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Ken Cooke
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Friendship Park closure
Fernando Orozco and his wife, Marta Ramos, embrace through the iron posts of the U.S.-Mexico border fence. Orozco is a legal U.S. resident who
works in Santa Monica; his wife is a Mexican citizen. When construction of a second parallel fence through Border Field State Park is completed later
this year, reunions like this won't be possible.
There are just two weeks left in his presidency, but down in San Diego County the heavy machinery is grinding away at one last grand project from the
administration of George W. Bush.
As The Times reported Sunday, your tax dollars are paying for contractors to move mountains of earth and make canyons disappear at the U.S.-Mexico
border. New fences are rising and a no-man's land is being carved into the Earth.
By government decree, state and federal laws that might have slowed down the project -- including the Clean Water and Endangered Species acts -- have
been suspended in the name of national security.
This hurried display of Pharaonic excess from the people who brought us the Iraq war won't make us much safer. It's another bit of overkill that's
blind to the causes of illegal immigration. And it also happens to be killing a place called Friendship.
Friendship Park sits on a spot of California territory overlooking the beach where the border reaches the Pacific Ocean. In the early 1970s, President
Nixon and then-Gov. Ronald Reagan established it as a symbol of international goodwill.
These days, contractors hired by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security have sealed off its picnic benches with hurricane fencing.
For three decades, the park has been property of the state of California and a cross-border meeting place. Fernando Orozco, a legal U.S. resident,
biked there Sunday. He recently had his wallet and ID stolen, and the park is the only place where he can see his wife, Marta Ramos, a Mexican
national. They embraced and kissed through the fence.
John Fanestil, a United Methodist minister, is one of several activists who say they are determined to "use the park for its intended purpose." Even
as the construction project marches toward the sea, Fanestil holds Communion at the fence every week, passing a chalice of wine over or through the
barriers.
"There is no accountability and no check on the power of Homeland Security," he told me as we hiked to the fence. "What they're doing here is almost
punitive."
Illegal border crossings at the park stopped being a major problem more than a decade ago -- that traffic moved inland, to the Sonoran Desert, after
the Clinton administration's Operation Gatekeeper brought fences, cameras, floodlights and motion detectors to the area. But the current
administration's determination to build ever-higher barriers has not flagged.
In November, two members of Congress, half a dozen state legislators and Lt. Gov. John Garamendi wrote to President-elect Obama's transition team
asking that he "intervene to save Friendship Park."
But construction has continued. And on Sunday, Fanestil, 47, passed tortillas that doubled as Communion wafers through the border. Border Patrol
agents had prevented him from climbing up to the bluff and his usual spot near the picnic benches, so he held the ceremony at the beach. "Just another
day at Friendship Park," he said afterward.
A lot of history has unfolded on that spot of earth and sand, much of it reflecting the tortured and ambivalent relationship we have with our
Spanish-speaking neighbor to the south.
On Oct. 10, 1849, in the wake of the Mexican War, a group of U.S. and Mexican surveyors met there and began mapping the frontier. First Lady Pat Nixon
dedicated Friendship Park in 1971, and even reached across the border to shake a hand or two. Until recently, you could picnic in its half-acre plaza,
or walk up to the obelisk that marks the first point in the 1849 survey. You could even put your fingers through the fence and talk to someone on the
other side.
That was the era of "friendship." John Carlos Frey, a San Diego native and filmmaker who joined me on my hike with Fanestil, remembers celebrating his
ninth birthday at Friendship Park in 1972.
"My Mexican relatives passed their presents over the fence," he said. "And we could walk over to the Mexican side and buy some tacos if we liked. It
wasn't a big deal."
Then came the era of The Wall, which was spurred by the anarchy of the 1980s and '90s. Large crowds of illegal crossers gathered at the bluff and
nearby canyons at night to rush past the overmatched Border Patrol.
