A D&S Special Report

border

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.

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.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B5uwK1mgfPW/?igshid=1avvtxm394llj&fbclid=IwAR0vY4nnIgCUNEKdoyv4w7IdoLDKjUzYGKWbKQHBqf3b3XBiCGrZKlG7HGA

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.”

 

Immigration Laws Form Barriers More Powerful than a Border Wall

Migrants impacted by the “Remain in Mexico” protocols attempt to cross the border to seek medical care in the U.S. (Photo by Nicolas Palazzo)

By Juan Diego Ramirez and Annmarie Gajdos

Jonathan, a 28-year-old Salvadoran who asked that his full name be withheld for fear of deportation, traveled through Mexico by bus, taxi and foot until he reached the U.S. border at El Paso on Oct. 22, 2018. After turning himself into border patrol agents to claim asylum, saying he was persecuted at home for identifying with the LGBTQ community, he spent 15 months in immigration detention centers near the border before he won asylum thanks to the efforts of attorneys from Las Americas, an El Paso legal aid organization.

“Before coming into contact with Las Americas, I was contemplating taking my life,” said Jonathan, who spoke during a phone interview from his new home in New York, where he settled in January. “Being incarnated was traumatizing. It impacts you mentally. They chain your feet. They treat you as if you are a murderer or a drug trafficker.”

Jonathan’s struggles are representative of the tangled and complicated legal battles that many immigrants face at the Mexican border, where immigration lawyers navigate a labyrinth of new laws and policies implemented by the Trump administration to curb immigration, said Nicolas Palazzo, the Las Americas attorney who represented Jonathan.

“I think people don’t understand how insignificant the wall is,” Palazzo said during a Zoom interview in April, referring to President Trump’s promises to build a wall along the border with Mexico. “The real problem is the policies and the laws that prevent people from coming into the country. It’s not the wall. The policies are effective. They accomplish what they are intended to accomplish.”

The Trump administration has implemented some of the toughest anti-immigration laws in recent American history. Under his policies, the number of immigrants detained at the border has risen significantly. In 2016, Trump launched his presidential campaign based on nationalistic promises that called for restricting immigration from Central and South America. During his campaign, Trump also referred to Mexicans, as rapists, drug smugglers and criminals. These comments were a mere preview of how his administration would eventually deal with immigration issues through the creation of stringent immigration laws.

A mother holds her child while awaiting legal counsel from the Las
Americas staff. (Photo by Paige Censale, Communications Counselor at Las
Americas)

In 2017, Trump enacted several executive orders calling for diminishing the Central American immigration influx to the United States. These included Executive Order 13767, which calls for the construction of a physical border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border; Executive Order 13768, which punishes “Sanctuary Cities” that implemented immigrant protection laws by withholding federal funds; and Executive Order 13769, coloquially referred to as the “the Muslim ban,”  which restricts residents of majority-Muslim countries from entering the U.S. All three Executive Orders were challenged in court.

However, these new laws didn’t stop waves of Central American migrants, like Jonathan from El Salvador, from seeking asylum at the southern U.S. border. In 2019, the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol apprehended 977,000 migrants, the highest apprehension rate since 2009. In May alone, 144,000 migrants were apprehended.  “It was overwhelming. The number of people that we were dealing with was just astonishing,” said Ernesto Mena, a border patrol agent in the El Paso sector.

In spring 2018, controversy erupted when the Trump administration implemented a policy to separate children from their families, culminating in the misplacement of 1,500 children during the temporary detention period. Many migrants came as family units from countries plagued with poverty and violence. During a short time period, mass migration overwhelmed the American immigration system. Migrants entered the country illegally, without inspection, or would arrive at a port of entry seeking asylum. As a result, the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol would either detain or release these individuals while they were physically present in the United States to wait for a decision on their cases.

A migrant mother zips her child’s coat while waiting to cross from Mexico to the U.S. in February 2020. (Photo by Paige Censale, Communications Counselor at Las Americas).

During detention, families were not allowed to await their trials together; the Trump administration blamed the policy on laws that prohibit underage children from being kept in adult prisons. This caused government workers to physically separate family members, resulting in an onslaught of civil and human rights lawsuits against the Trump administration. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, 4,200 children have been separated from their parents at American immigration detention centers since February 2020. “Child separation started in El Paso and that’s where it was seriously implemented,” Palazzo said.

