la tribu des #Tohono_O’odham

A #Sells, les cactus sont plus nombreux que les habitants. C’est ici, en plein désert de #Sonora, que les Tohono O’odham (« peuple du désert ») ont leur gouvernement, leur parlement, leur prison et leur police tribale. Rendez-vous était pris avec Verlon Jose, le numéro deux de la tribu amérindienne. Mais il nous a posé un lapin. On a donc eu droit au chef (chairman), Edward Manuel, un peu moins habitué aux médias.

Bien décidés à s’opposer au mur de Donald Trump, les Tohono O’odham se trouvent dans une situation particulière : 2000 de leurs 34 000 membres vivent au Mexique. La tribu est coupée en deux. Elle l’est de fait déjà depuis le traité de Gadsden de 1853, mais elle refuse que des blocs de béton concrétisent cette séparation. Certains membres ne pourraient alors même plus honorer la tombe de leurs parents. D’ailleurs, dans leur langue, il n’y a pas de mot pour dire « mur ». « Le projet de Donald Trump nous heurte pour des raisons historiques, culturelles, mais aussi spirituelles et environnementales. Et parce que nous n’avons même pas été consultés », dénonce, sur un ton ferme mais calme, Edward Manuel.

Chez les Tohono, pas de rideau de fer comme à Nogales, mais du sable, des arbustes secs, des montagnes et des canyons. Avec, par endroits, des Normandy-style barriers, des sortes de structures métalliques qui émergent du sable, de quoi empêcher des véhicules de passer. Mais pas les hommes, ni les animaux.

Edward Manuel et sa « Nation » ont avalé bien des couleuvres. Ils ne voient pas d’un bon œil la militarisation de la frontière, mais ont dû apprendre à collaborer avec la Border Patrol, déjà bien présente sur les 100 kilomètres de frontière qui passent par leurs terres. Car les cartels de la drogue y sont très actifs. Des membres de la tribu ont été séquestrés et brutalisés. Le chairman parle lentement. « Il y a un cartel en particulier qui contrôle la zone. Nos jeunes sont parfois recrutés. Ce sont des proies faciles : le taux de chômage est élevé dans la tribu. Se voir proposer plusieurs milliers de dollars est très tentant. »

La réserve est aussi devenue un corridor mortel pour les migrants. Edward Manuel brise un autre tabou. « Si nous en trouvons en difficulté, nous les soignons dans nos hôpitaux, avec l’argent fédéral que nous recevons. » Délicat. Quand des corps sont retrouvés, la police tribale mène des enquêtes et doit transférer les dépouilles à l’institut médico-légal de Tucson pour procéder à des autopsies, coûteuses. Mais parfois, nous dit-on, les dépouilles sont enterrées là où elles sont trouvées, et resteront probablement à jamais anonymes. D’ailleurs, le long de la route qui mène à Sells, nous avons été frappés par le nombre de petites croix fleuries. Des accidents de la route, mais pas seulement. Des clandestins morts déshydratés, aussi.

Le chef évoque un chiffre : la tribu dépense près de 3 millions de dollars par an pour « gérer ces problèmes de frontière », une somme non remboursée par le gouvernement fédéral et à laquelle s’ajoutent les frais médicaux. Alors, forcément, la tentation est grande de vouloir laisser un plus grand champ d’action aux agents de la Border Patrol. Même si leurs courses-poursuites en quad dans le désert brusquent leur quiétude et effraient le gibier qu’ils aiment chasser. C’est le dilemme des Amérindiens : ils veulent conserver leur autonomie et défendre leurs droits, mais la situation tendue les contraint à coopérer avec les forces de sécurité. Au sein de la tribu, des divisions apparaissent, entre les plus frondeurs et les pragmatiques. Mais ils sont au moins unis sur un point : personne ne veut du mur de Trump. « Les 21 tribus de l’Arizona nous soutiennent dans notre combat », insiste le chef.

