If President Donald Trump gets his way, the
towering brown barrier, which stands 5.5 meters (18 feet) tall, will be
just the beginning of a wall that runs the length of the more than
3,000-kilometer (2,000-mile) border.

As Trump heads to the boundary on Thursday to
continue pushing for the wall during a bitter political battle that has
partially shut the US government, residents of Ciudad Juarez say they
can already feel the project’s impact on their lives, even though it has
barely begun.

For some, it means waking up two
hours earlier to get to work or school across the border, where
increased security under Trump has led to traffic jams and long lines at
rush hour.

For others, it means preparing for the reality
that Mexico’s border cities will have to host swelling numbers of
backlogged migrants unable to reach the United States to request asylum.

For
Victor, who lives in the poor neighborhood of Anapra on the city’s
outskirts, it means losing his once-unbroken view of the vast expanse of
empty America stretching out from his backyard, but also gaining a
makeshift jungle gym that doubles as a goal when he and his friends play
football.

The spry boy and his friends hold races to see
who can climb the fence’s long steel slats the fastest, and he has
charmed the US Border Patrol agents who police the other side.

“The ‘migras’ are my friends. Sometimes they give me money. They give me a dollar,” he says.

But while the fence has become an
ordinary part of Victor’s landscape, it can be scary sometimes, he says
— such as last November, when the US held a drill to prepare for a
possible border breach by one of the caravans of Central American
migrants that have been trekking in massive waves toward the United
States.

“I got scared when I heard the booms. But then they threw colored smoke bombs, which was pretty cool,” he says.

Lost sleep

Built two years ago, the Anapra fence is one
of several reinforced border barriers that the Trump administration
calls the first sections of the wall.

But they were built using $1.6 billion in federal funds that had already been allocated for border security.

Now Trump is waging a war with Congress to get
$5.7 billion to launch the full wall he envisions, which he says is
urgently needed to keep out violent criminals, terrorists, human
traffickers and drugs.

The US has, meanwhile, tightened security at
the border since October, when the largest migrant caravan left
Honduras, swelling to as many as 7,000 members on its northward trek and
leading Trump to deploy nearly 6,000 troops to the frontier.

That has complicated life in places like
Ciudad Juarez, where a sea of people crosses the border every day to
work or study in neighboring El Paso, Texas.

“Since November I’ve been having to wake up as
much as two hours earlier in the morning,” says Adriana Sanchez, who
lives in Mexico and works in El Paso as a teacher.

She questions whether the wall will actually work the way Trump plans.

“That wall is psychological. It’s not going to
stop migrants, and it’s not going to stop us border residents from
crossing back and forth. But it’s there, anyway, blocking our view of
the other side.”

Overwhelmed shelters

Trump has been deeply unpopular in Mexico ever
since he launched his presidential campaign in 2015 calling Mexican
immigrants criminals and rapists and vowing to make the country pay for
his promised border wall — something the Mexican government has
steadfastly rejected.

Border residents have more concrete reasons to dislike him.

One is the growing realization that the
swelling numbers of Central American migrants that the Trump
administration is fighting to keep out of the United States are likely
to end up spending extended stays on the Mexican side, where there is
limited capacity to house and feed them.

That is the challenge facing people like
Blanca Rivera, who runs the Casa del Migrante, or migrant house, a
shelter for migrants fleeing violence and poverty.

“We know there’s a new caravan on its way from Central America right now,” she says.

“Ciudad Juarez simply isn’t prepared for that volume of people. But we’ll try to do what we have to for them.”

She says residents on both sides of the border
have stepped up private donations to the shelter in recent months,
enabling it to accommodate the growing number of migrants.

The shelter housed and fed about 15,000 migrants last year, more than double the 7,200 it received in 2017.

Rivera remarks that despite Trump’s attacks, the migrant caravans have only grown.

“It was never a very valid argument to say a wall would reduce this phenomenon,” she says.

“We know that nothing is going to stop migrants from trying to reach the United States.”