Trump Endangers Arizonans, Risks Spreading Virus to Build Wall
Wall construction accelerates amidst deadly pandemic
By Gail Emrick and Laiken Jordahl
The coronavirus outbreak provides more proof that the Trump administration sees border communities and indigenous nations as expendable.
Not content with bulldozing national monuments and destroying sacred Native American sites, Trump is now taking advantage of the pandemic to accelerate construction of his border wall in Arizona and across the borderlands. He’s adding to the long, painful legacy of injustice against indigenous people and other frontline communities, who are disproportionately falling ill and dying from the virus.
By sending thousands of construction workers into rural border towns, Trump is risking Arizonans’ lives and the health of our communities. All for a misguided campaign promise.
We live in the borderlands and work to protect the health and wellbeing of people, wildlife and wild places from a litany of assaults ― from underfunded public health programs to the extinction of animals like our revered native jaguar.
It’s appalling to see border wall construction intensify in the midst of this deadly pandemic.
We’re stunned to watch construction workers moving through our communities and ignoring the important public health practices we’ve all embraced to flatten the curve and save lives.
Earlier this month a group of 20 workers crowded into a small store in Ajo, spurring the store owner to plead with the construction company to require employees to take commonsense social distancing precautions.
We don’t yet know the toll the coronavirus will take on rural communities. We do know that Ajo is a small town with few health care providers and a sizeable population of older residents who are more vulnerable to serious complications from it.
Border-wall workers, who are arriving from all around the U.S., could spread the virus with each trip they make to our local stores, gas stations and motels in isolated rural communities, which often lack the health-care capacity to care for their own residents ― much less a surge of potentially ill construction workers.
The Army’s Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite recently said there were more than 4,000 workers building the wall. They live in tight quarters, sometimes called “man camps,” and travel to and from their worksites on weekends. They could already be spreading the virus to our communities and bringing it home to their families across the country when they leave.
Arizona’s border counties have more than 2,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 161 deaths, but the state has tested only a tiny fraction of people. It’s impossible to know how widespread the virus really is.
Fast-tracking wall construction defies stay-at-home orders issued by governors in Arizona and New Mexico, who’ve wisely pressed pause on non-essential services and urged people not to congregate.
But let’s be clear, there’s nothing “essential” about the border wall. The wall won’t stop people or drugs from coming into the country. It won’t protect us from the virus that’s turned our lives upside-down and brought the economy to a screeching halt.
Trump’s fixation on building the wall is risking the lives of Americans for nothing but a misguided campaign promise.
Imagine if the thousands of construction workers building the wall were instead building hospitals, crisis centers and critical infrastructure to fight the pandemic?
What if some of the $18 billion wasted on ineffective barriers were used to train the new army of public health care workers needed to perform testing and contact tracing to jump on the next inevitable outbreak?
If just a fraction of our nation’s funds Trump is spending on his wall were instead used for coronavirus response and future pandemic prevention and preparation, we could save thousands of lives.
If there was ever a time to realize the futility of building the wall, it is now.
Border wall construction must stop, before more people die.
Gail Emrick, a lifelong Southern Arizona resident, and a Public Voices Fellow, is the executive director of the Southeast Arizona Area Health Education Center in Nogales, Ariz., and serves on the Binational Health Council of Ambos Nogales.
Laiken Jordahl is the borderlands campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity, where he focuses on protecting wildlife, ecosystems and communities throughout the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Twitter: @LaikenJordahl
