The Wall : The real costs of a barrier between the United States and Mexico Leer en Español

Along the U.S. Mexico near Nogales, Arizona Getty Images Vanda Felbab-Brown

The cheerful paintings of flowers on the tall metal posts on the Tijuana side of the border fence between the U.S. and Mexico belie the sadness of the Mexican families who have gathered there to exchange whispers, tears, and jokes with relatives on the San Diego side. A woman in Tijuana, Mexico speaks with a U.S. immigration attorney through the border fence. Getty Images Many have been separated from their family members for years. Some were deported to Mexico after having lived in the United States for decades without authorization, leaving behind children, spouses, siblings, and parents. Others never left Mexico, but have made their way to the fence to see relatives in the United States. With its prison–like ambience and Orwellian name—Friendship Park—this site is one of the very few places where families separated by immigration rules can have even fleeting contact with their loved ones, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. Elsewhere, the tall metal barrier is heavily patrolled. So is to be the wall that President Donald Trump promises to build along the border. But no matter how tall and thick a wall will be, illicit flows will cross. Undocumented workers and drugs will still find their way across any barrier the administration ends up building. And such a wall will be irrelevant to those people who become undocumented immigrants by overstaying their visas—who for many years have outnumbered those who become undocumented immigrants by crossing the U.S.–Mexico border. Nor will the physical wall enhance U.S. security. The border, and more broadly how the United States defines its relations with Mexico, directly affects the 12 million people who live within 100 miles of the border. In multiple and very significant ways that have not been acknowledged or understood it will also affect communities all across the United States as well as Mexico.

What the wall’s price tag would be The wall comes with many costs, some obvious though hard to estimate, some unforeseen. The most obvious is the large financial outlay required to build it, in whatever form it eventually takes. Although during the election campaign candidate Trump claimed that the wall would cost only $12 billion, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) internal report in February put the cost at $21.6 billion, but that may be a major underestimate. The estimates vary so widely because of the lack of clarity about what the wall will actually consist of beyond the first meager Homeland Security specifications that it be either a solid concrete wall or a see–through structure, “physically imposing in height,” ideally 30 feet high but no less than 18 feet, sunk at least six feet into the ground to prevent tunneling under it; that it should not be scalable with even sophisticated climbing aids; and that it should withstand prolonged attacks with impact tools, cutting tools, and torches. But that description doesn’t begin to cover questions about the details of its physical structure. Then there are the legal fees required to seize land on which to build the wall. The Trump administration can use eminent domain to acquire the land but will still have to negotiate compensation and often face lawsuits. More than 90 such lawsuits in southern Texas alone are still open from the 2008 effort to build a fence there. Mountainous terrain along the U.S.-Mexico border is an obstacle to building a wall. Depicted here: a stretch of border about 100 miles east of San Diego. Google Earth The Trump administration cannot simply seize remittances to Mexico to pay for the wall; doing so may increase flows of undocumented workers to the United States. Remittances provide many Mexicans with amenities they could never afford otherwise. But for Mexicans living in poverty—some 46.2 percent in 2015 according to the Mexican social research agency CONEVAL—the remittances are a veritable lifeline which can represent as much as 80 percent of their income. These families count on that money for the basics of life—food, clothing, health care, and education for their children. The remittances enable human and economic development throughout the country, and this in turn reduces the incentives for further migration to the United States — precisely what Trump is aiming to do. I met the matron of one of those families in a lush but desperately poor mountain village in Guerrero. Rosa, a forceful woman who was initially suspicious, decided to confide in me. Her son had crossed into the United States eight years ago, she said. The remittances he sent allowed Rosa’s grandchildren to get medical treatment at the nearest clinic, some thirty miles away. Like Rosa, many people in the village had male relatives working illegally in the United States in order to help their families make ends meet. Sierra de Atoyac may be paradise for a birdwatcher (which I am), but Guerrero is one of Mexico’s poorest, most neglected, and crime and violence–ridden states. “Here you have few chances,” Rosa explained to me. “If you’re smart, like my son, you make it across the border to the U.S. If you’re not so smart, you join the narcos. If you’re stupid, but lucky, you join the [municipal] police. Otherwise, you’re stuck here farming or logging and starving.” Construction cost estimates* *The above figures show the upper estimate when a range was suggested. Costs do not include annual maintenance. Any attempt to seize the remittances from such families would be devastating. Fluctuating between $20 billion and $25 billion annually during the past decade, remittances from the United States have amounted to about 3 percent of Mexico’s GDP, representing the third–largest source of foreign revenue after oil and tourism. The remittances enable human and economic development throughout the country, and this in turn reduces the incentives for further migration to the United States—precisely what Trump is aiming to do.

