A D&S Special Report

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A Tale of Twin Cities: How Politics and the Pandemic Are Affecting Binational Life at the U.S.-Mexico Border

Upon entering El Paso from the El Norte border crossing, people pass under a welcome sign over El Paso Street, a popular shopping area. (Photo by Andrea Gabor)

By Melissa Bacian and Sophia Carnabuci

For Willivaldo Delgadillo, a writer and professor at the University of Texas at El Paso, growing up as binational citizen in the El Paso-Ciudad Juarez region never felt like he was setting foot in another country.

“I always think of certain areas of El Paso not as El Paso but as ‘North Juarez.’ And of course, Juarez is really influenced by El Paso and the United States,” said Delgadillo, 59, who is a U.S. citizen and currently lives in Juarez. “If you cross the bridge, just because it’s another country, you have to show your passport and sometimes there are very long lines to cross, but if you just go, in either direction, it still feels like it’s part of the same city.”

The symbiotic relationship between El Paso and Juarez is one that runs through many Mexican-Americans like Delgadillo.

“(It’s) sort of hard to understand if you’re not from the border where people literally have a piece of the family in each country, and not that they’re communicating to each other through WhatsApp or sending packages on Christmas, or whatever, but literally visiting every weekend,” said Josiah Heyman, an anthropology professor at UTEP who studies border issues.

But the ties have been tested in recent years with the surge of Central American migrants and refugees who have passed through the two cities, the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration and the mass shooting at an El Paso Walmart. In mid-March, The Trump administration shut down all nonessential crossings on the southern and northern borders, including shoppers, visitors, tourists and migrants, in an attempt to stop the spread of the coronavirus, further scrambling the life of binationals in the El Pass-Juarez region.

A mural depicting the twin-city relationship between El Paso and Juarez in El Paso’s El Segundo neighborhood, just steps from the Paso del Norte bridge connecting the two cities. (Photo by Vera Haller)

With no confirmation on the re-opening of the U.S.-Mexico border, the twin cities are temporarily separated, leaving the future of a long-standing binational culture uncertain.

Together, the two cities form a vibrant urban center spanning the border of western Texas and Mexico. Juarez’s population is more than 1.3 million, making it the eighth largest in Mexico, according to the Center for Interdisciplinary Health Research and Evaluation at UTEP. El Paso has a population of almost 840,000 residents, according to the U.S Census Bureau.

El Paso is located far from other large metropolitan areas – about a nine-hour drive from Dallas and eight hours from San Antonio, making its connection to Juarez even more important.

Before the coronavirus, crossing the border was a part of daily life for many. In 2019, more than 300,000 individuals legally crossed the El Paso Station, one of the sectors linking El Paso and Juarez, according to the Bureau of Transportation.

Friar Stephen Pitts, the religious education director at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in El Paso, described the unique relationship Juarez and El Paso have with one another. “It’s incredible to live in a bilingual place. People here want their kids to speak Spanish. It’s part of their culture they want to carry on,” he said. “People come from across the city to do their first communion or confirmation here because it’s a part of their heritage.”

Juarez and El Paso have a long and storied history dating back to the 1500s when Spanish explorers came across the two mountain ranges rising out of the desert with a deep chasm in between. They named the site El Paso del Norte (the Pass of the North: Modern day Juarez, El Paso and Chihuahua.)

In 1682, five settlements were founded south of the river – El Paso del Norte, San Lorenzo, Senecu, Ysleta and Socorro. The area soon became a trade center for agriculture and eventually became the region we know as Juarez.

But the cross-border nature of the two cities has long posed challenges as well.

Many in the region have been affected by violence in Juarez dating back to the late 1980s and drug trafficking organized by a group called the Juarez Cartel, run by Vincente Carrillo Fuentes. In the early 2000s, rival gang warfare between the Sinola and the Juarez Cartel caused an increase in crime in the city of Juarez. Though drug trafficking has not disappeared, there has been a notable decrease. This in turn, has helped tamp down other crimes; in 2010, 3,500 homicides were reported, while in 2014, it had dropped down to roughly 430 homicides.

Then in 2019, the surge of Central American migrants overwhelmed the social-service sector of El Paso. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection held over 13,400 migrants in custody at the time, including nearly 3,500 in El Paso. “A crisis level is 6,000; 13,000 is unprecedented,” stated border patrol commissioner Kevin McAleenan during a 2019 news conference.

The 30-foot-tall “Grand Candela” memorial in the parking lot of the Cielo Vista Walmart store in El Paso commemorates the victims of the Aug. 3, 2019, mass shooting. When illuminated at night, “the light transcends borders and connects our hearts as one community,” reads a plaque at the base of the memorial. (Photo by Vera Haller)

Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric also hit the El Paso-Juarez region particularly hard. When a man armed with an AK-47 walked into an El Paso Walmart and killed 22 people on Aug. 3, 2019, the attack was seen as a direct attack on the twin cities’ binational character.

