Along the 20-foot border wall in Nogales, Arizona, six lines of coiling razor wire blanket the rust-colored bollards from top to bottom. Shortly after Joe Biden was inaugurated in January, Nogales mayor Arturo Garino asked that it be cut down. Although the wall itself predated the Trump administration, the razor wire was installed by the US military in 2019. Today, it is the most visceral reminder of Trump’s viciously anti-immigrant administration. But the concertina wire, and the wall, aren’t going anywhere. In February, the federal government issued a call for bids from private industry to maintain border wall infrastructure. As Garino said, “I know that the government has a tendency of, when they put something up, they always keep it up, doesn’t matter what administration is there.” Indeed, the maintenance of this flesh-slicing wire is but one layer of a complex and massive border apparatus and industry that Biden has inherited.
Read the rest here as first published in The Border Chronicle.