Why the wall wouldn’t stop smuggling Why the DHS believes that a 30–foot tall wall cannot be scaled and a tunnel cannot be built deeper than six feet below ground is not clear. Drug smugglers have been using tunnels to get drugs into the United States ever since Mexico’s most famous drug trafficker, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán of the Sinaloa Cartel, pioneered the method in 1989. And the sophistication of these tunnels has only grown over time. In April 2016, U.S. law enforcement officials discovered a drug tunnel that ran more than half a mile from Tijuana to San Diego and was equipped with ventilation vents, rails, and electricity. It is the longest such tunnel to be found so far, but one of 13 of great length and technological expertise discovered since 2006. Altogether, between 1990 and 2016, 224 tunnels have been unearthed at the U.S.–Mexico border. Other smuggling methods increasingly include the use of drones and catapults as well as joint drainage systems between border towns that have wide tunnels or tubes through which people can crawl and drugs can be pulled. But even if the land border were to become much more secure, that would only intensify the trend toward smuggling goods as well as people via boats that sail far to the north, where they land on the California coast. 224The number of tunnels unearthed at the U.S.–Mexico border, 1990–2016 Another thing to consider is that a barrier in the form of a wall is increasingly irrelevant to the drug trade as it is now practiced because most of the drugs smuggled into the U.S. from Mexico no longer arrive on the backs of those who cross illegally. Instead, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, most of the smuggled marijuana as well as cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamines comes through the 52 legal ports of entry on the border. These ports have to process literally millions of people, cars, trucks, and trains every week. Traffickers hide their illicit cargo in secret, state–of–the art compartments designed for cars, or under legal goods in trailer trucks. And they have learned many techniques for fooling the border patrol. Mike, a grizzled U.S. border official whom I interviewed in El Paso in 2013, shrugged: “The narcos sometimes tip us off, letting us find a car full of drugs while they send six other cars elsewhere. Such write–offs are part of their business expense. Other times the tipoffs are false. We search cars and cars, snarl up the traffic for hours on, and find nothing.” A U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer patrols some of the 24 lanes of traffic entering the U.S. from Mexico at San Ysidro. Reuters Beyond the Sinaloa Cartel, 44 other significant criminal groups operate today in Mexico. The infighting within and among them has made Mexico one of the world’s most violent countries. In 2016 alone this violence claimed between 21,000 and 23,000 lives. Between 2007 and 2017, a staggering 177,000 people were murdered in Mexico, a number that could actually be much higher, as many bodies are buried in mass graves that are hidden and never found. Those Mexican border cities that are principal entry points of drugs into the Unites States have been particularly badly affected by the violence. Take Ciudad Juárez, for example. Directly across the border from peaceful El Paso. Ciudad Juárez was likely the world’s most violent city when I was there in 2011 and it epitomizes what can happen during these drug wars. In 2011 the Sinaloa Cartel was battling the local Juárez Cartel, trying to take over the city’s smuggling routes to the United States, and causing a veritable bloodbath. Walking around the contested colonías at the time was like touring a cemetery: Residents would point out places where people were killed the day before, three days before, five weeks ago. Juan, a skinny 19–year–old whom I met there that year, told me that he was trying to get out of a local gang (the name of which he wouldn’t reveal). He had started working for the gang as a halcone (a lookout) when he was 15, he said. But now as the drug war raged in the city and the local gangs were pulled into the infighting between the big cartels, his friends in the gang were being asked to do much more than he wanted to do—to kill. Without any training, they were given assault weapons. Having no shooting skills, they just sprayed bullets in the vicinity of their assigned targets, hoping that at least some of the people they killed would be the ones they were supposed to kill, because if they didn’t succeed, they themselves might be murdered by those who had contracted them to do the job. I met Juan through Valeria, whose NGO was trying to help gang members like Juan get on the straight and narrow. But it was tough going for her and her staff to make the case. As Juan had explained to me, a member who refused to do the bidding of the gangs could be killed for his failure to cooperate. “And America does nothing to stop the weapons coming here!” Valeria exclaimed to me. Weapons seized from alleged drug traffickers in Mexico City. Reuters While President Trump accuses Mexico of exporting violent crime and drugs to the United States, many Mexican officials as well as people like Valeria, who are on the ground in the fight against the drug wars, complain of a tide of violence and corruption that flows in the opposite direction. Some 70 percent of the firearms seized in Mexico between 2009 and 2014 originated in the United States. Although amounting to over 73,000 guns, these seizures still likely represented only a fraction of the weapons smuggled from the United States. Moreover, billions of dollars per year are made in the illegal retail drug market in the United States and smuggled back to Mexico, where the cartels depend on this money for their basic operations. Sometimes, sophisticated money–laundering schemes, such as trade–based deals, are used; but large parts of the proceeds are smuggled as bulk cash hidden in secret compartments and among goods in the cars and trains daily crossing the border south to Mexico. Some 70 percent of the firearms seized in Mexico between 2009 and 2014 originated in the United States. And of course it is the U.S. demand for drugs that fuels Mexican drug smuggling in the first place. Take, for example, the current heroin epidemic in the United States. It originated in the over–prescription of medical opiates to treat pain. The subsequent efforts to reduce the over–prescription of painkillers led those Americans who became dependent on them to resort to illegal heroin. That in turn stimulated a vast expansion of poppy cultivation in Mexico, particularly in Guerrero. In 2015, Mexico’s opium poppy cultivation reached perhaps 28,000 hectares, enough to distill about 70 tons of heroin (which is even more than the 24–50 tons estimated to be necessary to meet the U.S. demand). Heroin brand name stamps. DEA Mexico’s large drug cartels, including El Chapo’s Sinaloa Cartel, which is estimated to supply between 40 and 60 percent of the cocaine and heroin sold on the streets in the United States, are the dominant wholesale suppliers of illegal drugs in the United States. For the retail trade, however, they usually recruit business partners among U.S. crime gangs. And thanks to the deterrence capacity of U.S. law enforcement, insofar as Mexican drug–trafficking groups do have in–country operations in the U.S., such as in wholesale supply, they have behaved strikingly peacefully and have not resorted to the vicious aggression and infighting that characterizes their business in Mexico. So the U.S. has been spared the drug–traffic–related explosions of violence that have ravaged so many of the drug–producing or smuggling areas of Mexico. Both the George W. Bush administration and the Obama administration recognized the joint responsibility for drug trafficking between the United States and Mexico, an attitude that allowed for unprecedented collaborative efforts to fight crime and secure borders. This collaboration allowed U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agents to operate in Mexico and help their Mexican counterparts in intelligence development, training, vetting, establishment of police procedures and protocols, and interdiction operations. The collaboration also led to Mexico being far more willing than it ever had been before to patrol both its northern border with the United States and its southern border with Central America, as part of the effort to help apprehend undocumented workers trying to cross into the United States. A U.S. Border Patrol officer looks through bullet-proof glass at the border near El Paso. Getty Images The Trump administration’s hostility to Mexico could jeopardize this progress. In retaliation for building the wall, for any efforts the U.S. might make to force Mexico to pay for the wall, or for the collapse of NAFTA, the Mexican government could, for example, give up on its efforts to secure its southern border or stop sharing counterterrorism intelligence with the United States. Yet Mexico’s cooperation is far more important for U.S. security than any wall.

What the wall would mean for crime in the U.S. Although President Trump has railed against the “carnage” of crime in the United States, the crime statistics, with few exceptions, tell a very different story. From 1991 to 2015, U.S. homicides fell 36% In 2014, 14,249 people were murdered, the lowest homicide rate since 1991 when there were 24,703, and part of a pattern of steady decline in violent crime over that entire period. In 2015, however, murders in the U.S. did shoot up to 15,696. This increase was largely driven by three cities—Baltimore, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. Baltimore and Chicago have decreasing populations, and all three have higher poverty and unemployment than the national average, high income and racial inequality, and troubled relations between residents and police—conditions conducive to a rise in violent crime. In 2016, homicides fell in Washington and Baltimore, but continued rising in Chicago. There is no evidence, however, that undocumented residents accounted for either the rise in crime or even for a substantial number of the crimes, in Chicago or elsewhere. The vast majority of violent crimes, including murders, are committed by native–born Americans. Multiple criminological studies show that foreign–born individuals commit much lower levels of crime than do the native–born. In California, for example, where there is a large immigrant population, including of undocumented migrants, U.S.–born men were incarcerated at a rate 2.5 times higher than foreign–born men. A Mexican man is fingerprinted while in custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Reuters Unfortunately, the Trump administration is promoting a policing approach that insists on prioritizing hunting down undocumented workers, including by using regular police forces, and this kind of misguided law enforcement policy is spreading: In Texas, which has an estimated 1.5 million undocumented immigrants, Republican Governor Greg Abbott recently signed a law to punish sanctuary cities. Among the punishments are draconian measures (such as removal from office, fines, and up to one–year imprisonment) to be enacted against local police officials who do not embrace immigration enforcement. Abbott signed the law despite the fact that police chiefs from all five of Texas’s largest cities—Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Austin, and Fort Worth—published a statement condemning it: “This legislation is bad for Texas and will make our communities more dangerous for all,” they wrote in their Dallas Morning News op–ed. They argued that immigration enforcement is a federal, not a state responsibility, and that the new law would widen a gap between police and immigrant communities, discouraging cooperation with police on serious crimes, and resulting in widespread underreporting of crimes perpetrated against immigrants. There is powerful and consistent evidence that if people begin to question the fairness, equity, and legitimacy of law enforcement and government institutions, then they stop reporting crime, and homicides increase. Police chiefs in other parts of the country, from Los Angeles to Denver, have expressed similar concerns and also their dismay at having to devote their already overstrained resources to hunting down undocumented workers. The Trump administration has broadened the Obama–era criteria for “expedited removal.” Under Obama any immigrant arrested within 100 miles of the border who had been in the country for less than 14 days—i.e., before he or she could establish roots in the United States—could be deported without due process. The result: In fiscal year 2016, 85 percent of all removals (forced) and returns (voluntary) were of noncitizens who met those criteria. Almost all (more than 90 percent) of the remaining 15 percent had been convicted of serious crimes. Children touch hands with family members through a border fence at Ciudad Juárez and El Paso. Reuters Now, however, any undocumented person anywhere in the country who has been here for as long as two years can be removed. And although it claims it will focus on deporting immigrants who commit serious crimes, the Trump administration is gearing up for mass deportations of many of the 11.1 million undocumented residents in the U.S., by far the largest number of whom come from Mexico (6.2 million), Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Ecuador, and Colombia. To that end, it is vastly expanding the definition of what constitutes deportable crime, including fraud in any official matter, such as abuse of “any program related to the receipt of public benefits” or even using a fake Social Security number to pay U.S. taxes. The Trump administration is also reviving the highly controversial 287(g) program under which local law enforcement officials can be deputized to perform immigration duties and can inquire about a person’s immigration status during routine policing of matters as insignificant as jaywalking. Many of the people being targeted have for decades lived lawful, safe, and productive lives here. About 60 percent of the undocumented have lived in the United States for at least a decade. A third of undocumented immigrants aged 15 and older have at least one child who is a U.S. citizen by birth. The ripping apart of such families has tragic consequences for those involved, as I have seen first–hand. “ Many of the people being targeted [for deportation] have for decades lived lawful, safe, and productive lives here.” 60% of the undocumented have lived in the U.S. for at least a decade Antonio, whom I interviewed in Tijuana in 2013, had lived for many years in Las Vegas, where he worked in construction and his wife cleaned hotels. Having had no encounters with U.S. law enforcement, he risked going back to Mexico to visit his ailing mother in Sinaloa. But he got nabbed trying to sneak back into the U.S. After a legal ordeal, which included being handcuffed and shackled and a degrading stay in a U.S. detention facility, he was dumped in Tijuana, where I met him shortly after his arrival there. He dreaded being forever separated from his wife and their two little boys, who had been born seven and five years before. But Sinaloa is a poor, tough place to live, strongly under the sway of the narcos, and Antonio did not want his loved ones to sacrifice themselves in order to rejoin him. As Antonio choked back tears talking about how much he missed his family, I asked him whether they might travel to San Diego to speak with him across the bars of Friendship Park. But Antonio wasn’t sure how long he could stay in Tijuana. He was afraid he would be arrested again, this time in Mexico, because in order to please U.S. law enforcement officials by appearing diligent in combating crime, Tijuana’s police force had gotten into the habit of arresting, for the most minor of infractions, Mexicans and Central Americans deported from the United States. Sweeping homeless poor migrants and deportees off the streets made Tijuana’s city center appear peaceful, bustling, and clean again, after years of a cartel bloodbath. Mexican businesses were pleased by the orderly look of the city center, the U.S. was gratified by Mexico’s cooperation, and tourists were returning, with U.S. college students again partying and getting drunk in Tijuana’s cantinas and clubs. If harmless victims of U.S. deportation policies like Antonio had to pay the price for these benefits, so be it.