The store, located in Cielo Vista, is the closest Walmart to the border and it is where many Juarez residents come to shop. Out of the 23 victims, eight of them were Mexican citizens, leading many to believe this was an attack on the Latino people.

For a month after the shooting, Friar Mario L. Serrano, who runs the Catholic Church’s ministry program at UTEP, went to the Walmart and walked through the store, lending help to anyone who needed it. “I often wondered what it was for Martin Luther King Jr. to minister in such a toxic environment,” said Serrano. “Or I don’t think I have to wonder anymore. Because that’s the reality, right? So many of them were just fearful right of saying like, Father Friar this is crazy, how can we address this?”

Now, the coronavirus has further disrupted life in the area. For many individuals, crossing the border is simply a means of getting to school, work or access to adequate health care. Store owners rely on profits from Juarez residents who come to El Paso to shop. Since the coronavirus outbreak began, resulting in the partial closure of the U.S-Mexico border, hundreds of binationals are left with no choice but to put an indefinite pause on their lives.

“More people come to the food pantry now with the pandemic,” said Pitts, noting that the church has moved food distribution to the outdoors. “The elderly that used to volunteer were all sent home and its parish employees doing it now. Some of the landlords are still trying to evict people, which is insane.”

The events of recent years have done much to change life at the border.

“When I was growing up, I remember we would go to Juarez and come back; it was very easy because there was a time when you wouldn’t even show a birth certificate,” recalls Joash Alanis, a student at UTEP, where more than 960 students out of the 25,000 have a permanent Juarez address, according to the university’s website.

Father Friar blessing incoming UTEP students who are part of the Catholic Church’s ministry program. (Handout photo from Father Friar)

Throughout the years, stricter measures have been set in place, making crossing between the intertwined cities a long and agonizing wait, especially for students who often have to wake up before sunrise to get to class on time.

A rally is held outside the Buddhist temple on the UTEP campus. The university’s architecture is styled after the Himalayan country of Bhutan. (Handout photo from Professor Heyman)

“I tutor at a middle school, and at that middle school there’s usually a lot of them that come from the other side of town,” said Alanis, noting that many of them will be falling asleep in the middle of class. “I’ll talk to the kids and be like, what’s going on? They’ll be like ‘I’m just so tired. I woke up at three in the morning.’”

Since the coronavirus pandemic began, UTEP has transitioned to distance learning. Professor Heyman described the existing efforts the university already had in place, prior to the coronavirus pandemic, to ensure its students would not fall behind. “Professors are aware of the fact that students have to work for a living, and that they’re commuting.”

Nonetheless, if the partial closure of the border wall becomes a complete closure, he is unsure of what the future might hold for binational individuals. “If they do something like that at the border, it’s going to have a whole bunch of wrenching effects on our students at the university, it’s going to have wrenching effects on binational families. It’s going to have an effect on the economy.”

Amanda Salazar and Anacaona Rodriguez Martinez contributed reporting to this story.

No-Vote Texas: The Roots of Voter Apathy in the Second Most Populous U.S. State

Bernie Sanders supporters fill the Abraham Chavez Theater in El Paso last February, seven weeks before the candidate suspended his campaign. Now Texas Democrats worry whether the party can recreate “that energy and enthusiasm” moving into the November elections. (Photo by Joe Moody)

By Jose Nieves Herrera and Catherine Chojnowski

One Saturday afternoon in February, Texas State Representative Joe Moody sat in the Abraham Chavez Theater in downtown El Paso surrounded by thousands of people, many of them young Latinos who were awaiting the arrival of Bernie Sanders. The theater was at full capacity. The energy and passion were palpable, recalls Moody.

The scene inside the theater appeared to defy a long history of voter apathy in Texas. “The saying you hear a lot is Texas isn’t a red state, Texas is a non-voting state,” said Moody, who represents Texas House District 78 in El Paso.

State Representative Joe Moody and his son attend the Bernie Sanders rally in El Paso in February. (Photo by Lyda Ness-Garcia)

However, that was seven weeks before Sanders suspended his campaign. Now Moody worries whether the Democrats will be able to recreate “that energy and enthusiasm” moving into the November elections.

Texas is the second most populous state in the United States. And, although the U.S. recorded the highest voter turnout in more than a century during the 2018 midterm elections, Texas had the third lowest voter turnout that year.

The stakes this coming November are exceptionally high. Texas has become a battleground for Democrats, even as the Covid-19 outbreak will likely hinder voter turnout in the midst of one of the most consequential presidential elections in modern American history. The coronavirus has upended retail politics, which means that campaigns must  establish a digital presence in order to engage voters and fundraise if they have any chance to succeed.

And it is not just the presidential election that is at stake. Texas Democrats are aiming to flip the state house, which has been in GOP control since 2003.

A  range of forces have converged to make Texas a low-vote state. In a state with a rich history of political corruption, Texans harbor a general mistrust in government. Other contributing factors include, gerrymandering, voter suppression and lack of civics education.

