IMPERIAL BEACH, CA - A new anti-climbing border wall design is taking shape at the boundary between the U.S. and Mexico as it bisects the Friendship Park between San Diego and its Mexican conurbation, Tijuana.
The new design, pioneered under the auspices of the Trump administration, is a stark, metal, bollard-style wall similar to those employed in Texas and Arizona but with a wing-like protrusion at the top of the span resembling a comma, tapering to a point on the Mexican side and overhanging it while rounded on the American side. The modification is ostensibly to prevent a prospective climber from overtopping the wall by presenting no possible grip.
Fox5 San Diego KUSI reported that critics of the wall, such as illegal immigrant advocate Pedro Rios of the American Friends Service Committee, have referred to the design as "techitos," meaning little rooftops, loosely translated. He explained, "It’s the first of its kind along the U.S.-Mexico border. It’s an anti-climbing feature that’s meant to stop people from scaling the border wall."
“This is being tested out at Friendship Park, a park that’s meant to symbolize the unity between both countries, and people coming together,” Rios told KUSI. “This new feature, which will likely cause more injuries, does the exact opposite. It represents denial, represents exclusion, and is pushing people away.”
However, Friendship Park, despite the initial good intentions of its creation in 1971 became a site of frequent breaches of the border in the last forty years as willingness to secure the border evaporated among the American political left and the Mexican government overall.
The situation deteriorated so badly that in 2005, The Tampa Bay Times reported that then-Mexican President Vincente Fox's government actively distributed the "Guide for the Mexican Immigrant" from Mexico's Foreign Relations Department which was essentially a "how-to guide" to illegally enter into the U.S.
John Keeley, director of communication for the U.S.-based Center for Immigration Studies, a group that favors stricter immigration policies told the outlet, "With this document the Mexican government not only has not instructed its citizens to obey immigration law but, in rich detail, it has supplied a manual on how to circumvent U.S. immigration law. It's very, very troubling."
Fifteen years later in 2019 as former President Donald Trump grappled with the runaway illegal immigration problem, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador claimed, "this is a problem of the United States, or it's a problem of the Central American countries. It's not up to us Mexicans, no," according to Reuters.
A few weeks before Lopez-Obrador's dismissive statement no less than 52 illegal immigrants had been apprehended after breaching the border at Friendship Park in a single rush. As reported by The Los Angeles Times, it would be a sign of things to come. Doctors at the UC San Diego Trauma Center later said they've treated at least 455 patients who suffered falls off the wall since 2023.
A spokesman for the Border Patrol said that the agency has "developed an approach that meets the border security needs of the area while also addressing feedback from the community," according to The New York Post, adding that the park can still be accessed.
The new design, pioneered under the auspices of the Trump administration, is a stark, metal, bollard-style wall similar to those employed in Texas and Arizona but with a wing-like protrusion at the top of the span resembling a comma, tapering to a point on the Mexican side and overhanging it while rounded on the American side. The modification is ostensibly to prevent a prospective climber from overtopping the wall by presenting no possible grip.
Fox5 San Diego KUSI reported that critics of the wall, such as illegal immigrant advocate Pedro Rios of the American Friends Service Committee, have referred to the design as "techitos," meaning little rooftops, loosely translated. He explained, "It’s the first of its kind along the U.S.-Mexico border. It’s an anti-climbing feature that’s meant to stop people from scaling the border wall."
Rios expressed his concerns regarding the wall's anti-climing feature saying, “People will continue to try and scale the border wall. The concern here is someone who’s at that height, and if they get stuck, they will probably fall and severely injure themselves. We continue to see an increase in people that are falling from the border wall and seeking medical treatment. In this case, if they fall onto the Mexican side then we won’t have an accounting for how dangerous this new feature might be.”
Rios decried the decision to test the new border wall type at Friendship Park as an irony. The Park which sits atop a bluff on the Pacific Coast was created as a site of amity between the U.S. and Mexico, during times of greater cooperation in controlling illegal immigration between the two nations.“This is being tested out at Friendship Park, a park that’s meant to symbolize the unity between both countries, and people coming together,” Rios told KUSI. “This new feature, which will likely cause more injuries, does the exact opposite. It represents denial, represents exclusion, and is pushing people away.”
However, Friendship Park, despite the initial good intentions of its creation in 1971 became a site of frequent breaches of the border in the last forty years as willingness to secure the border evaporated among the American political left and the Mexican government overall.
The situation deteriorated so badly that in 2005, The Tampa Bay Times reported that then-Mexican President Vincente Fox's government actively distributed the "Guide for the Mexican Immigrant" from Mexico's Foreign Relations Department which was essentially a "how-to guide" to illegally enter into the U.S.
John Keeley, director of communication for the U.S.-based Center for Immigration Studies, a group that favors stricter immigration policies told the outlet, "With this document the Mexican government not only has not instructed its citizens to obey immigration law but, in rich detail, it has supplied a manual on how to circumvent U.S. immigration law. It's very, very troubling."
Fifteen years later in 2019 as former President Donald Trump grappled with the runaway illegal immigration problem, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador claimed, "this is a problem of the United States, or it's a problem of the Central American countries. It's not up to us Mexicans, no," according to Reuters.
A few weeks before Lopez-Obrador's dismissive statement no less than 52 illegal immigrants had been apprehended after breaching the border at Friendship Park in a single rush. As reported by The Los Angeles Times, it would be a sign of things to come. Doctors at the UC San Diego Trauma Center later said they've treated at least 455 patients who suffered falls off the wall since 2023.
A spokesman for the Border Patrol said that the agency has "developed an approach that meets the border security needs of the area while also addressing feedback from the community," according to The New York Post, adding that the park can still be accessed.
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