A seesaw for kids on the US-Mexico border wins Beazley Design of the Year

 "Teeter-Totter Wall," a temporary interactive installation designed by California-based architects Ronald Rael and Virigina San Fratello, has won the 2020 Beazley Design of the Year, an annual award and exhibition run by London's Design Museum.

The installation, which took place in July 2019, consisted of three bright pink teeter-totters -- or seesaws -- slotted into the gaps of the steel border wall that separates the United States and Mexico. It allowed children from El Paso, Texas, and the Anapra community in Juárez, Mexico, to play together in spite of the 20-foot wall, which stands on the most-crossed border in the world and is a continual site of political fracture.

"Teeter-Totter Wall" was designed to illustrate the intrinsic connection between the two lands, and was a collaboration with Juárez artist collective Colectivo Chopeke. "What you do on one side has an impact on the other," Rael told CNN back in 2019, "and that's what a seesaw is."

Winner of Beazley Design of the Year 2020, Teeter-Totter Wall, designed by Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello with Colectivo ChopekeRonald Rael/Virginia San Fratello/Colectivo Chopeke/Design Museum

Because of the wall's sensitive context, the project took ten years to realize. It was live for just under twenty minutes, but enough time for it to go viral. Although a temporary installation, Rael said on Instagram that the event was "filled with joy, excitement, and togetherness at the borderwall."

"The Teeter-Totter Wall encouraged new ways of human connection," said Tim Marlow, the chief executive and director of the Design Museum, in a press statement. "It remains an inventive and poignant reminder of how human beings can transcend the forces that seek to divide us."

The category winners

Five more prizes were awarded for each of the categories of nominees, in "Architecture," "Digital," "Fashion," "Graphics" and "Product."

They include a moveable school, called "ModSkool," designed by the Dehli-based Social Design Collaborative. The project responded to the forced evictions of farming communities in India with a place of learning that is easy to erect and dismantle. In addition, the Chilean feminist arts group Colectivo LASTESIS won for their protest performance "A Rapist in Your Way," which denounces sexual violence against women and the LGBTQ+ community, while luxury brand Telfar was awarded for its popular vegan leather, gender-neutral bag (priced according to the average earnings of a New York DJ for a single night's work).

Medical illustrators Alissa Eckert and Dan Higgins, who work for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), were awarded for an image seen countless times over the past year: their 3D rendering of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the illness Covid-19. Lastly, Impossible Foods won for the Impossible Burger 2.0, which aims to be a tastier, juicer patty made from plant-based proteins.

"Designs of the Year this year feels more pertinent than ever," said assistant curator Maria McLintock in October. "From designs that create a kinder and healthier world, to those calling out and critiquing systems of oppression, we hope it serves as a time capsule of a shifting world."

The virtual exhibition of "Beazley Designs of the Year" can be viewed through March 28, 2021.

(Source: CNN)

'Most sophisticated tunnel in US history' discovered between Mexico and Arizona

Although it’s not clear exactly what the structure was intended for, it had ventilation, a rail system and extensive reinforcement

An incomplete tunnel found stretching from Mexico to Arizona appears to be “the most sophisticated tunnel in US history”, authorities said.

The tunnel, intended for smuggling, ran from a neighborhood in San Luis Río Colorado, Mexico, to San Luis, Arizona, where it stopped short of reaching the surface. It was built in an area that’s not conducive to tunnels because of the terrain, and it had a ventilation system, water lines, electrical wiring, a rail system and extensive reinforcement, federal officials say.

“What makes this one unique is that the terrain in Yuma is very hard … the sand is very loose, and most of them end up caving. So the fact that the material was very well built and it had ventilation, it had water, it had a rail system with walls, roof, floor, electrical, makes this one a very unique type of tunnel,” said Angel Ortiz, the assistant special agent in charge for Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in Yuma. HSI is a division of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“This appears to be the most sophisticated tunnel in US history, and certainly the most sophisticated I’ve seen in my career,” said Carl E Landrum, the acting chief patrol agent with the border patrol’s Yuma sector.

Homeland Security Investigations started excavating around the tunnel in late July after someone reported a sinkhole near the border wall. HSI already had reports of potential tunnel activity in that area, and the agency began drilling, Ortiz said. A camera was sent 25ft (7.6m) underground, and the tunnel was discovered on Tuesday.

The tunnel measured 3ft (about 1m) wide and 4ft (1.2m) high.

Investigators don’t know what exactly the tunnel would have been used for, since it was incomplete. They also don’t know how long it had been there, because they don’t know what kind of equipment was used to build it. If it was done by hand, it would be many months of construction to get as far as it did, Ortiz said. But if the builders used heavy machinery it would have been “potentially a few months, not that long of a period”, Ortiz said.

Smugglers have been using tunnels to get drugs and people across the border for decades. Two years ago, authorities in Yuma discovered a sophisticated drug-smuggling tunnel that went from a home in Mexico to an abandoned fast-food restaurant in Arizona.

A section of an incomplete tunnel found stretching from Mexico to Arizona. Photograph: AP

HSI said the tunnel ran from Mexico to a disused Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in San Luis, Arizona, just about 200 yards (180m) north of the border.

The owner, Ivan Lopez, was arrested in August 2018, after authorities found several packages of methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin and fentanyl in the back of his truck.

That arrest led to a search at his home and the old restaurant, where agents found a hidden tunnel that was large enough for people to freely walk through.

Lopez pleaded guilty to one count of using a tunnel or passage to smuggle controlled substances, and was sentenced to seven years in prison, according to court records.

HSI continues to investigate the tunnel found on Tuesday.

(Source: The Guardian)

Vogue cover features Indigenous transgender 'Muxe' from Mexico for first time

The iconic fashion magazine shines a light on Mexico's "third' gender

Vogue has featured a “muxe” - an indigenous transgender woman from Mexico - as its cover star for the first time.