Las Americas staff attorney Nicholas Palazzo works on a case during a wave of migrant arrivals from Central America. (Photo by Paige Censale, Communications Counselor at Las Americas)

He said he met Jonathan while working with migrants detained at the Otero County Processing Center in New Mexico. Before ending up in Otero, Jonathan was placed in two other detention centers in the area. Palazzo helped Jonathan win his asylum case in January 2020, resulting in a successful end to his 15-month detention period.

Recently, Palazzo has been working with migrants who have been returned to Mexico under the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP). Also referred to as the “Remain in Mexico” policy, this piece of legislation requires that migrants “wait outside the U.S. for the duration of their immigration proceedings.” This has made it difficult for lawyers working with Las Americas to adequately defend their clients. “I represented three of the six cases in El Paso that have actually won asylum from MPP, which just shows you how difficult it is for people,” said Palazzo.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Palazzo said that as an immigration lawyer his work has become even more complicated. On March 21, President Trump invoked Title 42, which suspends the entry of people and imports from Mexico and Canada to prevent the spread of communicable diseases.

“Since we are in a pandemic and we do want to protect the U.S. from any health risks, when somebody tries to enter the country illegally, we’re not going to take them to any of our facilities,” said U.S. Border Patrol agent Sara M. Cabrera. “We’re going to fingerprint them to make sure that they’re not felons, that they’re not wanted here in the U.S., then we’re going to take them to the nearest port of entry and expel them from the country.”

Palazzo described what was happening at the border now as “turn-backs,” meaning that migrants are being sent back to Mexico without being processed. “They are essentially closing off all these people from getting any form of relief from the United States. It is frustrating,” he said, adding that lawyers are no longer allowed to travel to Mexico and work with clients who have pending cases.

Migrant children play at a shelter in Juarez while the Las Americas team works on intakes. (Photo by Paige Censale, Communications Counselor at Las Americas)

“I don’t anticipate these policies are going to end soon, even if the pandemic slows down, because what we see is the pretext of the virus weaponizing the border against migrants and it’s effectively closed off the whole border,” he said.

 

Advocate Fears for Environment Amid Border Wall Expansion

Environmental advocates say expanding the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border will harm the area’s delicate desert ecosystem. (Photo courtesy of the Southwest Environmental Center.)

By Christian Lewis

The border between the U.S. and Mexico spans nearly 2,000 miles, running along the southern confines of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, there are about 354 miles of pedestrian barriers and 300 miles of vehicle barriers, for a total of 654 miles of border walls. During his campaign for president, Donald Trump had promised to complete the border wall. So far, his administration has built 110 miles of new barriers, mainly replacing existing structures. Administration officials said earlier this year that the federal government was on track to build more than 450 miles of additional wall along the southern border by the end of 2020.

Kevin Bixby (left) joins a 2018 demonstration calling for a halt to border wall construction. (Photo courtesy of Joseph Yaroch)

Environmental advocates have long voiced concerns about the ways border walls adversely affect the environment of this richly biologically diverse area. According to Kevin Bixby, executive director of the Southwest Environmental Center, the border region is home to more than 1,000 wildlife and 430 plant species. He said the border wall has prevented the interbreeding of Mexican gray wolves and divided its population, as well as cut off access to water for species such as the Sonoran Pronghorn, an ungulate related to goats and antelopes.

Advocates like Bixby, who has led the Las Cruses, N.M-based organization for eight years, are trying to raise awareness of the region’s fragile ecosystem and to halt construction of additional barriers along the border. He talked about the center’s work and mission during interviews in April. The interviews have been edited for length and clarity

How is President Trump’s plan to expand the border wall going to further impact the environment?

The current Trump design is 30 feet of metal steel square rods that are stuck into concrete. Under (President George W.) Bush, he built 650 miles and half of it was these pedestrian fences and the other were what we would call lethal barriers which are generally not too big of an issue for wildlife to crawl through. That was the extent of the problem when Bush left office and that was not too bad for wildlife. And then along came Trump with his signature campaign promise. So, he starts replacing the existing barriers, taking out these vehicle barriers and replacing them with these 30-foot pedestrian fencing which we call the wall. In the beginning of his administration, we had heard that this was nothing to worry about and this was just replacing what was already there but we knew, those of us that were actually down there at the wall, what he was replacing the vehicle barriers with was much worse for wildlife. He is also building where walls were not there.

