Walls Don’t Work a thesis proposal by Jonathan Corriveau
Walls Don’t Work 1
Walls Don’t Work a thesis proposal by Jonathan Corriveau
“Far-distant politicians in Washington, DC, and Mexico City rarely focus on the needs of border people and pay even less heed to their long history of cross-border coexistence. By electing to fight its security battles at the border, the United States is, in effect, relying upon the sacrifices of a small minority of citizens, whose communities have no choice but to bear the brunt of their nation’s fears, with little or no capacity for self-determination in such matters. Left to their own devices, border communities suffer the Wall’s daily disruptions and indignities, intrusive practices of security forces, ubiquitous infrastrues of control, and a pervasive miasma of mistrust and danger. The assistance offered by federal and local authorities rarely extense beyond military occupation, enhanced surveillance, and pervasive policing.” “Walls won’t work because the border has long been a place of connectivity and collaboration. The border zone is a permeable membrane connecting two countries, where communities on both sides have strong senses of mutual dependence and attachment to territory.”
Michael Dear, Why Walls Won’t Work
6
An Introduction
The Spa
8
In the News
28
Shared Housing
22
ace Between
36
Welcome Centers
6
Security in Culture
Bridges. Not walls. How the proposed Fort Brown Humanitarian Respite Center can reconnect the former twin cities of Brownsville and Matamoros. Over the past century, our society has been dictated by the fear of “others,” a complex ideology that was drastically motivated by the events of September 11th. Following these events, American politics and regulations have been centered around keeping our citizens safe, often turning our back to those who need our help the most. There is perhaps no better physical manifestation of these fears than the Southern Border Wall. For more than two decades, the Southern Border Wall has been more than just a wall. It has served as a place of protest, a place of death and life, a place of joy and of mourning, and most notably a place of new beginnings. Since its construction starting in 1994, it has had one simple goal: to keep people out. However, through the research of this semester, I find myself asking why? Why do we want to keep people out? Why do they want to come here in the first place? Why do we have the right to decide who is worthy of entering or being alienated? Over the past few years, there has been much talk about increasing security measures at the Southern Border Wall, a notion that several architects have entertained — either through real design proposals or through design as a form of protest. These proposals, at their most basic, represent a fundamental rethinking of our border wall. However, regardless of their intentions, they still imply that a wall should exist in the first place. In response to the current administration’s inhumane treatment of immigrants at the Southern Border, my proposal for the Fort Brown Humanitarian Respite Center seeks to provide the resources and tools necessary for immigrants and refugees to quickly and safely build a better life in America. Responding to a design competition for the expansion of the existing Brownsville Humanitarian Respite Center, “The center should provide an opportunity for the refugees to refresh, to be nourished, to rest and to play, while volunteers help them make arrangements for the next phase of their journeys. The building should embody the spirit of – and serve the McAllen community – through intentional urban design in the downtown core, by connecting adjacent districts and
offering a replicable template for ongoing streetscape improvements. Furthermore, it can become an anchor for the city, bringing people together at its downtown heart and by its design, help launch downtown revival. The building should welcome the stranger, and mark the accomplishment of arrival to the USA. The experience at the HRC is the beginning of healing for the refugees and the physical character of the building itself should support that healing. As a beacon of hope the center should offer a welcome worthy of the immigrants and the Valley’s citizens.” Through this final project, I hope utilize the loopholes of the construction of the border wall, combined with emerging cases regarding immigration fraud and religious liberty, to create a place of rest, a community center for hopeful or deported immigrants on the United States/Mexico border that provides legal help, family counseling, temporary housing, language courses, child care, and more. For decades, the international border between Mexico and the United States has been defined by the shape of the Rio Grande. However, in 2006, with the signing of the Secure Fence Act, the United States built portions of the Southern Border wall just north of the Rio Grande. It is here, in these contested spaces, that I am proposing this humanitarian respite center. Located at the former Fort Brown Memorial Golf Course, this Respite Center sits in the space between—a “no man’s land” that has lost its identity. While the fundamental goal is to provide a space that assists some of the most neglected people simply seeking help, this center will be undoubtedly a place of resistance. Given its inherent political nature, I understand the threats and dangers present in this proposal, and it is my goal to create an environment that is welcoming and safe for those who need our help the most. Michael Dear, author of Why Walls Won’t Work, argues, “Walls won’t work because the border has long been a place of connectivity and collaboration. The border zone is a permeable membrane connecting two countries, where communities on both sides have strong senses of mutual dependence and attachment to territory.”