Muxes (pronounced ‘moo-she’) have a unique gender identity that mixes gay male and feminine characteristics and is sometimes referred to as a “third” gender.

Both the British and Mexican editions of the magazine will carry the image of of Estrella Vasquez, a weaver and designer from Oaxaca, a southern Mexican state that is home to the largest muxe community in the country, although British Vogue will feature it inside the magazine.

The photo marks the first instance in Vogue’s 120-year publication history that a muxe has been placed on the cover.

“I think it’s a huge step,” 37-year-old Vazquez - who had never heard of Vogue when she was approached for the shoot - said.

“There’s still discrimination [in Mexico], but it’s not as much now and you don’t see it like you once did.

“Everyone is seeing this cover, everyone is congratulating me. I don’t know; it’s just hard to make sense of the emotions I’m feeling. It almost makes me want to cry,” she added.

The full shoot, shot by photographer Tim Walker, features a dozen muxes in traditional indigenous dress and is an attempt by Vogue to highlight the remarkable singularity of muxe culture, which is specific to Mexico.

"We're delighted to collaborate with Vogue Mexico for the first time ever on this amazing fashion shoot featuring members of Oaxaca’s indigenous muxe community," a British Vogue spokesperson told The Independent.

Muxes last made international news for their prominent role in rescue efforts following the 2017 Juchitan earthquake.

#MUXE’ Naa: Érase una vez una tierra llena de magia, filigranas en oro e iguanas, en la que la cálida brisa aún susurra LEYENDAS al oído de los transeúntes. Desde tiempos INMEMORIALES, comienza la historia del tercer género y llega a la PORTADA de @voguemexico, Diciembre 2019. pic.twitter.com/OLghjXe5YJ

— Vogue Mex y Latam (@VogueMexico) 18 November 2019

Many dug through rubble with their bare hands and lead organising efforts after the disaster.

However, outside the quais-matriarchal indigenous community, minority persecution in Mexico persists, which has some of the highest rates of crime in the world against individuals who identify as LGBT.

One LGBT person was murdered every three to four days between 2014 and 2016 in the country.

(Source: Independent) 

Seesaws installed at US border wall so American and Mexican children can play together

Inventor says event was ‘filled with joy, excitement and togetherness’

Seesaws have been installed at the border wall between US and Mexico to allow American and Mexican children to play together.

The bright pink installations were set up along the border fence between Sunland Park in New Mexico and Ciudad Juarez in Mexico.

The seesaws created a “literal fulcrum for US-Mexico relations”, according to their inventors Ronald Rael, from the University of California in Berkeley, and Virginia San Fratello, from San Jose State University.

In an Instagram post, Mr Rael, a professor of architecture, said he and Ms Fratello, an associate professor of design, came up with the idea 10 years ago.

He said the event was “filled with joy, excitement and togetherness at the border wall”.

In an Instagram post, Mr Rael said both children and adults ”were connected in meaningful ways on both sides with the recognition that the actions that take place on one side have a direct consequence on the other side”.

He shared footage and photos showing children and adults from both sides of the wall laughing as they swung each other up in the air on the seesaws.

The “Teetertotter Wall” project comes days after the US Supreme Court said Donald Trump‘s administration could spend $2.5bn from a military budget to build the US president’s border wall.

Mr Trump pledged to build a “big beautiful wall” on the border with Mexico, but two-and-a-half years after he took office it emerged no new stretches of wall had been built.

The US Customs and Border Protection agency said the 51 miles of fencing completed during Mr Trump’s tenure so far had simply replaced barriers that already existed.

(Source: Independent)

Children cannot parent other children

Reports of babies and toddlers being left in the care of slightly older children in detention facilities at the U.S.-Mexico border reveal an ongoing atrocity.

A fundamental truth about children is that they have needs they cannot themselves fulfill. They need people who acquire and prepare food for them, and people who look out for their safety and cleanliness. Beyond those material needs, they also need people who care for them emotionally, tending to them when they are sick and supporting them through tough times. Normally these duties fall to parents, but they can also fall to relatives, family friends, babysitters, teachers, or social workers. At the border, in detention centers, they are falling to other detained children, a harrowing detail in a sea of harrowing details now being reported.

Lawyers who visited a border station in Clint, Texas, this week told the Associated Press that during their visit, they encountered small children who had been taken from their parents under the Trump administration’s family-separation policy, some of them infants and toddlers, who are receiving little time or attention from adult caregivers or supervisors. Instead, some detained children receive affection and care—such as being held, rocked, bathed, fed, and even changed—only from other, slightly older detained children. As the AP reported Saturday:

Three girls told attorneys they were trying to take care of [a] 2-year-old boy, who had wet his pants and had no diaper and was wearing a mucus-smeared shirt when the legal team encountered him.

“A Border Patrol agent came in our room with a 2-year-old boy and asked us, ‘Who wants to take care of this little boy?’ Another girl said she would take care of him, but she lost interest after a few hours and so I started taking care of him yesterday,” one of the girls said in an interview with attorneys.

An asylum-seeking boy from Central America runs down a hallway after arriving from an immigration detention center to a shelter in San Diego.AP / GREGORY BULL

Children are so tired from the duties of caring for one another that they are reportedly falling asleep during interviews with the lawyers, and one 8-year-old who was “taking care of a very small 4-year-old with matted hair couldn’t convince the little one to take a shower,” a lawyer told the AP. One 14-year-old girl from Guatemala who had been holding two little girls in her lap told the AP, “I need comfort, too. I am bigger than they are, but I am a child, too.”

A report published in The New York Times, meanwhile, said that “children as young as 7 and 8, many of them wearing clothes caked with snot and tears, are caring for infants they’ve just met … Toddlers without diapers are relieving themselves in their pants.” Lawyers who spoke with the Times confirmed that they had observed similar scenes involving dirty, neglected children, often being surrogate-parented by other children, at six other facilities along the border.

