Local Blogs
House Tries To Give 'Dreamers' a Path to Citizenship, but Mitch McConnell Won't Even Consider the Bill
Source: House Tries To Give 'Dreamers' a Path to Citizenship, but Mitch McConnell Won't Even Consider the Bill
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A Chance for ?Dreamers?
Congress should do its job and pass a bill to protect immigrants brought to the United States as children.
Source: A Chance for ?Dreame...
Forty Years in America
Foot-Voting Nation
Will Senate Republicans Revolt Over Trump's Mexico Tariff Threats?
Source: Will Senate Republicans Revolt Over Trump's Mexico Tariff Threats?
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Reason Magazine Immigration Feed
Mexico Has Tried to Avoid Trump. It Can?t Anymore.
Source: Mexico Has Tried to Avoid Trump. It Can?t Anymore.
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The New York Times Immigration Feed
Today’s border reality: River hazards, refugee child trauma; an end to migrating wildlife
There are many perils for humans and wildlife crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, from the hazards of navigating challenging terrain to the trauma of being detained by law enforcement. As tensions rise with each newly erected section of border wall, the impact of hardline policies can be seen taking a toll on the mental, physical, and environmental health of the borderland.
Rising waters threaten migrants crossing Rio GrandeVice President of Operations and Technical Services for El Paso Water Utility Alan Schubert gestures at the intake for the American Canal in El Paso, Texas on June 3, 2019. Photo by Fred Batiste.
Risks to migrants crossing into the U.S. near El Paso have increased with the annual release of Rio Grande water from upriver in New Mexico. The release replenishes the borderlands and allows its farmers to irrigate, but the surge of water and migrants is a potentially deadly combination. Migrants who bypass barriers at U.S. ports of entry to seek asylum by crossing the Rio Grande risk drowning in the high water of the borderland canals.
El Paso Water Utility is working with a local nonprofit, the Hope Border Institute, to place posters in shelters on the Juarez side of the border to urge migrants not to try to cross the river and the canals.
Wildlife Across Borders
Erecting physical barriers along the U.S. southern border endangers the wellbeing of native wildlife in the area, says Kevin Bixby, executive director of the Southwest Environmental Center (SWEC). He is concerned that a wall’s environmental impact could lead to loss of habitat and biodiversity.
Listen: Barriers to healthy wildlife migration
The SWEC has lobbied against the wall in Washington, D.C. and organized protest rallies at the wall itself. The center is a participant in two active lawsuits against the wall.
The first lawsuit was filed March 2018 in reaction to the Department of Homeland Security’s waiver of laws — including the Endangered Species Act, Clean Air Act, and Clean Water Act — in clearing the way to build a border wall. That suit currently resides in a D.C. federal district court.
The other lawsuit was filed in February by the ACLU, Sierra Club, and the Southern Border Communities Coalition, of which the center is a part. The suit calls for a halt to construction on 57 miles of border wall in New Mexico and Arizona which was sanctioned by President Trump’s national emergency declaration earlier this year. A judge recently granted an injunction temporarily stopping construction.
When construction began last year on a new stretch of wall near the Santa Teresa port of entry, the center installed 20 cameras to bring attention to wildlife in the area. Over the course of about a year they captured images and video of mountain lions, bobcats, javelina, mule deer, coyotes, grey foxes, and badgers, among others.
A bobcat captured by one of the motion sensor cameras posted by the Southwest Environmental Center along the border. Photo courtesy Southwest Environmental Center.
“They would all be too big to pass through the wall that was built,” Bixby said.
The center is currently trying to raise $10,000 to support its staff while it continues its efforts to oppose border wall construction.
Uncaged Art Turns Lens on Trauma of Child Detainees
Among the migrant stories of hardship and life-threatening danger in the past year, one of the most controversial is that of the Tornillo tent camp where unaccompanied migrant children were detained on the eastern edge of El Paso County.
