Immigrant

Imagine a tall, enormously long brownish comb sticking its teeth skyward, or a giant fork whose handle is buried, its tines sticking 21 feet up into the air. Next to those tines are other tines, and other tines, forming a sometimes straight and sometimes sinuous line of rust-colored steel slats reaching upward and following the course of the Rio Grande. While fork tines generally taper at the end, the 6" wide fence slats are pointed on the top and are set 4" apart, so when you drive along a section of the wall and look at the land on the other side, you are reminded of seeing an old-time movie. Designed as a barrier to deter anyone who wishes to cross the Rio Bravo, as it is called in Mexico, and enter the land of opportunity, the border wall in southeast Texas is located anywhere from a few feet to a mile or so north of the river, sometimes forming the back fence of a residential property along Rt. 281, and sometimes located a mile or more to the south of that highway. The U.S.-Mexican border runs for 1696 miles between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean. The completed wall, or fence, separates the two countries along 651 miles of that border, The expanse of steel and concrete has gaps, where a farmer can drive his tractor between sections of the wall to work in his fields between the wall and the river, or where the ubiquitous white and green SUV's move as they patrol the dirt pathways and paved highways along the southern edge of the nation of immigrants.