What about Mexico’s border wall with the US?

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If you go to where Mexico meets the US at the Pacific Ocean you will see a curious thing. There appear to be two fences. One appears to be on each side of the border.

This arrangement is normal and benign. Both countries have their own security needs.

But there’s a journalistic scandal staring at you right in the face. The US media conversation covers the US fence often enough. I can’t seem to find any coverage of the Mexican border fence. Why is it there? How much coverage does it have? How much does it cost to maintain it?

The idea of Mexico paying for its own fence along our common border simply doesn’t enter into the US conversation about borders and relations with Mexico. Omitting it does make for simplified narratives, but mostly that’s in the service of laziness. We could do better, but we don’t.

14 thoughts on “What about Mexico’s border wall with the US?”

  1. I used to go to Mexico all the time, before not got too violent. I drove through the border going into Mexico and nobody even paid attention.

    The other day there was a shooting at the Nogales border checkpoint but it was Mexican border gourds shooting a driver headed south.


    At about 7 p.m. Thursday, two men in a Ford pickup were heading southbound through the DeConcini Port of Entry when border officers questioned the driver about the license plate because a check showed it was registered to a different vehicle, a news release said. During questioning, the driver accelerated toward Mexico, the release said.

    Interesting. Car theft is a big problem in Tucson. A guy I knew said he had Lojack installed in his care. When it was stolen, he notified the police.

    The car was already 50 miles into Mexico. Maybe Mexican border guards are starting to pay attention.

  2. Nothing to be surprised about here, Mr. Lutas. The Establishment Media allow as much coverage for Mexico fencing out the US as they do for India’s fences & ditches with Bangladesh, for example. This is because ‘The Man’ — the rich & powerful, aka the Democrat Establishment — have decided that open borders and the importation of unskilled, non-English-speaking indigents is in their interest. Why have the Democrats decided that? That is the real puzzle.

    After all, the Democrats have proved there is no need to import those unfortunate people for voting purposes — because there are already enough dead people around to vote Democrat when required. And there is no shortage of low-wage labor today. Most ordinary Democrats are ’empty-headed followers of fashion’ who just ape their leaders. But what is the real benefit of open borders to the wealthy Europhiliac Democrat leaders who are calling the shots?

  3. It’s a non-story, of course. *waves hand in Obi-Wan-Kenobi fashion* The Ruling Class does not want to hear about it, and so their todies in the Establishment National Media will never write about it, being good servants and stenographers to the ruling class.
    Just like how they do not wish to hear anything about exotic and/or medieval diseases like typhus or TB suddenly cropping up, in places where American medicine hasn’t seen them in decades. Or give any attention to how illegal and uninsured drunk drivers slaughter Americans in road accidents. Or how illegals burden hospitals, schools and working-class neighborhoods, at the expense of citizens both native and naturalized. Or the costs of ordinary Americans of identity theft, not to mention illegals voting.
    It’s not an issue at all, if it comes at the cost of the Ruling Classes ability to virtue-signal.
    And get cheap help, and sample exotic cuisine.

  7. The first indication of a border wall/fence I’ve found in Tijuana is a reference to a wall going west from the old customshouse in 1909-1911. I’ve not been able to find any indication of when a fence was initially placed on the border; but of the ones existing now, the fencelines that are certainly within the US are US ones, and all indications are that the southernmost one at the border proper is a US built fence as well.

    Unlike, say, Nogales where the initial fence was built by the Mexican mayor who wanted to be sure that no-one bypassed the customs officers enforcing his tarrifs.

    From 1921 (29?) the “border field” place was in use by the navy as an airfield, as a bombing range, as a place for launching target drones, as a place for machine-gun training, and most recently as a place for communications-research that no-one will talk about. So I’m thinking that at some point in the pre-war era the fence went up, the one that is “Mexico’s” fence for the purpose of this discussion.

  8. The Friendship Monument is precisely on the border line. A view on Google Earth shows that both fences are on the US side.

  11. Newrouter –

    On your google link, I see a white-line for the border that is seems to be in the incorrect position: it does not bisect the surveyed monument. And I see a fence that is to the north of that monument by 3 feet or so.

    Perhaps of interest, this article which places the 2011 US DHS replacement fence 3 feet to the US side of the border, and how it upset people that cannot now touch the monument from the US side because of the fence in the way.

    http://sdcitybeat.com/culture/seen-local/border-fence-blocks-access-important-historical-site/

    Isn’t the border still a “straight line drawn from the mouth of the Gila to one marine league south of the port of San Diego? One wouldn’t see zigs and zags on such a section of border.

  13. Here is a photo album (from a kite!) of what it looked like in 2009, when the US fence was on the border proper:

    http://www.supertopo.com/climbers-forum/990233/Tijuana-The-Happiest-Place-On-Earth-aerial-photos-OT

    And maybe Google is not serving the same thing to you as it is to me, so here is what I’m seeing when I click on your link, along with a few annotations:

    https://i.imgur.com/obYTajp.jpg

    It is very easy to see the monument which marks the border, and it is easy to see the pavement marking differences on the plaza around the monument that still show where the border-fence (that was there until 2011) stood. We’ve seen above that in 2011 the fence which was on the border was removed and replaced with a fence that was 3′ inside the USA at that monument.

    The white line that I see on the google map which says “United States” above it and “México” below it is near to but not on the border.

    And on this Bing map aerial photo the white line is also not on, but near, the border as can be seen if you follow the border monuments which are about every mile in that area.
    https://binged.it/2GnDoXO

    This one https://goo.gl/maps/mjugy2VnFcJ2 by the rail station has a little alcove in the fenceline around it. The white line on the aerial photo would appear to show the surveyors monument as 20 feet inside Mexico. I trust the surveyors monument, I do not trust the line on the google photo.

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