Related: ‘Uncaged Art’ exhibit gives voice to migrant children detained in Tornillo tent city
The Tornillo tent camp opened in June 2018 with room for 400 and spent the next several months adding capacity before finally shutting down in January following protests and congressional criticism. About 6,000 children passed through Tornillo during the seven months it stood.
An exhibit at the Centennial Museum at the University of Texas at El Paso titled “Uncaged Art” showcases artwork created by the children, mostly teens who were detained in Tornillo. The exhibit is a visible artifact of the mass detention of youth in the U.S. that gives visitors a sense of the conditions more than 10,000 migrant children continue to face in detention centers throughout the country.
“This is a very dangerous policy that hurts children in large numbers,” said Mark Lusk, UTEP associate dean of Health Sciences.
The Quetzal Bird of Hope
The colorful Quetzal bird is the heart of the ‘Uncaged Art’ exhibit, representing freedom for the children of Tornillo. The exhibit also includes scenes celebrating soccer, fashion, faith, and native culture.
This multimedia story was produced for 2019 Dow Jones Multimedia Training Academy by Fred Batiste, Jenna Duncan and Molly Hunter.
Click hear to read Today’s border reality: River hazards, refugee child trauma; an end to migrating wildlife
D-Day anniversary
Today is the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings (June 6, 1944).
I am thankful for what they accomplished.
Brutus
Like two exhausted boxers, Border Patrol and Central Americans seek respite
By Walt Baranger
SUNLAND PARK, New Mexico – Just feet away from a large freeway-like sign declaring “Boundary of the United States of America,” children play in the Anapra neighborhood of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. But this is not exactly true; they gambol in a narrow strip of the United States that lies between the Mexican state of Chihuahua and the American border fence, perhaps a dozen feet of disused territory between the invisible international border and the steel slats that soar up to 26 feet high, forming a rust-colored dotted line across the continent.
Happily for the youngsters, the designers of the United States’ border fence failed to take them into consideration. A shoeless pre-teen can easily scramble nearly to the top of the barrier here, and later ask $1 of American passersby who are amazed to see the fence so easily scaled.
Bemused U.S. Border Patrol agents occasionally hand out granola bars or other treats to the little hands that reach north through the bars. The agents know the children by name, and on a recent Monday even chided them for not being in school.
This thin necklace of sand may be United States soil, but sovereignty has been ceded to the nimble fence-climber and his friends, and their pet dog.
In this parched rural stretch of the Border Patrol’s El Paso sector, audiences for the fence climbers are an increasingly rare commodity as agents are diverted from patrolling the fence duties elsewhere. The migrants who attract Washington’s attention are no longer Mexican job seekers, but Guatemalan, Honduran and Salvadoran families, driven north by poverty, violence and endemic government corruption.
Officials report that the number of migrants apprehended in the El Paso area over the past seven months is up a staggering 374% from a year ago, to more than 10,000. The number of families taken into custody is up 1,816% in the same period, to more than 74,000. In the entire Southwest, the number of families caught by the Border Patrol may rise 400% this year, the government estimates.
Actually, “caught” misstates another trend that the vexes the Border Patrol: Families from Central America seeking asylum frequently make no attempt to evade border guards, and instead seek out agents to whom they can surrender. The border security system was designed to apprehend and quickly deport single Mexican males who crossed the border. Small holding cells near the border were never designed for families.
El Paso is the epicenter of this surge of humanity, and a Border Patrol spokesman said that 40% of the region’s field agents have been reassigned from patrol duties in an effort to buttress processing and detention centers.
By all accounts, both the Border Patrol and the migrants they encounter are in dire straits. Federal processing centers and detention facilities are beyond their designed capacities, filled with the poor and dispossessed, the young and the old, often suffering from health problems after such an arduous journey north.
