Radio Topia.

From PRX.

From PRX's Radiotopia, this is Radio Diaries.

I'm Joe Richman.

In 2006, President Bush signed a law to begin building an 18-foot-high fence along a few key parts of the U.S.-Mexico border.

The project went by different names, Operation Gatekeeper in California, Operation Safeguard in Arizona,

and in Texas they called it Operation Hold the Line.

Today, that fence looks like a somewhat random dotted line, covers about a third of the entire border.

And the border fence has always been controversial, but it's based on a very human impulse

to have an actual physical barrier that marks the imaginary one on the map.

It's a simple idea, and like most things, it turned out to not be so simple.

Hello. Hello, is this Pam to not be so simple. Hello.

Hello, is this Pamela Taylor?

It is.

So can you tell me where you are right now?

I'm in my living room.

I'm looking out the window.

I see my front yard, and beyond that is the fence.

It is huge iron, about 20 feet tall. The fence was put in there by Homeland

Security. Pamela Taylor is 86 years old. You may have noticed she has a slight British

accent, but she's an American citizen. After World War II, she married an American, and they

moved to a small brick house outside of Brownsville, Texas.

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