After hearing about it for years Annie and I made it a point to drive along the new Mexican-American Wall while we were in southern Texas...Ironically the wall--really a fence in the area we saw from Brownsville to McAllen, a 50 mile stretch--was surprisingly attractive physically. As you can see from the attached image it is a very tall "picket fence" made of I-Beam sized steel beams. There are clearly additional anti-climbing features near the top but they are pretty much invisible from the ground. It is a dark brown "burnished" color. If Cristo or some other performance artist had put it there it'd be featured on TV.

That said clearly there are real issues with it. First, it splits many properties and communities. There are large gates in the wall to help address this issue. I can only imagine what those cost and how much we are spending to monitor them since they appear to be open all day. Second, wildlife is heavily impacted since the Rio Grande River is right on one side of the wall where the riparian habitat is and where animals try to go to drink. Third and perhaps most important no one who lives near the border seems to have any faith that the wall will actually change anything. In many cases the most important immigration checkpoints are the ones 30-50 miles in from the border (since there are many ways that Mexican shoppers, workers and tourists can get across the immediate border so it is not a sufficient barrier).

Beyond that I won't try to get into the politics one way or the other except to say that the wall does not replace or reduce the need for some serious immigration reform in the USA. We have millions of undocumented workers but can't get enough visas for students who have earned PhDs in our universities to stay in our country and start companies. Let's hope for all our sakes that the issue gets tackled in a meaningful way and not just used as a hectoring tool by party fringes.

Finally, while there has been much discussion of the protective and monitoring systems which accompany the wall helping prevent crossing from the Mexican side, as you can see there are some defenses on the US side. When we tried to get a closer look at the wall the goat in this photo was quick to lower his head and show us his horns. It was enough defense to send us back to our car.