The short-term and long-term harms that could come to children who have to do this kind of thing are staggering. While the psychological damage that children can suffer when involuntarily separated from their parents has been widely documented, the added duty of parenting other children only compounds the potential damage.

Experts call children shouldering parental duties in the absence of a capable adult caregiver “parentification,” or sometimes destructive parentification. As Cindy Lamothe wrote for The Atlantic in 2017, parentification often results from having an abusive or a neglectful parent, or a parent with an incapacitating alcohol or drug addiction, and it can have dire consequences both at the time and far into the future. For one thing, prolonged periods of heightened stress on a child—which would naturally result from having the wholly age-inappropriate responsibility of feeding, bathing, clothing, and otherwise providing for other children—can affect the function of several of the body’s internal systems and cause severe illnesses, short-term and long-term. As Lamothe pointed out, “Links have been found between childhood stressors and adult heart disease, diabetes, migraines, and irritable bowel syndrome.” Prolonged high-stress situations can also lead to brain damage in kids: According to Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child, high levels of cortisol and corticotropin-releasing hormone (two chemicals released by the body in stressful situations) can alter the hippocampus and damage a child’s memory and learning capabilities.

Plus, “Researchers are increasingly finding that in addition to upending a child’s development, this role reversal can leave deep emotional scars well into adulthood,” Lamothe wrote. Many “experience severe anxiety, depression, and psychological distress. Others report succumbing to eating disorders and substance abuse.” Some kids who parent their siblings, she added—especially those who come from abusive homes—have close but complicated relationships with those siblings as they grow older.

Parentification, in other words, is bad for kids even in less extreme circumstances than a detainment facility. Numerous books and studies underline the potential harms of burdening children with parental duties too early in life: Many find that they continue to compulsively parent others into adolescence and adulthood, at the expense of their own needs and sometimes at the expense of those relationships with others. Others link destructive parentification to mental illness in adulthood.

But in the case of the detained kids at the border, the involuntary separation from their parents—which, as my colleague Olga Khazan wrote last year, can cause some of the same childhood stress-related ailments as parentification—only makes the situation worse.

The children in these border facilities “are not developmentally equipped to deal with the immense task of caring for an infant in any circumstance, least of all these,” Louise Earley, a clinical psychologist and a lecturer at the U.K.’s University of Birmingham who has researched “parentified” children, wrote to me in an email. Not only are these kids simply not mature enough to undertake the immense responsibility of caring for a baby or toddler, they’re also struggling with the trauma of separation from their parents or any other caring adults, she noted. It’s a high-stress situation, “and with no effective support, the prospect that they will inflict unintentional harm or actual harm [on the smaller children in their care] as a result of their frustrations is likely.”

Much has been written over the years about the care that parentified children need later in life to recover psychologically. In 2011, for example, an article published in the Journal of Family Studies recommended that clinicians assess adults who were formerly parentified children with an eye on resolving the feelings of injustice they harbor toward their families. A feeling of unfairness, the article pointed out, could arise from the fact that their care of other family members was not acknowledged, supported, or reciprocated. Certainly, it stands to reason that the kids at the border who have by default ended up in charge of parenting smaller children will grow up with a sense of indignation concerning the time they spent thanklessly parenting other children in dirty detention centers. It’s unclear, however, whether that indignation will be directed at their parents, at the United States or its law enforcement, or elsewhere.

These children have taken on parental duties at an inappropriate age not because their parents or other guardians have been neglectful, but because they were, in many cases, forcefully removed from their parents or guardians by a government aiming to “send a message” to immigrants entering the country. Many of the children being detained came across the border with adults who would care for and comfort these children if only they hadn’t been separated under this policy.

Earley worries about the future effects this bleak situation may have on the children doing the parenting in the border facilities—and she worries about the immediate effects, too. “They will be unable to deal with the sense of responsibility and practical demands and will inevitably fail at the task, thus leaving an immeasurable sense of guilt and self-blame,” she wrote to me. And the effects won’t just wear off after a while, with some adjustment, she added. “Only with stability can psychological recovery begin, and only then in the context of a consistent, caring and responsive adult who can help them to begin to trust in relationships again.”

(Source: The Atlantic)

Shocking photo of drowned father and daughter highlights migrants' border peril

The toddler’s arm was still draped around her father’s neck after bodies were found in the Rio Grande as they sought asylum 

The grim reality of the migration crisis unfolding on America’s southern border has been captured in photographs showing the lifeless bodies of a Salvadoran father and his daughter who drowned as they attempted to cross the Rio Grande into Texas.

The images, taken on Monday, show Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez, 26, and his daughter Valeria, lying face down in shallow water. The 23-month-old toddler’s arm is draped around her father’s neck, suggesting that she was clinging to him in her final moments.

The UN refugee agency compared the photograph to the 2015 image of the three-year-old Syrian boy Alan Kurdi who drowned off the Greek island of Kos – although it remains to be seen if it will have the same impact on America’s fierce immigration debate.

Their bodies were discovered on the bank of the river near Matamoros, Mexico, across from Brownsville, Texas, just half a mile (1km) from an international bridge.

According to Julia Le Duc, a reporter for La Jornada, Martínez Ramírez had arrived in Matamoros on Sunday, hoping to request asylum from US authorities with his wife, Vanessa Ávalos, and their daughter.

But when he realized that it could be weeks before they were even able to start the asylum process, Martínez decided they should swim across, said Le Duc, who witnessed Ávalos give her account to the police.

“He crossed first with the little girl and he left her on the American side. Then he turned back to get his wife, but the girl went into the water after him. When he went to save her, the current took them both,” Le Duc told the Guardian.

 Tania Vanessa Ávalos of El Salvador, center left, is assisted by Mexican authorities after her husband and nearly two-year-old daughter were swept away by the current while trying to cross the Rio Grande to Brownsville, Texas, in Matamoros, Mexico. Photograph: Julia Le Duc/AP

The image underlines the dangers which mostly Central American migrants face in their attempts to escape violence, corruption and poverty at home and find asylum in the United States.

