"In the midst of our nationwide public health and economic disasters, one more dollar spent on Trump's wall is an obscenity."

— Richard C. Collins, Carlos C. Campbell, and Gary Paul Nabhan

Excerpt from "COVID-19 and Donald Trump Intersect: An Evolving Disaster."

“Poor Mexico: So far from God and so close to the United States.”

— President/Dictator Porfirio Diaz

“So far from God, so close to each other.” 

— Carlos Fuentes, La Frontera de Cristal

“Mexico has suffered in the shadow of the Colossus of the North, but Mexico is not poor. Mexico is rich in many ways, yet it also has been impoverished. And Mexico has been greatly underappreciated by North Americans.”

— Task Force on the Americas

“Trump constantly does things to humiliate the Mexican people… These walls are like monsters he created, like a border Frankenstein.”

— Manuela Altamirano, Tijuana

At an event along the Rio Grande, Hugs, Not Walls, organized by the Border Network for Human Rights and the Esperanza Border Institute, the interfaith community sought to generate an impact in Washington DC that helps counter President Trump's anti-immigrant narrative. The collaborative event was attended by members of Christian churches from the border states, who prayed and performed a ritual with which they symbolized the creation of a bridge that demolishes any wall.

“This is a prophetic act to spiritually remind us that every wall must be torn down. We respond the sound of the horn, to the sound of the needy, to the sound of the shofar, because this event is an event of love.”

— Pastor Daniel Vázquez Argüello

“Migrants are not criminals, much less do they constitute a threat to the security of Mexico or the United States. They are human beings who seek to escape the reality of poverty and insecurity in their countries of origin…They are looking for the possibility of being alive and finding a job that allows them to progress with dignity.”

— Olga Maria del Carmen Sanchez Cordero, Mexican Secretary of Interior