Week Seven in El Paso--The Borderland

This week I want to talk about El Paso as the Borderland and the importance of the immigration issue here. 

El Paso is really a blended city that is influenced greatly by its proximately to Juarez, Mexico. I’ve read that more than half of the population here has some familial roots in Mexico and that manifests itself in several ways. First, when you visit a store, restaurant or the UTEP campus, you are as likely to hear people speaking Spanish as English.

Second, when you visit certain parts of the city, you notice that many if not the majority of the merchants’ signs are in Spanish.

I’m taking classes in a program at UTEP for people over 50 and several of them have talked about “the good old days” when you could cross the border with minimal waiting to have your ID checked. One man said he worked in downtown El Paso and he and his co-workers often went to Ciudad Juarez for lunch. Another said he rode his motorcycle across the bridge into Juarez to shop for groceries that were much cheaper on the Mexican side of the border.

All this changed several decades ago with the rise of the Mexican drug cartels and the US government’s war on drugs. Now, it takes a lot longer to enter the US from Mexico, even if you are a US citizen. The border control agents now spend more time checking passports, vehicles and inquiring about purchases. So, for most of the day there are now multiple long lines of cars and trucks at the main boarder crossing.

Also, Juarez is much more dangerous than it used to be. As of March 5, there have been 90 homicides in Juarez so far this year. Many of these killings are execution-style and related to the drug trade. However, El Paso’s overall crime rate remains relatively low, 27 percent below the average for Texas and 20 percent below the national average according to the website areavibes.com.

There are two other border crossings in the El Paso area, but one of them in on the east side of the city closes in the overnight hours and the other is in Santa Teresa, NM, about 20 miles west of downtown El Paso.

What has happened is the number of large groups of immigrants crossing the border is growing. These immigrants are mostly from Honduras and Guatemala, two places where criminal gangs have made these countries unsafe. One news report said the number of large groups has increased because the smugglers are telling their “clients” that people accompanied by minor children will be admitted to the US automatically, which is not true.

Boarder patrol officials have confirmed a significant increase in large groups, defined as larger than 100 persons, trying to enter the US. This week, there were a total of about 1,000 people apprehended in one day entering the El Paso area in several groups.

The obvious problem for the federal government and the city of El Paso is dealing with the humanitarian needs of these immigrants while their cases are adjudicated—a process that may take several months. One proposal is to used a closed manufacturing plant, where Hoover vacuum cleaners were once made, as a processing center. Authorities say the facility could hold up to 800 people at a time.

Now, I need to disclose that in 1986 Pam and I travelled to Honduras and adopted an infant boy and brought him home to the US. Our son Brian became a US citizen at the age of two and is a great source of pride and joy for us. So, when I see videos of the young children in these immigrant “caravans”, it really upsets me.

Another misunderstanding about the current wave of immigrants is that they are criminals and bringing illegal drugs into the US. Of the 1,000 immigrants who entered the US this week in the El Paso area, only two of them had criminal records and a third person was a US citizen who may face charges for not entering the country through border control.

One class I took at UTEP was taught by Alfredo Arroyo, a 30-year agent with the DEA (U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration) who is now retired. He said that about 95 percent of the illegal drugs entering the U.S. from Mexico come in hidden in trucks and cars passing through the border checkpoints.

In a previous blog I detailed how he said drug gangs were getting the VIN numbers of frequent American visitors to Juarez and making duplicate remote lock openers for their cars. They would put drugs in the trunk of unsuspecting Americans’ cars in Mexico and then retrieve the shipment once the driver returned to the US.

He said the amount coming in with immigrants crossing the border on foot is insignificant.

The solution to this problem rests with countries such as Honduras and Guatemala being able to neutralize the gangs and restore safety and security for their citizens. The other solution lies with the US to effectively reduce the domestic consumption of drugs by our citizens, thus curtailing the market for the Mexican cartels.

In El Paso, both Republican and Democratic politicians, and many people who live near the border or further away mostly say they are in not in favor of a big wall. For the past four centuries, the character of this area is that people here are residents of a blended cultural society (called “Mex-America” by some experts). After all, the southern half of Texas used to be part of Mexico. Many long-time El Paso residents feel a large, impenetrable wall isn’t necessary and would change the unique character of the Borderland for the worse.

I’ll have more next week.