Edward Manuel tient à relever les effets positifs de cette coopération : en dix ans le nombre d’arrestations a baissé de 84%. La barrière anti-véhicules installée en 2006 y est pour beaucoup. La police tribale a procédé à 84 186 arrestations dans la réserve en 2006, chiffre qui est tombé à 14 472 en 2016.

Le chef est également préoccupé par l’impact qu’un « vrai mur » aurait sur la migration des animaux. « Et qui a pensé au problème de l’écoulement naturel de l’eau en période de mousson ? La nature est la plus forte. » Le porte-parole venu de Tucson acquiesce discrètement. Ce n’est pas un membre de la tribu, mais il a fallu passer par lui pour que les Amérindiens puissent s’exprimer dans un média.

La problématique des Tohono rappelle celle de propriétaires de terrains privés, du côté du Texas notamment, menacés d’expropriation pour que Donald Trump puisse construire son mur. Plus d’une centaine d’actions en justice ont déjà été lancées. Certains ont accepté des portions de barrière sur leur terrain, en échange de compensations. Et d’un code électronique pour pouvoir franchir le grillage qui s’érige sur leur propriété.

Edward Manuel semble fatigué. Mais il a encore une chose à dire : il a invité Donald Trump à venir « voir concrètement ce qui se passe du côté de Sells. Il verra bien que ce n’est pas possible de construire un mur ici. » Le président avait accepté l’invitation. Des dates avaient même été fixées. Puis la Maison-Blanche a annulé, sans jamais proposer de nouvelles dates. Pourquoi ? Seul Donald Trump le sait.

Les morts qui hantent le désert de Sonora

On continue notre route vers l’ouest, avec un crochet par l’Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. Le désert de Sonora est d’une beauté insolente. Des drames s’y déroulent pourtant tous les jours, parfois en silence, comme étouffés.

Le 15 juin, en début de soirée, la Border Patrol a joué une scène digne d’un mauvais film d’action : elle a pris d’assaut un campement humanitaire en plein désert, dans le but de dénicher des clandestins. Et elle en a en trouvé quatre. L’ONG No More Deaths est sous le choc. C’est elle qui gère ce camp un peu spécial, dont le but est de soulager, le temps d’une étape, les migrants qui se lancent dans une traversée périlleuse depuis le Mexique. Une tente, du matériel médical, des lits et beaucoup d’eau, voilà ce qu’elle leur propose.

« La Border Patrol connaissait l’existence de ce camp et, jusqu’ici, elle tolérait sa présence », explique Chelsea Halstead, qui travaille pour une autre ONG active dans la région. Un accord a été signé en 2013 : les agents s’engageaient à ne pas y intervenir. Mais le 15 juin, alors qu’ils traquaient déjà depuis plusieurs jours les clandestins aux abords du camp, ils ont décidé de troquer les goutte-à-goutte contre des menottes. Une quinzaine de jeeps, deux quads et une trentaine d’agents lourdement armés ont investi le camp. Chelsea Halstead : « Les migrants risquent maintenant de penser qu’un piège leur a été tendu. C’est dévastateur pour le travail des humanitaires. »

#No_More_Deaths s’attelle depuis treize ans à empêcher que des migrants meurent dans le désert. Des bénévoles vont régulièrement y déposer des réserves d’eau. Depuis 1998, plus de 7000 migrants ont trouvé la mort dans les quatre Etats (Californie, Arizona, Nouveau-Mexique et Texas) qui bordent le Mexique. Environ 3000 ont péri dans le seul désert de Sonora, déshydratés.

Dans l’Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, une réserve de biosphère qui abrite d’étonnantes cactées en forme d’orgues, une pancarte avertit les randonneurs : « Contrebande et immigration illégale peuvent être pratiquées ici. Composez le 911 pour signaler toute activité suspecte. » Interrogé, le manager du parc relativise les dangers. Une plaque en marbre devant le centre des visiteurs raconte pourtant une triste histoire. Celle de Kris Eggle, un apprenti ranger, tué à 28 ans par les membres d’un cartel qu’il était en train de poursuivre.