The fences the Clinton administration built in response shifted illegal immigration but didn't stop it. In the first years of this century, migrants
have paid increasingly higher fees to smugglers who ferry them through the distant desert.
Last year, when I lived in Mexico City, I knew one woman whose husband paid $3,000 to a "coyote" to get across the border. He later called from
Phoenix to say the smuggler was holding him hostage and demanding $500 more. It seems crazy that anyone would try to cross that desert by dealing with
such criminals -- but many take the risk and make it across.
Even if the U.S. government managed to hermetically seal the land and river border, experts predict the smugglers would simply move out to the Gulf of
Mexico, much like the Africans who cross the Mediterranean Sea to enter Europe.
What will stop illegal immigration is a mega-construction project of justice on the Latin American side of the border, the sudden leveling of
mountains of inequality.
That won't happen soon. But in the meantime, the crackdown on employers and the slowdown in the U.S. economy are succeeding in keeping more people on
the other side.
"They don't want us over there any more," a Salvadoran man named Walter told me through the fence when I visited Friendship Park last spring.
He had been deported from the U.S. a year earlier, after 15 years in Los Angeles. His wife, U.S. citizen Alicia Sandoval, had moved to Tijuana to live
with him and their two children. On the weekends, they come to the park to peer into the country where they used to live.
"Tijuana is not a good place to be," Alicia told me through the fence. "There's too much violence."
A few minutes later, I met another woman, Angelica, who stood on the other side of the fence with her son, 9-year-old Eduardo. She wept when I told
her that a Border Patrol agent had chased everyone else away, saying the park was closed.
She had come to the fence to meet her husband, a Cuban musician who had obtained asylum in the U.S.
The boy peered through the steel mesh into the United States, as if his father might appear suddenly on the empty trails and wetlands on the other
side.
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DENNIS
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| Quote: | Originally posted by Ken Cooke
Fernando Orozco and his wife, Marta Ramos, embrace through the iron posts of the U.S.-Mexico border fence. Orozco is a legal U.S. resident who
works in Santa Monica; his wife is a Mexican citizen. When construction of a second parallel fence through Border Field State Park is completed later
this year, reunions like this won't be possible.
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What? An end to conjugal visits? Homeland Security has no heart.
I wonder if Fernando and Marta have tried to start a family through that fence.
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Ken Cooke
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Posts: 8947
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Location: Riverside, CA
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Mood: Pole Line Road postponed due to injury
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| Quote: | Originally posted by DENNIS
| Quote: | Originally posted by Ken Cooke
Fernando Orozco and his wife, Marta Ramos, embrace through the iron posts of the U.S.-Mexico border fence. Orozco is a legal U.S. resident who
works in Santa Monica; his wife is a Mexican citizen. When construction of a second parallel fence through Border Field State Park is completed later
this year, reunions like this won't be possible.
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What? An end to conjugal visits? Homeland Security has no heart.
I wonder if Fernando and Marta have tried to start a family through that fence. |
I feel bad for this couple. I honestly do. Hopefully, Fernando will get his identification asap so he can visit Marta. But you have to admit, this
is a sad sight to see for what looks like a nice, legitimate couple.
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David K
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Fernando and Marta:
It is a border, if they want to be together one needs to cross over. Is that too hard to figure out?... one needs to cross over...
Since we are being invaded (daily) by those who won't come across legally or by those who wish us harm, our government is doing what it can to protect
us from lawbreakers and terrorists.
Like anyone else from Mexico who wants to visit the U.S. legally, she needs a visa. What is the problem, why is she special? Why did he leave her in
Mexico and come here when he knew she couldn't? Nothing is stopping him from walking into Mexico... he can do that.
