In his guest column this month, Todd Blodgett asserts: “It’s time to listen to those who are actually on the border.” I am…
In his guest column this month, Todd Blodgett asserts: “It’s time to listen to those who are actually on the border.”
I am a Mexican immigrant. I was born and lived in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. I went to my first two years of school there. My parents bought a home on the American side. I go back occasionally.
Blodgett quotes Raul Ortiz, the chief of the U. S. Border Patrol for the Rio Grande Valley sector: “Come walk in my shoes.” That hardly counts as compelling evidence for “the wall.”
Indeed, Blodgett never defines “the wall” because President Donald Trump does not have a stable definition in the first place.
On June 15,2015, Trump said: “I will build a great wall ― and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me ― and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.”
On Aug. 11,2016, he told a crowd that the wall would be made of “concrete plank… Precast. Precast, right? Boom. Bing. Done. Keep going.”
Today, the wall could be “artistically designed steel slats” according to Trump’s tweet from Dec. 18,2018.
Would “artistically designed steel slats” stop illegal drugs? Some calculate that the gaps between the slats are about nine inches.