Ce jour-là, pas loin de la piste, on aperçoit un bout d’habit pris dans les ronces. Par terre, une chaussure, sorte d’espadrille raccommodée, avec le genre de semelles qui ne laisse pas de traces. Celles que privilégient les migrants. Ils les recouvrent parfois avec des bouts de tapis.

Pour passer aux Etats-Unis par cette région hostile, les migrants peuvent débourser jusqu’à 6000 dollars. Plus le chemin est périlleux, plus le prix augmente. C’est bien ce que dénoncent les activistes : la militarisation de portions de frontière pousse les migrants à emprunter des chemins toujours plus dangereux, en alimentant l’industrie des « coyotes » – le nom donné aux passeurs –, qui eux-mêmes travaillent parfois main dans la main avec les cartels de la drogue.

Les « coyotes » abandonnent souvent les migrants en plein désert après avoir empoché l’argent. Ce n’est que la première difficulté à laquelle les clandestins font face. Poursuivis par les agents de la Border Patrol, ils sont parfois également traqués par des milices privées composées d’individus lourdement armés à l’idéologie proche de l’extrême droite qui, souvent, cherchent « à faire justice » eux-mêmes. Quand ils ne tombent pas sur des brigands. Des cas de viols et de meurtres sont signalés. Dans le désert, c’est la loi du plus fort.

« Chaque jour, entre trente et plusieurs centaines de gens passent par illégalement dans la région », raconte un agent de la Border Patrol, à un checkpoint à la sortie du parc, pendant qu’un chien sniffe l’arrière de la voiture. « Surtout des trafiquants. »

Chelsea Halstead travaille pour Colibri, un centre qui collabore avec l’institut médico-légal de Tucson. L’ONG s’est donné un but : identifier les corps, donner un nom aux restes humains retrouvés dans le désert. Faire en sorte que « Doe 12-00434 » ou « Doe 12-00435 » retrouvent enfin leur identité. « Nous avons obtenu l’an dernier l’autorisation de procéder à des tests ADN. Cela simplifie considérablement nos recherches. Avant, on recueillait les informations de familles qui n’ont plus de nouvelles d’un proche, et nous les transmettions aux médecins légistes. Mais s’il n’y avait pas de signalement particulier, comme une caractéristique au niveau de la dentition ou du crâne, c’était comme rechercher une aiguille dans une botte de foin. » En prélevant des échantillons d’ADN chez les familles de disparus, Colibri espère pouvoir identifier des centaines de corps encore anonymes. Un bandana, une poupée, une bible : tous les objets retrouvés dans le désert, à proximité ou non de restes humains – les animaux sauvages sont parfois passés par là –, ont une histoire, que l’ADN peut permettre de reconstituer.

Mais le centre se heurte parfois à un obstacle : la peur. « Notre travail n’a pas vraiment changé avec l’élection de Donald Trump. Mais les déportations sont plus massives, chaque clandestin se sent potentiellement en danger », précise Chelsea. Une femme a été arrêtée et déportée alors qu’elle subissait une opération pour une tumeur au cerveau, rappelle-t-elle. Autre exemple : une victime de violence conjugale. Son compagnon a dénoncé son statut migratoire, et la voilà expulsée. « Les clandestins sont tétanisés. Ils craignent d’être arrêtés en se rendant chez nous. Une famille de Los Angeles, qui nous avait fourni de l’ADN, nous a appelés pour nous dire qu’un de leur fils a été déporté peu après. »

Chelsea est encore toute tourneboulée par l’épisode du raid. Dans le désert, quand un migrant parvient à trouver une balise de sauvetage et appelle le 911, il tombe généralement sur la Border Patrol, et pas sur des équipes médicalisées. « Ils veulent nous faire croire qu’ils sauvent des vies, mais ils s’empressent de déporter les migrants. On a même eu droit à une fausse opération de sauvetage par hélicoptère, où un agent de la Border Patrol jouait le rôle d’un migrant ! » assure-t-elle.