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DENNIS
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| Quote: | Originally posted by Ken Cooke
| Quote: | Originally posted by DENNIS
| Quote: | Originally posted by Ken Cooke
Fernando Orozco and his wife, Marta Ramos, embrace through the iron posts of the U.S.-Mexico border fence. Orozco is a legal U.S. resident who
works in Santa Monica; his wife is a Mexican citizen. When construction of a second parallel fence through Border Field State Park is completed later
this year, reunions like this won't be possible.
|
What? An end to conjugal visits? Homeland Security has no heart.
I wonder if Fernando and Marta have tried to start a family through that fence. |
I feel bad for this couple. I honestly do. Hopefully, Fernando will get his identification asap so he can visit Marta. But you have to admit, this
is a sad sight to see for what looks like a nice, legitimate couple. |
What do you mean? The caption says he's a legal resident. Why doesn't he have ID?
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Ken Cooke
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| Quote: | Originally posted by David K
Nothing is stopping him from walking into Mexico... he can do that. |
He lost his ID, David. I'm sure he's back in Tijuana with Marta on weekends by now.
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CaboRon
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| Quote: | Originally posted by David K
Fernando and Marta:
It is a border, if they want to be together one needs to cross over. Is that too hard to figure out?... one needs to cross over...
Since we are being invaded (daily) by those who won't come across legally or by those who wish us harm, our government is doing what it can to protect
us from lawbreakers and terrorists.
Like anyone else from Mexico who wants to visit the U.S. legally, she needs a visa. What is the problem, why is she special? Why did he leave her in
Mexico and come here when he knew she couldn't? Nothing is stopping him from walking into Mexico... he can do that. |
Wow, I am agreeing with David here ... we are not getting the whole story from this heart rending photo .... they might be passing contraband .....
maybe she supplies Mexican Brown to him so he can sell in the states ....
You Never Know,
Do You ?
CaboRon
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Ken Cooke
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Visa issues
David, she can't get a visa, because Fernando isn't a US CITIZEN. In order for her to get her papers in place, Fernando needs to make the change from
US Resident to US Citizen.
He would then petition the consulate for a hearing into the matter, and after a year or so, they could be joined together. But, first he would have
to gather the money and possibly legal representation if he wasn't well versed in International legal matters.
[Edited on 1-7-2009 by Ken Cooke]
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k-rico
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I visit that area occasionally and it is sad that these folks won't be able to meet any longer. There is no way illegals can cross at that spot
without getting caught. If that was a problem the simple chain link fence would have been replaced long ago.
Someone asked "Why did he leave her in Mexico and come here when he knew she couldn't?"
Perhaps to mow your lawn, pick up your garbage, or wash your car so he can provide food and shelter for his family in a place he can afford (TJ).
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David K
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| Quote: | Originally posted by Ken Cooke
| Quote: | Originally posted by David K
Nothing is stopping him from walking into Mexico... he can do that. |
He lost his ID, David. I'm sure he's back in Tijuana with Marta on weekends by now. |
Yes I read that... they don't check IDs walking into Mexico.
What I'm getting at Ken is how the media uses photos like this to create sympathy for those 'poor' people and anger at the 'evil' Republicans... The
fact is he can be with her now... him losing his ID is not our fault... and he can get it replaced, if it isn't a fake. He also left her in Mexico...
that also is not our fault.
Just making some observations here, I hope they are together and happy! Thanks for sharing.
[Edited on 1-7-2009 by David K]
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Ken Cooke
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| Quote: | Originally posted by David K
Yes I read that... they don't check IDs walking into Mexico.
Just making some observations here, I hope they are together and happy! Thanks for sharing.
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Fernando has plenty of paperwork to file both for himself and later on down the line for Marta. I agree with K-Rico that he is probably here in the
US to earn some money to help support Marta back in Tijuana. He did ride a bicycle to the park and not a quad, so I'm sure he's just scraping by.
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David K
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| Quote: | Originally posted by Ken Cooke
David, she can't get a visa, because Fernando isn't a US CITIZEN. In order for her to get her papers in place, Fernando needs to make the change from
US Resident to US Citizen.