Walls Don’t Work
7
More Migrants Are Crossing the Border This Year. What’s Changed?
By Miriam Jordan, New York Times March 5, 2019
President Trump has tried to halt the arrival of undocumented migrants by beefing up border security, limiting who qualifies for asylum and, for a while, separating migrant children from their parents at the border. However, figures released on Tuesday suggest that those measures are failing to deter tens of thousands of migrants from journeying over land to the United States. Indeed, after shriveling to the smallest total in five decades, the number of migrants intercepted at the southern border — the best indicator of how many undocumented people are entering the United States — is soaring again. Border authorities detained nearly twice as many migrants — 268,044 — in the first five months of the fiscal year that started in October than were detained in the same period the previous year. To understand what’s happening, it’s important to look at who is coming, what is driving them and how the answers to those questions have changed over the years.
It used to be about Mexico. But no more.
In the past, undocumented immigrants were overwhelmingly single men from Mexico who slipped into the country undetected to find work and send money home. But immigration from Mexico has plummeted in recent years. In fact, more Mexicans are leaving than arriving in the United States. Mexicans are less compelled to come because there are more opportunities in their own country and they have smaller families to support. Central American families have become the new face of undocumented immigration. In the first five months of the fiscal year that began in October, the Border Patrol detained 136,150 people traveling in families with children, compared with 107,212 during all of fiscal 2018. A trend toward family migration from Central America that began when Barack Obama was president has endured, after temporarily dipping
8
Security in Culture
Border Patrol apprehended 136,150 people traveling in families with children in the first five months of the fiscal year that began in October. Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times
Walls Don’t Work 9
10
Security in Culture
during Mr. Trump’s first year in office.
Poverty is driving much of the latest migration.
Many Central Americans live in fear. El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala have among the world’s highest homicide rates. Arriving migrants report that they have faced extortion, and want to prevent their children from being recruited by street gangs. But murder rates in the Northern Triangle countries have been declining in recent years, and economic imperatives are believed to be the most important push factor for the majority of recent arrivals. More than 90 percent of the most recent migrants are from Guatemala, according to the newly released data. The majority hail from impoverished regions, including the Western highlands, where conflicts over land rights, environmental changes and depressed prices for crops like maize and coffee are undermining the ability of farmers to make a living.
Traveling with children is helping migrants avoid detention.
Migrants generally lack understanding of United States immigration law. But they appear to be informed about the basics. The majority know to request asylum at the border, either at an official port of entry or when they surrender to border agents shortly after sneaking into the country from Mexico. They know that they are unlikely to remain detained if they travel with a child and that they have a better shot at fending off deportation when they come with a child. By law, the government cannot keep migrant families in holding facilities at the border for more than 72 hours. It must either transfer them to an immigration detention facility suitable for children or release them. The government has been letting thousands of detained migrants go free each week because it lacks enough beds to hold them in family detention
facilities. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s three residential family centers — two in southern Texas and one in Pennsylvania — can accommodate 3,326 parents and children.
Zero tolerance didn’t work.
In the spring of 2018, the Trump administration tried to discourage parents from traveling with a child by prosecuting everyone who crossed the border illegally, even those who were traveling with children — a policy known as zero tolerance. This resulted in children being removed from their parents and placed in shelters across the country. The policy drew widespread condemnation, prompting the president to halt the practice in late June. But Customs and Border Protection officials believe that the various legal rulings preventing families from being detained have helped solidify the message to smugglers, who roam villages offering to guide people to the United States, that adults who come with a child are protected from deportation.