A #Ajo, on n’aime pas parler de migration illégale

Depuis le parc de cactus, on remonte vers la petite ville d’Ajo. Les gens ne sont pas toujours bavards, ni les journalistes bienvenus. Chez Marcela’s, la Marcela en question, une Mexicaine, n’avait visiblement pas très envie de parler immigration illégale ce jour-là. Sa préoccupation : faire fonctionner son petit restaurant. Elle a trouvé un bon créneau : elle est la seule de la ville à offrir des petits-déjeuners. Alors plutôt que de répondre aux questions, elle file chercher le café.

Départ pour #Yuma, située à la confluence du Colorado et de la rivière Gila. De l’autre côté de l’eau, le Mexique. Après avoir fait un tour en ville et tenté d’approcher le mur – le nombre de sens interdits nous fait faire des kilomètres –, on descend vers #Gadsden. Là, à force de chercher à approcher la barricade, on l’a vue de très près, en empruntant, sans le remarquer tout de suite, un chemin totalement interdit. D’ailleurs, à cet endroit, le « mur » s’est arrêté sec au bout de quelques centaines de mètres.

Plus rien. Ou plutôt si : du sable, des ronces et des pierres. Plus loin, la barricade se dédouble. A un endroit, elle jouxte une place de jeu, qui semble laissée à l’abandon.

A San Diego, le « mur » se jette dans le Pacifique

On décide un peu plus tard de poursuivre l’aventure jusqu’à San Diego. La route est presque droite. On traverse le désert de Yuha, des montagnes rocheuses, des réserves amérindiennes, des champs d’éoliennes et des parcs de panneaux solaires. Avec un détour par Calexico – contraction de « California » et de « Mexico » – pour avaler deux-trois tacos. En face, son pendant, Mexicali, mariage entre « Mexico » et « California ». A Calexico, on a beau être encore aux Etats-Unis, l’espagnol domine. Dans la petite gargote choisie pour midi, l’ambiance est étrange. Les clients ont tous des visages boursouflés et tristes.

L’entrée à #San_Diego est impressionnante, avec ses autoroutes à voies multiples. Ici, le « mur » se jette dans le Pacifique. On parque la voiture dans le Border State Park, et c’est parti pour 30 minutes de marche sous un soleil cuisant. Une pancarte avertit de la présence de serpents à sonnette. Très vite, un bruit sourd et répétitif : les pales d’hélicoptères, qui font d’incessants va-et-vient. On se trouve dans une réserve naturelle. Au bout de quelques minutes, la plage. Elle est déserte. On se dirige vers la palissade rouillée. Le sable est brûlant. Le bruit des vagues est couvert par celui des hélicoptères. Et par la musique qui émane de la jeep d’un agent de la Border Patrol, posté face au Mexique. Pas vraiment de quoi inspirer les Californiens : ils ont de belles plages un peu plus loin, sans barbelés, sans panneaux leur indiquant de ne pas s’approcher de la palissade, sans caméra qui enregistre leurs faits et gestes. De l’autre côté, à Tijuana, c’est le contraste : des familles et des chiens profitent de la plage, presque accolés aux longues barres rouillées. Un pélican passe nonchalamment au-dessus de la barrière.

Le week-end, l’ambiance est un peu différente. Le parc de l’Amitié, qui porte aujourd’hui très mal son nom, ouvre pendant quelques heures, de 10 à 14 heures. C’est là que des familles, sous l’étroite surveillance de la Border Patrol, peuvent, l’espace de quelques instants, franchir la première barrière côté américain, se retrouver dans le no man’s land qui sert de passage pour les jeeps des gardes-frontières, et se diriger vers la deuxième. Pour enfin pouvoir, à travers un grillage, toucher, embrasser leurs proches. C’est le sort de familles séparées par la politique migratoire.