On a recent day near downtown El Paso, Border Patrol agents in plain sight along the Rio Grande, which is easily forded but muddy, warned two families in Juárez not to cross. But they splashed ashore anyway and then waited patiently – the mothers and children appeared exhausted – while reporters quizzed them in Spanish and the agents arranged for their transportation to a processing center.
The migrants were driven away in a faded blue government bus of uncertain vintage. One of the families had decamped from a village in Honduras, some 2,100 miles away.
Their destination will be Border Patrol holding cells in the El Paso area that, in the words of Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general, are “overcrowded,” “dangerous” and “unsanitary.” In May 2019, one El Paso detention facility designed for 125 detainees held 900, with some cells so crowded that there was no room to sit.
“We are concerned that overcrowding and prolonged detention represent an immediate risk to the health and safety not just of the detainees, but also DHS agents and officers,” said the inspector general on May 30.
This multimedia package was produced for 2019 Dow Jones Multimedia Training Academy by Farideh Dada, Nancy Garcia and Walt Baranger.
Click hear to read Like two exhausted boxers, Border Patrol and Central Americans seek respite
D-Day and Mexico
?Food Doesn?t Grow Here Anymore. That?s Why I Would Send My Son North.?
A stark choice for some Guatemalans: watch crops wither, and maybe die with them, or migrate.
Source: [url=https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/05/opinion/guatemala-...
8 Siblings. 4 Time Zones. One WhatsApp Group.
The chat lets us know the small stuff and keeps us company wherever we are.
Source: 8 Siblings. 4 Ti...
Tired but determined volunteers sustain El Paso’s migrant relief services
As U.S. border officials detain thousands of migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border every day, another group waits for the men, women and families who have often been walking for days: volunteers.
In El Paso, where Border Patrol agents apprehended 136,922 migrants between October 2018 and May 2019, residents have responded to the influx of migrants with meals and shelter.
But it’s been eight months since the latest surge of Central American migrants started. Volunteer coordinators have had to adapt their efforts to a timeline that has no end in sight.
“The current volunteers are starting to get fatigued,” Christina Lamour, director of community impact for United Way of El Paso County, said. “That’s where United Way comes in to help.”
Lamour said the city and county asked United Way of El Paso to recruit and build a sustainable infrastructure than can relieve volunteers when they need a break without disrupting what migrants need.
Enter Angelica Mata Lindstrom, United Way’s new volunteer coordinator for migrant services. She was born and raised in El Paso and was hired as a direct result of the migrant influx.
“Immigration, migration has always existed here, especially on the border,” she said.
A grant from the El Paso Community Foundation and the Prudential Foundation pay sfor Mata Lindstrom’s position for one year. That means ramping up fast.
“Back in January, we worked with shelter in the northeast, and three or four weeks ago, we were asked to start building the capacity of that shelter, to increase the number of migrants that they can take in per week,” Lamour said.
The Northeast El Paso shelter is open Thursday to Sunday now, and Lamour hopes to have enough volunteers available to keep it open for at least one or two more days by the end of June.
“If we’re going to increase it for one day, you need to sustain it with 12 individuals, at least for an a.m. shift, and then an additional 12 individuals for a p.m. shift,” she said.
To increase its volunteers, United Way of El Paso will rely not only on Mata Lindstrom’s efforts but also its website, www.volunteerElPaso.org. That’s where volunteers register for a background check, choose volunteer shifts and duties.
Mata Lindstrom said volunteers should be flexible and know their limits.
“People are constantly on their feet, so don’t overexert yourself,” she said. “Balance it out with your everyday life because at the end of the day the individuals you’re interacting with are lovely people that are very appreciative of the work and if they could help us as well, they would.”
Faith informs and sustains local El Paso pastor
Additional community organizations in El Paso have also adapted their volunteer efforts as the ongoing influx of migrants seeking asylum.