It’s not that easy to get asylum, though.
Whether they sneak into the country in remote areas or enter the country through a port of entry, most migrants are trying to petition for asylum. In 2008, just under 5,000 applicants claimed they had a credible fear of persecution, the first legal step toward obtaining asylum, to avoid being returned to their homeland. Last year, nearly 100,000 claimed a credible fear. The Trump administration contends that people are flooding the asylum system with invalid claims. In recent years, immigration judges have granted less than 20 percent of asylum requests, a proportion that is even lower for Central Americans. Many asylum seekers from Central America claim they have been victims of gangs, which is harder to prove than political and other types of persecution. Poverty is not among the grounds for receiving asylum. If they are denied, asylum seekers can be deported.
Walls Don’t Work 11
12
Security in Culture
U.S. Has Hit ‘Breaking Point’ at Border. By Nick Miroff and Maria Sacchetti, New York Times March 27, 2019
Migrants gather inside the fence of a makeshift detention center in El Paso, where a surge has been overwhelming Border Patrol and the U.S. immigration infrastructure. Sergio Flores for The Washington Post
The nation’s top border official warned that the U.S. immigration enforcement system along the nation’s southern boundary is at “the breaking point” and said Wednesday that authorities are having to release migrants into the country after cursory background checks because of a crush of asylum-seeking families with children. Kevin McAleenan, the commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said that for the first time in more than a decade, his agency is “reluctantly” performing direct releases of migrants, meaning they are not turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, they are not detained, they are not given ankle bracelets to track their movements and they are allowed to leave with just a notice to appear in court at a later date. He said that this is a “negative outcome” but that it is “the only current option we have” because of overcrowding at detention facilities as Central Americans stream to the border knowing they will be able to gain entry with asylum claims. The number of migrant families coming to the border has reached new highs month after month, a trend that dramatically accelerated after President Trump announced parents and children would no longer be separated, reversing course on his “zero tolerance” crackdown. McAleenan said the agency detained more than 4,100 migrants Tuesday, the highest one-day total at the border in more than a decade, and agency projections have border apprehensions on pace to exceed 100,000 this month — an increase of more than 30 percent. By comparison, at the height of the last border crisis, in May 2014, agents apprehended more than 68,800 migrants that month. The massive influx of families seeking asylum has strained almost every aspect of U.S. operations on the border, McAleenan said, nowhere more evident than here, along the Rio Grande. Crossings have been overwhelmed with hundreds of migrants seeking asylum daily; Border Patrol stations are crammed and have no space for detainees; the immigration court
Walls Don’t Work 13
system is backed up with hundreds of thousands of cases; and health services are having to triage batches of patients who have a variety of ailments and communicable diseases.
Services can’t place them in shelters fast enough. CBP officials said they have 1,350 underage migrants in holding cells without a parent — and 20 percent are 12 years old or younger.
“That breaking point has arrived this week,” McAleenan said, standing in front of a border fence. “CBP is facing an unprecedented humanitarian and border security crisis all along our southwest border, and nowhere has that crisis manifested more acutely than here in El Paso.”
McAleenan said the overwhelming numbers and “inadequate capacity to detain families and children at ICE and HHS” is at the heart of the crisis.