Latino voters, particularly young Latinos, are vital to the Democratic Party’s efforts to flip Texas blue in November. As voter registrations in Texas trend upward, voter turnout remains low. In Moody’s district, which encompasses part of El Paso, around 13,000 voters participated in the last primary election, out of 470,000 registered voters in the county.

“Our voter turnout is really poor,” said Moody. “And I think if you ask most people on my side of the aisle that is by design.” Over 70 percent of the voting age population is registered to vote in Texas, yet registered voters continually fail to show up at the polls.

On Super Tuesday, voters experienced long waiting lines to vote in the Democratic primary. A report by the Leadership Conference Education Fund found that Texas had the most polling- place closures in the country. Texas closed 750 polling places since 2012, and Dallas, Travis and Harris County were at the top of the list.

The majority of El Pasoans are low-income and work hourly jobs, making travel to polling sites difficult. Many communities around El Paso are rural as well, requiring residents to travel long distances to cast their votes. For those reliant on public transportation, trips to polling sites can be quite costly.

Texas State Representative Mary González represents Texas House District 75 in El Paso, which is overwhelmingly Latino. González said people of color and marginalized communities not voting is arguably intentional.

Texas State Representative Mary González says the lack of online and same-day voter registration discourages Texans from voting. (Photo courtesy of Mary González)

“There is no reason why in Texas we shouldn’t allow online voter registration,” she said. “There’s no reason in Texas why we shouldn’t allow for same-day voter registration, There’s all these arbitrary rules and the only reason they exist is to make it harder to vote, but specifically harder to vote for people who are marginalized and who have intentionally been discouraged not to participate in democracy.”

In González’s district, which encompasses over 125,000 people over the age of 18, only around 10,000 voters participated in the last primary election .

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 eliminated obstacles, such as poll taxes and literacy tests, that made it nearly impossible for marginalized communities to vote. Under Section 5 of the Act, Texas was among several states that required pre-clearance before changing voting laws and procedures – including changes to district lines.

In recent years, gerrymandering has become easier to execute due to recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings that effectively nullified the Voting Rights Act

In 2013, in Shelby v. Holder, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the formula used to determine which states must obtain pre-clearance to change voting laws and procedures was outdated, and hence unconstitutional. The House of Representatives tried, in 2019, to pass an updated version of the law, the Voting Rights Advancement Act, but it never got a vote in the Senate.

The law does still permit federal court petitions for pre-clearance before changing voting laws and procedures if plaintiffs can prove discriminatory intent. However, in 2018, in another gerrymandering case – Abbott v. Perez – the Supreme Court reversed a lower court finding that the Texas legislature had intentionally discriminated against Latino and African-American voters. The court noted that under representing a particular racial or ethnic group does not, by itself, prove discriminatory intent—thus, raising the bar for pre-clearance petitions.

Partisan gerrymandering is more common in Texas, “because Texas is diversifying,” said González. Since many Latinos tend to vote Democratic, she added: ”There is a fear of Republicans losing the majority and so there’s a lot of effort to maintain that.”

With its population growing rapidly, Texas is projected to gain at least two seats in the House of Representatives after the decennial census. If Democrats fail to flip the legislature, a GOP-controlled legislature will retain the power to draw legislative maps favoring them.

Corruption also has hindered trust in government–in El Paso and throughout the state. Mary González’s unlikely victory in 2012 owed much to the arrest of her opponent, former County Commissioner Guillermo Gandara Jr. on charges of drug smuggling and money laundering; he pleaded guilty. “If the elected officials are doing shady stuff, then people lose faith in the governmental process and the officials,” said González.

The Covid-19 pandemic poses new obstacles that could further depress voting, especially if voters fear getting sick. Vote-by-mail is seen as crucial for getting out the vote among eligible Democrats—especially low-income Latinos.

Currently, the disabled, seniors, and voters absent from their county during the period of early voting and election day are permitted to vote by mail. Texas Democrats have brought litigation forward to expand vote-by-mail—though that effort is unlikely to succeed before November’s election. Meanwhile, campaigns are doubling down on efforts to make sure individuals who are eligible to vote by mail are applying to do so.

Election results and voter registration data collected from Texas Secretary of State archives. (Graphic by Jose Nieves Herrera)

Increasing turnout among young people is another challenge—one that is being taken on by the El Paso Young Democrats, a local chapter of the Texas Young Democrats and one of the largest partisan youth organizations in the country. The group is working to educate and engage young El Pasoans in the political process to overcome an often-common sense of defeat that follows when a candidate they are enthusiastic about loses an election.

Many young El Pasoans were devastated by Bernie Sanders’s withdrawal from the presidential race. What worries J.J. Martinez, President of El Paso Young Democrats, more than turnout “is Biden’s ability to appeal to the Sanders supporters in Texas.”

Beto O’Rourke’s failure to unseat Republican incumbent Ted Cruz in his 2018 Senate bid was another major blow, said Martinez. O’Rourke, a former U.S. congressman from El Paso, won nearly 74 percent of the vote in El Paso.

