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Sending your own member of Congress—and other Congressional leaders—a handwritten card or letter, can be one of the most effective ways to let them know you care about the borderlands.

Letters and cards are the most effective, but email and comments on their websites are also effective.

You can write a general letter, voicing your opposition to the border wall and urging your elected officials to take all actions to stop construction. Or, you can cover specific points and ask them to take specific actions.

Here are a few specific points you might want to make:

• Border walls threaten the survival of thousands of species along the 2,000-mile US-Mexico border by cutting off critical pathways between food, water, and mates. Wildlife species include jaguars, ocelots, Mexican gray wolves, Sonoran pronghorn and 100 other species that are already threatened with extinction.

• Border walls accelerate the death rate of human migrants. Since the 1990s, more than 8000 human migrants have died trying to cross this border, according to Border Patrol’s own figures. Many independent researchers believe the number may be much higher. Border walls and militarization increase the likelihood migrants will die on the journey, as they brave more and more remote areas in their desperate search for safety.

• Border wall is being constructed in violation of dozens of federal laws. More than 40 laws that protect land, waters, wildlife and human health, as well as cultural antiquities, have been waived to build border wall. The federal government is destroying the borderlands with utter disregard for the consequences.

• Border walls are a waste of taxpayer money. Since expansive border wall construction began in 2006, there has been no data to support the notion that walls effectively block people from entering the country. Thousands of ladders have been found from people going over, dozens of tunnels from people going under. Walls don’t stop people.

• Border walls erode borderlands communities. For hundreds of years, the border has been a land of connections and cultural richness. Many borderlands residents have friends and family on either side of this line and border barriers are continuously eroding their communities.

• Border walls undermine the rights of native people. Several native communities span the border and their ties to this land predate the United States by thousands of years. The federal government should not be militarizing and dividing native lands.

And here are a few specific actions you can ask them to take:

• Oppose all future funding for border barrier construction and work to rescind funding that was provided in previous budgets. (Find out how they voted on the 2018 budget, which included $1.6 billion for border wall construction).

• Work to revoke the RealID Act provision that allows the Department of Homeland Security to waive all laws in order to expedite construction of a border wall. (Information on the RealID Act, and a bill that would revoke this authority.)

• Demand that they ask their party leaders to stop supporting border wall, and to bring up the issue of wall construction in the upcoming presidential debates.