Transcripts For BBCNEWS Life In The Shadow Of The Wall 20170813

Evening as this High Pressure cubs then, it is getting squeezed out, towards the uk. A pretty unsettled way, some sunshine from time to time, but we can expect heavier showers, some longer spells of rain, Turning Cooler as well. Hello. This is bbc news. The headlines. A white house spokesperson has defended donald trump, after the president was accused of failing to explicitly condemn far right extremists following the death of an anti fascist Counter Protester at a White Supremacist rally in charlottesville. Mr trump has been criticised for condemning violence by many sides, instead of targeting his anger at the far right. The chancellor, philip hammond, and International Trade secretary liam fox have said that any brexit transition deal would be time limited, and would not be a back door to the uk remaining in the eu. Raila odinga, the defeated candidate in the kenyan president ial elections, has urged his supporters not to go to work on monday over the disputed election result. More on those stories at the top of the hour. Now on bbc news, in Life In The Shadow of the wall, Juan Paullier travels the length of the Us Mexico Border to see how President Trumps proposed wall could affect the people who live on the frontier. Build that wall, build that wall, build that wall. Yeah, ok, ok, well build the wall, we need to build a wall, a big beautiful wall, build a wall. It was one of his Main Campaign pledges to build a wall all along the Us Mexico Border. A third of it already has some sort of barrier. But what are the challenges of trying to seal it off completely . Ill be traveling the entire length of the Us Mexico Border to find the stories of the people who call the borderlands home, to see how the fence thats already in place has affected their lives and to try to find out what impact the wall President Trump wants to build could have. And the journey starts here at the very beginning of the border where the Gulf Of Mexico meets the rio grande. Reynosa is the kind of place that to The Americans justifies a wall. It is the most dangerous city on the border. A battlefield to control a key route for migrants and drug traffickers. We are on a patrol with the Special Forces that guard this place. Long gun battles between Government Forces and drug cartels are common in the city, with people often caught in the middle. Its a place where local journalists have been attacked and threatened for reporting on the drug cartels. The presence of International Media is rare and thats why we have to take these security measures. It has been a quiet shift but it isnt long before they are called into action. The officers just spotted two cars one of them seems to be abandoned and theyjust got off the pick ups to check what is going on. The Police Believe something suspicious is going on. Here different factions of the gulf and los zetas cartels are at the heart of a long and violent feud to dominate a profitable business. According to the Us Government Drug Trafficking is a 61; billion industry in the country. The police cant find anything so their suspects are not arrested. Then. Proof of how difficult it is to deal with the cartels. Colonel solis is listening in to cartel members. These hawks are a constant menace to the police. The migrants who arrive from the south and those deported from the north they are also targets for the cartels. This refuge offers them a respite in the middle of uncertain times. These men havejust been sent back from the us where there are an estimated 11 million unauthorised immigrants. This year, on average, the us authorities have apprehended nearly 600 people a day trying to cross the border. Sister Maria Nidelvia has seen more deportees in the last months. Jorge torres was deported twice in the last three weeks. He experienced this threat first hand. We are on our way to interview a high ranking official to find out how the government is coping with this new influx of deportees to reynosa. We also want to ask him what they are doing to prevent these people from becoming easy prey for the powerful cartels that terrorise the city. This is the most dangerous state along the border and we need an armed escort to travel to the capital where the government has its offices. Tamaulipas has the nations highest number of disappearances close to 6,000 people. It is a disturbing figure that could be much higher since only a fraction of all cases are reported. The government is in a tough position. The local police was so corrupt it was dismantled years ago. The cartels take advantage of this. From up here it is striking to see how close mexico is. The river, called rio bravo by the mexicans and rio grande by The Americans, is the flowing Border Dividing and uniting both countries for hundreds of kilometres. In most of texas it is the natural frontier and this is where they plan to build the next phase of the wall. For many its a threat to their properties and to the landscape itself. Building the wall will be difficult and money may not be the biggest hurdle. Getting the land is a major issue because over 90 of the border in texas is privately owned. Under the Bush Administration many landowners received letters saying the government would Compulsorily Purchase the land. Noel benavidez first received a letter in 2008. For nine years Nothing Happened but he recently got another one. Hes realistic about the situation. So why why do you think there is no point in fighting the government on this . On fighting the sale . Yeah. Because the Homeland Security has all the power in the world right now. They they can do and not do whatever they want to. The land has been in his wifes family for more than 250 years since it was granted by the king of spain. Before it was mexican territory, long before it became the us. So where are we exactly . Right now, so were on the second bank of the property, this is the flood plain and this is all going to be supposedly this is where the walls going to be. So your land will be on the other side of the wall . Yes, part of the property will