Ce parc a été inauguré en 1971 par l’épouse du président Richard Nixon. Jusqu’à mi-2009, il était possible de s’étreindre et de se passer des objets, presque sans restriction. Puis, le parc a fermé, le temps de construire une nouvelle barrière, en acier cette fois, de 6 mètres de haut. Il a rouvert en 2012. Ses environs sont désormais quadrillés en permanence par des agents de la Border Patrol. En jeeps, en quads et à cheval. C’est devenu l’une des portions de frontière les plus surveillées des Etats-Unis. Avec Donald Trump, elle pourrait le devenir encore plus.

Sur la piste des jaguars
La construction du mur « impénétrable, beau et solide » de Trump aurait des conséquences désastreuses sur l’écosystème, avertissent les scientifiques. Les rares jaguars mexicains venus aux Etats-Unis pourraient en pâtir. Et en matière de jaguars, Mayke et Chris Bugbee en connaissent un rayon.

Mayke est un berger malinois femelle. Elle était censée faire carrière dans la traque aux narcotrafiquants, détecter drogues et explosifs, mais la Border Patrol n’en a pas voulu : la chienne a peur des gros camions. Peu importe : Mayke a aujourd’hui une existence bien plus fascinante. Repérée par le biologiste Chris Bugbee, elle a été formée pour surveiller un autre type de clandestin venu tout droit du Mexique : El Jefe. L’un des rares jaguars à avoir foulé le sol américain.

El Jefe (« le chef ») vient probablement de la Sierra Madre, une chaîne de montagnes du nord du Mexique. La dernière fois qu’il a été filmé aux Etats-Unis – il lui arrive de se faire avoir par des pièges photographiques –, c’était en octobre 2015. Depuis, plus rien. A-t-il été tué, braconné par des chasseurs ? Ou est-il reparti au Mexique, à la recherche d’une femelle ? Aucune piste n’est à écarter.

Une chose est sûre : El Jefe est un jaguar malin. Chris Bugbee ne l’a jamais vu. Grâce à Mayke, il a trouvé des traces de sa présence – des excréments, des restes de mouffettes où tout a été dévoré sauf les glandes anales, et même un crâne d’ours avec les traces de dents d’un jaguar, peut-être les siennes –, mais n’a jamais croisé son regard. « El Jefe est très prudent. Il nous a probablement observés pendant des missions. Il est arrivé qu’il apparaisse sur des images de caméras à peine 12 minutes après mon passage, raconte Chris Bugbee. Ma chienne, par contre, l’a probablement vu. Un jour, elle s’est brusquement immobilisée sur ses pattes, comme tétanisée par la peur. Elle est venue se cacher derrière mes jambes. Je suis presque sûr que c’était lui. Cela devait en tout cas être quelque chose d’incroyable ! »

Auteur d’un mémoire de master consacré aux alligators, Chris Bugbee s’est installé à Tucson avec sa femme, qui s’est, elle, spécialisée dans les ours noirs, puis les félins. Il a d’abord entraîné des chiens à ne pas attaquer des serpents à sonnette. Puis il s’est pris de passion pour les jaguars et s’est intéressé de près à El Jefe, qui rôdait pas loin. Ni une, ni deux, il décide de faire de Mayke le premier chien spécialisé dans la détection de ces félins aux Etats-Unis. Il l’entraîne avec de l’excrément de jaguar récupéré d’un zoo. Tous deux se mettent ensuite sur la piste d’El Jefe pendant quatre ans, dans le cadre d’un projet de l’Université de l’Arizona, dont le but est de surveiller les effets sur la faune de la construction de premières portions de palissades de long de la frontière.

En été 2015, le projet prend fin, mais Chris Bugbee veut continuer. Il finit par obtenir le soutien du Center for Biological Diversity. Grâce à ses pièges photographiques, il réussit à cerner les habitudes d’El Jefe. Des images censées rester discrètes et utilisées uniquement à des fins scientifiques, jusqu’à ce que Chris Bugbee décide de les rendre publiques, sans demander l’avis de ses anciens chefs ni celui des agences fédérales associées au projet, « qui de toute façon ne font rien pour préserver les jaguars ». Il avait hésité. Le risque en révélant l’existence d’El Jefe est d’éveiller la curiosité de braconniers.

