Opinion | Along the Southwest Border, Trump’s Wall Is Only One of the Insults He Left Behind

President Biden has pledged that there will “not be another foot” of the Trump border wall built. But his first weeks in office demand more than stopping construction of the towering barricade that has fueled humanitarian crises and ravaged the desert environment.

Border towns from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Coast have suffered disproportionately, sacrificed to policies that ignore lives and livelihoods in favor of a dubious 450-mile-long monument to presidential hubris.

Over the last four years, border residents have experienced systematic discrimination and environmental destruction. Absent intervention, much of the damage to communities on both sides of the border will be long-lasting.

The insults include extreme rates of Covid-19 infection because of botched state and federal responses to the pandemic, the loss of thousands of agricultural jobs as a result of tariff wars and the intertwined catastrophes of drought, fire and flood, which the Trump administration’s hostile climate policies most likely worsened.

Most counties flanking the international boundary suffer from poverty levels double that of the U.S. average. In unincorporated settlements known as colonias, from Texas to California, border residents live without such basic services as clean water and waste removal. The Trump administration exacerbated longstanding problems by vilifying the border and those living along it and ignoring the region’s vital role in U.S. cultural, ecological, and trade relations with Latin America.

Lands and communities along the international line need help. They need jobs with livable wages and strategies to make desert ranches, farms and towns more resilient to climate change. Damage inflicted by the wall must also be repaired, including the restoration of wildlife corridors between the U.S. and Mexico. Fostering community engagement, cross-cultural exchanges and trade are among the most promising strategies.

Desert communities in the borderlands are already “laboratories for the future” because their residents have been adapting for decades to the new normal of increased aridity.With hotter, drier conditions expected to affect some 162 million people in nearly half of North America over the next two decades, border communities have much to teach about climate resilience.

Border inhabitants are also experts in racial and multicultural solidarity, bilingualism and endurance. They have mastered the art of frugality and self-reliance, because so few effective forms of governmental assistance have ever reached them.

Fresh leadership in the White House and Congress offers hope. We urge the Biden administration to signal a new direction to communities on both sides of the border. The administration can fast-track actions to deal with the poverty, marginalization and environmental degradation that worsened during the Trump era.

Here are 10 actions the new administration can take over the next few months to “right the boat” that has run aground along the parched banks of the Rio Grande:

• Remove segments of the wall where it has interfered with the flow of water, animal migrations, pilgrimage trails and trade between nations. Cease groundwater extraction and turn off unnecessary artificial lighting in wildlife refuges and other sensitive areas.

• Renew agreements and funding for trans-border conservation, health care and arts programs discontinued during the past four years.

• Support increased appropriations for restoring public lands damaged by wall construction.

• Increase representation of Hispanic, Black and Native American professionals on committees advising federal agencies working along the border. Renew genuine consultation and collaboration with ranchers, farmers, tribal lands managers and other property owners affected by the wall.

We must reimagine the landscapes we share with Mexico. The border should not be a line that divides cultures and fragments their desert environment. It is a juncture where two nations connect, where history is shared, where cultures are alive and where a common future must unfold.