Members of the Young Democrats of El Paso canvas for Elisa Tamayo, a candidate for state representative for District 96. (Photo courtesy of Young Democrats of El Paso)

During the Senate race, El Paso’s voter turnout nearly doubled between the 2014 and 2018 midterm elections to 45 percent in 2018. O’Rourke generated great enthusiasm among Black and Latino youth.

The lack of adequate civics education also contributes to voter apathy. “In Texas specifically, we start teaching people about government and politics too late,” said Martinez. “The public education system doesn’t seem to have an interest in educating young people earlier about politics and government.”

While Texas high school seniors are required to take a course on government in order to graduate, Martinez explained that these courses tend to only offer a very broad picture of how the U.S. government functions. Unless the course falls on an election year, students are unlikely to learn how to register to vote, or about candidates and their policies.

Carmen Crosse, Assistant Superintendent of Secondary Education from the Socorro Independent School District, counters that school principals in her district continuously work to engage young, future-voters in political matters and encourage them to participate in the electoral process by holding voting drives at several of their campuses.

“We do that at the beginning of registration time, we do that in our government and economics classes to make sure that all of our seniors, especially our upcoming 18 years olds are informed as to what they need to do in order to register to vote and what is their responsibility,” she said.

In light of the Covid-19 outbreak, the various issues that hinder voter turnout are likely to be exacerbated. While El Paso has lifted the “stay at home” order to comply with Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s initiative to begin reopening the state of Texas, health concerns are still looming and are expected to discourage voter participation.

“The fewer people you have engaged in their government, the easier it is to maintain the status quo,” said Representative Moody. “It is our job to inform and educate people and engage people on why these things matter to them and their daily lives … [and to] make sure those families understand that getting engaged in this process can play a role in changing the dynamic in our communities.”

https://www.facebook.com/eptxyds/photos/a.2424738874239404/2908102652569688/?type=3&theater

A Rural School District’s Pandemic Challenges: Online Education without Adequate Internet and Food Insecurity

The Socorro Independent School District has set up drive-thrus where parents can pick up laptops for their children or Wi-Fi hotspots if they lack connectivity at home. (Photo courtesy of the SISD)

By Erik Kantar and Andrea Blanco Morales

It’s 8 a.m. when cars begin pulling into the Socorro High School parking lot in Socorro, Texas. There are no good-bye kisses from parents sending their children off to the classroom. Instead, the students settle into the passenger seat and take out their laptops to access the school’s Wi-Fi. Students aren’t allowed to leave their car, a rule strictly enforced by school police.

This is the new normal for many Socorro students whose classes have moved online due to school closures during the Covid-19 pandemic, but who lack home access to reliable internet. An 18-minute drive from El Paso and a 14-minute bike ride to the U.S-Mexico border, the Socorro school district oversees three more Wi-Fi equipped school parking lots; each lot also has technical support assistants to help students troubleshoot connectivity issues every weekday from 8 a.m. to noon.

Yet, despite the best efforts of teachers and administrators, the pandemic has laid bare the district’s Achilles heel—and that of countless other poor, rural districts across the nation: The most vulnerable families don’t have access to technology and Wi-Fi connections, which are essential for online learning during a pandemic. Hector Reyna, the chief technology officer for the Socorro Independent School District estimates that 10 percent of Socorro families lack Wi-Fi. But an analysis of Wi-Fi access among county’s nationwide by Frank Donnelly, the geospatial data librarian at Baruch College, suggests that 17 to 24 percent of Socorro county’s minors lack internet access—a percentage that is in line with other rural areas in the South.

Students face other distinct challenges along the border. A large number of students in the district are binational and about 20 percent are residents of so-called colonias; both groups are likely to have either students or parents who struggle with English. Colonias are unincorporated, communities located along the Mexico–United States border that typically lack basic services, such as potable water, electricity, paved roads and sewer systems. Three colonias are situated within the Socorro school district.

Miguel Moreno, the district’s Instructional Technology Coordinator, helps distribute laptops to students. (Photo courtesy of the SISD)

To meet the needs of the disadvantaged students, the Socorro district says it has begun a mass laptop distribution program, personally calling over 2,000 families and delivering laptops and hotspots to them. As of April, the district had delivered 800 Wi-Fi hotspots, according to Reyna, and purchased 1,500 more.

In addition, approximately 90 percent of students in Socorro’s high schools take vocational classes in everything from air-conditioning and heating repair to cosmetology. These classes, which depend on hands-on learning, are likely to take an especially hard hit if the shutdown continues into the fall and could jeopardize students’ access to trades after graduation.

“I miss being in the shop with my friends,” said Javier Hernandez, a Socorro high school senior whose favorite class was auto mechanics.

