A week ago today I went down to Sasabe with another filmmaker and with O. He wanted to interview her about the effects on wildlife of the border wall, the subject of his new documentary, and I just tagged along.

Sasabe is a tiny little town bisected by the border, in the middle of the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, about 90 minutes southwest of Tucson. The new wall, part of the 370 new miles approved recently and being pushed frantically by Ministry of Fear, err, I mean Department of Homeland Security, is pretty much done at Sasabe, but the joke of it is that you can look off in the distance and see the ends of it a few miles on either side of the port of entry. So migrants and drug runners might have to walk a little bit out of their way if they weren't already avoiding the area by now. So stupid.

In other places the situation is more dire, like around the San Pedro River, a sensitive riparian area that they're planning to put wall right up to the banks of, and a cement road that cuts right through the stream for Border Patrol vehicles to easily cross at.. It's still not going to stop illegal border crossings, but it's going to fuck up a lot of sensitive species there.

Sigh.