A fence blocked their view, so the activists climbed on top of their trucks. They hoisted up a theater lamp and pointed it over the top of the fence, across the border at the 30-foot prototypes of the U.S. government’s proposed border wall.
Dusk fell. They slid in a metal stencil and flipped on the lamp, shining their message onto the concrete.
Build Bridges, Not Borders, the wall seemed to declare. #RefugeesWelcome. #NoOneIsIllegal.
Jill Marie Holslin and an activist group called the Overpass Light Brigade stood on their trucks in Tijuana, Mexico, on Saturday, projecting their protest onto segments of the wall they opposed. They covered the prototypes with white light: the Statue of Liberty, a lucha libre mask, a ladder that stretched to the top of the wall.
“The federal government has this very inflated idea of its power, of the massive power of these prototypes, the massive power of this border wall to supposedly seal the border,” Holslin said. “We wanted to deflate that in a humorous way.”
Holslin, an American artist and professor who lives in Tijuana, spends her days exploring the landscapes of Baja California. She fills her website with photos of Tijuana’s urban art and growing culture, trying to push the city’s reputation away from its lecherous past.
For months Holslin studied the area where the rough drafts of President Trump’s proposed border wall would stand. When construction of the prototypes began in San Diego, she made sure to be one of the first activists to publish a photo of them. Then she started planning her protest.
She wanted something harmless, something that could make her point without vandalizing federal property. Something local. Something that crossed borders.
Then the Overpass Light Brigade called. The Wisconsin-based group wanted to bring its projector to the border. Holslin suggested they work together.
They met in Tijuana a week before the demonstration, creating stencils and planning a response if Border Patrol agents or Mexican police confronted them. Holslin decided not to give the neighborhood advance notice, in case their lights led to trouble.
“We expected some kind of pushback,” Holslin said. “But we got absolutely nothing.”
When the light came on, just after 4 p.m. Saturday, nobody seemed to notice. The Mexican police didn’t confront them. A Border Patrol truck parked by one of the walls didn’t stir.
The Arizona Republic contacted Customs and Border Protection for comment, but the agency has not yet responded.
They shined their messages, one after another. Holslin snapped photos from atop her truck. A freelance journalist filmed everything. A video was posted later on YouTube.
After 25 minutes, the battery on their lamp started to fade. It announced its death with a series of loud beeps. The noise alerted a Border Patrol officer, and soon a searchlight flashed on, aimed directly at the activists.
The activists turned their own lamp toward the Border Patrol officer, and for a moment they froze, the two lights streaming at each other across the border.