While the district has instituted remote learning and encouraged families to share their experiences on social media, some of the district’s poorest students still struggle to access internet and online classes. (Handout photo from SISD)

The district is trying to use technology not just to close the gap between classroom learning and experiential work, but also as a way to “stay connected” with students and families, and to “ease tensions” during the lockdown. During Family Friday zoom sessions, created by the district superintendent Jose Espinoza, teachers, parents and kids engage in activities like knitting, writing letters to their future selves, gardening and even TikTok challenges. The objective of these activities, the district says, is to allow both students and parents to explore creative learning experiences.

“A lot of times, all we were hearing was how hard it was to learn from home or how it wasn’t enjoyable enough,” said Carmen Crosse, the district’s assistant superintendent, who says Family Fridays have created a bridge between parents and educators.

Parents “assumed that we expected them to become master teachers,” added Crosse. “Family Fridays allow parents the chance to say help me, because sometimes asking the question is intimidating.”

However, social distancing from their peers and teachers is still taking a toll on students’ mental health.

“It’s extremely hard,” said Socorro mother Zinnia Bustillos of her daughter’s difficulties in keeping up with her Pebble Hills High online classes, noting that her daughter doesn’t get as much in-person attention from her teachers as she feels she needs. “She’s even been depressed and has a lot of anxiety and now they’re doing finals next week through zoom, it’s hard.”

Indeed, Texas has a severe shortage of both mental-health professionals and counselors in schools. Texas has about one counselor per every 450 students; that’s about double the 250-to-one counselor-to-student ratio recommended by the American School Counselor Association.

To provide additional support, the Socorro district has partnered with Texas Tech University to host tele-mental health services for students, including those at risk of suicide. When counselors fear for students’ safety, they also work with the district police to check on them.

“One thing that we’ve seen is that our police department is working with our counselors to provide that support for some of our students that are having a difficult time at home,” said Marivel Macias, assistant superintendent of administrative services for the Socorro district. “Our police services do home visits to ensure our children are okay. Then we provide them additional support to ensure that they get the mental health help that they need.”

However, with undocumented immigrants in El Paso area estimated to number 55,000, some households may not welcome interactions with the police out of fear.

Meals are provided at district campuses Monday thru Friday, 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. (Photo courtesy of the SISD)

In poor districts like Socorro, the school closings and the economic challenges of the pandemic also have posed nutritional challenges for students who depended on schools for two meals a day even before the shutdown. According to the National School Lunch Program, about 22 million low-income children rely on free or reduced-cost food served at their public schools nationwide.

At the end of April, the Socorro district had distributed nearly 500,000 meals at designated school campuses.

But while the administration makes an effort to include everyone, some students still have difficulty accessing school meals. On some campuses, for instance, food is only being offered on a drive-thru basis, in order to ensure safety. But families without a car may be unable to access the food—or the Wi-Fi available in parking lots.

That may explain why Socorro campuses serve an average of 850 meals a day, while the schools that serve the poorest parts of the district, like the Desert Wind site, only serve about 150 to 200 meals a day. “We know it is a remote site,” said Macia. “I will put this on the table: There are students that we haven’t reached and we are consistently trying to identify why we haven’t reached them.’’

Meanwhile, the district keeps registering new students for the next school year. The students are then assigned to teachers who identify their technology needs and the best way to meet those needs.

As the pandemic unfolds, it is evident in Socorro, as nationwide, that school closings pose the greatest threat to students who are already the most disadvantaged.

 

 

 

 

 

The Forgotten Colonias: Covid-19 Poses Added Burdens for Unincorporated Immigrant Communities at the Border

Colonias in the El Paso area often lack basic services such as sewer systems, water, electricity and internet access. (Photo courtesy of Bethsaida Mondrago)

By Ayse Kelce

Two days after Texas Gov. Greg Abbot issued a stay-at-home order to curb the spread of Covid-19, a water main broke in an informal settlement, known as a colonia, near Clint and the U.S.-Mexico border, leaving residents without water for more than 14 hours.

“It was really frustrating because, remember, one thing we tell people is wash your hands,” said state Representative Mary Edna González, whose District 75 covers the Clint area, east of El Paso. “If you don’t have any water, and then all the stores are out of bottled water…It was just chaos.”

González, speaking during a Zoom interview on May 24, about 10 days after the incident, added that the lockdown had exacerbated the difficult living conditions, caused by a lack of basic resources, that residents of colonias had long faced.

Colonias are unincorporated neighborhoods around the U.S.-Mexican border that experience issues with accessing internet connections and potable water and often lack sewer systems, garbage pickup, paved roads as well as safe and sanitary housing. With the spread of the coronavirus, these largely immigrant communities are facing additional, unique challenges when it comes to accessing education, receiving Covid-19 relief from the federal government and getting accurate census counts.

States along the border, such as Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas, have high numbers of immigrant populations and colonia settlements. Texas has the biggest population of colonias with around 500,000 people living in 2,294 colonias, according to research by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

Marcelino Navarette, 61, who lives in one of these incorporated neighborhoods around West El Paso, said access to water is an issue in his neighborhood as well.

