SAN DIEGO (Border Report) — U.S. Marines deployed to the San Diego region since late January have been installing razor wire along the border barrier as a deterrent to keep migrants from hopping over the wall.
This week, they worked in an area known as Friendship Park, which lies on a bluff above the Pacific Ocean.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, this was a popular gathering spot for families and friends from both countries to interact with the border wall between them.
Public access has yet to return, and now with the razor wire on the barrier, it’s unlikely it will happen while President Donald Trump is in office, said Dan Watman, who is part of a binational group known as Friends of Friendship Park.
“It’s just sending that message of division and separation,” Watman said. “We strongly believe this can’t last, it’s based on such a false narrative.”
The installation of the razor wire, added Watman, “represents an abandonment of prior commitments made by U.S. federal officials.”
He says back in December, acting U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Troy Miller pledged, in writing, to resume regular public access to the federal land at Friendship Park — and allow the cross-border Friendship Garden to be replanted.
In July 2023, the San Diego-Union Tribune reported that Border Patrol officials had said the agency “remains committed to restoring the Bi-national Garden located within Friendship Park following the completion of construction activities,” referring to replacement of border wall along the park.
The Department of Homeland Security and the Border Patrol have said the new walls are needed to replace existing barriers that were falling apart and becoming a danger to the public, migrants and the agents who patrol the area.
The Border Patrol had also indicated that it would allow public access to the area once the construction work was done.
“We had plans and they were approved, but they put the wire right in the middle of where the garden was supposed to go.”
Watman believes the concertina wire is dangerous to people on the south side of the barrier where public gatherings and community celebrations take place, especially on weekends.
“I was talking to the Marine in charge of the operation when they were putting this in and he said to me, ‘I’m worried, these razor wires ride up against the wall and some little kid that doesn’t know could easily cut themselves on it.'”
Since taking office, Trump has deployed thousands of active duty military personnel and other resources to the southern border as a way to keep drugs and migrants out of the U.S.
Mexico has also sent members of its National Guard to the border to keep migrants from attempting to cross into the U.S.
Watman believes most people in the San Diego-Tijuana region see all military intervention as unwarranted and “overkill.”
“We need to be connected across cultural barriers and across borders, and if we do that we’ll be more secure, so this is really going in the complete opposite direction,” he said.
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