A Growing Public Health Crisis: A Conversation with Dr. Alexander Tenorio on Border Wall Injuries
A Growing Public Health Crisis: A Conversation with Dr. Alexander Tenorio on Border Wall Injuries
“I feel it’s my duty to notify the world of the atrocities that are occurring because of the border wall extension, and the increase in the border wall height," he says.
Appears in this episode
In 2020, Dr. Alexander Tenorio, a neurosurgeon based in San Diego, noticed a sharp increase in people suffering traumatic brain and spinal injuries. These cases, he soon discovered, were the result of people falling from the newly expanded and elevated border wall.
Under the Trump administration, the border wall’s height was raised to 30 feet, which has challenged border hospitals and had deadly consequences for migrants. Falls from the border wall have left many paralyzed or unable to function independently. Most of the injured are in their 20s and 30s and are their families’ breadwinners, so the debilitating injuries have a devastating ripple effect throughout communities.
In April, Tenorio wrote an opinion editorial for the Los Angeles Times about the record number of traumatic injuries he’s treated due to falls from the border wall. In the editorial, he cited a recent report by the Mexican government that 646 Mexican nationals were hurt or killed crossing the border from 2020 to 2022, and that the main cause of injury “was wall-related.”
Tenorio and other physicians and researchers are studying the phenomenon. To date, they’ve published two studies looking at patients on the California-Mexico border, and Tenorio says they plan to extend their research to include the rest of the nearly 2,000-mile-long border, as well as cases from Mexico.
“As a neurosurgeon,” Tenorio says, “I feel it’s my duty to notify the world of the atrocities that are occurring because of the border wall extension. The increase in the border wall height has led to a humanitarian crisis and international public health crisis.”
A Growing Public Health Crisis: A Conversation with Dr. Alexander Tenorio on Border Wall Injuries
Dr. Tenorio is scheduled to testify at the 7-18- 2023 House Homeland Security “Opening the Flood Gates: Biden’s Broken Border Barrier”. From his prepared testimony on HS website: "Conclusion
Ultimately, these raised border walls have resulted in a record number of traumatic injuries,
increased severity and mortality, and increased economic burden to our hospital systems.
As a neurosurgeon, I must reveal this untold human suffering and strain on financially strapped
hospital systems to our nation. I fear this trend will only get worse without any current system in
place to analyze the full extent of the humanitarian and economic costs of border infrastructure
policies to help determine sensible alternative solutions.
Thank you to both Subcommittees for inviting me to testify today, and I hope the Subcommittees
do all within their power to recognize the harms of the border wall on human lives and our
hospital systems.
Respectfully submitted by:
Dr. Alexander Tenorio, MD"
I suppose that those particularly conscience-free American people who ordered, paid for and built this wall would argue that anyone foolish enough to climb it deserves no sympathy. As they argue to support all the US empire's crimes against the poor of the world. Pointing out to American fascists the horrific consequences of this wall only delights them more. Better arguments and evidence are only of use to those already on the Left and have no positive effect on fascists who are, generally, of a psychopathic mindset. Ending this wall requires changing the power systems of the USA. You know: revolutionary socialism of the working class. NGOs don't take part in that.