Editor’s note: If you’re interested in helping save Friendship Park, get more information at this link: https://www.friendshippark.org/savefriendshippark. You can register there to join a Zoom meeting of Friends of Friendship Park scheduled Monday, July 11 at 7 p.m. Pacific.
SAN DIEGO, CA — Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas has approved plans to construct two 30-foot walls across the face of Friendship Park, the binational meeting place at the western-most end of the US-Mexico border just south of San Diego. These plans do not presently include a pedestrian gate in the secondary wall, according to Assistant Chief of San Diego Border Patrol Alfonso Martinez and Imperial Beach Station Chief Justin De La Torre.
“U.S. Border Patrol says they are just ‘replacing walls’ at Friendship Park, but the proposed construction amounts to a permanent closure of the U.S. side of this historic location,” said John Fanestil, convener of the San Diego-based Friends of Friendship Park coalition.
The iconic site of Friendship Park, overlooking the spot where the border wall dives into the Pacific Ocean, is home to the original boundary-marker first put in place in 1850 to demarcate the new international boundary at the end of the U.S.-Mexico War. In 1971, the surrounding area in the United States was inaugurated by then-First Lady Pat Nixon as California’s Border Field State Park, an action she declared should be the first phase in the creation of “International Friendship Park.” Last year members of the public gathered with leading officials from both nations to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of Mrs. Nixon’s historic inaugural visit.
Paul Enriquez, Real Estate and Environmental Infrastructure Portfolio Deputy Director for U.S. Border Patrol, told leaders from the local Friends of Friendship Park coalition earlier this month that plans to launch construction at Friendship Park are nearing completion and will extend the 30-foot “bollard-style” walls that were erected to the east of the park in 2019. (See photos below.)
Expected to begin within a matter of weeks, the construction would complete a project funded in Fiscal Year 2018, using designs authorized by the Trump Administration. “Joe Biden should not be putting the finishing touches on Donald Trump’s border wall at Friendship Park,” Fanestil said.
The first system of double border walls at this historic location – constructed between 2009 and 2011 after the federal government took land adjacent to the international boundary from the State of California by eminent domain – included several design concessions in recognition of its unique historical and cultural significance. (See photos below.)
Since the completion of the double walls in 2011, some public access has allowed thousands of families to reunite with their loved ones through the “primary wall” at Friendship Park by passing through a pedestrian gate in the “secondary wall” during limited “visiting hours” afforded by San Diego Border Patrol.
Appearing to fulfill a campaign promise to build “not one more inch of wall,” Joe Biden signed an executive order freezing border wall construction on his first day in office. More recently, the Biden Administration has approved construction projects at multiple locations along the border. While many of these ostensibly “replace” existing walls, they use design protocols approved during the Trump Administration. They also commit the Biden Administration, and all future presidential administrations, to the ongoing expense of border wall maintenance and enforcement.
