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US Border Patrol Allows Replanting After Bulldozing Garden

Associated Press

   SAN DIEGO - The U.S. Border Patrol, reacting to a breach it discovered
   in a steel-pole border wall believed to be used by smugglers, gave
   activists no warning this month when it bulldozed the U.S. side of a
   cross-border garden on an iconic bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

   On Saturday, after a public apology for "the unintentional
   destruction," the agency allowed the activists into a highly restricted
   area to plant stickymonkey-flowers, seaside daisies and other native
   species in Friendship Park, which was inaugurated by first lady Pat
   Nixon in 1971 as a symbol of bilateral bonds. The half-acre plaza
   separating San Diego and Tijuana has hosted cross-border yoga classes,
   festivals and religious services.

   The garden's rebirth is the latest twist in a sometimes adversarial,
   sometimes conciliatory relationship between security-minded border
   agents and activists who consider the park a special place to exercise
   rights to free expression.

   "It's hard to reconcile because we have two different agendas, but
   we're both in the same place, so we're trying our best," said Daniel
   Watman, a Spanish teacher who spearheads the garden for the volunteer
   group, Friends of Friendship Park.

   During an art festival in 2005, David Smith Jr., known as "The Human
   Cannonball," flashed his passport, lowered himself into a barrel and
   was shot over the wall on the nearby beach, landing on a net with U.S.
   Border Patrol agents nearby. In 2017, professional swimmers crossed the
   border from the U.S. in the Pacific Ocean and landed on the same beach,
   where a Mexican official greeted them with stamped passports and
   schoolchildren cheered.

   Some events rejected

   The Border Patrol has been less receptive to events that carry an
   overtly political message or that, in its view, take things too far. In
   2017, it rejected the Dresdner Symphony Orchestra's plans for a
   cross-border concert named "Tear Down This Wall." It also nixed a "Let
   Them Hug" signature campaign to allow "touch time" across the border on
   weekends.

   Agents briefly opened a heavy steel gate several times a year but ended
   the practice after an American man and Mexican woman wed in a
   cross-border ceremony in 2017. They were furious to learn later that
   the groom was a convicted drug smuggler whose criminal record
   prohibited him from entering Mexico.

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