You turn to us for voices you won't hear anywhere else.

Sign up for Democracy Now!'s Daily Digest to get our latest headlines and stories delivered to your inbox every day.

Trump Reportedly Asked Spain to Build 3,000-Mile Wall Across Sahara Desert

HeadlineSep 21, 2018

Spain’s foreign minister has revealed President Trump recently urged Spain to build a wall across the Sahara desert in Africa to stop the flow of asylum seekers from Africa. Spain—which does not control any land in the Sahara desert—pushed back on the idea. Trump then reportedly said, “The Sahara border can’t be bigger than our border with Mexico.” In fact, the Sahara stretches for about 3,000 miles from Mauritania and occupied Western Sahara on the Atlantic to Sudan in the east. The U.S.-Mexico border is roughly 2,000 miles long. The second-longest wall in the world already exists in Africa. Morocco built a 1,700-mile wall or berm in occupied Western Sahara, dividing Sahrawis who remain under occupation from those who fled into exile. To see Democracy Now’s special documentary, “Four Days in Occupied Western Sahara—A Rare Look Inside Africa’s Last Colony,” click here.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Non-commercial news needs your support

We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work.
Please do your part today.
Make a donation
Top