Fencing off the highways worked.
While politicians are embroiled in a polarized national debate over immigration, an iconic road sign cautioning drivers near the San Diego border to watch for migrants running across the highway has quietly disappeared.
The “immigrant crossing” signs have become obsolete, said Cathryne Bruce-Johnson, a spokeswoman for Caltrans. The transportation department stopped replacing the signs years ago because it constructed fences along medians to deter people from running across highways.
The last sign, which stood on the side of Interstate 5 near the San Ysidro border crossing, vanished in September.
“It’s gone,” Bruce-Johnson said. “Caltrans crews did not remove it, so it’s assumed stolen.”
Signs are more often damaged or vandalized than stolen, according to Bruce-Johnson, but when they are taken, there isn’t much Caltrans can do to get them back.
California Highway Patrol sergeant Dan Kyle said that officers who worked during the years before the fences were added recalled responding weekly to several fatal collisions between cars and unauthorized immigrants on the highway in San Ysidro.[…]
The sign’s image has been the source of controversy, with some seeing it as an offensive caricature of Mexican immigrants.
Justin Akers Chacón, a professor of Chicano studies at San Diego City College, said critics of the sign’s imagery felt that it dehumanized migrants by likening them to animals.
Critics are also bothered by the way the sign’s message fit into the immigration enforcement system.
“The deaths of migrant crossers was treated as an acceptable consequence of the enforcement model, not a reflection of the failure of the model,” Akers Chacón said.
An early version of the sign was entirely text: “Caution watch for people crossing road.”
Motorists weren’t able to read and process that sign quickly enough, so Caltrans asked artist John Hood to design an image to convey the message.
“It doesn’t just mean they are running across the freeway,” Hood told the Union-Tribune in 2005, describing his choice of imagery. “It means they are running from something else as well. I think it’s a struggle for a lot of things, for opportunities, for freedom.”
Caltrans installed 10 signs, focusing on areas like San Ysidro and the San Clemente checkpoint where migrants were known to cross the interstate on foot frequently.