How the wall would hurt the U.S. economy If immigrants are not responsible for any significant amount of crime in the United States and in fact are considerably less likely than native–born citizens to commit crime, then what about the other justification for President Trump’s vilification of immigrants, legal and illegal, and his determination to wall them out: Do immigrants steal U.S. jobs and suppress U.S. wages? Life of a typical migrant farm worker Profile 75% born in Mexico

53% undocumented Schedule 14 hours a day

6 days a week Pay $11k per year

No overtime pay

No benefits Risks Heat stress, infections, poison, respiratory illness There is little evidence to support such claims. According to a comprehensive National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine analysis, immigration does not significantly impact the overall employment levels of most native–born workers. The impact of immigrant labor on the wages of native–born workers is also low. Immigrant labor does have some negative effects on the employment and wages of native–born high school dropouts, however, and also on prior immigrants, because all three groups compete for low–skilled jobs and the newest immigrants are often willing to work for less than their competition. To a large extent, however, undocumented workers often work the unpleasant, back–breaking jobs that native–born workers are not willing to do. Sectors with large numbers of undocumented workers include agriculture, construction, manufacturing, hospitality services, and seafood processing. The fish–cutting industry, for example, is unable to recruit a sufficient number of legal workers and therefore is overwhelmingly dependent on an undocumented workforce. Skinning, deboning, and cutting fish is a smelly, slimy, grimy, chilly, monotonous, and exacting job. Many workers rapidly develop carpal tunnel syndrome. It can be a dangerous job, with machinery for cutting off fish heads and deboning knives everywhere frequently leading to amputated fingers. The risk of infections from cuts and the bloody water used to wash fish is also substantial. Over the past ten years, multiple exposés have revealed that both in the United States and abroad, workers in the fishing and seafood processing industries, often undocumented in other countries also, are subjected to forced labor conditions, and sometimes treated like slaves. Typical housing for migrant farmworkers in a work camp in Sampson County, in central North Carolina. Getty Images While paying more than jobs she could obtain in Honduras, the fish cutting job was hard for 38–year–old Marta Escoto, profiled by Robin Shulman in a 2007 article in The Washington Post. But she put up with it for the sake of her two young children, one of them a four–year–old daughter who couldn’t walk and suffered from a gastrointestinal illness that prevented her from absorbing enough nutrition. Yet the fear of raids to which the Massachusetts fish–cutting industry was subjected a decade ago, in an earlier wave of anti–immigrant fervor, drove her to seek a job as a seamstress in a Massachusetts factory producing uniforms for U.S. soldiers. But misfortune struck there, too. Like the seafood processing plants, the New Bedford factory was raided by U.S. immigration officers; and although Marta had no criminal record, she was arrested and rapidly flown to a detention facility in Texas while her children were left alone in a day care center. Unlike many other immigrants swept up in those raids, Marta was ultimately lucky: She had a sister living in Massachusetts who could retrieve her children. And as a result of large political outcry in Massachusetts following those raids, with Senators John F. Kerry and Edward M. Kennedy strongly speaking out against them, Marta was released and could reunite with her two small children. But she remained without documents authorizing her to work and stay in the United States and would again be subject to deportation in the future. Estimated undocumented immigrant population by state, 2014 10,000 or less