“If they don’t have a valid claim, we’ll repatriate,” McAleenan said. “If they do, they’ll be released with the certainty that they have asylum with the ability to plan, to invest in a business, to make these choices for schools. Right now, they don’t have that. They live with uncertainty for years at a time because the system is broken and overwhelmed.” CBP officials say they are particularly alarmed by the soaring number of unaccompanied juveniles in crowded detention cells because Health and Human
By law, the minors should remain in CBP custody for the shortest amount of time as possible and not in excess of 72 hours. But CBP officials privately acknowledged Wednesday that they are keeping them in custody longer, in potential violation of a court order, because HHS doesn’t have anywhere to put them, a situation leaving CBP with “no legal options.” The agency is reassigning agents to respond to and care for children, including U.S. agents who were sent south from the Canadian border this week. But Evelyn Stauffer, an HHS spokeswoman, said the agency “continues to receive children referred to our Migrants gather inside the fence of a makeshift detention center in El Paso, where a surge has been overwhelming Border Patrol and the U.S. immigration infrastructure. Sergio Flores for The Washington Post
14
Security in Culture
care from the Department of Homeland Security and place them in an appropriate shelter as safely and quickly as possible.” She said the agency could expand emergency facilities to handle an influx, as they also did under the Obama administration. There are 12,000 minors currently in HHS custody. Near where McAleenan spoke Wednesday, an improvised holding pen beneath a highway overpass is serving as a processing center. U.S. agents have been interviewing hundreds of parents and children in a dusty parking lot. Just before the commissioner began speaking, a group of nine parents and children from El Salvador and Panama traversed the Rio Grande, and agents led them to the processing center on foot. McAleenan’s plea for help reflects the growing desperation among Homeland Security officials faced with a border influx that is on pace to be the largest in more than a decade, led by Guatemalan and Honduran asylum seekers who arrive with children and surrender to U.S. agents. McAleenan said his agency currently has more than 13,000 migrants in its custody. “A high number is 4,000,” he said. “Six-thousand is crisis level. Thirteen-thousand is unprecedented.” Some of the migrants have been seriously ill, including infants with 105-degree fevers, a 2-year-old suffering seizures in the desert, a 19-year-old woman with a congenital heart defect who needs emergency surgery and a 40-year-old man suffering from multiple-organ failure. Others have lice, the flu and chickenpox. “We are doing everything we can to simply avoid a tragedy in a CBP facility,” McAleenan said. “But with these numbers, with the types of illnesses we’re seeing at the border, I fear that it’s just a matter of time.” He blamed the surge on smugglers and U.S. laws that he said encourage illegal migration because migrants are virtually guaranteed to be released in the United States. “There’s no questioning why this is happening,” he
said. The amount of resources needed to handle the surge is diverting Border Patrol agents from other duties, including security work aimed at drug interdiction and interior checkpoints. Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, an associate professor of policy and government at George Mason University who researches migration, smuggling and criminal organizations, said it is risky to divert Border Patrol agents from their main security mission. While McAleenan was emphasizing the need for more resources and legal authority to keep people from the U.S. interior, advocacy groups said the Trump administration should instead treat the migrants as refugees and invest in foreign aid. Migrants are streaming out of Central America for a complex set of reasons — including drought, poverty, violence and political instability — problems that will persist regardless of U.S. border policy. “They don’t need new money. They need a new strategy,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, an immigrant advocacy group. “They think that if we’re just tough enough, people will stop coming. That completely misreads what’s happening.” As migrant numbers have surged upward, thousands more Central Americans are waiting in Mexico, at shelters in Ciudad Juarez, and U.S. officials say they probably will cross the river in coming days and weeks. Although Border Patrol apprehensions remain below their annual peak of 1.6 million in 2000, the nature of the increasing migration flows has shifted dramatically, and that shift is driving the alarm. In prior eras, most of the migrants were adult men who could be easily deported to Mexico; now, many of those attempting to cross the border are asylumseeking Central American families and, to a lesser degree, minors traveling on their own. Because those seeking asylum have a legal right to have their cases evaluated, most families are released into the United States to await hearings in clogged immigration courts, a process that can take months or years.