be on the other side. And it will probably be approximately 20 acres maybe a little more. And you will be able to access your property . How will that work . They tell me that theres going to be openings where we can access the property. I dont know how. But i mean, it wont be a continuous wall or you have like a key . Thats a good question. More than likely itll be just an opening which would defeat the purpose of the wall, but thats the government for you. Ultimately congress has to approve President Trumps budget before construction can begin. If and when it comes, noel doesnt believe the wall will do thejob. Do you think the wall will serve its purposes . Well, the walls supposed to keep people out and i dont think its going to do that. In the history of mankind, i dont think a wall has kept anything or anybody out. I think a virtual wall would be more effective than any wall made out of mortar and brick and what have you. This virtual wall that noel is talking about already exists and my next meeting is with the people who defend it. This is a training exercise. Border patrol agents practice how to deal with drowning migrants. The Rio Grande Valley is popular with people trying to enter the country. 45 of all the apprehensions on the border take place in this sector. But patrols of the river are just one part of their strategy. We have sensors, we have cameras, we have agents on patrol, we have different types of infrastructure, bridges, roads that give us easier access to, like i said, those points that are breached on the border. We have different types of vehicles. We have four wheelers, horses, bicycles and dirt bikes so we have a multi layered defence approach to border security. Agent castro believes fencing deters some but the key is more people on the ground. Something President Trump has promised to deliver. The main needs of course are personnel, technology and infrastructure. The technology so we can have Situational Awareness of whats coming in. The infrastructure to get to that detection or that breach in the border. And of course you need the personnel. You can have all the technology and infrastructure, but if you dont have the personnel to respond efficiently and effectively then it becomes useless. Im making a short detour from the border itself. We are on the Outskirts Of Falfurrias where a Border Patrol checkpoint has created a second frontier. Don white is a volunteer and hes looking for migrants. More often than not he only finds their remains. You look for the, the paths that they travel, and then you backtrack those to see if anybodys been left behind. This toothpaste was probably left behind by Migrants Hiding in these ranch lands and many of them die here and whats striking is that we are more than 100 kilometres north of the actual border with mexico and you can hear the cars passing along the highway. This is a major corridor used by People Smugglers and drug traffickers. The migrants who made it across the rio grande must still avoid detection as they head to their final destinations. To circumvent the checkpoint, migrants are forced to walk through the surrounding brush for up to a0 kilometres. This is not the place where migrants expect to die. But they do. Its also dangerous for don. Im not worried about encountering the border crossers. Im worried about the drug smugglers. Thats why i carry what i carry, because thats for the drug smugglers. Theyre carrying armed, i want to make sure i can equal up. Don works with the missing migrant initiative, a multi Agency Project led by the Border Patrol. Their aim to recover those left behind. Its easy to get lost. And many migrants die of heat and exhaustion more than 550 in the last seven yea rs. The leaves were under this one so that was dropped three or four months ago. Half an hour in to our patrol don finds something. A rancher found a skull one time, and he called it in, it was collected, the sheriff asked if i could do a follow up search of the area with some anthropologists. We went out there, tore up some rat mounds, and these, these are big rats, tore up some rat mounds, a huge cactus, but we found several more bones, a cell phone, photo id, so you know, that was, that was an excellent follow up search, it was really good. Why does don, who lives three hours away, often spend days here . Decades ago his niece was kidnapped and killed. And it took two months for her remains to be found. If youve lost somebody in your family and you dont know where they, they were lost, you dont know where theyre at, you dont know if theyre even buried, you have nothing that you can, nothing you can bury, nothing you can go worship to, nothing you can go visit, nothing you can put flowers on. Thats a, its a pretty harsh way to die. Its hard on the families. Really hard on the families. So i guess thats why i do it, just to for the families that are still alive. My next stop is in laredo where almost 60 of the trade between mexico and the us passes. Jose Antonio Garcia is a trucker who takes cargo across every week. Today hes starting out on a trip to tennessee that is going to take him 27 hours. Joses job comes with risks. This is also a lucrative smuggling point. Jose antonio just told me that many of his colleagues have been forced by the cartels to carry drugs into the us and theres nothing they can do about it. 850 trucks cross this bridge every hour making it the busiest commercial crossing on the border and in the western hemisphere. Many of them are inspected over there. Not, so goods and drugs flow into the us. Goods and guns come into mexico. Would a wall be able to stop all the illegal trafficking . So far weve been through a lot of built up areas but our next destination is a bit more remote. Im at the Big Bend National park, a place with canyons, with mountains where the desert meets the rio grande. Its a stunning, dramatic and desolate landscape. Lets take a look. An indian legend says that after the creation all the remaining rocks were left in the big bend. Walls from another era. Hundreds of metres high in a place where the border bends and from which