25,000 – 95,000

100,000 – 130,000

180,000 – 450,000

500,000 – 2,350,000 Source: Pew Research Center Immigrant workers are actually having a net positive effect on the economy. Because of a native–born population that is both declining in numbers and increasing in age, the U.S. needs its immigrant workers. The portion of foreign–born now accounts for about 16 percent of the labor force, with immigrants and their children accounting for the vast majority of current and future workforce growth in the United States, If the number of immigrants to the United States was reduced—by deportation or barriers to further immigration—so that foreign–born represented only about 10 percent of the population, the number of working–age Americans in the coming decades would remain essentially static at the current number of 175 million. If, however, the proportion of foreign–born remains at the current level, then the number of working–age residents in the U.S. will increase by about 30 million in the next 50 years. We need these workers not just to fill jobs but to increase productivity, which has diminished sharply. We also need them because the number of the elderly drawing expensive benefits like Medicare and Social Security—the costs of which are paid for by workers’ taxes—is growing substantially. Nearly 44 million people aged 65 or older currently draw Social Security; in 2050 that number is estimated to rise to 86 million. Even undocumented workers support Social Security: Since at least 1.8 million were working with fake Social Security cards in 2010 in order to get employment but were mostly unable to draw the benefits, they contributed $13 billion that year into the retirement trust fund, and took out only $1 billion. Counterfeit Social Security cards confiscated by ICE agents. Reuters If immigrants are not stealing U.S. jobs and suppressing wages to any significant extent, is NAFTA doing so? Sal Moceri, a 61–year–old Ford worker in Michigan, fervently believes so. He has not lost his job himself, but he saw his co–workers and neighbors lose jobs and sees new workers accepting lower wages for which he would not settle. Although he calls himself a “lifelong Democrat,” he voted for Trump in 2016 because of Trump’s promise to renegotiate or end NAFTA. In a CNNMoney interview with Heather Long, he blamed NAFTA for the job losses and decreases in wages around him, disbelieving the claims of economists that automation, not NAFTA, is the source of the job losses in U.S. manufacturing. He loves automation and hates NAFTA. But contrary to Trump’s claim and Moceri’s passionate belief, NAFTA has not siphoned off a large number of U.S. jobs. It did force some U.S. workers to find other kinds of work, but the net number of jobs that was lost is relatively small, with estimates varying between 116,400 and 851,700, out of 146,135,000 jobs in the U.S. economy. Countering these losses is the fact that the bilateral trade fostered by NAFTA has had far–reaching positive effects on the economy. The trade agreement eliminated tariffs on half of the industrial goods exported to Mexico from the United States (tariffs which before NAFTA averaged 10 percent), and eliminated other Mexican protectionist measures as well, allowing, for example, the export of corn from the United States to Mexico. 2016 U.S.-Mexico goods & services trade: $ 580 bn NAFTA has enabled the development of joint production lines between the United States and Mexico and allows the U.S. to more cheaply import components used for manufacturing in the United States. Without this kind of co–operation, many jobs would be lost, including jobs provided by cars imported from Mexico. In 2016, for example, the United States imported 1.6 million cars from Mexico—but about 40 percent of the value of their components was produced in the United States. Leaving NAFTA could jeopardize 31,000 jobs in the automotive industry in the United States alone. But now that it is threatened with the collapse or renegotiation of NAFTA, Mexico has already begun actively exploring new trade partnerships with Europe and China. The big picture: Mexico is the third largest U.S. trade partner after China and Canada, and the third–largest supplier of U.S. imports. Some 79 percent of Mexico’s total exports in 2013 went to the United States. Yes, the United States had a $64.3 billion deficit with Mexico in 2016, but trade with Mexico is a two–way street. The United States exports more to Mexico than to any other country except Canada, its other NAFTA partner. Moreover, the half trillion dollars in goods and services traded between Mexico and the United States each year since NAFTA was enacted over 23 years ago has resulted in millions of jobs for workers in both countries. According to a Woodrow Wilson Center study, nearly five million U.S. jobs now depend on trade with Mexico. Trade, investment, joint production, and travel across the U.S.–Mexico border remain a way of life for border communities, including those in the United States. Disrupting them will create substantial economic costs for both countries. And a significantly weakened Mexican economy will also exacerbate Mexico’s severe criminal violence and encourage violence–driven immigration to the United States.

What the wall would do to communities and the environment If erected, Trump’s wall will not be the first significant barrier to be built on the border. That distinction goes to the 700–mile fence the U.S. began to put up—over protests from those on both sides of the border—some years ago. These people include 26 federally–recognized Native American Nations in the U.S. and eight Indigenous Peoples in Mexico. The border on which the wall is to be built cuts through their tribal homelands and separates tribal members from their relatives and their sacred sites, while also sundering them from the natural environment which is crucial not just to their livelihoods but to their cultural and religious identity. In recognition of this problem, the U.S. Congress passed an act in 1983 allowing free travel across the borders within their homelands to one of the Native American Nations tribes. But when the fence was built, by waiving statutes like the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990, and the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1994, Congress compromised that freedom of travel and made it hard for indigenous people to visit their family members and sacred sites. Indigenous people from the Tohono O’odham Reservation protest against a border wall. Getty Images Trump’s wall will, of course, exacerbate the damage to these Native American communities, causing great pain and anger among the inhabitants. “If someone came into your house and built a wall in your living room, tell me, how would you feel about that?” asked Verlon Jose, vice chairman of the Tohono O’odham Nation, in an interview by The New York Times’ Fernanda Santos in February 2017. Stretching out his arms to embrace the saguaro desert around him, he said, “This is our home.” Many in his tribe want to resist the construction of the wall. Others fear that if the border barrier is weaker on the tribal land, drug smuggling will be funneled there as happened before with the fence, harming and ensnarling the community. As Native American communities, conservation biologists, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service all have highlighted, the wall will also have significant environmental costs in areas that host some of the greatest biodiversity in North America. Deriving its name from the isolated mountain ranges whose 10,000–foot peaks thrust into the skies, the “Sky Islands” region spanning southeastern Arizona, southwestern New Mexico, and northwestern Mexico, for example, features a staggering array of flora and fauna. Its precious, but fragile, biodiversity is due to the unusual convergence of four major ecoregions: the southern terminus of the temperate Rocky Mountains; the eastern extent of the low–elevation Sonoran Desert; the northern edge of the subtropical Sierra Madre Occidental; and the western terminus of the higher–elevation Chihuahuan Desert. Among the endangered species that will be affected by the wall are the jaguar, Sonoran pronghorn, Chiricahua leopard frog, lesser long–nose bat, Cactus ferruginous pygmy–owl, Mexican gray wolf, black–tailed prairie dog, jaguarondi, ocelot, and American bison. Other negatively–affected species will include desert tortoise, black bear, desert mule deer, and a variety of snakes. Even species that can fly, such as Rufous hummingbirds and Swainson and Gray hawks could be harmed, and vital insect pollinators that migrate across the border could be burnt up by the lights necessary to illuminate the wall. Bison on the grasslands of Rancho “El Uno” in northern Mexico. Reuters Altogether, more than 100 species of animals that occur along the U.S.–Mexico border, in the Sky Islands area as well as in the Big Bend National Park in Texas and in the Rio Grande Valley, are endangered or threatened. But just as the DHS waived numerous cultural protection statutes to build the fence, it also overrode many crucial environmental laws—including the Endangered Species Act of 1973, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970, the Coastal Zone Management Act of 1972, and the Clean Water Act of 1972. The Trump administration wants to bulldoze through any remaining environmental considerations. The administration’s approach threatens years of binational environmental border cooperation that has protected not only many wild species, but also agriculture on both sides of the border. Take the boll weevil, a beetle that flies between Mexico and the United States and devastates cotton crops. In the late 1890s, the boll weevil nearly wiped out the U.S. cotton industry. Since then, the United States and Mexico have spent decades trying to eradicate the pest and almost succeeded. But the wall may so sour U.S.–Mexico environmental and security cooperation that Mexico may simply give up on eradication efforts. This will cause little damage to those in Mexico, since there is little cotton cultivation along that part of the Mexican border, but it will result in significant damage to U.S. farmers. A poisoned U.S.–Mexican relationship could also prevent the renegotiation of water sharing agreements that are critical to the environment as well as to water and food security, and to farming. For example, the 1970 Boundary Treaty between the United States and Mexico specifies that officials from both the U.S. and Mexico must agree if either side wants to build any structure that could affect the flow of the Rio Grande or its flood waters, water that is vital to livestock and agriculture along the border. The fence was built despite Mexico’s objections to it, and because its steel slats become clogged with debris during the rainy season, it has caused floods affecting cities and previously protected areas on both sides of the border, resulting in millions of dollars in damages. The Rio Grande curving through Big Bend Ranch State Park, Texas. Getty Images It wasn’t just Mexico that didn’t want that fence. U.S. farmers and businessmen along the Texas border in the Rio Grande valley opposed it, too, since it blocks their access to the river water and also augments the severity of floods. Now the wall is to be brought to flood plain areas in Texas where water issues precisely like these had prevented the construction of the fence before. Meanwhile, manufacturing, agriculture, hydraulic fracking, energy production, and ecosystems on both sides of the border depend on equitable and effective water sharing from the Rio Grande and the Colorado River, with both sides vulnerable to water scarcities. Over the decades there have been many challenges to the joint agreements governing water usage, and both Mexico and the U.S. have at times considered themselves the aggrieved parties. But in general, U.S.–Mexico cooperation over both the Rio Grande and Colorado rivers has been exceptional by international standards and has been hugely beneficial to both partners to the various treaties. That kind of co–operation is now at risk. U.S.–Mexico cooperation over both the Rio Grande and Colorado rivers has been exceptional by international standards and has been hugely beneficial to both partners If in retaliation for the Trump administration’s vitriolic, anti–Mexican language and policies, Mexico decided not live up to its side of the water bargain, U.S. farmers and others along the Rio Grande would be under severe threat of losing their livelihoods. One of them is Dale Murden in Monte Alto, who on his 20,000–acre farm cultivates sugarcane, grapefruit, cotton, citrus, and grain. Named in January 2017 the Citrus King of Texas, the former Texas Farm Bureau state director has dedicated his life to agriculture in southern Texas, relying on a Latino workforce. Yet he has memories of devastating water shortages in 2011 and 2013, when because of a severe drought Mexico could not send its allocation of the Rio Conches to the United States and 30 percent of his land became unproductive, with many crops dying. At that time he hoped that the U.S. State Department could persuade Mexico to release some water, even as Mexican farmers were also facing immense water shortages and devastation. U.S. diplomacy did work, no doubt helped by the rain that replenished Mexico’s tributaries of the Rio Grande. Without the rain, Mexico would not have been able to pay back its accumulated water debt. But without collaborative U.S.–Mexico diplomacy and an atmosphere of a closer–than–ever U.S.–Mexico cooperation, Mexico still could have failed to deliver the water despite the rain. That positive spirit of cooperation also produced one of the world’s most enlightened, environmentally–sensitive, and water–use–savvy version of a water treaty, the so–called Minute 319 of the 1944 Colorado River U.S.–Mexico water agreement. Unique in its recognition of the Colorado River delta as a water user, the update committed the United States to sending a so–called “pulse flow” to that ecosystem, thus helping to restore those unique wetlands. The United States also agreed to pay $18 million for water conservation in Mexico. In turn, Mexico delivered 124,000 acre–feet of Mexican water to Lake Mead. It was a win–win–win: for U.S. farmers, Mexican farmers, and ecosystems. But those were the good days of the U.S.–Mexico relationship, before the Trump administration. A new update to the treaty is under negotiation—once again a vital agreement and a lifeline for some 40 million people on both sides of the border that could fall prey to the Trump administration’s approach to Mexico. Yet this is a moment when maintaining cooperation is crucial because climate–change–increased evaporation rates, invasive plant infestation, and greater demands for water around the border and deep into U.S. and Mexican territories will only put further pressure on water use and increase the likelihood of severe scarcity.