As part of a broader crack down on migration, the Trump administration tightened the country’s asylum system, creating a growing backlog of cases. Migrants are routinely forced to wait for months to start the asylum process; those who despair of waiting turn to more remote and dangerous routes across the southern frontier.

On Sunday, two babies, a toddler and a woman were found dead after succumbing to heat exhaustion in Anzalduas Park, which borders the river in the city of Mission.

Elsewhere three children and a woman from Honduras died in April after their raft capsized on the Rio Grande, and a six-year-old from India was found dead earlier this month in Arizona, where temperatures routinely soar well above 100F.

So far this year, dozens of people have died attempting to cross the Rio Grande, where water levels are at their highest levels in 20 years and record levels of snowmelt run-off have transformed the river into a raging torrent.

 Authorities stand behind yellow warning tape along the Rio Grande where the bodies of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter Valeria were found, in Matamoros, Mexico, on Monday. Photograph: Julia Le Duc/AP

Claudia Hernández, a Mexican police officer in the border town of Piedras Negras, told the Guardian: “The river is treacherous and people who aren’t from here don’t know that. I grew up here along the Río Bravo River [Río Grande]. I wouldn’t even go into that water to bathe or swim. There are springs and whirlpools and when the current takes you it can pull you under.”

Isabel Turcios, a Franciscan nun, the director of the Casa del Migrante shelter in Piedras Negras said that local activists warn migrants not to try their luck on the river, but the US has drastically reduced the number of migrants who are allowed to request asylum each day.

“People get desperate and cannot keep waiting. They just want to cross. So they go to the river and without any form of protection – no lifejacket, nothing to save them – they go into the river. They always tell me that if God wants them to make it then somehow they will make it.”

She added: “It’s not how things should be. They should be able to cross at the bridges. Every human being has the right to migrate. It’s a human right.”

Meanwhile Mexico has launched its own crackdown on migrants as the government scrambles to ward off Trump’s threat of trade tariffs.

“Very regrettable that this would happen,” said President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Tuesday in response to a question about the latest deaths on the border. “As there is more rejection in the United States, there are people who lose their lives in the desert or crossing” the river.

According to reports in the local press, Martínez, Ávalos and their daughter left their home in the municipality of San Martín in April. But after two months waiting in the southern city of Tapachula – and fearful of the Mexican authorities – the family decided to push on.

“They said they were scared because of the way things were going for migrants, what with the pressure from Trump. That’s why they decided to cross the river. Their plan was to hand themselves into US migration,” Martínez’s sister Wendy told El Diario de Hoy.

One of Martínez’s cousins, Enrique Gómez, tweeted an appeal to the Salvadoran president, Nayib Bukele, pleading for help in repatriating the bodies. Gómez said the family sought assistance from the Salvadoran government but were being charged between $7,000 and $8,000 to repatriate the bodies. Bukele’s office responded by asking Gómez to send a private message and promised to start the repatriations.

 A US border patrol boat navigates the Rio Grande near where the bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his nearly two-year-old daughter Valeria were found. Photograph: Julia Le Duc/AP

On Wednesday, Pope Francis expressed “immense sadness” over the fate of Martínez and his daughter. “The pope is profoundly saddened by their death, and is praying for them and for all migrants who have lost their lives while seeking to flee war and misery,” a spokesman said in a statement.

The UN high commissioner for refugees, Filippo Grandi, said the deaths represent “a failure to address the violence and desperation pushing people to take journeys of danger for the prospect of a life in safety and dignity.”

In the US, several Democratic presidential candidates, including Kamala Harris, Beto O’Rourke and Cory Booker, also expressed their dismay on Tuesday evening. “Trump is responsible for these deaths,” wrote O’Rourke in a tweet, while Harris called it “a stain on our moral conscience”.

The photograph of Martínez and his daughter provoked soul-searching among some Mexicans, but recent polls revealed that attitudes towards migrants have hardened in recent months.

“The image … is a painful symptom of our systematic failure,” tweeted author Alma Delia Murillo. “And on top of that you have idiots who blame the migrants.”

Polling firm Parametría showed 58% of Mexicans oppose migrants entering the country from Central America. 32% of respondents expressed the same opinion on November, when migrant caravans were welcomed with outpourings of generosity.

(Source: The Guardian)

Trump insists Mexico wall will be built despite deal to end shutdown

US President Donald Trump insists the US will still build a wall along its border with Mexico, despite ending the longest-ever US government shutdown without securing funds for the project.

On Twitter, Mr Trump said the deal to temporarily reopen government was "in no way a concession" on the wall.

The bipartisan agreement announced on Friday covers just three weeks.

Mr Trump indicated he might trigger another shutdown or declare a national emergency if his demands are not met.

President Trump says a wall or fence along the Mexican border is vital for US security

The Republican president has vowed to reject any budget unless Congress includes $5.7bn (£4.3bn) to fund his signature campaign pledge.

The Democratic Party, which controls the House of Representatives, has flatly refused.

In a tweet on Saturday, Mr Trump said negotiations between Democrats and Republicans would start immediately but would not be easy because both sides were "very dug in".

In recent weeks Mr Trump has taken a hard line against thousands of migrants arriving at the US southern border.

"The case for national security has been greatly enhanced by what has been happening at the border and through dialogue. We will build the Wall!" he tweeted.

How did the shutdown end?
On Friday, the Senate and House unanimously passed a bill to temporarily end the shutdown, after which President Trump signed the bill into law.

Following the votes in Congress Mr Trump tweeted that his decision was not a concession but was "taking care of the millions of people who were getting badly hurt by the shutdown".

Unpaid federal workers used food banks and emergency kitchens to survive the shutdown

Most US media saw President Trump's move as yielding to political pressure after the unprecedented 35-day shutdown.

Speaking in the White House Rose Garden, Mr Trump said federal workers affected by the political standoff, whom he called "incredible patriots", would receive full back-pay.