the park takes its name. The river turns frequently. And its not always easy to see which side is mexico or the us. At this tiny Border Crossing point ive arranged to meet park rangerjennettejurado. She tells me the park has the borders fewest illegal crossings. Routinely the Border Patrol tells us that here in Big Bend National park we have the lowest statistics for any section of the us Mexican Border and within the park, we protect 12 of the us Mexican Border, so its a significant piece. In this vast, remote and lonely place the binational cooperation is essential. And borders are hard to distinguish. Just on the other side of our river well, we only have one half of the river to begin with that other half is preserved by mexican National Parks so we have canyons here but we can only preserve one half of the canyon, one half of the river and then to have a partnership with mexico to make sure this landscape is preserved as part of a larger ecosystem. That our vistas dont end right at that political boundary or right in the middle of the rio grande, is a truly beautiful thing that we have down here. Many people who come here dont even realise that the other half of our canyon is mexico. The river is so shallow sometimes you dont even need a boat. Mike davidson has been visiting this area for over a0 years. As a river guide, he knows this place intimately and hes agreed to take me downstream. In terms of, of the number of people coming to the area and a certain amount of development, theres been quite a few changes in that time. For me, when you still get into the National Park and go on the river, you can go places where you feel like youre the only person thats ever been there, so thats what i really like about this area. As with other people that visit and work in this area, hes concerned about the future. You know, the whole experience of big bend, with a big, a big, tall, strong, beautiful wall as they say would severely degrade the Visitor Experience here. This is one of our national treasures, you know, we cant just throw it away. On the mexican side is a small town called boquillas del carmen. Months after the 9 11 attacks the Port Of Entry was closed. It wasnt reopened untilfour years ago. And boquillas suffered. You know that was a big change, it really ruined this town and this is, this is one of these one size fits all solutions where they treated the whole border like a big danger zone and it really didnt deserve that and so now with all this talk about building, building a border wall and really cracking down you know, we, we worry that the gains that weve made in International Relations here, we fear that that may be left behind if they build this wall. I have now completed the first half of the trip and so far i have travelled along a border where the river is the natural barrier. Now im going to visit places where fences have been in place for years. So we are going to see much more of this. Join me next time when ill be injuarez with a mexican who is helping The Americans build their wall. What have your relatives or friends told you about building this fence . Theyjoke with me and they tell me to just leave a little opening for them to cross. And we visit Nogales The Tunnel Capital of the border. There is rain in the outlook but it has been a lovely weekend for most of us today. Blue skies earlier on today, this picture was taken in the vale of glamorgan. Cloud is increasing, Fairweather Cloud across wales and england. A few showers in scotland. A sunny end to the day for much of northern and eastern parts of england and a lot of the cloud elsewhere will fade away. Higher cloud is coming our way, thicker cloud across the west to bring rain to Northern Ireland and by the end of the night across wales and the south west of england. Cloud amounts increasing, not as cold as last night, chances of seeing the meteor shower, not as good as last night. There will be some clearer skies earlier in the night and particularly towards the east. Outbreaks of rain tomorrow morning. The wettest weather pushing into scotland, wet for the rush hour in the south west of the country. Outbreaks of heavy rain over the irish sea and Showery Rain Across Wales and the south west of england as well. Through the midlands, much of the east of england, it by be dry to start, hazy sunshine, it could stay dry all day because this rain is not really moving into the east. Showery rain across Northern Ireland, the west of england and wales, heavier rain for Northern Ireland and the Rain Beginning to turn heavier in the south west later. In the rain, temperatures about 17 or 18 degrees, sunshine further east and could be quite warm. The Rain Turning Heavier in the evening and overnight, spilling its way north and east through most of the country, south and east missing the worst of it and the heavier rain will be pushed away by tuesday morning. Leaving us with some sunshine but perhaps some showers, heavier ones, possibly thundery in the east of england. Those showers will decay during the evening as this High Pressure comes in, it is getting squeezed out, towards the uk. A pretty unsettled week, some sunshine from time to time, but we can expect heavier showers, some longer spells of rain, Turning Cooler as well. This is bbc news. Im shaun ley. The headlines at five. President trump is accused of being too soft on the far right, after violence at at a rally in virginia left one person dead and many more injured. The white house hits back, saying the president s statement condemning the violence in charlottesville included all extremist groups, including the kkk and neo nazis. The chancellor and the International Trade secretary, say the government will seek a transition period to help businesses adjust after brexit. Learner drivers will be allowed to have lessons on motorways for the first time from next year. Sir mo farah reaches another level despite a disappointing end to his track career at the world athletics championships. In sport we will have few details of the final day of the london games as Robbie Grabarz prepares for the mens high jump final