By Veronica Escobar
Ms. Escobar is the Democratic nominee for the 16th Congressional District in Texas.
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EL PASO — To hear it from the White House, America’s southern border is a war zone. Things look a lot different up close. Here in El Paso, local governments collaborate closely with federal agencies in the United States and Mexico to ensure that our ports of entry — bridges connecting the two countries — can effectively and safely move more than 10 million people and $90 billion in trade back and forth each year.
Our ports are critical to our local, state and national economies, and they stand as proof that international cooperation can make the border work for both countries. Never did any of us imagine that the area around one of them, the Marcelino Serna Port at Tornillo, would someday be the site of the United States’s first tent city for detained immigrant children, or that it would bring us together to protest the separation of refugee families.
Maybe we should have seen it coming. Fearmongering about immigrants has long hinged on the notion that the border is a porous, lawless place — even though it is as safe and secure as ever.
For many of us in El Paso, the international ebb and flow of people is part of daily life and our location is a source of pride. In the 16th Congressional District, where I am running for a seat in the House, immigrants make up a quarter of our population; in 2014 alone, they paid over $983 million in taxes and provided $3.1 billion in spending power.
But even as El Pasoans and our southern neighbors have built up a vibrant economy, politicians from Washington and other places far from the border have made our region the centerpiece of their efforts to restrict immigration.
This idea first surfaced in El Paso in 1993, when the head of the local Border Patrol office proposed building a border wall, inspiring protests and heated local debates. El Pasoans defeated the idea soon after it was introduced, but after that, national conversations about immigration reform became increasingly linked with tightly restricted border flows, making it nearly impossible for humane immigration reform to make it through Congress.
Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama attempted to deal with the challenge, but in order to avoid looking soft on undocumented immigration, they gave in to demands to be “tough” on the border. President Obama angered immigrant rights advocates with aggressive deportation tactics, meant, in part, to appease Republicans and get them to the bargaining table. And yet even now, with Republicans in charge of the federal government, conservatives still refuse the slightest gesture at compromise.
That doesn’t mean nothing has happened. Here in El Paso, we’ve had a front-row seat to watch the militarization of the border: There is a wall, drones fly overhead and state troopers and National Guard members have been sent to our community. And, of course, images of these tactics, seen on screens around the country, further fuel misperceptions and xenophobia.
And it hasn’t just been the work of federal legislators. Texas has spent over $1 billion in the last two legislative sessions on border security, with no measurable benefit. These huge expenditures have yet to appease anti-immigrant voters.
This preoccupation with looking “tough” comes at the expense of other, more pressing needs. In El Paso, we need more Customs and Border Protection agents to staff the ports of entry; we also lack the infrastructure to effectively process increases in refugees. And, mind you, this is occurring while immigration is still at historic lows.
El Pasoans understand the realities of immigration and know that especially now, the people surging north need to be met with compassion, not fear and hatred.
In recent weeks we’ve seen asylum seekers, following instructions from the secretary of homeland security, Kirstjen Nielsen, to present themselves at ports of entry, be physically prevented by federal agents from touching American soil. In El Paso, the longtime immigrant rights activist Ruben Garcia has had to escort families over the bridge and face off against agents, some of then carrying firearms. One agent claimed that blocking asylum seekers was a policy directive from higher-ups. And it turns out that El Paso was the training ground for family separations: We’ve only recently learned that families have been separated at our border since at least October.
Our experience along the border also gives us special insight into where things might go next. Many people around the country are beginning to suggest that the Democrats should just let President Trump have his wall, in exchange for an end to his draconian border enforcement policies. But El Pasoans know that walls are not the end, but the beginning.
That’s because walls might impede migration, but they won’t stop it. And when people keep coming, Mr. Trump and his allies will simply ratchet up their demands — he has already called for an end to due process for noncitizens. What comes next?
Meanwhile, the demonization of undocumented immigrants will soon carry over to the restrictionists’ real target: Mr. Trump has already proposed strict limits on family-based immigration and an end to the diversity lottery program.
How do we get from this manufactured “border crisis,” which is creating real pain for tens of thousands of people, to the dynamic but increasingly fragile reality of life along the border that we cherish here in El Paso? How do we get to a solution for Dreamers, investment in our ports of entry and a humane approach to immigration reform?
It’s a long list, and it’s easy to despair. Washington, at least as it stands now, will not find the solution on its own. It will take continued public pressure, both along the border and in every city and state around the country. We might differ on the details of what our immigration policy should look like, but a vast majority of Americans agree that the present situation is morally and practically untenable.
It took decades of border and immigrant bashing to get here. But we’re here, and it’s up to us to restore justice and compassion in our country.
Veronica Escobar is the Democratic nominee for the 16th Congressional District in Texas.
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