Mr Trump also said he would not yet resort to "a very powerful alternative" - an apparent reference to declaring a national emergency.

Analysts say this could divert military funding towards building the border wall but would provoke constitutional uproar and legal challenges.

How bad was the shutdown?
On Friday, about 800,000 civil servants missed another payday amid the five-week closure of about a quarter of the federal government.

Earlier, hundreds of flights were grounded or delayed at US airports because of unpaid air traffic controllers calling in sick.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) halted arrivals for about an hour at New York's LaGuardia Airport.

Flights were also delayed at Newark Liberty International Airport and Philadelphia International Airport because of staff shortages, the FAA said.

Meanwhile, thousands of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) employees failed to show up after they were ordered to return to work unpaid, the Washington Post reported.

The Trump administration recalled 26,000 IRS workers this week to handle the looming tax filing season.

But about 14,000 of them did not come back as of Tuesday, IRS officials told members of Congress.

In a video message to agents on Friday, FBI Director Christopher Wray said: "I'm about as angry as I've been in a long, long time."

Of the shutdown's effects on his agency, he said: "It's mind-boggling, it's short-sighted, and it's unfair."

His remarks came after an FBI report this week revealed its resources were at "breaking point".

(Source: BBC)

Trump wall - all you need to know about US border

A standoff over funding for President Donald Trump's long-promised border wall has resulted in the longest-ever shutdown of the US government.

Mr Trump argues $5.7bn (£4.5bn) is needed to address a "humanitarian and security crisis" at the southern border and has warned the shutdown will continue until he gets the cash.

Democrats say the wall is a waste of taxpayers' money and accuse the Trump administration of creating a "manufactured crisis".

Here are seven charts and maps that try to explain where we are with the wall and what the situation is like at the US-Mexico border.

1. Trump hasn't built very much of his wall
Before Mr Trump took office, there were 654 miles (just over 1,000km) of barrier along the southern border - made up of 354 miles of barriers to stop pedestrians and 300 miles of anti-vehicle fencing.

In the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, Mr Trump promised to build a wall along the border's entire 2,000-mile length.

He later clarified that it would only cover half of that - with nature, such as mountains and rivers, helping to take care of the rest.

But, since Mr Trump entered the White House, although some of the already existing barriers have been replaced, no construction on any extension to the wall has yet been started.

Overall, Congress has so far approved $1.7bn in funding for 124 miles of new and replacement barrier since Mr Trump entered the White House.

Just over 40 miles of replacement barriers have been built or begun. Construction is expected to start on 61 more miles of replacement barrier in 2019. This equates to new sections of about 15% of existing structures.

The first construction on any extension to the existing structures - what could be termed new barrier - will start in February in the Rio Grande Valley, Texas.

The twin projects will cover a total of 14 miles - one barrier stretching six miles and the other eight miles.

Despite Mr Trump's continued determination to see a wall along the border, a survey this month by the Pew Research Center suggests the majority of Americans - 58% - oppose substantially expanding it, while 40% support it.

2. No-one really knows how much it would cost
A number of widely different estimates for a concrete wall have been put forward by official and unofficial bodies - ranging from $12bn to $70bn.

Mr Trump's initial price tag of between $8bn and $12bn (£6.4bn and £9.7bn) for a wall covering half the length of the border was widely disputed.

The 650 miles of fencing built under President George W Bush cost an estimated $7bn, and it could not be described as fulfilling Mr Trump's promises of a "tall, powerful, beautiful" barrier.

However, Mr Trump is now asking for $5.7bn in addition to the $1.7bn already allocated for new and replacement barriers.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) previously estimated a wall spanning half the border would cost up to $25m, but it has now said it is still looking at options to determine the price tag.

US Customs and Border Protection (CPB) says that, on average, it costs approximately $6.5m per mile to construct a new border wall or replace existing legacy fence.

3. Trump wanted concrete, but is now talking about steel
Mr Trump has changed his view of what constitutes a wall.

His promise to build a "big, beautiful wall" between the US and Mexico was a rallying cry throughout his election campaign. And early on, when he described it, he talked about concrete.

But once elected, he began talking about a barrier made of steel, so that border agents could see through it.

And in October 2017, when the Trump administration revealed eight 30ft-tall wall prototypes - they were a combination of concrete and metal.

Since December, Mr Trump has said he does not want to build a concrete wall at all, but instead wants "artistically-designed steel slats".

And just before the government shutdown, he tweeted an image of the design of his "steel slat barrier", which he said was "totally effective while at the same time beautiful".

A design of our Steel Slat Barrier which is totally effective while at the same time beautiful! pic.twitter.com/sGltXh0cu9

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 21 December 2018

Officials at the US Customs and Border Protection agency have said none of the Trump administration prototypes tested in 2017 met its operational requirements.

However, they did provide "valuable data" to help select design elements in the future, they added.

4. The number of apprehensions at the southern border has declined over time
Mr Trump said in a national address in early January that a wall was needed to stem a "growing humanitarian and security crisis at our southern border", involving "thousands of illegal immigrants".

In exchanges with House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, Mr Trump also said that people were "pouring into our country".

However, figures show that illegal border crossings have seen an overall decline since 2000.

 In 2000, 1.6 million people crossed the border illegally, while last year that number was just under 400,000.

In 2017, Mr Trump's first year in office, they were the lowest they had been since 1971.

Every congressperson along southern border opposes the border wall, arguing it would not improve security.

"I think building a concrete structure sea to shining sea is the most expensive and least effective way to do border security," said Republican Will Hurd, who represents more of the southern border than any other member of Congress.

5. But arrests and asylum claims did rise again between 2017 and 2018
Between 2017 and 2018, arrests - the number of people apprehended by authorities - on the Mexico-US border rose by about 100,000 and asylum claims rose by about 16,000 - up 43%.

