El Paso not impressed
Residents cite cooperative spirit
Residents bristle at claim that Trump’s wall made city safe
EL PASO — People walking over the Paso del Norte Bridge linking this West Texas border city to Mexico can watch President Donald Trump’s border wall getting bigger in real time.
Workers are digging trenches, pouring concrete and erecting rust-colored slabs of 18-foot-high metal to replace layers of barbed wire-topped fencing along the mud-colored Rio Grande.
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 no mind. 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 here today to show why he’s demanding more than 100 miles of new walls, costing $5.7 billion, along the 1,900-mile border.
But many in the city, 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, population around 800,000, had a murder rate 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 Juárez, Mexico.
Many residents say El Paso embodies a cross-border spirit that transcends walls rather than proving more are needed.
Beto O’Rourke, a former Democratic congressman, will lead a march this evening opposing the wall with dozens of local civic, human rights and Hispanic groups at the same time the president is holding his rally.
For centuries, virtually nothing but an often easily wadable Rio Grande stood between the city and Juárez. But worsening economic problems in Mexico increased the flow of immigrants into the United States in the 1970s, prompting Congress to approved chain-link fencing here and in San Diego. More barriers were added in the 1990s and 2006.
Public reaction to the security measures was initially positive because it helped reduce vagrancy and petty crime. But many residents now complain that Trump’s demands have gone too far, making their home sound like a war zone.
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 outside the city in desolate deserts where deaths from exposure have risen. Democrats argue that electronic sensors and patrols are a more effective answer for additional border security.
Many Republicans, though, insist the low crime rate here is not a coincidence.
“There are regular shoot-outs 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,” Roy said in a post-State of the Union email championing a Trump-backed wall.