Walls Don’t Work 15
McAleenan’s appeal came amid heated debate in Congress over the border situation. Trump declared a national emergency in February after a government shutdown failed to secure the funding he wanted for construction of a border wall. Congress sent him a bipartisan resolution that sought to nullify his declaration, but the president vetoed it. On Tuesday, a House vote seeking to override the veto failed. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.) called it a “sham emergency” on Tuesday. “The Trump administration has withheld the money Congress appropriated to improve conditions in the Northern Triangle countries, wasted funds on an ineffective wall and refused to work with Congress on a comprehensive solution,” Drew Hammill, a spokesman for Pelosi, said in a statement. “Every action this administration has taken over the past two years has increased the numbers of families, women and children coming to the border.” The migrants arriving in El Paso are crossing the Rio Grande, arriving in a place where the United States already has formidable, modern border barriers. By
16
Security in Culture
surrendering to agents on U.S. soil — the strip of land between the river and the tall U.S. fencing — the migrants can assert their legal right to seek asylum. Border Patrol holding cells in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas also are overcrowded, as are facilities in Arizona. The most dangerous overcrowding is here in the El Paso area, where Border Patrol stations are at 300 percent to 400 percent capacity. Most parents who arrive with a child are issued an appointment with an immigration judge. But agents are so overwhelmed by the volume that they often do little more than a cursory screening, officials said. CBP is supposed to be a fast-track system that books migrants into custody, checks their fingerprints and sends them to other agencies. Families and single adults are referred to ICE, which conducts additional checks and detains or releases them to await a court hearing. Families can be detained, but space is limited to roughly 3,000 people. The border security compromise Democrats reached with Trump last month includes $415 million to improve medical care and detention conditions for
families and children in U.S. custody, including the construction of a new child-appropriate processing center in El Paso. But that facility is not likely to open for at least six months, CBP officials say. Gil Kerlikowske, CBP commissioner under the Obama administration during the border surge of 2014, when officials were pitching emergency tents and holding large flows of unaccompanied minors in a converted warehouse near McAllen, Tex., cautioned Wednesday that the latest migration projections are “an amazing number.” “It really is a significant issue,” said Kerlikowske, who headed the agency from March 2014 until January 2017. “Resources and space are going to need to be devoted to dealing with this.” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen met with senior Mexican officials in Miami on Tuesday for unannounced talks, telling her counterparts that cross-border trade and commerce are likely to suffer as more CBP officers are pulled away to cope with the migration surge. CBP is preparing to temporarily reassign 750 blue-uniformed officers from its Office of Field
Operations to help the Border Patrol, according to a senior DHS official, and Nielsen told Mexican interior minister Olga Sánchez Cordero that move probably will produce longer wait times for trucks and vehicles seeking to cross. “Secretary Nielsen said very bluntly that if we didn’t work jointly, our resources are pulled away, and that creates problems for us and on the Mexican side in terms of facilitating commerce, and we want to avoid that,” said the senior DHS official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations. Nielsen also is readying a plan to ask volunteers from the U.S. Coast Guard, Transportation Security Administration and other Homeland Security agencies to go to the border to help with the flood of Central American families, the official said, adding: “We are burning red hot right now, and we are looking everywhere for help.” Nielsen arrived in Honduras on Tuesday to meet with Central American leaders, in talks aimed at increasing efforts to deter migration to the United States and to crack down on smuggling organizations.
Walls Don’t Work 17
18
Security in Culture
Migrants Are Detained Under a Bridge in El Paso. By Simon Romero, New York Times March 29, 2019
People rest as they are held by U.S. Customs and Border Protection in an enclosed area beneath the Paso del Norte International Bridge in El Paso, Tex. Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times
The surge in Central Americans seeking asylum in the United States is straining facilities across the Southwest border, with Border Patrol processing facilities this week handling thousands of people in excess of the system’s capacity. President Trump threatened to close the border next week if Mexico did not halt “all illegal immigration” into the United States. El Paso, the Texas border city where the president held a rally in February calling for his wall with Mexico, is emerging as a flash point. Border Patrol agents in the city have begun holding migrant families in an area under a bridge, surrounded by fencing and razor wire. Photos of the conditions drew attention this week on social media and in news reports. Here’s a look at where the migrants came from, and how they came to be detained under the bridge.
A growing wave of migrants has overwhelmed Texas border facilities.
