Laredo resident Blasito Lopez told MSNBC on Wednesday that President Donald Trump's wall would kill her city's cultural character, and that is was not the solution she was looking for.
"I don't feel like I live in an unsafe community," Lopez, a mother of four who has lived and worked in Laredo for 20 years, told reporter Mariana Atencio. "I feel like part of that picture being portrayed last night is very far removed from the reality of my city and my community."
Lopez, who works in tourism, said "it would truly impact" her business.
"There is an image that we have, and this binational vitality that you see right here where we're at? That happens every day," she said. "If you put a wall right in the middle of that, that will take away from that life, from that fluidity of the binational and that bicultural essence that we have."
She added that Laredo was not the only border city that would suffer.
"Laredo, along with many other communities along this U.S.-Mexico border, [has] that interchange every day and a wall is just going to take completely away from that," she lamented. "it is not the solution to the crimes and safety issues that have come forward in this rhetoric."
