National Border Security and Environmental Sustainability

Jan 3, 2025 | Saleem H. Ali
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While border security has become one of the most divisive issues of our times, there is an opportunity for both sides of the partisan divide to find some common “green” ground as the Trump administration takes charge. Environmental concerns used to be a bipartisan issue before the advent of climate change. Let’s not forget that it was under a Republican president and a Democratic Congress that the EPA was established in 1969. During that same period, on old naval base near the Mexican border in California was converted into Border Field State Park. First Lady Patricia Nixon visited the site that year and focused on friendship between the two countries and shook hands with Mexicans across a loose wire fence. While demographics, drug lords, economic inequality and armed conflicts south of the border have changed the dynamics of such a park, the ecological reality remains the same.