“We haven’t had water here for the 22 years that I’ve been here. It is a little unfair for the representatives of El Paso or the county not to help us with regards to the water service,” he said in Spanish, after struggling to find a spot in his house where the phone connection would not be lost.

He explained that in his neighborhood, residents buy water from companies that deliver it in trucks, charging around $100 for about 1,200 gallons. “There’s mainly only two trucks that deliver water,” he said, adding that during the summer months, the wait time increases to get water. With the coronavirus, waits are already long.

Accessing water is not the only struggle for colonia residents. “We do have light in our homes, but around the streets, everything is just dark,” he said.

Unpaved roads are the only way to get to the colonias near Hueco Tanks, east of El Paso. (Photo courtesy of Daniel Navarette)

Colonias started forming in the 1950s for low-income individuals–most of them immigrants– seeking affordable housing in rural areas.

“The colonias are typically a response to wanting that same suburban house, but without the ability to get into the debt system that finances houses for the mass of consumers,” said Prof. Josiah Heyman of the University of Texas at El Paso.

Heyman, an anthropologist who is the director of UTEP’s Center for Interamerican and Border Studies, explained that colonias are often home to working class people like construction or service workers who manage to get together some money to purchase a piece of land and build a mobile house.

Navarrete’s son Dan, 34, was raised in the colonias from the age of 9. He agrees that his community needs easier access to water and internet connection the most, especially since the coronavirus lockdown forced residents to stay home.

“One of my cousins was going to school and they’re sending him all the classes online but he’s having a hard time getting access to the internet,” said the younger Navarrete. The cousin, who goes to high school in El Paso, returned to Juarez, Mexico, just across the border, after the schools closed because his parents were in Mexico and the sketchy internet connection in the colonias was not allowing him to catch up with schoolwork.

“I think it’s better for him over there because over here he won’t have access to the internet because the schools are closed, and the libraries are closed,” the younger Navarrete said. “There’s no way for him to access his homework,” the younger Navarrete said.

Dan Navarette currently lives in East El Paso in a mobile home with his wife and two kids and works in the oil fields in New Mexico.  He considers himself to be one of the lucky ones who still gets paid a minimum amount without having to go to work; due to the economic downturn caused by Covid-19, his company laid off many workers. “It’s a program that the company has,” he said, adding that most people in his community work in construction or warehouses. “They’ll lay you off for a month, but they’ll still pay you for it. Not your whole salary but something you can live off of.”

Along with infrastructure and internet issues, colonia residents also are mostly on their own when it comes to health care during this pandemic.

“In Texas specifically, we have done a really bad job of providing rural health,” González said. She explained that while Covid-19 testing is key to slowing the spread of the virus, many colonia residents were having difficulty getting to test sites.

She said that for some people, the closest site was 40 minutes away.

“So it’s 80 minutes away, back and forth. That’s just driving; most families don’t have cars or have one vehicle per family,” she explained. “Showing symptoms, there’s no way that they can even get 80 miles, especially if there are kids and there’s all this complexity. We have not done enough to do mobile sites.”

Marcelino Navarette said that even before the coronavirus pandemic, he had similar difficulties getting medical care. “Since the closest hospital or any access to medical services are so far away, sometimes it takes a whole day, even when you have an appointment because we have to drive,” he said. He explained that there were no clinics close to where he lives, and getting to and from the nearest hospital–a 15 mile drive–is very time consuming.

Texas’ efforts to inform Texans about the coronavirus pandemic also failed to reach the colonias, according to González. “I don’t think we’ve had enough bilingual communication,” she said. “The governor has been doing a lot of press conferences and they are sending out a lot of resources. But it’s all in English. More than 40 percent of the border colonias have limited English proficiency, according to the data shared by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

The coronavirus lockdown has worsened the economic hardships faced by residents of colonias, whose median household incomes are less than $30,000. According to Dallas Federal Bank, 73.1 percent of colonia residents are U.S. citizens, meaning that the rest, nearly 30 percent, were undocumented or not naturalized, making them ineligible for federal coronavirus stimulus funds. Additionally, married couples who file taxes jointly are also unable to access stimulus funding if one of them is an undocumented immigrant. This decision largely affects communities like colonias whose residents depend heavily on public assistance and where many families have various members with different immigration statuses.

Local politicians and non-profit organizations have stepped up to offer additional assistance for residents of the colonias, but they say not enough help is reaching people in need. The Border Network for Human Rights has been working with González to provide resources through private donations. González described their work as a “Band-aid situation.”

“Although we are appreciative of the trillions in stimulus funding provided by the federal government to date, few of the programs created provide relief for immigrant families,” González and five other state representatives wrote in a letter to their congresswoman, U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar. “Their inclusion in stimulus funding is necessary to ensure that they too have the resources to stay home to slow the spread of Covid-19 without losing their livelihoods.”

“Immigrants, whether documented or undocumented, are part of the backbone of El Paso and communities across Texas and the nation,” the letter continued, thanking Escobar for her work in the Congress so far.