Among these groups were a rising number of families fleeing violence in Central America and surrendering themselves to US authorities at the border. Many have told officials that they fear returning to their home countries.

Some have blamed the decision to slash the number of refugees allowed into the US under the Refugee Admissions Program for the rise in such claims for asylum at the border.

To apply for refugee status in the US, foreign nationals must obtain permission to enter the country before travelling, but those arriving at the US border are able to claim asylum "defensively" to prevent them from being deported back to a situation of "credible fear".

Such claims are then referred to the Asylum Officers of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services.

And despite Mr Trump's claims, any new border barrier is unlikely to stop these migrants legally claiming asylum at a port of entry.

6. Most illegal immigration is from visa 'overstayers', not people crossing the border
Although Mr Trump has blamed the southern border for illegal immigration, most actually arises because people overstay their visas.

While almost 400,000 people were apprehended trying to cross the southern border illegally last year, more than 700,000 people who entered the US legally overstayed their expected departure date in 2018, according to the DHS.

Canadians were the highest group of overstayers, according to DHS figures, followed by Mexicans and Brazilians.

Although the number of overstayers overall dropped to around 420,000 in May 2018 - it was still more than the number of people arrested trying to enter illegally via the Mexico-US border.

7. The wall is unlikely to stop drugs coming into the US
Mr Trump has claimed 90% of heroin comes across the southern border and that a wall would help the fight against drugs.

Nationwide heroin seizures reached 7,979kg in 2017, with 39% seized at the US-Mexico border, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).

Most of the border seizures were in the San Diego corridor - approximately 1,073kg in 2017, a 59% increase on the previous year.

While most of the heroin in the US does come from Mexico, the DEA says the majority of it is smuggled in through legal ports of entry, hidden in privately-owned vehicles or transporter lorries, mixed with other goods.

Only a small percentage of the heroin seizures were between entry points - where barriers exist or are proposed.

In fact, there are already barriers in border patrol sectors with the highest volumes of heroin seizures.

(Source: BBC)

What is life really like in border country, where Trump wants his wall?

The Guardian travelled to five locations on the US-Mexico border to discover how Trump’s rhetoric jars with the reality on the ground

Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful wall” has become the trademark of his presidency. It is the promise that more than any other has energized his base, and riled his opponents, and his dogged attachment to it has now brought a large part of the US government to a historic 25 days of partial shutdown.

US aerial view of the US-Mexico border fence seen from Tijuana. Photograph: Guillermo Arias/AFP/Getty Images

The potency of Trump’s wall – for his supporters and his detractors – stems from its simplicity. Build it tall, build it wide – he has pledged 1,000 miles of it – and America will be safe again.

But how does that uncomplicated notion compare to the complexity of the border itself? Taken as a whole, the 1,954 miles of US-Mexican border is a place of astounding diversity – of terrain, of land use, of city and countryside, of ethnicity. It traverses desert, river, mountain and sea.

There is diversity, too, of political view among the 7.5 million people who live in US border counties. Some are ardent backers of Trump’s wall. Others see their future, and the future of America, as being inextricably linked to that of their neighbor to the south.

 Central American migrant families at a protest at Friendship Park in April last year.
Photograph: Carolyn Van Houten/Washington Post/Getty Images

Friendship through the fence
Hike 45 minutes past salt marshes and sand dunes, down a lonely beach empty but for occasional tourists on horseback, and you arrive at a steel fence that juts out into the Pacific Ocean.

This is where Trump would like to start building his wall should he find the billions of dollars necessary. With the impasse over funding, which prompted the shutdown, administration officials have started to describe what’s already here, as well as repairs to a two-mile stretch of fence in Calexico 100 miles to the east, as Trump’s wall. They are not.

The length of wall that has been built by Trump since he entered the White House in January 2017 is zero.

This is the westernmost point of the US-Mexico border, on the outskirts of San Ysidro, California, a suburb of San Diego that is home to one of the busiest border crossings in the world. Here, the hopes of thousands of migrants who try to make it to the US every year are often dashed.

A mix of high and low fencing covers about 650 miles of the US-Mexico border

California

Arizona

New Mexico

Existing fence

or wall

Los Angeles

San Diego

Texas

El Paso

Dallas

Ajo

Tucson

Tornillo

Lukeville

Del Rio

San Ysidro

If Trump receives

funding, his wall

would start here

Ports

of entry

Eastern border

defined by the

Rio Grande

Eagle Pass

McAllen

250 km

Matamoros

250 miles

Guardian graphic. Source: © OpenStreetMap contributors

The fence stretches out just to where the waves break, and reaches 15 or 20ft, not the looming 30ft the president has demanded.

Adjacent to this stretch of fence is Friendship Park, a patch of bi-national ground where loved ones from both sides of the border are allowed to meet. The name is paradoxical given the hostility Trump has engendered since he began his wall obsession.

Outside Friendship Park – which only takes 10 visitors at a time – separated families and friends must make do with waving at each other from a distance. Today the US side is unpopulated save for a lone American, and on the Mexican side a father and young boy are looking northwards. “USA!” the man says, pointing through a slot for his son’s benefit.

From San Ysidro, the fence extends for 46 of the next 60 miles of border before finally giving way way to the unforgiving desert. That’s 46 out of a total of 654 miles of fencing that already exists, much of it in various stages of disrepair.

Those hundreds of miles of double reinforced fencing and wire meshing were the product of a different era in politics where some degree of bipartisan consensus was possible. They were largely funded by the Secure Fence Act, an immigration compromise reached in 2006 under former president George W Bush.

Compromise seems unthinkable these days. Trump has laid out a vision of the border that is harshly binary: on his side of the territorial line there is the rule of law, hard work and freedom; on the other side there is criminality, gangs and drug smuggling.

The purpose of the wall, in Trump’s dystopia, is to prevent America being overrun by the dark forces billowing out of its neighbor. In his Oval Office address to the nation last week he said: “Over the years, thousands of Americans have been brutally killed by those who illegally entered our country and thousands more lives will be lost if we don’t act right now.”