What do you think about the federal government using loopholes in funding to pay for the wall’s construction?

It makes me angry, but it also makes me feel helpless. We have a couple of lawsuits we are a part of, but we have nothing truly significant. But you touched on the fundamental problem, which is that in 2005, Congress gave the secretary of Homeland Security the authority to waive laws to build border barriers. And this was used by Bush and it has been used by Trump in every single border wall project. The list of laws waived vary from project to project. The Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act are always waived. Those are fundamentally important laws but the administration knows that those laws are the ones that need to be waived in order to dodge legal action. Another one that is always disregarded is the Native American Grave Protection Act, which is really important in the southwest. You can find Native American graves and sites all over the place and if you are building a wall like the border wall you are bound to run into them.

I have read about your press release in January 2020 about a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court to stop construction of the border wall. Can you tell me more about that?

We actually placed that back in 2018, and we had challenged the use of the waiver authority, and there is a similar lawsuit challenging that same authority. There was one from a bunch of states like California and New Mexico. We filed it with the Center of Biological Diversity and the Defenders of Wildlife along with the Animal Legal Defense Fund. Those guys filed a lawsuit to stop construction in Arizona and California but I was a plaintiff on the ground in New Mexico.

Under the 2005 Real ID act, Congress gave the waiver authority to the director of Homeland Security and the only avenue to challenging the use of the authority was through federal district court which is the lowest level of federal court. Whatever this decision was can only be appealed to the (U.S.) Supreme Court. This law cut out the middle step which is normally the (U.S.) Court of Appeals. The Supreme Court takes on very, very few cases that are submitted to it so we lost the case in District Court which happened to be in D.C, so then what we did was then appealed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is probably not going to take it.

However, we do have another case that is a lot more promising…with the Sierra Club and the SBCC, which is a coalition of groups that stands for the Southern Border Coalition of Communities. My organization is a part of that coalition. We are challenging the national emergency declaration and the transfer of money from the Department of Defense to build a wall. We actually won in the first step in the 9th District Court of Northern California. It is now being heard by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and we asked for a stay on construction. The district court issued the stay but the Supreme Court overturned it (the stay). (The merits of the case are still being decided by the Court of Appeals)

What impact does the border wall have on the flow of clean water on the communities?

It is mostly not too much on the quality of the water but more the quantity of the flooding. For example, because the wall is being constructed without any input on environmental issues, they are ignoring things like drainage. What they have done in the past is build these pedestrian fences right across arroyos or streams. We have a lot of arroyos which are dry, clean beds that normally don’t have water but when it rains they can have a lot of water. Now when the border wall cuts through, this can cause flooding and redirects the water in a way that is destructive. That happened in Nogales, Sorona in 2008. That actually was when they plugged up an arroyo which caused a lot of flooding on the other side of the border and led to some death all to stop people from crossing.

More recently in Arizona, they are drilling these shallow groundwater wells in order to get the water they need to mix cement for these concrete footings. These footings are 3 or 4 feet wide and 6 or 8 feet deep. And you know, 500 miles of that, that is a lot of concrete. They are building these wells and pumping out groundwater and using a lot of water, which is going to cause springs to dry up and wetlands to dry up.

What are your thoughts about the future and whether your efforts to protect the environment from construction of the border wall will be successful?

I’m not optimistic that we will be able to stop the border wall under Trump, but long term I think, or I’m hopeful, that we can take down the border wall, which was a ridiculous waste of resources…It is going to be a fight because even people who don’t like the wall may say it is already there, why bother to take it down.

Kevin Bixby (center) and other protesters call for protections for the jaguar population during a protest in New Mexico in 2018. (Photo courtesy of Joseph Yaroch)

There is more awareness of the impacts on wildlife…The pandemic may offer an opportunity to step back and realize our relationship with nature is partly responsible for the coronavirus. The breathtaking quickness that we have been able to shut down the economy and lower carbon emissions. With this horrible cost of the loss of lives and jobs, it does demonstrate how fast we can shift and change. Hopefully people will be willing to do that.