“Border walls don’t make us safer or stronger, says political scientist” (berkeley.edu, 2019): “[the partial border fence between the U.S. and Mexico is] not actually keeping immigrants out, but it has magnified the cost and peril for migrants on the one hand and created an enormous illegal smuggling industry on the other.”
Fast forward to January 2024 and the university-owned People’s Park in Berkeley, California, formerly a home for the unhoused, became home to a border wall of shipping containers and razor wire, with guards posted at all four corners. A photo from March 2024:
“UC Berkeley adds razor wire to part of People’s Park shipping container wall” (Berkeleyside, Janary 11, 2024):
UC Berkeley spokesperson Kyle Gibson said the “security wire” was installed on portions of the wall near buildings on the west side of the property, and would not fully encircle the site. Officials were concerned someone could scale those buildings, then have an easier time getting on top of the barrier that was constructed last week, Gibson said.
“It’s meant to prevent people from being able to easily climb on top of the containers,” he said. “It’s purely there for safety and security.”
The 160 double-stacked shipping containers, some of which have also been outfitted with security cameras and lights, are meant to secure the open space through construction of a 1,100-bed student and supportive housing complex now before the state Supreme Court.
In other words, the unhoused are making way for paying customers.
What are all the marks on the containers you might ask? Apparently, the containers were richly plastered in pro-Hamas signage until just a few days before I was there.
Given the location and history of this site, nothing short of armed guards will keep troublemakers out. There has been crime on this site for decades.
These shipping containers are easy to equip to temporary house homeless, especially in mild California climate. They are sometimes used as an ad-hoc housing by people in extreme conditions, military etc…
These containers are not free, interesting who owns them…
At the very least.they all should have tracking code
Anon: It’s the university’s land so I assume that the university either owns or rents the containers as well as the razor wire (and let me remind you that neither containers nor razor wire are effective barriers to human migration; that’s #Science).
Why Berkeley has a need to own or rent containers? Are they relocating to Texas already? Through Panama canal? Or do they decide to form not only administrator corps but an expeditionary force? By they way renting containers is not that cheap. I believe that Berkeley is a public university, does not seem that CA taxpayers getting their higher education investments worth.
You would think illegals are crossing over from the southern boarders only. Not anymore, the northern boarder is now another crossing point: “What’s behind the record number of illegal crossings at the U.S.-Canada border?” [1]
“In fiscal year 2023, Swanton Sector agents arrested roughly 7,000 migrants trying to cross the border illegally. That is more than the previous 12 years combined.”
“Here, we’re not seeing the same prevalence of individuals requesting either asylum or wanting to be caught. The people here that we’re seeing for the most part, they’re trying to find that seam. They’re trying to find that vulnerability and come into the United States without detection,” Lavallee said.
I don’t care if you are pro illegal migrant or not, the fact remains: if someone walked into your backyard of your own home, and sets a camp, don’t you get alarmed and call the police? Don’t you demand that the police immediately removes such a person? Uncle Sam, isn’t doing that; Uncle Sam is welcoming illegals and offering them protection and shelter — at our cost. And because Uncle Sam is being welcoming, more and more are crossing illegally.
Even a woke person would understand this, no?
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/northern-border-illegal-crossings-vermont-canada-new-hampshire-new-york-question-everything/
They are mentally ill, at least in some ways (in other ways they are doing GREAT). Pathological compassion, groupthink, masochism.
Dear Democrats – what is so compassionate about enticing people to (1) risk their lives to travel to Colombia to be at the mercy of traffickers, (2) pass through the Darien Gap and get assaulted/raped/kidnapped by bandits or die in the jungle (3) making them ride The Beast and not fall off the train an die (4) risk getting human trafficked into sex work.
If you are so bent on allowing the border to be open and being so compassionate, why don’t you demand Biden to stop this ‘survival of the fittest’ game and send boats and planes to pick up all those people you want to help bring into the USA without risking their lives? Because looking at the situation the most compassionate thing to do is (1) bring them all in safely with proper transportation, or (2) do not let anyone come in so that they don’t risk their lives to get here.
What is surprising is that it’s cheaper to use shipping containers than to rent a fence. How come?
Perhaps because of the huge trade imbalance with our geopolitical rival, China? It costs money to ship back the containers empty (although presumably the ships have to go back).
SK: Two standard containers stacked are 17′ high. It is tough to build a fence that high, I think. Much digging at union rates would be required. It’s also easier for a motivated migrant to cut a hole in a fence than to cut through a shipping container.
FB, how Berkley came into ownership of the containers? Shipping containers are hot commodity, US taxpayers is spending untold millions on containers used by branches of US military for example.
If they are rented, which is very common, it means that either US or CA taxpayers paying for renting this fence.
The price of a used 20″ shipping container is around $8k. How do I know? I bought one for storage on my farmland.
Philip,
I should really give up laughing at hypocrisy for Lent, but this was a fine example and target of derision