We visited the border wall. Here’s what it looks like.

In Spring 2016, we
visited different parts of border^[1]—the ones heavily guarded
with long lines for cars to cross, and the places where the two
countries are separated by little more than dirt and trees. These
are the panoramic views that resulted from that visit.

The border that Trump hopes the wall will protect is roughly
2,000 miles long. And the area spans diverse geology, including
terrain not always hospitable or conducive to large-scale
construction. (Trump hasn’t said exactly how high he wants the wall
to be, or how thick, although engineering^[2]
and media^[3]
critiques have questioned the feasibility of such a project.)

Piecemeal walls have been used before in the region, and some
have been successful in stopping large scale operations of
smuggling and illegal immigration. The Smuggler’s Gulch fence^[4]
was designed as part of a $60 million engineering project to
fortify 3.5 miles of fencing between San Diego and Tijuana.

Further east in Jacumba, California, a border wall was
constructed in the mid-1990s to disrupt human and drug trafficking.
The large stretches to the east and west are the areas Trump wants
to fix, the places with a small border fence, if one at all.

But photographer James Whitlow Delano learned during his time
reporting along the border that walls alone don’t solve such
problems. In April of 2015, U.S. border patrol agents seized almost
70 pounds of amphetamines that drug smugglers had transported
across the border. The border agents realized that to get around
the wall between Calexico, California, and Mexicali, Mexico, the
smugglers had found
another way^[5]. They built a
tunnel.