Trump has laid out a binary vision: the rule of law versus criminality, gangs and drug smuggling.
Photograph: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post/Getty Images

But talk to people in San Ysidro on the American side of the border, and they will tell you about fear and intimidation inflicted on them by the US government.

In this town, where 90% of residents speak Spanish at home, the land south of the border is not equated with lawlessness and evil, but with family, friends and affordable healthcare. If there’s a dystopia, its not the Mexican one of Trump’s imagining but the hardened militarism that is fast emerging on the US side replete with helicopters, barricades and armed border patrol.

“The feeling like you’re in a war zone is so dramatic the last couple months,” said Lisa Cuestas, head of Casa Familiar, a non-profit that provides social services to San Ysidro.

Militarization sped up after the arrival in Tijuana, on the Mexican side, of the caravan of Central American migrants which Trump made so much of during the November midterm elections, calling it an “immigration invasion”. Now members of the caravan are stuck in Mexico and barbed wire has proliferated everywhere like a mutant weed.

Estrella Flores has family and a job in San Ysidro, working with youth at Casa Familiar, but she lives in Tijuana with her husband and 18-month-old child. Her commute has become hellish since Trump’s border crackdown.

“The first time I went across the border where they had the barricades and the barbed wire and the helicopters I was like: ‘Am I in a war zone? What’s going on here? I’m just trying to get to work.’ This isn’t just a friendly crossing, it could turn very bad, very quickly.”

Such views are commonplace across California. A poll conducted by the San Diego Union-Tribune after Trump’s Oval Office speech found that 56% of Californians opposed the idea of the wall, compared with 34% in favor.

That’s not surprising for a state that is a leading force of progressive politics in the US. But California is also significant for having more undocumented migrants than any other state – 2.4 million to Texas’s 1.7 million.

Close by is the site of Trump’s eight wall prototypes. He came here last March to pose for photos in front of the giant slabs of concrete and steel. Now they languish and rust.

According to a later report by the Government Accountability Office, the eight model sections were riddled with design and construction flaws. US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) tested the slabs and found they can be breached.

The Cabeza Prieta wilderness near Ajo, Arizona. Photograph: Caitlin O’Hara/Getty Images

Death in the desert
The first light glistens off the frosted spines of the cholla cacti as 30 volunteers in neon yellow shirts fan out to comb the desert under a pale pink sky. Ely Ortiz, the leader of the Águilas del desierto (Eagles of the desert) rallies his team who have driven through the night from San Diego to Ajo, Arizona. He tells them the last time they searched this area they found 11 sets of remains.

The volunteers are joined by a team of cadaver dogs to help in the grim search. A dog called Zabra, whose last job was looking for victims of the California wildfires, is unaccustomed to the desert terrain and has to stop every couple of hundred yards to have barbed spines yanked from her paws.

Unexploded ordnance dropped by the US military in training is one element of danger for migrants.

Trump can already count on a metaphorical wall here. This is the most frequently travelled, but also most deadly, migrant corridor across the Sonoran desert.

Water is scarce and temperatures rise above 120F (49C) in the summer months. The official CBP count records 7,209 deaths along the south-western border in the past 20 years, but that is almost certainly a gross underestimate.

 Indigenous Tohono O’odham people in the Altar desert protest against Trump’s proposed wall.
Photograph: Pedro Pardo/AFP/Getty Images

Despite the human tragedy, federal prosecutors have seen fit to prosecute nine volunteers with the humanitarian group No More Deaths. Their offence: “littering” and driving on restricted roads in the Cabeza Prieta reserve when responding to search and rescue calls. The nine will face trial on Tuesday in a federal district court in Tucson.

“The irony is that they tell us we can’t drive here or leave water because it’s protected wilderness, but meanwhile border patrol drives their trucks and ATVs off road, and fly helicopters and drones wherever they want,” one of the nine, Parker Deighan, told the Guardian.

Trump’s policy of “prevention through deterrence” is forcing migrants to take greater risks. As legal admission to the US through official ports of entry becomes ever more restricted, migrants are being “funneled” away from fenced sections of the border towards the desert.

One of the only towns in the area is Ajo. Today it’s a ghost town, as its copper mine closed in the 1980s. Since then most residents have switched to the main local job-provider: border security.

Ajo Samaritans recently gathered in the plaza for a vigil to honor the lives of the people who succumbed in the surrounding wilderness. They laid out 118 white crosses, one for each of those lost in 2018. Those whose bones had yet to be identified were called desconocido – unknown.

An agent in Nogales, Arizona, watches over the border at dusk.
Photograph: John Moore/Getty Images

Making an entry
Before Trump decided to throw a bone to his voter base during the midterm election campaign last year by sending more than 5,000 active-duty military troops to the border, the gate at Lukeville port of entry in Arizona was almost always open. American tourists, seeking to flee the winter, would blithely pour through heading for the beach at Rocky Point, an hour’s drive south on the Mexican coast.

Trump’s border clampdown hasn’t only cramped the style of beach-lovers as they pass through the now half-closed gate. Over the past two months, the US military have brought with them concertina wire and a double stack of shipping containers, ready to be used to block the entry as an impenetrable barricade should another caravan – or “immigrant invasion” – arise.

Not that there’s any sign of that. Most of the traffic through Lukeville is commercial and passenger, and the main concern of federal agents is not migrants but drugs.

It is one of the myths propagated by the Trump administration that America is awash with drugs that have flooded into the country through lack of a wall. In his Oval Office address last week, Trump said that “the border wall would very quickly pay for itself” by halting the flow of illicit drugs – implying that narcotics came into the US through sections of open border.

Not true. In fact, most illegal drugs are hidden away in cars and tractor-trailers as they pass over international bridges and through small ports of entry like Lukeville. The 2018 annual drug threat assessment of the Drug Enforcement Administration points out that for drugs like heroin, up to 90% enters the country through ports of entry.

