According to the Center for Biological Diversity, 41 laws have been waived to construct a solid concrete and steel wall through Arizona’s Sonoran Desert. Through this land flows the U.S.’s last remaining undammed, free-flowing river, the San Pedro.
Currently, the markers of the border are vehicle barriers — 6-foot-tall steel structures through which water and wildlife can move, without a single thought that a so-called border exists.
It’s going to cost us a lot to create this impermeable divide. Trump’s “national emergency” declaration is diverting national funds to the construction of this wall. This interruption to the flow of federal defense money will also interrupt the flow of the river, and the whole ecosystem depending on it. Sediment deposit disruption will occur. Water infiltration into the earth, and to plant and animal life on the other side of the wall will suffer. Incredible species like jaguar and ocelot would no longer be able to migrate through their habitat, and the populations would diminish.
The real national emergency is the death of people and the natural world from the Trump Administration’s draconian migration policy. The real defense America needs is climate action.
Olivia Juarez, Salt Lake City
Olivia Juarez is the Utah Coalition of La Raza’s Environmental Justice Chair, and Latinx Community Organizer at the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.