Navigating the invisible boundary and physical barriers that define the U.S.-Mexico border
In 1989, the first fence built to stop illegal crossings from Mexico to the United States was erected in San Diego, where the border begins. From here, the border stretches for almost 2,000 miles, only 700 of which are walled or fenced. President Trump wants to change that.
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That first fence was a line of surplus helicopter landing pads, welded together. It stopped vehicles but not climbers, so a taller secondary layer came in 1996. Then came a third layer, including at Friendship Park, the one place where families not permitted to travel between the countries can gather to talk through mesh.
Nearly six miles east of Friendship Park is the port of entry at San Ysidro, which is the most heavily traveled in the Western Hemisphere; 135,000 people cross there each day.
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Much of California’s 140 miles of border is fenced, even a chunk of the tarantula-infested Otay Mountain Wilderness Area, a vast tract of rugged federal land with an abruptly rising 3,500-foot peak.
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There are dozens of legal entry points ( ), ranging from heavily trafficked bridges to a dusty road monitored by a remote camera to pedestrian paths between cities that, though separated by the border, have felt like single communities for generations.
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The Campo Indian Reservation stretches across the Laguna Mountains and is home to about 315 members of the Campo Kumeyaay Nation. The tribal corporation oversees Golden Acorn Casino — and a wind farm with 25 turbines that supplies energy to about 30,000 homes.
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(Sandy Huffaker/Bloomberg News)
There are many kinds of barriers, either carved by nature or made by man. The latter range from barbed wire and reinforced steel to high bollards that block vehicles and wake detectors that can help stop boats.
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(David McNew/Newsmakers)
Vast unfenced areas, including this one, are treacherous to cross. Border agents patrolling on horseback have found the bodies of hundreds of migrants who died trying to hike through these brutal mountains, which are scorching in summer and snow-covered in winter. Some volunteers place jugs of water along the route for crossers.
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(Guillermo Arias/AFP/Getty Images)
Between deserts lies a broad quilt of green. The Colorado River feeds canals that water the fruit and vegetable farms of the Imperial Valley in California. Calexico has about 40,000 people. Mexicali, the capital of Baja California, is home to nearly 700,000, hundreds of whom cross daily to work the fields.
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Click and drag anywhere to rotate the map
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Border agents need ATVs to patrol this odd and shifting terrain, formed from the beach sands of an ancient lake and shaped by opposing seasonal winds. (John Moore/Getty Images)
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Responsibility for securing the border is divided among nine sectors. Migrant apprehensions in the Yuma sector, which spans part of California and Arizona, fell sharply in the decades after the United States installed more than 100 miles of fencing and vehicle barriers. But in the year ending Aug. 31, agents detained nearly 18,000 people, more than twice as many as the year before. Much of the border in Arizona runs through federal, state or tribal land, and most of it is fenced.
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Trump’s solution to stop illegal migration: Replace the fences with a wall. Eight border wall prototypes commissioned by the U.S. government were constructed in late 2017 in California. Tactical teams tested them and discovered, according to a recent government report, that nearly all of them could be breached. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)
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Undocumented Mexican immigrants walk through the Sonoran Desert after illegally crossing the border into the Tohono O’odham Nation in Arizona in January 2011. (John Moore/Getty Images)
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(John Moore/Getty Images)
The cities of Nogales, Mexico, and Nogales, Ariz., are like twins separated at birth. Both are built right up to the tall slatted fence between them, and people go back and forth to work and to school. Here, traffic from Mexico waits to cross into the United States in Nogales.
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(Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
The ranchers who run cattle in southern Arizona know the border as well as anybody. It gives peace and quiet, and it takes lives by exposure and sometimes violence. John Ladd works a ranch around Naco that has been in his family for more than a century. He’s had crossers come through holes in the fence, and he’s lost cattle recently to toxic sewage spilling from a pipe carrying it from Mexico. Most ranchers worry that a wall would upend the area’s ecosystem. They favor more patrols.
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In some places, people can walk across the border into Mexico almost casually, like a stroll between neighborhoods. Coming into the United States invites more scrutiny, although crossing by foot often is quicker than by car. There are 27 pedestrian crossings.