Agents are apprehending about 570 migrants a day in the El Paso metropolitan area, up from about 100 a day five months ago. On some days last year, there were no apprehensions at all in the entire El Paso sector, which stretches across New Mexico and a swath of West Texas. The increase translates into a lack of space at processing facilities, so officials put up a large military tent under the Paso Del Norte International Bridge in what they describe as a temporary measure. The tent has bathrooms, blankets, water and food — but people appear to be miserable nonetheless. Stays in the encampment are said to vary from several hours to a couple of days, depending on the flow of migrants across the border. Some migrants are sleeping in cots inside the government tent, while others prefer to sleep on the ground outside. Kevin McAleenan, the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, said at a news conference on Wednesday near the encampment that the country’s immigration enforcement system is at a “breaking
Walls Don’t Work 19
point.”
Leaders in El Paso are skeptical.
Political and business leaders in El Paso are expressing criticism over the Trump administration’s handling of the new influx. Many in the city, a Democratic bastion, had already disputed the president’s assertion that border fencing had cut crime in El Paso. In a news conference in El Paso on Wednesday, Mr. McAleenan announced that C.B.P. was temporarily reassigning up to 750 officers to places on the border that are grappling with the increased flow of migrants. But some of those in El Paso say the overall response has been haphazard. A sticking point is the Trump administration’s plan to spend $192 million on a new immigrant processing center in the city. Officials chose an old 400,000-square-foot Hoover vacuum plant for the site. But business leaders are questioning whether the manufacturing facility is the best place to process migrants in a humane way. Others claim that federal officials chose the site despite concerns over its proximity to schools, businesses and residential areas. In any case, the new center won’t be open until at least June.
Tension is building with Mexico.
Mr. Trump has lashed out at Mexico’s government, claiming on Twitter that it was doing “nothing” to stop unauthorized migrants from reaching the United States. But the view in Mexico is more nuanced. In fact, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has already given in to some of Mr. Trump’s demands, breaking with decades of asylum practices in Mexico. (Read more about that here.) Mexican authorities have been blocking groups of migrants at some border towns, intercepting unaccompanied minors before they reach American soil and allowing the Trump administration to send
20
Security in Culture
more than 120 migrants to Tijuana to await decisions on asylum requests. Now Mr. López Obrador’s efforts to avoid a confrontation with Mr. Trump over the issue seem to be waning. The Mexican president said on Thursday that while he respected Mr. Trump’s position, the problem largely involved the United States and Central American countries. “I just emphasize that migration flows of Mexicans to the United States are very low,” Mr. López Obrador told reporters in Mexico City. “The Mexican is no longer seeking work in the United States,” he said. “The majority are inhabitants of our fellow Central American countries.”
Migration dynamics from Latin America have changed Border Patrol apprehensions remain well below their peak of 1.6 million in 2000. But apprehensions climbed to 467,000 in 2018, the highest level in six years. Mr. McAleenan said at his news conference on Wednesday that there were more than 12,000 migrants in United States custody at the beginning of the week. “As of this morning, that number was 13,400. A high number for us is 4,000. A crisis level is 6,000. 13,000 is unprecedented,” he said. The important thing to understand is that migration patterns from Latin America have undergone a big shift. Standing in contrast to previous migration surges, the latest one involves few single men from Mexico.
Instead, as more Mexicans actually leave the United States than arrive as migrants, Central American families now account for the large majority of new arrivals. Whereas the Border Patrol could easily deport undocumented Mexicans, deporting Central Americans is more challenging. Most are arriving as family units applying for asylum, a process that can take months or years to evaluate. The federal government is letting many migrants go free each week because it lacks enough beds to hold them in family detention centers. “The situation has changed dramatically, and we’re responding to it the best we can,” said Ramiro Cordero, a Border Patrol spokesman in El Paso.
Walls Don’t Work 21
22
Fort Brown Memorial Humanitarian Respite Center Security in Culture
Walls Don’t Work 23
The Space Between
654 Miles of Barrier
1,245 Miles of Rio Grande
1,954 Miles of Proposed Border
24
Security in Culture
Although only 654 of the Southern Border is “protected� by physical barriers, the Rio Grande stretches over 1,245 across the border, serving as a natural barrier. Under the Trump Administration, the new proposal for the Southern Border covers all 1,964 miles with a physical barrier, something that is not only illogical, but nearly impossible. Doing so would disrupt natural ecologies that have existed for millenia and threatens 93 endangered species.
