Yesterday I showed you a picture of the border fence near Jacumba Hot Springs. Today I have a picture of the end of the fence. There’s nothing photogenic about this, however. It’s purely photojournalism. As you can see, when the fence hits a hill, it just stops. There’s precisely nothing to prevent someone from walking up to this section of the fence and walking across.

That is, there’s nothing except the Border Patrol, which is presumably keeping an eye on places like this. But there’s at least a mile or two of unprotected border that goes over this hill, so there’s a fair amount for the Border Patrol to watch. And I imagine there are lots of places just like this one.

None of this means the fence is useless, but it does mean that it’s primarily guards and patrol officers who are responsible for preventing illegal crossings, not the fence itself. This has been true of border walls and fences throughout human history.

September 26, 2020 — Near Jacumba Hot Springs, California

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We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

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