Chance Table Mates Prompt In-depth Discussion about Border Wall

     Still reflecting on the election and its impact on immigrants, I had an eye-opening conversation about the border with three people I was seated with at a fundraising dinner for a Catholic nonprofit. One of them was Mr. D, a Westpoint graduate and veteran who also teaches engineering at a college in Houston. As the conversation deepened, he prefaced to the table, “I don’t want to be political,” before dropping a personal detail that stunned me: he said he managed a private company contracted to build the border wall between Texas and Mexico. He showed the table a golden replica of a small piece of border wall about twice the size of a matchbook and said he was flying out early the next day to manage the project.

    Over the meal, he shared more details about his work. He told us that acquiring privately owned land was the first hurdle; his company offers market value to landowners. If an offer is refused, the company simply skips that section, leaving a gap. He noted, however, that when border crossers begin using those gaps as pathways, landowners often change their minds to sell.

    The US-Mexico border stretches 1,954 miles from California to Texas. Only about 800 miles require a man-made wall. It is staggeringly expensive to build; each mile of the 30-foot-high steel fence costs between $25 to $30 million. Over the last several decades, about 200 miles have gone up, leaving 600 miles still open. The couple sitting to my right calculated that it would cost another $18 billion to complete. Mr. D argued the cost was worth it; the wall would save the lives of thousands of immigrants who may otherwise try to cross the open desert. In addition, he claimed, it would save billions in law enforcement and processing costs for immigrants who were captured crossing illegally. 

     I’m not versed in the pros and cons of a physical wall to curtail unauthorized border crossings. I do know that Catholic Social Teaching says that a country has a right to maintain its borders. There may be better ways than a steel barrier, which some argue is as much of a symbol as an actual deterrent. At the same time, the Church holds unequivocally that migrants have a right to flee to save their lives and provide for the future of their families. We cannot lose sight of that. 

    To say the least, it was a sobering conversation. Whatever our feelings about a border wall or immigration, more broadly, all of us at the table were polite and, putting politics aside, were present to support a Catholic organization meeting the urgent humanitarian needs of immigrants and refugees that find their way into Texas. On that, there could be no disagreement.