In early 2017, in the wake of Trump’s inauguration, photographer Elliot Ross and writer Genevieve Allison decided to drive the entire length of the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border–a trip that took four months and 10,000 miles of driving as they moved back and forth between access points. “We did our best to see every inch of the actual physical border,” says Ross.
Their goal was to find out how much truth–if any–lay in the narrative that Trump was spreading about the border. “We really wanted to see where the reality existed on that spectrum from the people we spoke to while transiting the entire border to get the largest demographic possible,” he says. “And to see where the lived experiences of the people that we spoke with compared and contrasted with the president’s message.”
Throughout the trip, they tried to find support for the expansion of the border wall, intending to present opposing perspectives in the book. But that support didn’t exist. “In terms of people who live within a 15-minute, 30-minute drive to the border, and understand that the reality that comes along with that, no, there’s no support for building the wall,” says Ross. In Bisbee, Arizona, a Trump-supporting Republican rancher whose land abuts the border said that he thought the wall was a waste of money in remote areas. Many conservative ranchers dislike the idea of the wall on their land both for political reasons (“government coming in to use eminent domain to seize part of their land for border easement is the definition of federal overreach,” Ross says) and because the construction and other patrol activity can block cattle from accessing water. In Nogales, the border wall caused catastrophic flooding when it was built.
Most Americans, Ross and Allison say, don’t have a full understanding of what the border is like. “From the imagery that’s available through the media and online, there was kind of a limited representation of what the border looked like, and what narratives were presented,” says Allison. The book hopes to help present a more nuanced view.