Before massacre, El Paso became a hot spot on border
EL PASO» Deny Martinez paid a smuggler $7,000 to take him and his teenage son from Honduras to the Mexico side of the Rio Grande, across from the West Texas city of El Paso.
His smuggler’s destination was Ciudad Juarez in Mexico — a dry river basin in view of El Paso’s downtown office towers. The channel crosses the city and, at one point, is fewer than 3 miles from the Walmart where a gunman attacked shoppers 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 dried-up 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-yearold 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.”
Agents in the Border Patrol’s El Paso sector made as many arrests during the entire 2012 fiscal year as they averaged in a single week in May. The sector saw a more than sevenfold increase in apprehensions from October through June, compared with the same period a year earlier.
The Border Patrol released a grainy surveillance video of more than 1,000 people crossing the border illegally in El Paso on May 29, the largest group the agency ever encountered. Armed militia members started flocking to the desert on the outskirts of El Paso this past spring, including one group that detained 300 migrants. The group posted a Facebook Live video of the encounter in which militia members repeatedly described it as an “invasion.”
President Donald Trump planned to visit the city Wednesday amid backlash from some El Paso residents who believe his hard-line immigration rhetoric has helped fuel the online vitriol associated with the Walmart gunman. Trump held a rally here in February and invoked El Paso during his State of the Union speech in making the case for his border wall, drawing criticism because he overstated the city’s crime rate.
With a population that is 80% Latino, El Paso is one of the most heavily Hispanic big cities in America and one of the safest. It holds deep significance for many MexicanAmericans.
The desert oasis’ economy depends on Mexican factories and shoppers who frequently cross the border to shop in El Paso, and many residents have close ties to neighboring Ciudad Juarez. Eight Mexican citizens were killed in Saturday’s massacre.
El Paso’s enduring connection to Mexico plays out in daily rituals of education, family and commerce. After the bells ring in El Paso high schools, the international bridges become a sea of backpacks, with hundreds of American students going home to their families in Ciudad Juarez. Pesos and dollars are accepted on both sides of the border.
Thousands of residents have a border fence as their backyard. Mexican architecture shapes the city, from opulent missionstyle haciendas in the hills to humble adobe houses.
“Our diversity is what makes us special,” Mayor Dee Margo said Monday.