Tijuana, Baja California. Four activists bound themselves to the border wall of the coastal area as PROTESTS due to the installation of a new fence approximately 10 meters high, a construction that caused damage to Binational Friendship Park.
The immigration authorities in the United States began construction to replace this main fence in Friendship Park, located between the two countries. Families and friends used to meet in this space. border side.
With the motto “Friendship yes, wall no!”, they defend the park. Daniel Watman, the convening activist, told the media that his purpose was to stop building fences:
“My goal here is to stop the construction in general for the park, because the construction they have now is a destruction of the park. They put two walls between nine and ten meters, and that sends a message to division and separation when the park was about connection and friendship.”
Likewise, the activists stated that the construction of the walls was a cruel act. They commented that the fences do not stop migration but only put migrants in a dangerous situation.
“The walls don’t exactly work for the purpose they say is to stop people from crossing, because people keep crossing and that crossing has become more dangerous, and I fear that now with the higher walls people will drown trying across the sea,” he reported.
Friendship Park was inaugurated in 1971 by Pat Nixon as a friendly gesture by US citizens to relatives of Mexican migrants.
However, in 2021, during the administration of Donald Trump, rumors emerged about the height of its walls and the destruction of space as part of a framework of xenophobic policies.
In 2022, Customs and Border Protection announced the suspension of construction to establish a dialogue with disaffected communities, but at the beginning of 2023, the installation of the new fence started.
Different groups of activists, migrants, and citizens protested around this building. Even the environmental groups participated in these demonstrations because of the damage they could cause to the plants in the area.
