My Siren Call

We drive well-used pickup trucks through the desert until the narrow trail ends, then continue our trek by foot. As we walk towards the fence, our group of chatty teenagers falls silent. A Dora the Explorer backpack sits in the bushes, its wearer long gone. She could be in America, she could be in Mexico, or her name could be written on one of the hundreds of white crosses that remember those who died while crossing.

Looking at the rusted iron divide that towers above me, I cannot avoid the tears that well up in my eyes. I am an American citizen with my passport tucked safely under my shirt, yet I feel unwanted. I feel dirty. I feel illegal. And I want to climb that fence. I want to be accepted. I want to be part of the “better” world. So I climb. My fellow students climb, too. We climb for freedom and feeling. We climb knowing that others climb for their lives. At the top, we marvel at how easy it was. Below us, our guide points out an antenna to the south, saying “that’s where the drug runners watch the Border Patrol.” I look north, where a signature white and green truck sits on a ridge, watching us. Another truck speeds towards us. The agent calls up to us in Spanish. Do we not look American? We answer in Spanish.  “Somos de California. Nosotros somos estudiantes.” He switches to English, asking if we have passports. We answer in the affirmative, telling him we will not cross, we just want to learn. He warns us about dangerous aliens, then backs up one hundred yards, remaining there until we hike back into the Sonoran desert.

I pondered the meaning of fences as I climbed the border wall from the Mexican side. Fences serve important purposes for politics, privacy, and safety. Yet barriers of the wrong type can ruin society. They isolate select groups of people and elevate others. The fence in question divides two physically identical pieces of dirt, telling people that there is value on one side but not the other. I take special issue with this fence. It is the Iron Curtain of North America,  the wall that separates two countries supposedly on friendly terms.

I am not proud of this fence. I am not proud to live in a country that goes to great lengths to keep out people who simply want a better life. I know a man whose mother brought him here as an infant. He owns a business and is a single father of two kids. He was deported after receiving a traffic violation. He has no memory of Mexico, has no known family there, and barely speaks Spanish. I want to help him and others in similar situations. To me, the fence symbolizes everything that is wrong with our current immigration policy. The fence embodies my desire to help those in need. The fence is my siren call to politics.