Before massacre, El Paso became a hot spot on Mexican border

EL PASO, Texas — Deny Martinez paid a smuggler $7,000 to take him and his teenage son from Honduras to the Mexican side of the Rio Grande, across from El Paso, Texas. His smuggler’s destination was Ciudad Juarez, Mexico: a dry river basin in view of El Paso’s downtown office towers.

The channel crosses the city and, at one point, is less than 3 miles from the Walmart where a gunman attacked shoppers on Saturday, resulting in 22 deaths.

An unprecedented wave of Central American families has reached the U.S. border this year — most strikingly in El Paso, where the suspected assailant was linked to an online screed against a “Hispanic invasion” and Latino asylum seekers.

It is unknown why the gunman traveled from his hometown near Dallas to El Paso, but the border city of 700,000 people has become a hotbed for immigrant crossings after years of being one of the sleepiest locations on the border.

With smugglers often dictating the route, Central Americans find they can easily cross the driedup Rio Grande in El Paso with young children.

Then they wait for Border Patrol agents to arrest them and to be released to a robust network of private shelters in the city.

Martinez, 34, was freed with his 14-year-old son after four days in U.S. custody and given a notice to appear in immigration court. He came for economic reasons and had no plans to seek asylum.

“I feel very happy to be in the country,” he said on a Sunday night in April before boarding a Dallas-bound bus. “Let’s see how much time they give me here.”