Rather than a line of separation, the border should be conceived of as a membrane, connecting the tissues of communities on both sides, enabling mutually beneficial trade, manufacturing, ecosystem improvements, and security, while enhancing inter–cultural exchanges. In 1971, When First Lady Pat Nixon attended the inauguration of Friendship Park—that tragic place that allows separated families only the most limited amount of contact—she said, “I hope there won’t be a fence here too long.” She supported two–way positive exchanges between the United States and Mexico, not barriers. In fact, for her visit, she had the fence in Friendship Park torn down. Unfortunately, it’s still there, bigger, taller, and harder than when she visited, and with the wall about to get much worse yet.

Vanda Felbab-Brown is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. She is an expert on international and internal conflicts and nontraditional security threats, including insurgency, organized crime, urban violence, and illicit economies. Her fieldwork and research have covered, among others, Afghanistan, South Asia, Burma, Indonesia, the Andean region, Mexico, Morocco, Somalia, and eastern Africa. Her books include The Extinction Market: Wildlife Trafficking and How to Counter It (Hurst, 2017) and Shooting Up: Counterinsurgency and the War on Drugs (Brookings Institution Press, 2010). She received her doctorate in political science from MIT and her bachelor’s from Harvard University.

A market-based approach to managing water in the Colorado River basin could provide more reliable supplies for farmers, communities, and industry amid ongoing drought and excess demand. The right market design and a little extra investment could also help threatened fish species, researchers have found.

The study, published June 20 in Nature Sustainability, details a new system for leasing rights to water from the basin while reallocating some water to imperiled habitats.

Not enough river water to go around

When the seven states of the Colorado River basin first divided water rights in the 1920s, they allocated more than the river could reliably deliver, especially during periods of drought. Today, the basin supplies drinking water to 40 million people and irrigation to 5 million acres of farmland across the southwestern United States, 30 tribal nations, and parts of Mexico.

Steven Gorelick is the Cyrus Fisher Tolman Professor in the Doerr School of Sustainability’s Department of Earth System Science.

Climate change has exacerbated shortages, with studies indicating that recent Colorado River flows are near their lowest in at least 2,000 years. “The Colorado River is a marvel in terms of the scale of its impact on ecosystems, agriculture, economies, and people across the western U.S. and Mexico,” said Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability hydrologist Steven Gorelick, a senior author of the new study. “Given the overallocation of the river water, we explored how the needs of people and the environment can both be served.”

Two decades into a historic megadrought in the U.S. West, the immediate need for effective solutions has grown. Out of 49 fish species native to the Colorado River basin, 44 are already threatened, endangered, or extinct. Standing agreements governing Colorado River management among states and between the U.S. and Mexico are set to expire after 2026.

“By strategically directing river water to the right places, even under drought conditions, fish can be saved with targeted restoration at nominal additional cost,” Gorelick said.

Congress allocated more than $4 billion in federal funds under the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 for drought mitigation, largely through water market transactions that pay farms, cities, and industries in the region to use less water. “Those projects are not sufficient in many cases to meaningfully improve flow conditions for fish and ecosystems,” said the study’s lead author, water policy expert Philip Womble, who worked on the research as a graduate student and postdoctoral fellow at Stanford and is now an assistant professor at University of Washington.

Which Federal Programs Are Under Scrutiny? The Budget Office Named 2,600 of Them.

Update: On Wednesday, Jan. 29, the White House rescinded its previous order pausing grant and loan programs across the federal government.

A Trump administration memo sent to U.S. federal agencies Monday night ordered temporary freezes in funding for programs across the government. It caused widespread confusion among agency officials and organizations that rely on federal support, including states, schools, hospitals and other nonprofits.

The order, temporarily blocked by a federal judge as it was set to go into effect, was circulated alongside a spreadsheet of about 2,600 programs now under review, spanning virtually every federal initiative that distributes money — even some, like Medicare, that officials said would not be affected.

Below is a list of all those programs, identified by the Office of Management and Budget for examination to ensure they do not “advance Marxist equity, transgenderism and Green New Deal social engineering policies.” Agencies were asked to answer questions about each budget line, including “Does this program promote gender ideology?”

The Trump administration has insisted that direct payments to Americans are not at risk. But the list named numerous programs that aid millions of individual Americans, like Medicaid and Head Start, but that are funded first as grants to states, local governments or nonprofits. On Tuesday, some grant recipients reported interruptions. We’ve highlighted some programs where those interruptions in funding have already been reported or where budget officials have said no freeze will take place.

In sweeping up so many federal initiatives — even interest payments on the federal debt — it was unclear if the spreadsheet reflected oversights and accidental contradictions, or something closer to the administration’s full ambitions. The programs listed below, alongside dollar estimates for their annual spending in 2024, encompass much of how the federal government touches American life.

What You’ll Learn From This Report

Key Findings The dangerous Big Ag feedback loop

The American West is facing a water crisis, compounded by climate change, a history of bad policy, and government refusal to address Big Ag head-on. Huge agribusinesses remain unfazed by this crisis, continuing to abuse water supplies to feed animals on factory farms that, in turn, worsen the climate crisis and associated drought. Despite a short-term respite in late 2022 and early 2023 from a wet winter, a long-term megadrought persists across the region, as groundwater storage is being depleted after decades of over-withdrawals. The Colorado River Basin is ground zero for Big Ag’s assault on our water and climate future, and states must begin standing up to these perpetrators to ensure a safe and livable future.

