Close to the southern tip of Texas a border wall suddenly ends. Its final post sits in a dry cornfield half a mile from the nearest bend in the Rio Grande river, the actual border with Mexico.
It would be easy to walk around it. Tires left by the border patrol rest nearby. Agents drag them behind trucks to smooth the cracked earth and check for footprints.
Unlike other famous barriers in history such as the Berlin Wall or the Great Wall of China, the U.S. version is not much of a wall. What stands in Texas is fragmented series of fencing, composed of enormous steel bars embedded in concrete close together. The rust-colored thick bars that must reach a height of 18 feet loom over the landscape, forming teeth-like slats that split farmland, slice through backyards, and sever parks and nature preserves.
There are miles of gaps between segments and openings in the fence itself. As a result of the Secure Fence Act passed in 2006, the government built some 650 miles of wall along the 1,954-mile U.S.-Mexico boundary. While 1,254 miles of that border is in Texas, the state has only some 100 miles of wall.
Republican presidential candidates insist they'll finish it. But completing the Texas part of the wall would be a daunting task thanks to the border's sheer length, the fact that it sits in the center of the snaking Rio Grande, and because treaties with Mexico prevent either country from constructing within the river's flood plains. And unlike in other southwestern states, most border land in Texas is privately owned.
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