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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Most Heartbreaking Place In America Is Called ‘Friendship Park’
SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA When former First Lady Pat Nixon traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border in 1971 to inaugurate what is now Friendship Park just south of San Diego, California, she observed the then-thin string of barbed wire separating the two countries and reportedly said, I hate to see a fence anywhere. The implication, people thought, was that neither nation would ever build one.
But they did build a fence. Two, in fact. Today, a pair of massive metal walls both constructed by the U.S. government and each roughly 18 feet high separate most of Friendship Park from Mexico. The first is incomplete, porous, and encircling only one section of the park. But the second fence, expanded and reinforced multiple times since the early 1990s, represents the formal border between the two countries. It currently extends east as far as the eye can see and westward down to the beach below, where a weathered-looking series of iron pylons stretches out into the Pacific Ocean. The Mexico side is home to the bustling city of Tijuana, where crowds of people can often be seen strolling across the sand and bodysurfing through the crashing waves. The U.S. beach, by contrast, is usually deserted, save for the occasional low rumble of a border agent vehicle on patrol.
On Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., however, a small crowd comes from miles around to gather at the American section of the fence. Thats when U.S. Border Patrol officers open the first gate, allowing visitors to walk up to the second fence and talk to people on the other side. This makes Friendship Park one of the only places in the world where people in the United States and Mexico can physically see and speak to each other without the aid of electronics or the risk of deportation. It attracts a wide variety of guests, most of whom have visceral and often frustrating experiences with Americas immigration system.
https://thinkprogress.org/the-most-heartbreaking-place-in-america-is-called-friendship-park-ed0effeaac3a#.cv8vabc86
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This is not right. They are families.
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The Most Heartbreaking Place In America Is Called ‘Friendship Park’ (Original Post)
sheshe2
Oct 2016
OP
Raine
(30,540 posts)1. This sight makes me so sad... nt
sheshe2
(83,925 posts)3. I am in tears as well, Raine.
Many have driven hours. Many walk for days to spend a few minutes touching their loved ones. This is wrong.
upaloopa
(11,417 posts)2. I went to Rosarito Mexico last week. My brother has a house there.
That fence on the border looks like a demilitarized
zone.
Very ugly.
sheshe2
(83,925 posts)4. A demilitarized zone. Ugly.
Yes.
Yes, upaloopa.
Cha
(297,692 posts)7. That is sad.. it breaks my
heart, she.
Gracias for your OP on Friendship Park in San Diego, California May they some how some day find a way to be together
lillypaddle
(9,581 posts)8. Heartbreaking