The Secure Fence Act of 2006 is an act of the United States Congress which authorized and partially funded the construction of 700 miles of fencing along the Mexican border. The Act was signed into law on October 26, 2006, by U.S. President George W. Bush, who stated at the time that the Act would “help protect the American people”, would “make our borders more secure”, and was “an important step toward immigration reform”. To reduce costs, the border wall was often built north of the Rio Grande in areas where construction along the border was too expensive. Caught between the border wall and the Rio Grande, the Fort Brown Memorial Golf Course closed in 2015 after 50 years of business. It now sits abandonded.
Walls Don’t Work 25
The Neighborhoods
26
Security in Culture
By extending the urban fabric of Matamoros to the fluid landscape of the former Fort Brown Memorial Golf Course, the new Respite Center seamlessly connects the former twin cities and restores a centuries old relationship. This grid intersects the existing infrastructure and creates a bus route to bring immigrants from the Brownsville Bus Station to the welcome centers, while utilizing the existing golf cart paths as public walking paths. Clustered in four neighborhoods, shared housing units are directly connected to one of four community centers, ensuring immigrants direct access to many of the services provided.
Day Care 200+ Children Daily
Dining Facility 1,400+ Meals Daily 4 Facilities 3 Meal Services
Counseling Services Family Counseling Legal Counseling Social Adjustment
Temporary Housing 37 Clusters 5-6 Houses / Cluster Common Living Spaces 800+ Beds
Recreational Services Soccer Field Walking Paths Baseball Field
Educational Services 575 Seats 16 Classrooms
Walls Don’t Work 27
Shared Housing Units
Inspired by tradition jacal and latilla architecture, the shared housing units consist of a single, modular structure to house single immigrants, couples, and families. The jacal is an adobe-style housing structure historically found throughout parts of the southwestern United States and Mexico.This type of structure was employed by some Native people of the Americas prior to European colonization and was later employed by both Hispanic and Anglo settlers in Texas and elsewhere. Because visitors will only stay anywhere from 1 day to 2 weeks, the inclusion or removal of temporary partitions and doors provides maximum flexibility and allows the respite center to quickly adjust based on the direct needs of immigrants and their families. Up to six of these modular housing units directly connect to shared living spaces, which feature kitchenettes, bathrooms, and a lounge.
28
Security in Culture
Single
Couple
Family
4 Single Beds 200 sf
2 Full Beds 100 sf (x2)
1 Full Bed Two Single Beds 200 sf
Walls Don’t Work
29
30
Security in Culture
Walls Don’t Work
31
Centered around a shared path, each housing unit has an immediate connection to those around them, creating an intimate environment that promotes interaction between other immigrants and their families. Above, the former golf cart paths can easily be converted to public walking paths, providing Matamoros and Brownsville with a new public park.
32
Security in Culture
Walls Don’t Work 33
34
Security in Culture
Each living area module is shared between 4-6 housing units, a maximum of 24 visitors per module.
Walls Don’t Work
35
Welcome Centers
Kitchen
Restrooms & Utilities Welcome Center Waiting Area Counseling Services
36
Security in Culture
Child Care
Classrooms Lounge
Counseling Services
Walls Don’t Work
37
Welcoming immigrants to a place of refuge and respite, the four welcome centers draw inspiration from traditional latilla roofs. Built with low cost, local materials, each welcome center includes 11 counseling offices, one shared kitchen and dining area, four classrooms, a lounge, restrooms, and a child care facility.
38
Security in Culture
Walls Don’t Work 39
40
Security in Culture
Walls Don’t Work 41
42
Security in Culture
Once an immigrant and their family has been welcomed (above), they are taken through the open atrium to their corresponding housing unit (Right).
Walls Don’t Work
43
“Walls won’t work because the border has long been a place of connectivity and collaboration. The border zone is a permeable membrane connecting two countries, where communities on both sides have strong senses of mutual dependence and attachment to territory.�
44
Security in Culture