BORDER TRUTH

Environmental Destruction

The open southern border of the United States, and the millions of individuals flowing across that landscape, has created an environmental disaster 2,000 miles long, and one that will cost billions of dollars to remedy. 

While mass migration has battered the southern border's ecosystems for decades, the recent surge of over 30 million individuals crossing illegally, in the course of just 39 months, has exacerbated this devastation.

Mountains of waste have long been issues at the border. A cleanup crew in Rio Rico, Arizona, for instance, removed over forty-two tons of trash between 2008 and 2012. This was from only 160 acres of the Cocopah tribal lands of western Arizona. Cleanup crewmember Raquel Martinez stated, “We need more bags…there’s so much trash.” 

In 2005, the manager of the Buena Aires National Park Wildlife Refuge testified to the House Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies that 118,000 acres were being destroyed by migration waste, as 235,000 illegal aliens had used this wildlife refuge illegally to cross into America. In one year, park workers had to remove over 500 tons of trash. Imagine the impact of millions of people now using this same refuge for their crossings.

The southern border landscape is beautiful and diverse, and all that beauty is now at risk: California has the Pacific Ocean, as well as desert and mountain terrain. Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas share gorgeous deserts. 

But after ten million individuals have traversed this beautiful landscape, it is despoiled with mountains of clothing items, backpacks, soiled diapers; with water bottles, food wrappers, condoms, narcotics, narcotic needles, and masses of human waste.

These waste-filled areas that destroy the border landscape would be considered Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) superfund sites; they are so badly soiled. Thousands of soiled diapers, clothes, and human waste contaminate ranches and farmland. 

Texas ranchers have seen their land destroyed. Their fences are torn down and breached. When vehicles drive off road to escape law enforcement detection, this causes damage. Cattle and other livestock die or become sick from eating the litter that is strewn everywhere. 

I was recently contacted by a nonprofit organization that wanted me to participate in a border cleanup project on the north side of the Rio Grande River in Texas. This nonprofit truly wants to help -- but found that it was not prepared to tackle this problem. This was not as simple as doing an hour or two of cleanup on a back country highway, I explained.  Rather, the nonprofit would need earth -moving equipment. There would be several feet of debris before they even touched actual dirt. There would be hypodermic needles, blood-stained clothes, and used condoms. Disease and contaminants blanketed this area.  I told them about a man from Florida that recently went to Texas to try to help clean up the border. After just several hours, he was overcome with feelings of helplessness, stating: “This is just beyond comprehension, man. It’s out of control. It has to end.... It just makes me sick.”  

The beautiful California coastline and the Pacific Ocean have not been spared. The border area in California is a giant city landfill. Dead animals, tons of clothing, narcotics and paraphilia, and many times dead people litter the landscape. The Tijuana River, that runs from Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico into Imperial Beach, California, has spilled millions of gallons of raw sewage into the Pacific Ocean. 

Illegal immigration, and the lawless destruction of America’s sovereignty, impact every facet of American life. The unspoken atrocity of the ecological devastation of our deserts, coastlines, and farms, along the hopeless piece of land called the border, is unforgivable. 

The protection of our environment is not a political issue. Instead, this is a rare opportunity that should unite us all to come together to address this ecological disaster. The physical destruction of our lands needs to be stopped. This will only happen when we come together as Americans and demand it stops.