Inside a modest store-front church in Central El Paso, refugees from Latin America and beyond regularly take refuge in triple-decker bunk beds. The towering structures that nearly touch the bedroom ceiling are exactly what the weary migrants need after spending days, weeks or longer on their trek to the United States.
They’ve been making Iglesia Luterana Cristo Rey their waystation ever since Pastor Rose Mary Sánchez-Guzmán decided to open the Evangelical Lutheran church’s doors to asylum-seekers who have just been processed by the U.S. government. During the migrants’ short stay before moving on other destinations, warm meals feed their bodies and prayers feed their souls.
The number of refugees who’ve made the church their waystation has increased significantly in the past two years: 200 in 2017, 800 in 2018 and already more than 2,500 this year. Church members, 60% of whom are undocumented themselves, offer hospitality to the refugees.
“My people have been transformed by the interaction with the refugees, hearing their stories and being able to serve them,” said Sánchez-Guzmán. “They feel like they they’re kind of in the same journey. The only difference is that my people are hiding there in the shadows. The refugees have some kind of status while they’re here while they go to court and their cases decided.”
University and high school students, in addition to folks across the country, also interact with the migrants through the church’s immersion program, aimed at increasing knowledge of border communities and their unique issues. When their paths cross at the church, refugees share their stories with immersion program participants.
Helping out poor migrants isn’t a matter of politics, according to Sánchez-Guzmán.
“I wish people would understand that. It’s not about being Republican or being Democrats … This is about being God’s people, loving the world and making the world a better place,” she said.
Borderland Rainbow Center serves both LGBTQ and migrant communities
From a modest one-stove kitchen, Omar Ventura, a refugee relief coordinator at Borderland Rainbow Center (BRC), cooks meals for hundreds of migrants every week. Donated packages of hotdogs, tubs of peanut butter and giant bags of lettuce are the building blocks for feeding hundreds of migrants. Disposable foil roasting pans of pasta, chicken, beans and rice are staple dishes in Ventura’s repertoire.
“We’ll end up making pasta, and then stretch out that pasta and have rice and beans on the side,” Ventura said. “You never see those two together, but our best thing is to get them fed, and also give them something that they recognize.”
Borderland Rainbow Center has been providing about 600 meals a week for migrant shelters in El Paso. The center’s main mission is to serve El Paso’s LGBTQ community, but recently expanded its relief services in response to the influx of migrants since December 23, 2018, when ICE left more than 150 migrants at the Greyhound bus station.
“It is a lot on the community,” said Ashley Heidebrecht, a social work intern at BRC. “But we’d rather have them in our community, released to people who are going to care about them, make sure they have that hot meal, and help them get to their next destination, rather than sitting in a freezing cell in detention.”
BRC is a small organization and has to keep costs down for the food they buy. Heidebrecht said she shops at discount food stores to keep each meal less than a dollar.
Ventura, who is originally from Salt Lake City, said he relates to the migrants’ struggle.
“I’ve been on my own since I was 14 years old, so I know what it’s like to be hungry,” he said.
This multimedia story was produced for 2019 Dow Jones Multimedia Training Academy by Stephanie Bluestein, Jacqueline Fellows and Adam Schrag.
Click hear to read Tired but determined volunteers sustain El Paso’s migrant relief services
U.S. border businesses feeling pain of fewer shoppers from Mexico and tariff threats
El Paso Street buzzes by 9 a.m. on a weekday.
A shop owner with a front-row view of the Paso del Norte Bridge picks up a bedazzled pump and sets it on a box containing the mate. A jackhammer pulses two stores down, caution tape forcing walkers to the street. A steady stream of feet — some quick-paced, others leisurely — move past a Customs and Border Protection officer watching the scene unfold.
Life moves, but not at the pace it once did.
“Business is a lot slower now,” said Angel Macías, an employee at a business on the strip, where Spanish-language music is a soundtrack. “People from Mexico, like I have some friends over there who don’t want to cross anymore. They say it’s pointless … we did used to get a lot of customers that crossed over from Mexico. They don’t want to cross over anymore — because of the lines.”
