As someone who spends a good portion of the year living a short distance from the southern border in Arizona and doing humanitarian aid work here, I promise you that walls and fences do not stop undocumented immigration. They do not even slow it down by very much.

What walls and fences do is force people into the hands of the cartels and help maintain the border industrial complex.

It's also really important to keep two things in mind when you read these numbers coming out of the Border Patrol: one is that many of these "apprehensions" are repeats. In other words, the same person was caught several times and therefore counted several times. The second is that many if not most of these people are asylum-seekers, crossing the border and turning themselves in. This is legal, other than not crossing at a port of entry. 

 @ad39b1fd One could almost believe there is a conspiracy in which immigrants would have to turn to cartels because of the border walls, i.e. #Enshittification of the border experience. 

 @b9482105 
No, it's just a somewhat predictable perverse incentive created by cutting off access to legal entry which then leaves limited chokepoints to undocumented entry that can easily be controlled by cartels. 

 We need to start calling it Biden's Wall. Lay responsibility where it belongs. This will also piss off Trump and his supporters, who want to claim credit. 

 @ad39b1fd What did you expect? Trump is going to be the Democrat's Strawman SockPuppet for the rest... of... the... Democrat's... existence.

"US President Joe #Biden has ordered the construction of additional sections of #BorderWall along a stretch of the US border with #Mexico..."; and OFC blames it on #Trump. https://www.dw.com/en/biden-announces-mexico-border-wall-extension-in-u-turn/a-67010430 #Immigration 

 @a4f1847d 

Back last winter when I was photographing the #ContainerWall in southern Arizona, most conversations about the future or the San Rafael Valley section of the border seemed pretty unanimous that Biden would try to build more wall there at some point. Or, if not Biden, whoever the next president is, R or D. They all want it. 

 @ad39b1fd I knew that... But what I said about the 'Forever SockPuppet' stands.

Personally I think the "Border Wall" is in large part a scam... a gimme to a completely bankrupt US construction industry. Lots of 'studies, research, planning' cutesy exhibitions of wall design, but little has ever actually been built over the years.

Ps a few years back the BP had a whole section of the Tex/Mex border cleared to have a better 'line of sight', and destroyed the Agave the Lipan Apache need to survive 

 @a4f1847d 

Um, it's mostly been built. 

And, yeah, there is a term that even some in law enforcement I've spoken with use: Border Industrial Complex. They all know it's a big joke, but a very lucrative one for many.