Leonid Bershidsky, Columnist

In Texas, Even Trump Supporters Hate the Border Wall

The border fence in Brownsville has irked the entire community. It doesn't work, either.

September 27, 2016 at 3:23 PM UTC

Corrected

September 27, 2016 at 6:04 PM UTC

Leonid Bershidsky, formerly Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist, is a member of the Bloomberg News Automation Team. He recently published Russian translations of George Orwell’s “1984” and Franz Kafka’s “The Trial.”

Bad fences make bad neighbors.
Photographer: Leonid Bershidsky/Bloomberg

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"Nobody likes the wall," says Tony Martinez, mayor of Brownsville, a city in the southeastern corner of Texas across the Rio Grande from Matamoros, Mexico. He's the son of Mexican immigrants and a Democrat, but he's not exaggerating: Even Donald Trump supporters in the town hate the border fence that has been here since 2008.

"Build that wall, build that wall!" I have heard people chant at Trump rallies in the small towns of Iowa and New Hampshire, far from the Mexican border. Trump promises to build a wall that will be "impenetrable, physical, tall, powerful, beautiful."