The coronavirus lockdown also could impede efforts to secure government funding for future improvements because it is making it more difficult for residents to participate in the 2020 U.S. Census. Getting accurate census counts also gets harder in the colonias as one third of the residents do not have citizenship.

“Some people that I know who don’t have any legal papers to be here…are very afraid of someone coming up to them and asking questions in their house,” Dan Navarette said. He added that he still has not received his census form in mail, but his parents who live farther from the city limits have.

The elder Navarette said that he had filled out the census, but he is not hopeful that having an accurate count will actually bring public services to his neighborhood since he has not seen any changes in many years.

Indeed, Navarette is an exception. The average census response rate in Texas is just 48 percent,” according to González. Her census efforts have moved online because of Covid-19 and the need for social distancing, mainly to platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Those efforts, however, are least likely to reach the colonias.

When asked about voting in the upcoming 2020 election, Dan Navarette laughed. “Right now for me, elections or voting are not in my mind. Right now, it’s about being safe and go buy whatever you need for groceries and come back home,” he said.

The younger Navarrete said that some colonias were 50 miles away from voting stations in schools, which discouraged a lot of people from voting in the past. His father added that local politicians informed them about where to go and vote, but it still was not enough.

“I don’t feel that it really makes a difference. Because for these 22 years that I have been out here, really nothing has changed,” he said.

 

 

 

 

Inside the Border Patrol: The Conflicted Identities of Immigration Enforcers

An agent patrols a checkpoint alone in El Paso. (Photo by the U.S. Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector Strategic Communications Branch)

By Annmarie Gajdos and  Juan Diego Ramirez

Born in Mexico, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Antunez served in the U.S. Army. After being deployed to Iraq in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he received his American citizenship. Described as both a proud American citizen and a lover of Mexico by his colleague Agent Sara M. Cabrera, Antunez is just one of the many U.S. Border Patrol agents who are responsible for policing an area that they also call home.

When asked about this complicated relationship, Agent Ernesto Mena said: “The job itself is a very difficult, challenging job. You’ve got to keep that in mind. We’re human beings. We’re here to do a job. And a lot of times it’s not very pretty.”

The U.S. Border Patrol plays an important social and economic role at the Southwest border. Agents, who are often members of a binational community straddling the U.S. and Mexico, deal with the compounded stress of a job that is both physically dangerous and mentally draining, and the stigma caused by the national outcry against Trump-era immigration policies. Frequently changing strategies and the effects of Covid-19 have further complicated their role.

During a Zoom presentation and interview in mid-April, two agents and an intergovernmental public liaison from the Border Police’s El Paso station described the work of what they said is a largely misunderstood government agency.

Often associated with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Border Patrol is an agency within the Department of Homeland Security. It is responsible for protecting and enforcing immigration laws at the border, and also is in charge of maintaining traffic checkpoints, conducting city patrols and transportation checks. Officers work with local police departments to solve cases involving Amber Alerts and anti-smuggling investigations such as the concealment of narcotics. In contrast, ICE enforces immigration laws throughout the rest of the United States and is responsible for arresting and removing undocumented migrants.

A member of the border patrol’s All-Terrain Vehicle (ATV) unit patrols the border wall. (Photo by the U.S. Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector Strategic Communications Branch)

The Border Police is a federal police force whose mission is to “detect and prevent the illegal entry of aliens into the United States,” according to the U.S. Customs Department.  In the eyes of some of the American public, they are the face of anti-immigration policies. Described in a Sept. 15, 2019, article in the New York Times as a by and large “willing enforcer of the Trump administration’s harshest immigration policies,” the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has been scrutinized by countless media outlets and American residents for its role in carrying out President Trump’s Zero-Tolerance and Remain in Mexico (MPP) policies. However, the agency’s role is most convoluted at the Southwestern border.

The CBP El Paso sector, which includes all of New Mexico and two counties in far west Texas, employs 2,400 agents. The force patrols over 268 miles of international boundaries. The job is not easy. Every agent must participate in the Academy in Artesia, N.M., in preparation for the job. The most dangerous part: Every officer patrols alone. With only 19,000 agents guarding all of the nation’s borders, a number that pales in comparison with the 35,000 officers employed by the New York Police Department alone, the agency’s aggressive recruiting program fails to meet its quota by more than 1,800 agents nationwide, according to Politico.

For those living along the border, joining CBP is considered a ticket to the middle class. With only a high school diploma, a starting agent can earn $55,800 a year plus overtime. This figure can grow to $100,000 in as little as four years. This is a promising option for individuals living in El Paso, where the 2017 median household income was $44,416, a figure 25 percent lower than the average median income in Texas.