He would then petition the consulate for a hearing into the matter, and after a year or so, they could be joined together. But, first he would have
to gather the money and possibly legal representation if he wasn't well versed in International legal matters.
[Edited on 1-7-2009 by Ken Cooke] |
That's not the facts at all... A Mexican doesn't need to have a U.S. spouse to get a visa. Mexicans with visas cross the border legally very day to
shop, work, go to Sea World, etc. Antonio comes here to buy things for Baja Cactus...
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k-rico
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Maybe she can't get a visa because she has a spouse in the US and US immigration would assume that once she crossed she wouldn't return to Mexico. Of
course Mexican citizens can get tourist visas but they have to convince US immigration that they will return to Mexico. From what I understand
Mexicans who don't own property and/or can prove they are gainfully employed in Mexico have a difficult time getting visas.
Not all Mexicans who request visas get them.
[Edited on 1-7-2009 by k-rico]
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k-rico
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I know hard border liners probably won't agree with me but the US missed a good opportunity to show some sensitivity to the immigration problem and
build some good will with the people of a neighboring country.
Instead of building a wall, Friendship Park could have been enhanced and made more secure while still enabling people to meet and talk. It is a
popular spot for Mexicans from all over Mexico to visit when in Tijuana and building a wall will just increase the contempt for the US felt by many
Mexicans and others.
I guess they'll have to rename the park.
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mtgoat666
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| Quote: | Originally posted by k-rico
I guess they'll have to rename the park. |
Friendship park? We should rename it "heartless republican" park.
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BajaGringo
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David:
I understand your basic point but something you have no concept of is how hard it has now gotten to even obtain a tourist visa. My son is an Argentine
citizen, has had a valid passport his entire life and was granted several visas during his first 25 years of life to come and visit the US. He was
never involved in any trouble of any kind in any of his visits, never overstayed a visit and has never had even so much as a traffic ticket in
Argentina. He recently graduated from law school in Buenos Aires and is building a successful practice there.
He has been denied a tourist visa now his last three attempts with zero reason given.
It is not simply a matter of just applying for a visa my friend and I am sure that if the shoe was on the other foot and you were the one living this
very difficult experience your perspective would be quite different. It is easy to just assume that those denied visas are for reasons like criminal
records, etc but the reality is quite a different story.
In between black and white exists many shades of gray...
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DENNIS
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I thought the U.S. showed lots of sensitivity when we built a sewege treatment plant to deal with the Tijuana waste dumped into the river. If the
waste had hit the ocean and gone south instead of north, the "So what" attitude from Mexico might have been different
Building and maintaining a "Love Park" would be a good movie but, wouldn't remain altruistic and pure for long. Who would police it? It would turn
into a demonstration park.
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rayfornario
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I think many of you are missing the point Ken was making about the closure.
It makes no sense whatsover!!! You can't build a fence to Hawaii so Border patrol will have to be staioned at Friendship park 24/7 to watch for
illegals that might swim AROUND the fence.
We have just lost a little bit more of our humanity with the closing of this park!!!!
Even a bad day in Baja is better then a good day somewhere else!
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Ken Cooke
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| Quote: | Originally posted by k-ricoIt is a popular spot for Mexicans from all over Mexico to visit when in Tijuana and building a wall will just
increase the contempt for the US felt by many Mexicans and others.
I guess they'll have to rename the park. |
I wish this park could have been enhanced like you said. It would have been great to see it improved, with better lighting, and more parking near "La
Bola".
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DENNIS
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| Quote: | Originally posted by rayfornario
We have just lost a little bit more of our humanity with the closing of this park!!!! |
It's seldom that Homeland Security will be credited for sensitivity. Have you had your genitals exposed through an Xray machine at the airport
lately?
OK...Bad type of fence but, the fence has been mandated. Doubt we'll ever see their lack of effort in the back country. This over-kill fence is
just a visible showpiece.
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