Borderlands // 48x24" // Acrylic // 2017

The Real ID Act, passed in 2005, was an act constructed to make it more difficult for terrorists and illegal immigrants to enter the country. Embedded in this act is a provision that allows the Attorney General or the head of the Department of Homeland Security to waive federal laws that would interfere with the construction of walls and barriers at the US border. Later that year, thirty-seven federal laws, including the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and the American Indian Religious Act were waived in order to fill in vital estuaries and build a wall on top of them. The waiver was enacted again in 2007 and 2008 to build walls across diverse and fragile ecosystems all along the US-Mexico border. Because of these walls that cut across supposedly federally protected lands, the US population of the critically endangered Sonoran Pronghorn (fastest land mammal in North America) has been cut off from it's Mexican sister population. Without the ability to migrate and interbreed, our Pronghorns will die out very soon. The largely ineffective walls we are building to keep out terrorists serve as an insurmountable barrier to literally thousands of mammal, reptile, and bird species that migrate from Mexico to the deserts in the Southwest US every year. When we voted to enact these 37 laws protecting the environment and indigenous people, we sent a clear message to our government as to what we care about. The Real ID Act made it possible for one person to waive the will of the American people and wipe out innumerable animals in order to propagate fear and fulfill government contracts.