Hundreds of CBP officers who normally process people walking and driving into the United States have been diverted in recent months to the care and processing of migrants who have been taken into custody at the border. That has led to longer lines for people walking or driving into El Paso.
The El Paso/Ciudad Juárez ports of entry saw $72 billion in trade in 2015, according to the Texas Comptroller’s Office. Talk of tariffs, potential shutdowns, and slower lines is making border business owners nervous about the future.
“It’s drastically impacted the business, not only in downtown. Of course I think downtown is the biggest impacted, but of course this is everywhere in El Paso,” said Gustavo Tavera, owner of Tee Box on El Paso Street.
Business not as usual
Tavera has been in business for 29 years in one place or another along El Paso Street. His inventory is a mix or primary-colored polo shirts, neon tights, and basic t-shirts.
A few years ago, he had 11 employees. Today, he has four. He said he owes his suppliers money, struggles to make his car payment and worries that the business that put his kids through college may go bust.
“I’ve been adjusting the business for so long already … we have not many choices anymore. How many times can you lower the price on a shirt? You have four workers, you only give them 20 hours a week of work now,” said Tavera.
The problem, he said, starts in Central America. Since October 2018, the number of migrants moving through Mexico with sights set on the United States has increased.
“Nothing’s getting better,” he said. “From here to Christmas, we’re expecting another half a million people at least.”
The influx has meant customs agents are spread thin, increasing wait times to walk or drive onto El Paso Street, he said. People once making trips into the United States four times a week are now only coming once. When there’s hope among business owners to see more customers, such as upcoming school breaks that historically would bring more foot traffic from Juárez, it is shattered by reality.
Sergio González, owner of La Esquina at the corner of El Paso Street and Father Rahm Avenue, estimates a 15% loss of sales for the last 18 months. His store offers a variety of products, from self-care items to novelty character lunch boxes to live Betta fish.
Clothing businesses are down 40%, González said. Businesses are closing down.
“We’re friends,” Tavera said of other business owners in the area. “Every morning it’s the same thing. ‘How are you, how are you doing, how was yesterday.’ The answers? They’re always the same. ‘Oh bad.’ How was it Saturday? ‘Oh bad.’”
Early rise for cross-border employment
Macías wakes up between 4 and 5 a.m. to start his journey to work, less than a mile into Texas, just to make sure he’s on time. His queue time for entry to the United States was, until recently, on average 30 minutes. In early June, he waited more than an hour to be admitted.
“I’ve been crossing over for about four years,” he said. “The lines started a month, a month and a half ago … You get used to it. I got used to it. It’s like normal now.”
Macías is a U.S. citizen. His wife is a Mexican national. The couple has two daughters.
To make it to work on time, he’s up early. His commute includes a 45 minute bus ride from his home in Juárez. Leisurely trips to El Paso no longer exist.
“I know people that just want to come over and eat at McDonald’s, Burger King, there’s a Kentucky Fried Chicken,” he said. “There’s people who just want to come over and eat and go back, but they can’t do that because it’s about two to three hours to cross.”
Their money, Macías said, is being spent in Mexico instead. A shift in spending brings fear among employees in downtown, many who cross the border for the better wages.
“We are afraid because we work out of the stores downtown and, like, if the stores close, we’re going to have to move even further looking for jobs. So we hope for the best, but it’s going down as far as I see it. It’s decreasing on sales. It’s going from worse to worse.”
Working longer for just as much
On the corner of the Sixth and El Paso streets, a group of men patiently await customers coming from Mexico. They try to stay away from the sun of the summer standing in the narrow strip of shade provided by a wall.
This used to be a very busy spot in downtown, with taxi drivers going back and forth from El Paso to Ciudad Juárez and with many people crossing from Mexico to shop in El Paso. But now, taxi drivers are having a hard time to get enough clients and most of them have to work longer hours to make at least $60 or $80 per day.
