Border voters largely reject Trump’s caravan scare tactic

If Americans living along the Mexican border were frightened by President Donald’s Trump’s dire warnings about the caravan of refugees headed toward the U.S., they didn’t register that fear on Election Day.

In an election seen by some as a referendum on Trump and his policies, residents of 17 of the 23 counties closest to the Mexican border in New Mexico, Texas, Arizona and California voted for Democrats in statewide contests. Most border voters favored candidates who rejected Trump’s characterization of asylum-seeking refugees as criminals, opposed his plan for a border wall and said foreign-born children brought to the U.S. illegally by their parents should be allowed to stay.

The so-called blue wave was strongest in New Mexico, where Democrats won 13 statewide elections and flipped the formerly Republican 2nd Congressional District, which encompasses all three of the state’s border counties — Doña Ana, Luna and Hidalgo.

From South Texas to Southern California, most border counties tend to vote Democratic, but

Trump’s emphasis on the caravan making its way to the U.S. border from Central America in late October and early November — which has since reached border towns of Mexicali and Tijuana — seemed to target Democratic politicians by accusing them of opening the border to criminal immigrants.

Critics say it was a scare tactic that could only succeed in places where people have comparatively little contact with immigrants from south of the border. In states where lives and livelihoods are often intertwined along the border and many residents must balance security concerns with the importance of good working relationships with their neighbors in Mexico, the strategy failed.

“Trying to make those poor people out as criminals is ridiculous,” said Arizona cattle rancher Bill McDonald, referring to Trump’s comments about the Latin American refugees making their way north. McDonald, who lives seven miles from the Mexican border outside Douglas, Ariz., is a conservative Republican who said he did not vote for Trump.

There is no wall along the border east of Douglas where McDonald lives, only vehicle barriers that he says are adequate.

“I don’t think a wall would do a thing for us,” he said. “Anyone who can make his way through this country, mountainous as it is, will be able to get over a wall.”

Kelly Glenn-Kimbro, a neighbor who said she did vote for Trump, agreed.

“I sent emails to every politician I knew urging them to tell Trump that this kind of wall is not feasible,” she said. “A lot of us who voted for Trump down here feel that way.”

Richard Winkler, a schoolteacher who lives close to the border in New Mexico’s Hidalgo County, said that while border security has been on people’s minds, other issues matter more.

“For me and a lot of other people, school funding is more important,” he said. “With school budgets shrinking, with no money for books in some cases, I don’t see spending millions on a wall that is not effective in remote country like there is down here.”

In New Mexico, a statewide poll conducted in September by Research and Polling Inc. of Albuquerque found that about two-thirds of people surveyed said border security was a serious concern, but 56 percent said they were opposed to a border wall.

Candidates who stressed education, health care and employment tended to fare especially well in border counties across the four states that border Mexico. The most notable exception to the trend was Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican who won re-election easily with Trump’s support and with the backing of most voters in the state’s border counties.

Yet even Ducey sought to soften his image as a hard-liner on immigration and border security. He said children brought to this country illegally should not be punished for the actions of their parents. He said he supported the border wall as long it did not damage Arizona’s business relationship with Mexico.

The potential for economic growth on both sides of the border is huge, according to a study by the Perryman Group, an economic and financial analysis firm based in Waco, Texas. The study projects employment growth on the U.S. side between 700,000 and 1.4 million jobs, providing new barriers are not put in the way of economic integration.

“Cross-border activities range from crossing to shop or visit friends or relatives to utilizing supply chains, which include communities on both sides of the border,” the firm’s CEO, M. Ray Perryman, said in a recent interview. “Any political actions or policies which reduce integration, such as the border wall or military presence, would have a decidedly negative effect on the economy.”

The wall — actually a collection of unconnected walls, fences and barriers of various types — now extends across about one-third of the nearly 2,000-mile boundary between the U.S. and Mexico. The first sections were constructed in the early 1990s, a time when well over 1 million people a year were illegally crossing. Since 2000, however, that number has dramatically dropped.

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics, about 362,000 people have been apprehended for crossing illegally so far this year. The Texas Border Coalition, among other groups, attributes the decline to the efforts of law enforcement and to increasingly sophisticated cameras and sensors.

Others give Trump credit for discouraging illegal entries.

“Trump’s talk about getting tough on illegals pretty well shut down the border in 2017,” said John Ladd, a rancher in southeastern Arizona whose land runs along the border for about 10 miles. Ladd also agrees with Trump’s assessment of the migrant caravan.

“There isn’t any doubt in my mind that the women and children are being used as shields for the bad guys,” Ladd said. His belief is based on his own observations over the past year: “Most of the ones I see are carrying drugs or guns.”

But Ladd is not a fan of the wall.

In order to cross his property, migrants must first scale an 18-foot-high wall made of steel tubing. “When the government first described it to me, I thought, sure, that ought to work,” Ladd said. “But with ladders and ropes, they’re over that wall in 30 seconds. It didn’t work. It’s not the answer.”