07 May 2019

The people who actually live by the border wall

Elliot Ross: "The singular most surprising thing going into this was seeing this core issue of building a wall as not this really divisive thing. Within the national discourse it is, but once you get to the borderland and meet the people who live with the border as a part of their daily life, across the board, rather than it being a divisive issue, it's one that brings people together in opposition. That was surprising to us.

From far right to far left, and for different reasons. The Republicans have very Republican reasons: They want to avoid federal overreach — and the government coming in and taking their land, using eminent domain for the border, is the definition of federal overreach.

For all the thousands of people that we met, we only met a handful who were pro construction of the wall, and that's something that is not really acknowledged. I feel like so much of this conversation is driven when anecdotes are needed from a very few select group of people, most of whom don’t even live in the borderland."
Photo credit: Eliot Moss