New Documentary: The Border Wall

By Larry Jones

President Barack Obama is committed to retaining the wall along the Mexican border which George W. Bush brought into being.  It is a huge wall where the border is adjacent to an urban U.S. area, such as El Paso.  It drives desperate immigrants to cross where there are simple chain link fences along desolate, dry, and burning deserts.  Literally thousands of men, women and children have died on the border in recent years. The border wall has led to a massive increase in those deaths. 

No accurate account of the number of people who have died trying to cross the border so they could work  is available because such counts never include the bodies which were never found.  Anti-immigrant politicians and right wing private groups want a law that would punish the humanitarians who leave scores of gallon containers of water for immigrants in the desert.   Will Obama’s head of immigration as part of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano fix this?  Not likely.  When she was governor of Arizona, she pushed the feds into sending the National Guard to further beef up border enforcement.  She and her boss, Obama, have no desire nor plans to reduce the horrors caused by the wall.

A new film by Richard Martinez called “The Wall Documentary”, which shows both the development of this wall during the Bush years and the growth of opposition to it in cities and towns along the border, is premiering this week in San Antonio and McAllen Texas. Check out this video clip regarding a documentary about the wall.