Arial view of a farmer harvesting alfalfa.

Findings

Alfalfa farming is a major culprit

In 2022, alfalfa covered 2.7 million acres across the Colorado River Basin states, consuming more than 2 trillion gallons of irrigation water .

. Large-scale alfalfa farms (with 1,000 or more acres) make up less than 2 percent of all alfalfa farms in the Basin states. Around 94 percent used irrigation in 2017, together guzzling one-third of all irrigation water applied to alfalfa across the Basin states.

Mega-dairies are hugely culpable

The Basin states are also home to 2.5 million cows living on mega-dairies, requiring an estimated 218 million gallons every day just to wash and hydrate them.

The Big Ag feedback loop

Together, the Basin states exceed the national average for irrigation water applied per irrigated acre of farmland by more than 70 percent, with Arizona using over three times the national average.

Colorado River Basin states are hijacked by Big Ag in a relentless feedback loop, requiring more and more water as climate change intensifies, thereby decreasing the amount of water available for all uses.

Crisis on the Colorado River The Colorado River is under threat and drying up

The Colorado River is one of the most regulated rivers in the world, due largely to its famous interstate water agreement, the Colorado River Compact. Established in 1922, the Compact theoretically distributes 16 million acre-feet of water annually to seven states and Mexico. The Upper Basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming are obligated to deliver 7.5 million acre-feet to the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California, and Nevada, and the Upper Basin can only take its share from what remains.

This agreement has important ramifications across the West, with roughly one in ten Americans relying on the Colorado River Basin for their household water supply. Around 16 percent of the Basin’s area is on tribal land, with the river supplying water to dozens of American Indian tribes. By 2060, the Colorado Basin is projected to supply water to as many as 77 million people within the U.S., nearly double current figures.

The Colorado River also supplies the nation’s two largest reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, created by the Hoover and Glen Canyon dams, respectively. Lake Mead was originally designed to hold water for the Lower Basin states, while Lake Powell was created later to store water in case the Upper Basin could not deliver its promised amount. These reservoirs also generate significant amounts of electricity — nearly 10 billion kilowatt hours per year combined.

The Colorado River is the U.S.’s most endangered river. Since the early 2000s, average annual water demand has exceeded supply, and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation projects that annual demand will reach as high as 6.7 trillion gallons by 2050. As demand increases, flows are trending in the opposite direction, with the annual flow down 20 percent since 2000. Climate change is only worsening this trend — for every 1 degree Celsius of warming, the river’s flow declines by 9 percent.

Lake Powell and Lake Mead are in similarly dire situations. Lake Powell currently holds a quarter of its capacity, with water levels at 3,561 feet as of May 2023. It is only able to generate power above 3,490 feet, and dead pool — where water goes stagnant and cannot flow through the dam — is fewer than 200 feet away (see Fig. 1). This situation could be reached as soon as 2025. Record rainfall in early 2023 buoyed the lake’s levels, but this temporary reprieve provides only a year’s worth of breathing room.

Bad policy leads to insufficient negotiations

The Colorado River Compact formed in 1922 during a period of abnormally wet rainfall, resulting in an agreement that allocated 15 million acre-feet annually among the states. Yet in recent decades, only 12 to 13 million acre-feet has flowed through the river each year. The Compact relies on fixed numbers, leaving little room for declining supplies and potentially leaving Upper Basin states unable to fulfill their obligations to the Lower Basin. This dire scenario has not yet been reached, but the writing is on the dam walls. When Lake Mead and Lake Powell reached record lows in 2021, the Bureau of Reclamation issued a shortage declaration and began temporarily curbing water supplies to Upper Basin states. It cut Arizona and Nevada’s supplies by 18 and 7 percent, respectively. Due to Western water law principles of seniority, California was spared.

In June 2022, the federal government stepped in with an ultimatum for Compact states: create a plan to cut water over the next year, or the government will do it by force. The three Lower Basin states came to a proposed deal in May 2023, promising voluntary cuts of 3 million acre-feet by 2026. This amounts to 13 percent of the Colorado River water used each year in the Lower Colorado Basin, among the largest cuts ever taken. Reductions come with a call for the federal government to pay out $1.2 billion to the irrigation districts, cities, and American Indian tribes for their temporary water reduction.

Even so, this proposed agreement only lasts until the end of 2026. Farmers may be incentivized to temporarily leave their land fallow, but this is not a permanent solution. The proposal also does not cut nearly enough water to restore the Colorado River — states need to cut four times as much annually for the reservoirs to recover.

x How Do Water Rights Work in the West? See the Answer

How Do Water Rights Work in the West? In Eastern U.S. states, surface water use is typically governed by the riparian doctrine, where water access is tied to land ownership and regulated by states through permitting systems. In Western states, appropriative water rights often govern how much surface water, groundwater, or other water source an entity or individual is entitled to. Although this varies by state, two principles underlie most Western states’ water governance: prior appropriation and beneficial use. The Prior Appropriation Doctrine (also called appropriative rights) The Prior Appropriation Doctrine grants water rights in chronological order of claims, with the earliest claimants granted the highest priority. The older the claim, the less likely that water will be cut off in times of shortages. These so-called senior rights are most often held by agricultural users whose original claims frequently pre-date nearby urban centers. Junior rights, on the other hand, are fulfilled only after senior holders have received their full allocations. Municipalities often hold junior rights, jeopardizing residential water use in times of crisis. Beneficial Use Beneficial use dictates that the water must be put to good use, although this is often a very broad category. Examples range from agriculture to recreation to mining, with these all given equal standing. These rights, however, may be forfeited if a user does not use their full allocation for several years. Out of fear of seeing their water allocations reduced, agricultural users have shifted to low-value applications such as flood irrigation or low-productivity cultivation rather than simply conserving the water. However, along the Colorado River, the Compact’s allocation system supersedes appropriative rights as the main legal authority. Tribal water rights are often overlooked under these framings. For a more in-depth examination, see the section below, “Tribal Water Rights.”

Alfalfa and Mega-Dairies Monopolize the Colorado River Big Ag guzzles water supplies at the expense of water security

Disputes between Basin states obscure the true problem underlying the Colorado River’s water crisis: an agricultural system that is wholly unsuited to the arid climate. Crop irrigation makes up 79 percent of all water consumed in the Colorado River Basin, and a staggering 70 percent of this water is used to irrigate livestock feed crops including alfalfa, other hays, and corn silage. Alfalfa farms, along with the proliferation of mega-dairies, are sucking the Colorado dry — and the West’s lifeblood alongside it. Basin states must take firm and immediate action to rein in these water abuses.

Food & Water Watch estimates that alfalfa consumed 2.2 trillion gallons of water across the seven Basin states in 2022 alone (see Methodology). To put this in perspective, this is enough to meet the indoor household water needs of the nearly 40 million people who rely on the Colorado River system for municipal water for three-and-a-half years (See Fig. 2). It is also enough to cover the area of two Connecticuts in a foot of water. Large-scale alfalfa farms (with 1,000 or more acres) guzzle around one-third of this water, despite making up less than 2 percent of all alfalfa farms in Basin states. In addition, the 2.5 million dairy cows living on mega-dairies in these states sucked up an estimated 218 million gallons every day just for washing and hydration.

The estimated 2.2 trillion gallons of water consumed by alfalfa across the seven Basin states in 2022 is enough to meet the indoor household water needs of the nearly 40 million people who rely on the Colorado River system for municipal water for three-and-a-half years.

Not all of this water comes from the Colorado River; even so, livestock feed crops remain the largest consumers of water in the Colorado River Basin, accounting for 55 percent of the water used. Basin states together exceed the national average for irrigation water used per acre on all irrigated farmland by 71 percent (see Fig. 3).

