US expands border wall amid migration concerns

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­[email protected]

ARI­ZONA — Even as the Caribbean con­tin­ues to grap­ple with il­le­gal mi­gra­tion, Unit­ed States se­nior ad­vis­er and for­mer jour­nal­ist CJ Kara­mar­gin has con­firmed the US is strength­en­ing and ex­pand­ing sec­tions of its bor­der wall to curb il­le­gal mi­gra­tion, while al­so main­tain­ing sys­tems to care for mi­grants and ad­dress hu­man­i­tar­i­an needs.

Kara­mar­gin, a se­nior ad­vis­er to Re­pub­li­can Con­gress­man Juan Cis­co­mani for Ari­zona’s 6th Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict, spoke to re­porters at a For­eign Press Cen­tre brief­ing held in Ari­zona, where a team of 13 jour­nal­ists are par­tic­i­pat­ing in a re­port­ing tour or­gan­ised by the US De­part­ment of State.

Kara­mar­gin spoke on the role of Con­gress in se­cur­ing the US south­ern bor­der. He said the ad­min­is­tra­tion of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump had sig­nif­i­cant­ly al­tered con­di­tions along the U.S.-Mex­i­co bor­der, adding stricter poli­cies had changed be­hav­iour among crim­i­nal net­works in­volved in mi­gra­tion.

“Don­ald Trump came in promis­ing a new ap­proach to the bor­der,” Kara­mar­gin said. “Just the promise of it was enough to change the be­hav­iour of car­tels. They knew it wasn’t go­ing to be easy any longer.”

Kara­mar­gin said bor­der se­cu­ri­ty had im­proved sub­stan­tial­ly in re­cent years, not­ing the bor­der “is now far safer than it has been in re­cent times.”

He at­trib­uted much of the po­lit­i­cal mo­men­tum be­hind stronger bor­der en­force­ment to pub­lic frus­tra­tion over mi­gra­tion lev­els un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, say­ing the is­sue ex­tend­ed far be­yond com­mu­ni­ties di­rect­ly along the south­ern bor­der.

“A porous bor­der didn’t af­fect just a bor­der com­mu­ni­ty like ours,” he said. “Mi­grants would come in, usu­al­ly not stay in Ari­zona… they would tran­sit through Ari­zona, so it would have an im­pact in oth­er states.”

Ari­zona, which shares a long bor­der with Mex­i­co, has of­ten been at the cen­tre of na­tion­al im­mi­gra­tion de­bates. Kara­mar­gin re­called ac­com­pa­ny­ing for­mer Ari­zona Gov­er­nor Doug Ducey to an area near Yu­ma where un­fin­ished sec­tions of wall had be­come cross­ing points for mi­grants.

He de­scribed mi­grants walk­ing through vis­i­ble gaps in the bar­ri­er and said large num­bers of peo­ple camped in near­by agri­cul­tur­al ar­eas while await­ing as­sis­tance from aid groups.

Kara­mar­gin said the sit­u­a­tion had eco­nom­ic con­se­quences for farm­ing com­mu­ni­ties in Yu­ma, a re­gion known for win­ter agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion.

He de­scribed farm­land be­com­ing over­whelmed by makeshift camps and said lo­cal res­i­dents ex­pe­ri­enced first­hand the im­pact of un­man­aged mi­gra­tion flows.

While em­pha­sis­ing the need for stronger bor­der en­force­ment, Kara­mar­gin al­so ac­knowl­edged the hu­man­i­tar­i­an di­men­sion of mi­gra­tion and not­ed ex­ten­sive sup­port sys­tems ex­ist to as­sist mi­grants once they ar­rive.

Re­spond­ing to a ques­tion from Guardian Me­dia about mi­gra­tion pres­sures af­fect­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go, par­tic­u­lar­ly those in­volv­ing Venezue­lan mi­grants, Kara­mar­gin said the Unit­ed States had de­vel­oped or­gan­i­sa­tions ded­i­cat­ed to help­ing mi­grants in ways that did not ex­ist gen­er­a­tions ago.

“One of the re­mark­able things about Amer­i­ca is there are a lot of or­gan­i­sa­tions that care for mi­grants,” he said.

He not­ed when his own grand­fa­ther im­mi­grat­ed to the US in the 1920s, there were few for­mal sys­tems avail­able to help new­com­ers. To­day, he said, mi­grant as­sis­tance or­gan­i­sa­tions pro­vide food, cloth­ing, shel­ter and trans­porta­tion.

Still, Kara­mar­gin stressed mi­grants should en­ter through le­gal path­ways.

“The over­all point is that peo­ple should not be sneak­ing across the bor­der,” he said. “They should be com­ing through le­gal mech­a­nisms.”

He al­so ac­knowl­edged broad­er chal­lenges in mi­gra­tion pol­i­cy, not­ing it re­mains dif­fi­cult to cre­ate long-term con­sis­ten­cy, not on­ly with­in the Unit­ed States but in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

“It can be a chal­lenge,” he said, re­fer­ring to pol­i­cy­mak­ing and dif­fer­ing ap­proach­es among gov­ern­ments.

This, he said, has made it dif­fi­cult to achieve com­mon mi­gra­tion poli­cies or co­or­di­nat­ed re­spons­es across bor­ders.