Mais Chris veut sensibiliser l’opinion publique à la nécessité de protéger cette espèce, qui revient progressivement aux Etats-Unis. Car le mur de Donald Trump la menace. Tout comme le projet d’exploitation d’une mine de cuivre, pile-poil sur le territoire d’El Jefe. En février 2016, il diffuse donc une vidéo de 41 secondes qui montre « l’unique jaguar aux Etats-Unis ». C’est le buzz immédiat. La vidéo a été visionnée des dizaines de millions de fois. Du côté de l’Université de l’Arizona et du Service américain de la pêche et de la faune, l’heure est par contre à la soupe à la grimace. Chris Bugbee est sommé de rendre son matériel et son véhicule.

« Je ne regrette pas d’avoir diffusé la vidéo, souligne aujourd’hui Chris Bugbee. L’opinion publique doit être alertée de l’importance de protéger cette espèce. C’est incroyable de les voir revenir, peut-être poussés vers le nord à cause des changements climatiques. Dans les années 1900-1920, il existait un programme d’éradication de ces prédateurs. La population des jaguars aux Etats-Unis a presque été entièrement décimée vers 1970. » Il ajoute : « Mais avec le projet de Trump, ce serait clairement la fin de l’histoire du retour des jaguars aux Etats-Unis. »

Le dernier jaguar femelle recensé aux Etats-Unis a été tué dans l’Arizona en 1963. Depuis, les jaguars observés dans le pays se font rares. Ces vingt dernières années, sept jaguars ont été aperçus. Les deux derniers ont été photographiés récemment, l’un d’eux en décembre 2016 dans les montagnes Huachuca. Juste au nord d’une petite portion de frontière sans barricade.

Les jaguars de Sonora et les ocelots ne seraient pas les seuls animaux affectés par la construction d’un mur. Beaucoup d’espèces migrent naturellement entre les deux pays. Des coyotes, des ours, des lynx, des cougars, des antilopes ou des mouflons. Ou encore les rares loups gris du Mexique. Même des animaux de très petite taille, comme le hibou pygmée, des tortues, des grenouilles ou des papillons risquent d’être touchés. Les animaux volants pourraient être gênés par des radars et des installations lumineuses, qui font partie des méthodes de détection de passages illégaux de migrants ou de trafiquants.

Chris Bugbee continue de se promener sur les terres d’El Jefe dans l’Arizona, dans l’espoir de retrouver, un jour, des signes de sa présence. Quant à Mayke, elle pourrait bientôt avoir une nouvelle mission : « Je vais probablement l’entraîner à trouver des ocelots. Eux aussi commencent à remonter depuis le Mexique. »

https://labs.letemps.ch/interactive/2017/longread-au-pied-du-mur/img/article/phoenix1.jpg https://labs.letemps.ch/interactive/2017/longread-au-pied-du-mur/img/article/phoenix6.jpg https://labs.letemps.ch/interactive/2017/longread-au-pied-du-mur/img/article/phoenix2.jpg https://labs.letemps.ch/interactive/2017/longread-au-pied-du-mur/img/article/bloc2.jpg https://labs.letemps.ch/interactive/2017/longread-au-pied-du-mur/img/article/mexicain1.jpg https://labs.letemps.ch/interactive/2017/longread-au-pied-du-mur/img/article/mexicain3.jpg https://labs.letemps.ch/interactive/2017/longread-au-pied-du-mur/img/article/elpaso99.jpg https://labs.letemps.ch/interactive/2017/longread-au-pied-du-mur/img/article/tonoho2.jpg https://labs.letemps.ch/interactive/2017/longread-au-pied-du-mur/img/article/elpaso1.jpg https://labs.letemps.ch/interactive/2017/longread-au-pied-du-mur/img/article/sonora6.jpg

Avec une carte des morts :

https://i.imgur.com/pLePFah.png

sur les tunnels, v. aussi :
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/625559