Hole In The Fence Summary

Part One: Hole in the Fence
Jason, who was supposed to be an archeologist, had his world turned around when he reads a book about the United States and Mexico Border. He became exposed to the horrors of the border that he never saw, even though he lived in Texas and was a son of immigrant parents. He visited the border to see the area where the book took place. When he arrived, he saw thousands of ripped clothes, socks, bandages, dresses, backpacks, toys, and wrapper, and these were the items of smuggled immigrants. Eventually, when looking and collecting the items, he found a complete arm hidden in the remains. From here, they found other body parts and then the realization comes over that no one will know that that individual was gone or what had happened to them. He ended up finding many and many cases of missing individuals and the deaths of them.
These horrors of immigration and

illegal smuggling of individuals over the borders are the realities that we do not know about or are not exposed to. The podcast continues to discuss why individuals tend to cross at the border where the desert is located. The desert, being the roughest land to overcome, is not the ideal place to walk through, and that is why many people would die, leave baggage, and abandon each other along the way to the Southern border because of the harsh conditions the desert exposed the migrants to.
The podcast then shifts to El Paso, Texas and reporter, Tracy Hunter. In El Paso, they visited a high school that seemed normal and typical like any other, except many of the students are Mexican-American. In the 90s, there was an odd occurrence at this school. A child, while on the court outside, was approached by Border Control Officers asking for papers and legal documents, demanding they have them to attend school. This approach was not an unlikely occurrence at this time because it was happening to everyone. The Border Control would just approach them and search their things, being forceful, disrespectful, and even unnecessarily pulled weapons on individuals.
The Border Control being on the school campus were due to the Juarez city being right across the border.

The “Mexican peso crashed,” so many illegal immigrants were coming to and fro the United States to make money. Since there could be up to “10,000” people crossing the Southern border a day, Border control agents had to investigate around the surrounding areas because catching all of the migrants would be impossible at the first sight in the beginning. Hunter said that “for every 1 individual they caught, there was about 4 to 5 immigrants they did not catch.” There was a hole in the fence “50 steps from the high school campus,” and this means that many people would slip through the fence, possibly with drugs, and travel through the high school campus. The Border Control would concentrate their investigations on campus and “would stop people mainly based upon their skin color.” This did not sink into many of the students because at this time, they were used to being discriminated against, but the adults and teachers who saw what was going on were angered by the patrol’s

actions.
From this discrimination, student groups began to arise in the high school, and activists, like one named Susan who came to the highschool, informed them that their rights have been abused. They were being wrongfully discriminated against because of the color of the skin, so, they started to take action. The children of the school, when approached by the patrol officers, would plead the fifth amendment. This was a brave notion to stand up for their rights, but it put them in danger because of the unnecessary violence the officers would use against individuals. In one of the instances, a child was threatened by the officers, saying that they would break his arm, and once he refused to entertain him with their information, he grabbed his arm and threw him. After this was publicized, the stories of the high school were becoming widely spread, so the students start to begin a lawsuit against the Border Control. Within the courtroom, the border control stated that by law, “they are allowed to investigate whoever they want within a 100 mile radius around the border, and they can even go on private property if its within 25 miles of the border.” The final ruling of the court was that the children won and the officers had to stop discriminating and assuming stereotypes based upon the skin color of the citizens.
This podcast was my favorite one thus far because it concentrated its focus on the hardships and the trials that citizens endure within the catastrophe of the large influxes of migrations of people over the border. The United States is “the cause of the building of the fences, and since the fences stand tall, they have led to many deaths of people trying to get through.” This podcast related to human geography because it concentrates on migration and the discrimination that can be the associated with immigration. The podcast focuses on the discrimination citizens of the United States unfairly received because of their skin color, and this discrimination is a direct effect of the increased migration over the Southern Border. This podcast relates to human geography because it also discusses the rights that the individuals are each entitled to, and all of the topics we have discussed in human geography relate to this podcast because of it being a real-world example of migration and discrimination.