Ten years is enough
Immigrants in San Diego organize against Operation Gatekeeper
by Willie Colón Reyes
Adriana Jasso’s raspy, seemingly tireless voice booms with the sound of undiluted passion. Jasso is working the crowd in San Diego, California, during a march to protest U.S. immigration policies, and it’s clear that she’s done this before.
“¡Migra entiende! (Listen up, U.S. immigration!),” Jasso shouts.
“¡El pueblo no te quiere! (The people don’t want you!),” comes the response from a fired up passel of protestors.
It’s October 2, a warm and partly cloudy Saturday in the San Diego community of San Ysidro. At one point, Mexico is only several hundred yards away; so close that many of the roughly 1,200 marchers wave and cheer to a handful of men standing on a hill across from a 10-foot-high metal wall that dissects the border.
The wall and what it represents is the reason why Jasso, along with other San Diego area immigrants and their allies, have taken to the streets: Operation Gatekeeper, the repressive U.S. immigration program that has militarized the Mexico-U.S. border and terrorized immigrant communities in the San Diego area, is now 10 years old. (Operation Gatekeeper came after a similar blockade-style border control initiative in El Paso, Texas—1993’s Operation Hold the Line—and was succeeded by 1999’s Operation Safeguard in Southern Arizona.)
 |
| 10 años son demasiados (10 years is too much). |
The march, cosponsored by AFSC’s U.S.-Mexico Border Program based in San Diego, has drawn a diverse group. There are preschoolers and elders who could be grandparents; men and women; Latinos, whites, Asians, and African-Americans. They’re united under a theme that’s dramatically emblazoned with a blood-red splash on informational literature passed out to onlookers: 10 años son demasiados (10 years is too much).
“¡Somos un pueblo (We are a people)…
“…sin fronteras! (…without borders!),” rises another thundering call-and-response chant.
The men in Mexico swing their shirts over their heads, whoop in support, and watch as the long line of protestors moves on.
A failed program
Begun in 1994, Operation Gatekeeper’s primary objective was to decrease the influx of undocumented immigrants by making it more difficult for people to travel via relatively safe routes in the San Diego area. Instead, potential crossers would be forced to go through the perilous deserts and mountains east of San Diego.
The program included an increased presence of U.S. Border Patrol agents, the building of huge steel “fences” and concrete pillars that extend some 150 feet into the Pacific Ocean, and high-tech surveillance equipment.
 |
A section of the steel wall along the border.
Photo by Malik Stevenson |
By several important measures, the program has failed.
In 1993, there were an estimated 3 million undocumented immigrants in the United States; today, that number has tripled. Furthermore, poverty and desperation drive many people to risk crossing via more dangerous routes. An estimated 3,000 people have died trying to cross the border as a result of Operation Gatekeeper and similar programs in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.
A June 16, 2003 report by the Government Accounting Office (GAO) cited that “…the Border Patrol has realized its goal of shifting illegal alien traffic away from urban areas into more remote areas. However, rather than being deterred from attempting illegal entry, many aliens have instead risked injury and death by trying to cross mountains, deserts, and rivers.” [Read more about the perils faced by border crossers in the Arizona desert.]
“The biggest contradiction of Operation Gatekeeper is that goods and money can cross the border with no difficulty [as a result of trade policies such as the North American Free Trade Agreement], but workers cannot,” says Christian Ramirez, director of the U.S.-Mexico Border Program. “Human beings don’t even get the same dignity as goods and money.”
He adds: “The border is a war zone, and we have the casualty list to prove it. No matter where you stand on the issue of immigration, is any policy worth the life of one person—much less 3,000?”
CONTINUED 1 2 NEXT >
^ Top of page |
Email this page