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In the rugged places where the man-made border and its fencing between countries disappear, the earth takes over, in its imposing and intimidating way. For most of the border’s 2,000 miles, there are few roads near it, save for some dirt paths carved by Border Patrol agents. Here and there, weathered stone obelisks stand watch, markers from surveying done in 1848, when California passed to the United States from Mexico via the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
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El Paso marks the halfway point of the country’s southern border. The city of about 650,000 converges with Las Cruces, N.M., and Juarez, Mexico, to form a bustling hub where thousands move back and forth daily over four bridges with nearly 80 lanes for pedestrians and vehicles. Most of the land east of El Paso to the Gulf of Mexico is privately owned.
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(Mike Blake/Reuters)
This tent city suddenly appeared in June to house unaccompanied minors and children separated from their parents after crossing the border, under the Trump administration’s controversial zero-tolerance policy on illegal immigration. It’s grown to 123 tents and now holds about 1,500 children waiting to be reunited with relatives or other sponsors. Some have been there for months.
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Humans have occupied lands along the border for 10,000 years. In the four U.S. states that abut Mexico, people speak more than 50 languages.
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Big Bend National Park shares 118 miles of border with Mexico, studded with deep canyons and thick stands of trees. At the official port of entry, travelers can go back and forth between the park and the tiny village of Boquillas, Mexico, by rowboat over the Rio Grande — and then by burro, horse or the back seat of an old truck. Trump’s promise to slice the park with a 30-foot border wall has alarmed those who love what the National Park Service touts as “one of the last remaining wild corners of the United States.”
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(Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
There is no accurate figure for how many people die trying to reach the United States. Too many are never identified, leaving their families with perpetual uncertainty. The remains of this man, found by a ranch hand, were taken to the Webb County Medical Examiner’s Office, where fingerprints, DNA testing and other techniques are used to identify the dead.
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Floods were persistent at the convergence of the Rio Grande, Devils and Pecos rivers until the U.S. and Mexican governments built a dam in 1969 and named it Amistad, Spanish for “friendship.” A pair of bronze eagles atop the dam marks the international boundary, in a deliberate and dramatic symbol of unity. One day, a limo arrived from the Mexican side. Out jumped a group in formal wear on their way to a high school prom. They wanted photos of themselves on the U.S. side of the border, even though they couldn’t make it past the security checkpoint.
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The river winds through and defines more than half the border, creating one of many natural barriers between the two countries. The land here is a lush green, and fencing is set atop levees far from the banks, to prevent the fences from becoming dams that cause flooding.
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A boom in natural gas technology has led to thousands of wells being dug in Texas’s Eagle Ford shale region, between Del Rio and Laredo. Pemex, Mexico’s nationalized oil and gas company, recently signed a deal to develop part of the Eagle Ford shale south of the border.
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Trump says the wall is necessary to stop the flow of migrants and illegal drugs. In the Rio Grande Valley sector, the Border Patrol reports that it caught more than 137,000 illegal crossers and seized more than 260,000 pounds of marijuana and nearly 1,200 pounds of cocaine in fiscal 2017. Most of the cocaine comes through ports of entry.
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Families from Latin America line up in Mexico to illegally cross the river into Granjeno, Tex., this month. (Adrees Latif/Reuters)
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Throughout Hidalgo and Cameron counties in Texas, there are gates. They allow farmers to move back and forth on acreage that sits south of the border fence but north of the Rio Grande. Many used to have land straddling the United States and Mexico, a legacy of deeds that were granted long before treaties defined the border.
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This month, the Trump administration announced that it would waive 28 environmental laws to speed up construction, in both counties, of 17 miles of new barriers. They would cut through wildlife and butterfly preserves and hundreds of private farms, according to the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit conservation organization.
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(Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)
The Gomez family, including Rosa and her granddaughter Ashly, 3, were one of hundreds who have camped out for hours on the Mexican side of the Gateway International Bridge between Brownsville, Tex., and Matamoros, Mexico. Threatened by gangs in their home country, Honduras, the family in June sought asylum in the United States.
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(Pictometry, 2017)
Where the Rio Grande empties into the Gulf of Mexico, there are no fences. Recreational vehicles on the Mexican side sit on a sandy spit of land a mere 100 feet from U.S. soil. The closest road is still three miles away.
About this story
Satellite imagery from ESA Sentinel via Google Earth Engine. Border data from the State Department. Wall and fence locations from the Department of Homeland Security and Open Street Map.
Tim Meko, Danielle Rindler and Karly Domb Sadof contributed to this report.
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