The reasons why mega-dairies and thirsty crops such as alfalfa persist in regions prone to mega-droughts lies in decades of poor governance by states, along with federal agricultural policies that favor Big Meat and Dairy.

The Factory Farm Feedback Loop Mega-dairies and alfalfa growth are deeply interconnected

Nearly every sector of the U.S. food system has undergone rapid corporate consolidation in recent decades, but few as severely as the dairy industry. Today, just three cooperatives market more than 80 percent of all fluid milk in the country , leaving farmers with fewer buyers, who have greater leverage to set prices and determine milk routes. At the same time, federal dairy policy has shifted from price supports to a corporate-friendly export agenda. These forces have gutted farm income and increased pressure for farmers to “get big or get out” — to increase their herds to mega-dairy sizes or leave dairy farming altogether.

Most of this growth in mega-dairies occurred in Western states, aided by milder climate and affordable land. Factory farms mushroomed, while family-scale dairies (those with fewer than 500 cows) collapsed, with states like California seeing a 60 percent loss over 20 years (1997 to 2017). Alfalfa production feeds these mega-dairies, with the dairy industry being the primary user of forage crops like alfalfa. The crop can be harvested multiple times a year in mild climates and grown in varying soil conditions — assuming that sufficient water is available. Today, the West grows nearly all of the country’s irrigated cattle feed supplies, despite alfalfa being a notoriously thirsty crop.

Alfalfa grown in Basin states is not just feeding the U.S.’s appetite for dairy; the region also exports dairy products, along with alfalfa and other forage crops that feed foreign factory farms. For example, in 2021 California accounted for nearly a third of U.S. dairy exports by value, and for more than a fifth of all hay exports. Foreign corporations are even capitalizing on this farming system that is out of touch with the climate reality. The Almarai Company, a Saudi multinational, owns 10,000 acres of Arizona farmland, cultivating alfalfa to support dairies in Saudi Arabia, which banned alfalfa cultivation in 2018 in order to conserve water. This gross misuse of water has been unfolding for years, with 75 percent of Lake Mead’s decline in the past two decades attributed to cattle feed irrigation.

However, even prolonged drought conditions have not broken the West’s dependence on alfalfa. The 2011 to 2017 drought only modestly reduced California’s alfalfa production, with some regions actually increasing production. This includes regions in Southern California with “very secure senior water rights” that continued to receive their full allocations and thus had little incentive to reduce production (see Fig. 4). This underlines the fact that state and federal water governance can play a stronger role than climate patterns in farmers’ planting decisions.

Basin states cannot break free from their dependence on alfalfa and dairy without changes to federal and state water governance, along with support for family-scale farmers to transition to more sustainable farming systems. Yet leaders remain reluctant to take these necessary steps — perpetuating a water crisis in Basin states.

Tribal Water Rights Tribal water supplies continue to be threatened by Big Ag’s water abuses

The dozens of American Indian tribes in the Colorado River Basin hold the most seniority to its water, having lived on the land before any state or federal laws even existed. Federally recognized rights account for as much as 25 percent of the river’s flow. Despite this fact, the tribes have been historically neglected from water rights discussions. They were excluded during the creation of the Compact and ignored again in 2007 during renegotiations. This has led to a patchwork of rights across the basin, where some tribes have officially quantified water rights while others are still working to achieve them. Many of these rights exist only on paper, with the tribes having no way to access the water due to legal conflicts, prior designated use, or lack of infrastructure.

Paper rights are a slap in the face on top of historical injustices. The designations often fail to account for the historical context of land theft lurking behind every stolen water right, making the continued inequities even more unjust. Without infrastructure to access the water, Upper Basin tribal water flows downstream and is lost, depriving tribes of their resource without compensation. In Utah, for example, the Ute tribe has seen its water rights debated and slashed down, while other priorities such as the Central Utah Project receive funding and water.

Much of what you can see in this photo is Hualapai land but the tribe cannot use any of the water. Taken along the west rim of the Grand Canyon, you can see the shrinking Colorado River in the canyon. CC-BY-SA © Donald Hall / Flickr.com

For those still battling out water rights, the situation can be even more enraging. For the Hualapai tribe in Arizona, the Colorado River borders more than 100 miles of their land, but they cannot draw a single drop from it. As the river’s water continues to shrink, their water rights are tied up in Congress, forcing them to postpone building fire stations and elementary schools. Often, tribes will be forced to cede huge water rights in order to receive assurance of supply and funding for delivery, pulling what they can from bad deals.

Many tribes have begun to lease out their water rights for energy production, endangered species recovery, or city use. Extra water could be sold to the federal or state governments as well, to support reservoir levels at Lake Mead or Lake Powell. While this is a possibility for some, tribes should not have to cede their water before massive users like Big Ag do the same. Tribal waters are needed to supply clean drinking water and to sustain communities, a far superior use than much of the agricultural production across the West.

Consequences of Inaction Energy, crop systems, and ecosystems suffer under dwindling river supplies

Hoover Dam/Lake Mead. Raquel Baranow, CC BY-SA 2.0

Loss of water and energy

If nothing is done to conserve water and to cut back on Colorado River usage, disaster will follow. Lake Powell and Lake Mead are some of the grimmest indicators, with each reservoir dangerously low. The first level of concern is the minimum power pool elevation — the lowest level at which water continues to power the respective dam’s hydropower. When the water level approaches this point, the turbines begin to take in both air and water, forcing them to be shut down to avoid permanent damage.

Minimum Power Pool: The lowest level at which water continues to power the dam’s hydropower.

Should hydropower cut off at either dam, this will bring the greatest harm to American Indian tribes, rural cooperatives, and small towns. These groups would be forced to buy energy on the open market, potentially from fossil fuel sources and at hugely inflated prices. Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona, which supplies energy for 4.5 million people, sells electricity at $30 per megawatt hour, compared to prices as high as $1,000 per megawatt hour on the open market. Glen Canyon Dam already generates 40 percent less power than what has been promised to customers.

Should the minimum pool elevation be bypassed, the next crisis emerges 120 feet below it: dead pool, where water becomes stagnant. Smaller, rarely used pipes would take over the role of passing water along. This would immediately slash the dam’s water releases by two-thirds. If levels fall much further than that, no water at all would be able to pass through the dam to deliver water to Lower Basin states. Years ago, either of these scenarios would have been unthinkable. Now, they are all part of the planning process and could come within the decade.

Crop failures

Draining the Colorado River puts many of the nation’s food crops in serious peril, including winter crops such as lettuce and broccoli. Although the climate may not be conducive to these crops, a few key regions within the Colorado River basin supply numerous winter vegetable crops; Yuma, Arizona and the Imperial Valley in California together produce more than 90 percent of the nation’s winter leafy greens.

These crops are first in line to be cut, while water-intensive nut acreage typically remains safe. Nut trees are more valuable for farmers and require long-term investments, leaving them as favored crops to receive water in times of shortages. Strategic and targeted planting must be used now before it is too late, and alfalfa and mega-dairies need to be prevented from using so much water across the Colorado River Basin.

As climate change and drought intensify, grocery store prices rise in tandem. When Arizona or the Imperial Valley apply their water cuts to crops used for human consumption, supply shrinks dramatically. As this happens, food becomes more expensive. This is not a crisis unique to the Colorado Basin. Food security across the world is threatened by climate change as rising carbon dioxide levels decrease crop nutrition, extreme weather destroys crops, and drought reduces water availability.