Twenty percent of the residents in El Paso live in poverty. Thus, well-paying government jobs, ranking right below education in popularity, attract 8 percent of the workforce in El Paso. Fort Bliss, the second largest Army base in the country, is the largest employer in the El Paso metro area, contributing $23.1 billion to the Texas economy in 2017. The Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection program employs more than 10,700 workers in the area, according to data compiled by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

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Another popular choice of employment, health services, increased by 28 percent from 2010 to 2017, thanks to companies like Tenet Health and Las Palmeras Del Sol Healthcare. But wages across all employment sectors in El Paso are still lower than the national average. Large corporations with the ability to employ many people have not yet moved into the area. “If you go to the Career Day in my local high school, all it is there is Mary González, State Rep, and Law Enforcement. There are no doctors, nurses, or anything else. It’s really just Law Enforcement. It’s the only opportunity given to a lot of these young people,” says Mary González, the State Representative for House District 75, an area just east of El Paso.

In the Socorro Independent School District, the second largest school district in El Paso, students who do not enroll in four-year colleges often choose a career in law enforcement.

“If you look at our state, at Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, that’s the triangle of our state; most of the major companies, Google, Apple, are relocating to that area,” said Hector Reyna, the school district’s Chief Technology Officer. “Unfortunately, our kids, when they graduate, the majority of them have to leave for those high-paying jobs.”

However, those who do not make this decision have a feasible alternative: joining the Border Patrol.

For members of the El Paso community, Border Patrol agents represent more than just uniformed officers. They are neighbors, friends and oftentimes the relatives of members of the larger Latino community.

“Almost everybody knows somebody who is an agent or has a family member, a father, a brother-in-law,” said Irene Mortensen, the Community Relations Officer for the CBP’s El Paso sector. “So, we are very integrated with the community and we do things to try to explain to the community what we do.”

“Most of our agents do have backgrounds or families from Mexico and some of them go on their weekends, they go visit their families and come back; but they do understand that a job is a job and the law is the law,” added Cabrera, an agent in El Paso who hails from Puerto Rico.

Despite the national stigma, members of the El Paso community respect Border Patrol agents. Agent Cabrera said: “If you have a family member that’s in it and you feel that need to serve your country and you want to do something better for yourself, it is a very big option. It is a very well-paid job so you can provide for your family. So that is very attractive to a lot of people. Also, they see us as part of the community.”

Border patrol agents detain migrants at the Southwest border. (Photo by the U.S. Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector Strategic Communications Branch)

Still, living in a binational community poses difficulties. Often times, agents must deal with criticism from the American public. Officers’ responsibilities also have changed immensely since 2014, when a large influx of immigrants from Central America began arriving at the Southwest Border. In 2019, 851,508 individuals were apprehended, with record highs from Guatemala (264,168), Honduras (253,795) and Mexico (166,458). Many long-time officers have witnessed a stark shift in their original responsibilities.

State Representative González lives two miles from the Migrant Detention Center in Clint, where over 700 children were held in cells over the summer of 2019. Border Patrol agents called her and alerted her to the crisis, just as they had informed their superiors. They told her that they were at capacity and that nobody knew what to do. A lack of resources and a lack of initiative from upper leadership initiated an onslaught of criticism against Border Patrol agents, who were poorly equipped to handle the challenges of the immigration influx.

“There’s some low points during the recent influx,” said Agent Ernesto Mena. “It was overwhelming. The number of people that we were dealing with was just astonishing. We’ve never seen this before in our lives.”

During this time, agents were furloughed. Those who remained on the job were expected to work for 69 days, despite a government shutdown.

The events playing out at the border over the past several years have taken an emotional toll on members of the force. The suicide rate for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers is 28 percent higher than that of any other law enforcement agency in the country, states Quartz. El Paso, with 7 reported suicides from 2007-2019, accounted for 15 percent of the CBP’s total suicides and had the third highest rate out of nine sectors, according to an internal government report acquired by Quartz.

Mexicans and Americans gather at the border for an annual binational mass organized by the Catholic Dioceses of Las Cruces, El Paso and Juarez; border patrol agents stand guard. (Photo by the U.S. Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector Strategic Communications Branch)

Officers received taunts and hate mail on a daily basis. In 2019, the President of the Agents’ Union received death threats.

Representative González: “These [Border Patrol agents] are still human beings, who are usually from low-income communities…You can’t say abolish ICE and not think about the Latino families that are part of that system too and were intentionally put in that system by larger forces.”

Concerns about the mental health of officers are evident. Officers are given Employee Assistance Program (EAP) services and a variety of free counseling services. In May 2019, the CBP requested an additional $2.1 million for the agency’s EAP program. But Agent Mena said: “We’re our own best support here. We spend so much time with each other. It’s just we know each other so well and when something’s not right, we pick up on the other person.”

Covid-19 had not made their job any easier. By closing borders to reduce the spread of the virus, immigrants encountered by the Border Patrol must be returned to their nearest port of entry. “It’s very difficult,” said Agent Cabrera. “Sometimes the way that you find out is the way that we find out. Right, you’re watching the news and all of sudden this comes up and then we’re like, oh, well, good, let’s wait for them to give us the guidance. It’s very difficult.”