El Paso residents, proud of cross-border spirit, say they don’t need a wall
People walking over the Paso del Norte Bridge linking the West Texas border city of El Paso to Mexico get an idea of what President Donald Trump’s border wall might look like.
Trump wants a 1600km wall along the United States’ 3150km border with Mexico. While no new stretches of wall have been built since Trump took office at the start of 2016, some portions of the existing 1050km of fencing and barriers are being replaced, including a section at El Paso.
Workers in the border city can be seen digging trenches, pouring concrete and erecting rust-coloured slabs of 5.5-high metal to replace layers of barbed wire-topped fencing along the Rio Grande, which is usually little more than a trickle.
Most of the more than 70,000 people who legally cross four city bridges daily — to shop, go to school and work — pay the construction little attention. But on a recent weekday, one man stopped and pointed, saying simply, “Trump.”
In his State of the Union address, the President said a “powerful barrier” had cut crime rates in El Paso. He’s holding a rally there today to show why he’s demanding the wall, costing US$5.7 billion ($8.4b), along the border, despite opposition from Democrats and some Republicans in Congress.
But many in this city of dusty desert winds and blistering salsa bristle at the prospect of their home becoming a border wall poster child.
Trump said barriers turned El Paso from one of the nation’s most dangerous cities to one of its safest, but that’s not true. El Paso, with a population of around 800,000, had a murder rate of less than half the national average in 2005, a year before the most recent expansion of its border fence. That’s despite being just across the border from drug violenceplagued Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
Many residents say El Paso embodies a cross-border spirit that transcends walls rather than proving more are needed.
“The richest of the rich, the poorest of the poor, we all have different reasons for wanting to cross, and people cross every day,” said El Paso City Council member Peter Svarzbein.
El Paso lays bare the mixed feelings the border inspires.
Even native Beto O’Rourke, a former Democratic congressman now mulling a presidential run, says barriers are inevitable but that Trump’s calls for an expanded wall are the “cynical rhetoric of war, of invasions, of fear”. O’Rourke will help lead a march today opposing the wall with dozens of local civic, human rights and Hispanic groups at the same time Trump is holding his rally.
For centuries, virtually nothing but an often easily wadable Rio Grande stood between the city and Juarez. But worsening economic problems in Mexico increased the flow of immigrants into the US in the 1970s, prompting Congress to approved chain-link fencing in El Paso and in San Diego dubbed the “Tortilla Curtain”. More barriers were added in the 1990s and 2006.
Public reaction to the security measures initially was positive in some quarters because it helped reduce vagrancy and petty crime. But many residents now complain that Trump’s demands have gone too far.
“The border is fluid culturally, economically,” said Cesar Blanco, a Democratic lawmaker who lives a stone’s throw from the wall. “We are a binational community.”
Those who live near the wall say they see few people climbing the barriers now. In fiscal year 2017, about 25,000 people were apprehended in
Border Patrol’s El Paso sector, down from 122,000-plus in fiscal year 2006.
Instead, those crossing illegally now tend to do so in desolate deserts where deaths from exposure have risen. Democrats say electronic sensors and patrols are a more effective answer for additional border security.
The demand for more and bigger walls is “the supreme symbol of racism”, said Fernando Garcia, executive director of the Border Network for Human Rights in El Paso.
Many Republicans, though, insist the low crime rate here is not a coincidence. “There are regular shootouts near the border, dangerous narcotics trafficked,” said recently elected Republican Congressman Chip Roy, who represents a district between Austin and San Antonio. “The good news is that we can stop this.”
The richest of the rich, the poorest of the poor, we all have different reasons for wanting to cross, and people cross every day.
Peter Svarzbein