Ecosystems in peril

For years, the greatest dangers posed to Colorado River species were the myriad human-made dams and other water control devices that upend their habitats. Now, the entire Colorado River ecosystem has been transformed by human-induced drought conditions. As water levels decline, water temperatures have skyrocketed. In 2000, summer water temperatures in the Glen Canyon dam averaged 48.5 degrees Fahrenheit, but just two decades later, in 2022, they jumped to an average of 65.5 degrees Fahrenheit.

This has radically shifted the aquatic ecosystem, allowing invasive species such as the smallmouth bass to thrive and endangering other native fish like the threatened humpback chub. Warming waters also lower dissolved oxygen levels, posing additional threats to species such as the rainbow trout and the cutthroat trout — which now barely survives in 10 percent of its historic range. As of now, no modern Colorado River species has gone extinct, but this could change.

Extreme drought conditions also drive the collapse of desert bird populations. Typical bird species across the Mojave Desert have declined an average of 43 percent over the past century, with the decline in precipitation being one of the largest drivers. Burrowing owls are a particularly grim example, experiencing an astonishing 98 percent decline in their breeding population in just 16 years, along with reduced body mass.

With the Earth already facing a human-caused sixth mass extinction, animal and plant ecosystems require as much assistance as they can get. Instead, humanity’s refusal to act in both their and our best interests for survival has put numerous additional species at risk. As the Colorado River continues to dry up, so do these species’ chances of surviving ongoing climate change.

SPECIES AT RISK Endangered Wildlife of the Colorado River ​​With the Earth already facing a human-caused sixth mass extinction, animal and plant ecosystems require as much assistance as they can get. Instead, humanity’s refusal to act in both their and our best interests for survival has put numerous additional species at risk. As the Colorado River continues to dry up, so do these species’ chances of surviving ongoing climate change. SCROLL SIDEWAYS TO NAVIGATE Photo: Colorado River WESTERN BURROWING OWLS Western Burrowing Owls are permanent residents of the Southwestern U.S., but their numbers are dwindling. The owls are labeled vulnerable or imperiled in nearly every state within their territory. Severe drought and climate change may already be driving this decline, with future projections for the area only growing hotter. As the Colorado River shrinks and water use is cut back, burrowing owls struggle to survive in a rapidly changing landscape. Ironically, efforts to conserve water are making less water available to the owls, who had adapted to the man-made farms and irrigation systems. Moving forward, the species needs more attention and protection as it adapts to climate change. Photo: The Western Burrowing Owl SAGUARO CACTUS The iconic Saguaro Cacti are struggling to survive Arizona’s droughts, with many dropping arms or toppling over altogether. Though the species is not yet endangered, Saguaros are increasingly threatened by a seemingly benign source: cattle feed grass. Apart from guzzling up the Colorado River’s water, the introduction of these exotic grasses to the desert has created the perfect environment for fire to spread, a threat the Saguaro Cacti are unadapted to. Should their populations drop off, entire ecosystems will be threatened by the loss of this keystone species, and countless birds, insects, and bats will lose a vital food and shelter source. Photo: Saguaro Cacti LESSER LONG-NOSED BAT Lesser Long-Nosed Bats inhabit the Southwestern U.S. and Mexico, feeding off the nectar of flowering plants like agave and Saguaro Cacti. In fact, pollination by these little creatures supports tequila production across Mexico. But the bats, and the tequila byproducts alongside them, are facing serious threats from climate change and habitat loss. One study found that even under optimistic conditions, 59 percent of the bat’s habitat will be unsuitable for habitation by 2050. As temperatures rise and precipitation declines, the plants the bats depend on may shift their habitats or fail to flower. This includes Saguaro Cacti, which long-nosed bats depend on for night-blooming flowers. Photo: Lesser Long-Nosed Bat BONYTAIL CHUB Bonytail Chub are the rarest of the Colorado River’s endemic fish, evolving 5 million years ago. Their populations remain critically low even as other species begin the road to recovery; so low in fact, that the species is ‘functionally extinct,’ or unable to self-sustain their populations in the wild. Bonytails once swam along the entire expanse of the Colorado River, but now, due to man-made disruptions and draining of the river, this has shrunk dramatically. But even these populations could not survive without hatcheries to raise and release the fish annually. The ever-present threat of environmental pollutants, like spills or leaching of chemicals, still poses serious risk to bonytails, as does alteration of habitat. Recovering the Colorado River is a matter of life or full extinction for these fish. Photo: Bonytail Chub RAZORBACK SUCKER Razorback Suckers are endemic only to the Colorado River, over 3 million years old, and known to some as the “dinosaurs of the Colorado.” Classified as endangered since the 1990s, their populations are in decline throughout the Colorado River, with the Lower Basin seeing populations plummet over the last two decades. Human diversions of the river disturbed their natural habitats and processes, and the species has never recovered. Even now, Razorbacks’ critical habitats and hatcheries along the main Colorado River tributary, the Green River, face contamination from oil and gas companies eager to drill despite the risk to the fish. Their populations are only just beginning to be seen in the wild, but their recovery is still dependent on hatchery support and a clean, flowing river. Photo: Razorback Sucker

Conclusion and Recommendations We cannot save the Colorado River without combating corporate power

The Colorado River is deeply in crisis, and the solutions are already known. The arid U.S. West cannot sustain the factory farm system as water shortages continue. States must immediately de-prioritize wasteful industries such as large-scale alfalfa, nut trees, and mega-dairies. Each of these only contributes to worsening drought and climate change along the river, and continuing along this path only leads to harming communities and ecosystems that are struggling to survive in a hotter climate.

As Basin states and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation consider how best to move forward with allocations beyond 2026, state leaders must take this opportunity to radically rethink how water is used going forward in their states. Without drastic changes, there will not be enough water to sustain our future.

Food & Water Watch recommends:

At the federal level

Pass the Farm System Reform Act (FSRA) , which would put a moratorium on new and expanding factory farms and help transition dairy farmers away from factory farms. Pass a Farm Bill that incorporates the FSRA.

, which would put a moratorium on new and expanding factory farms and help transition dairy farmers away from factory farms. Pass a Farm Bill that incorporates the FSRA. Restrict federal conservation dollars from being used to prop up factory farms and alfalfa acreage.

from being used to prop up factory farms and alfalfa acreage. Restrict exports of alfalfa.

At the state level

Ban new mega-dairies and the expansion of existing ones.

and the expansion of existing ones. Stop new and expanding large-scale tree nut and alfalfa acreage.

large-scale tree nut and alfalfa acreage. Help transition small and medium-sized growers to more geographically appropriate and resilient crops.

to more geographically appropriate and resilient crops. Improve water management practices by defining all water as a public trust resource, not a commodity subject to resource extraction at the expense of the public.

Tell authorities to take these steps and protect the Colorado River! SEND MESSAGE

Protecting Our Water for Future Generations

Protecting water during climate change is one of the most important challenges of our time. Whether it’s droughts, floods, wildfires, rising sea levels or changes in the ocean food chain – climate change affects every place we have water. We’re in a water crisis and we need to act like it.

The foundation’s Environment strategy seeks lasting water solutions in three key geographies: the Colorado River Basin, the Mississippi River Basin and our Oceans. Our goal is to make sure there is enough healthy, available water for people and nature to thrive together. To meet this challenge, we need the best ideas from everyone. Big decisions to protect water must include those closest to the problem.

To learn how to grow enough food, while protecting soil and water – we listen to farmers. To keep enough fish in the ocean — we listen to fishermen. To find ways to use less water in the West – we learn from tribal nations. They have lived there longer than anyone else.

Together, we can make lasting progress to create a secure water future. We measure progress by the increasing use of conservation solutions that benefit nature and people, the number of wetland acres or river miles restored and the recovery of depleted fisheries.