High Ground

 Up on D Hill, you can see all around this valley in a 360 degree panorama that includes Agua Prieta/Douglas, the sprawling desert scrub lands leading up to the far away mountains, and the road out to where the new section of the barrier wall is being built. It’s the perfect place for a big tower full of high definition zooming cameras and and fleet of border patrol cars.

As I walked up the road to the hill, I was passed by at least a half dozen border patrol cars, vans, paddy wagons, and at one point a convoy of camouflage-painted step vans with camouflage-dressed armed men huddled inside. A plane flew low overhead. And as I looked out from the hill, I could see the miles and miles of the wall stretching across the landscape like a scar. I couldn’t see, but know about, the many motion detectors hidden all over the valley. The other day we spotted a surveillance blimp in the distance. There are checkpoints on the roads. The desert itself is used as a weapon.

Such a militarized place. Being here, I have the creepy feeling of being watched all the time, either on camera or in person. Not just when I am accompanying refugees, but also on my own time doing mundane things like going for a walk, grocery shopping, driving in and out of town. I can only imagine what it’s like for the Spanish-speaking brown skinned people who live here. This is a military occupation, pure and simple, with a demographic enemy that poses a challenge to white supremacy.

It reminds me of Palestine, where the same tactics and technologies are used by Israel – with some of the same corporations making profits. And for the same reasons. In Palestine, the occupation is much more pervasive, brutal, and overt; here there is a veneer of what passes for normal civilian life. But in both places, the constant policing presence and the threat of arrest are in the xenophobic air.

Now that I have met a number of people making this migrant journey, I am struck by the cruelty of our national response to their plight. These are people who are just like us, doing just what we would do if we were in the same circumstances. They are not scary people. They are lovable. And courageous. And resourceful. And hard working.

We are the richest country on earth, with plenty of space for more people. We have, through our years of economic exploitation and military oppression, actually created the unlivable circumstances from which people are fleeing. It is we who have been, and are, the invaders. And now we gate off our country to prevent the victims of our aggression from coming to us for refuge.

As I stood on the high ground of D Hill contemplating all this, I thought about the irony that this occupation has been portrayed as defensive in nature, as some kind of moral high ground. Out here in the remote borderlands, nothing could be further from the truth.