The border fence. Trump has pledged to build 1,000 miles of wall.
Photograph: John Moore/Getty Images

Another contradiction is that Trump insists on immigrants showing up legally at border crossings, yet for those who do so he has made it increasingly difficult for them to claim asylum. In November the Trump administration announced it would deny asylum to anyone who tries to cross the border illegally, though a federal court has since temporarily blocked the new regulation.

Meanwhile, a new system of “metering” has been introduced that amounts to a federal slowdown at legal entry points. As a result, growing numbers of increasingly desperate families, most coming from the trio of violence-ridden Central American countries – Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala – have been left stranded in Mexico.

At Lukeville, asylum seekers following Trump’s orders and showing up legally at the port of entry have simply been turned away. The Guardian spoke to Alberto (not his real name) in a shelter on the Mexican side. In November, he presented himself at Lukeville and asked for asylum.

The supervising agent there told him to leave, claiming it was out of hours. Alberto was left on the streets where, days before, mafia members had told him they would kill him if they saw him again.

Volunteer groups working with immigrants protested, and CBP apologized. Now when asked if they accept claims, Lukeville agents repeat the official mantra: “Asylum seekers are being accepted at all ports of entry.”

That doesn’t mean claims will be successful. Alberto did try a second time to have his claim heard. He will testify before an immigration judge in two weeks’ time.

The skyline of El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, where nearly 3 million people live.
Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The twin city
There is no place along the border that more strongly rebuts Trump’s dystopian vision than El Paso. The Texas city is so intertwined with Ciudad Juárez across the Rio Grande to the south that they are virtually inseparable.

Between them they are home to almost 3 million people – roughly the size of Chicago. About 20,000 pedestrians and more than 35,000 vehicles cross into El Paso from Mexico every day, many to work, others to go to school or shop.

It’s two-way traffic: Americans in El Paso also regularly cross into Juárez to visit family or experience the nightlife.

Eighty per cent of El Paso’s residents are of Hispanic origin, and a quarter of the city’s population was born outside the US.

Mary Gonzalez, the Democratic representative for El Paso in the Texas house, said: “It’s a very generous, diverse, multinational, welcoming and loving community. That human component is left out when the border is discussed.”

Retail sales in the US side of the twin cities are estimated to generate $10bn a year, with a fifth attributed to Mexican shoppers.

Against that reality, Trump has painted a picture of rampant crime and the threat of violence being imported into the US. That’s a particularly loaded argument for El Paso, given the historically high murder rate in neighboring Juárez.

Sister Cities, a mural painted by Los Dos, symbolises the bond between El Paso and Ciudad Juárez.
Photograph: Paul Ratje/AFP/Getty Images

Last year saw it rise again to almost 200 people killed each month. Yet crime in El Paso on the US side of the border remains relatively low. Violent crimes have fallen sharply from about 6,500 in 1993 to around 3,000 today.

That’s why Beto O’Rourke, the rising star of the Democratic party and former Congress representative for this strongly left-leaning city, lauded El Paso as the “safest city in America” as part of his senatorial election campaign in November. (His claim wasn’t entirely accurate – factcheckers found it was only “half true”.)

O’Rourke failed in his bid to unseat Ted Cruz in the midterm elections, but the fact that he came within three points of doing so suggests that Texans might be more open to his liberal stance on immigration and less in step with Trump than is often assumed.

Opinion polls show that while most Texans are concerned about immigrants entering the country illegally, most are also opposed to Trump’s wall.

Some people go as far as to suggest that El Paso could be a harbinger of things to come for the whole of America. As Josiah Heyman, director of the Center for Inter-American and Border Studies, put it: “El Paso is a place where there is a vision of the future, where people, instead of being part of a closed defensive community, are able to find the joy of relating to others.”

People cool off in the Rio Grande, just over the border from Laredo, Texas.
Photograph: Rodrigo Abd/AP

On the edge – the Rio Grande
Travel 40 miles east from El Paso along the Rio Grande to Tornillo, and it feels a world away from the big city. Vast open areas are filled with orchards, and pecan nut and dairy farms.

US border patrol vehicles keep a watchful eye.

Of the 1,317 miles of border with no fence or human barrier, much of it lies along the 1,248 miles of Rio Grande. The river serves as the demarcation line between the two countries all the way from El Paso to the Gulf of Mexico.

Powerful currents, towering canyons and cliffs that in the Big Bend section rise to 50ft reduce the need for a solid barrier through much of the river’s trajectory.

Still, Trump has his eye on the Rio Grande for his wall. Of the $5.7bn he is demanding from Congress, a sizable chunk would go towards building more than 100 miles of wall along the river.

Here just outside Tornillo, the existing fence that runs west to Sunland Park in New Mexico has a 10-mile gap in it. Despite the lack of an artificial barrier, most locals go about their daily routine without fuss.

Miguel Alvarez, who has lived close to the border for 25 years, said the arrival of the fence has made precious little difference. “You still see small groups of people passing through just like they did before any fencing,” he said.

A farmer who didn’t want to reveal his name said he would feel more comfortable if the gap in the fencing were closed. “I haven’t had any issues with people coming across, but you never know,” he said.

Tornillo itself fell under the national spotlight after the Trump administration chose the Marcelino Serna port of entry south of the town to house thousands of unaccompanied minors in a tent-like facility. It was meant to be temporary, designed to help deal with hundreds of children who had been separated from their families as a result of Trump’s crackdown on border crossers.

But it rapidly grew, to up to 2,400 beds, becoming the face of the brutality of Trump’s policy of tearing families apart as a form of deterrent.

In November, a government watchdog warned that conditions in the tent city were putting children at risk, and since then the numbers have been reduced until the last teenager was transferred out of the facility last week. As far as locals are concerned, its closure couldn’t happen fast enough.

They are eager for things to get back to normal. Or at least as close to what passes as normal these days.

(Source: The Guardian)