“You have to work all day for that,” said Martín Ramírez, who has been a taxi driver for 30 years. “It was better before because the line would keep moving faster, but now with this, we have to stay longer hours to make three to four trips a day.”
He avoids taking trips to Juárez too.
“Whenever you get a trip to go to Juárez to the airport or to the bus station, on the way back it takes about three hours, if not about four hours to come back because they don’t have enough immigration agents to check all the cars; they just have two lanes open,” he says.
But occasionally, the long waiting lines benefit the drivers.
“Sometimes people coming are late to work, so they have to take a cab, but not always,” he adds.
Like the other taxi drivers in this corner, Ramírez works from Monday to Saturday, if not Sundays too. “It is not easy,” he says. “You got to work a lot of hours. It is getting bad.”
Beyond the border
Trade at the El Paso ports of entry is down 7.3%, impacting both imports and exports, according to a May 2019 report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. Imports were down 9.8% to $45.3 billion.
The Fed cited “recent long delays at the border crossing due to Customs and Border Protection officers being diverted to process migrants.”
What starts at the border, makes its way into the city, state and country, creating ripple effects.
“Eighty percent of our freight comes all the way from Mexico and the interior of the republic and the other 20 percent is what we call domestic, either from El Paso or somewhere into El Paso or something just inside the United States,” said Angel Ponce, senior sales manager at Erives Enterprises Inc. in El Paso.
The day at Erives starts with the sound of diesel engines revving to life. Border struggles put the company’s fleet of 210 trucks, and the jobs attached to those rigs, on the line. Lower import numbers slow down business.
“We’re talking about drivers who are making a paycheck every week,” said Ponce. “So when tariffs hit or the market slows down, some of those drivers have to stay home. We’re talking about drivers not having a week of payment. Not a lot of us can go through that.”
The past couple weeks, particularly, have been hard, said Ponce. The fleet is operating at 85 to 90% efficiency. Below 80 is cause for concern, which could result in a red line at the end of the month. No business wants to bleed money, said Ponce.
“We have a social responsibility to be successful, to be profitable for employees and for investors and the people that depend on us, including our customers and our stakeholders,” said Ponce.
Slowdowns to entry into the United States mean Erives has gone as far as hiring security to protect cargo overnight.
It’s more than just tariffs and slowdowns, though. Another Trumped-discussed threat looms with the potential replacement or change of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
“We have learned the last couple years that trying to predict what’s going to happen is a fool’s errand,” said Ponce. “The worst case scenario is for NAFTA to go away. I can tell you first hand that if NAFTA goes away, a lot of businesses are going to go away.”
This multimedia story was produced for 2019 Dow Jones Multimedia Training Academy by Tara Cuslidge-Staiano, Lourdes Cardenas and Steve J. Collins
Click hear to read U.S. border businesses feeling pain of fewer shoppers from Mexico and tariff threats
Federal Judge Dismisses House of Representatives Border Wall Lawsuit for Lack of Standing
Source: Federal Judge Dismisses House of Representatives Border Wall Lawsuit for Lack of Standing
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Reason Magazine Immigratio...
Bob needs dough and I need material - please help
Amateur hour
Our city government is evidently getting into the clothing business, kinda.
You can see the full image here http://www.elpasotexas.gov/~/media/files/coep/temporary/aac2019%20-%20t-shirt-hat.ashx
In this day of e-commerce the city invites you to send them an email if you want to purchase something.
The web page tells us that the proceeds “go directly to our All-America City fundraising efforts”.
If we all pitch in and buy something maybe they will have enough money to only raise our taxes by 7%.
We deserve better
Brutus
GOP Caving on Tariffs and AMLO on Verge of Channeling Santa Ana
Lost Dog Land Thieves Now Pounding Sand
Tariffs! OH NOES!!!
