Shared from the 1/11/2019 Houston Chronicle eEdition

SHUTDOWN

Trump brings wall fight to border

Residents say security not the ‘crisis’ president claims

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Evan Vucci / Associated Press

President Donald Trump salutes as a U.S. Customs and Border Protection helicopter passes during his tour of the U.S. border with Mexico on Thursday in McAllen. Trump claimed a “lot of crime” is caused by criminals who cross the Rio Grande.

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President Donald Trump speaks during a tour of the U.S. border with Mexico on Thursday. Before his visit to the Rio Grande, the president spent about an hour listening to residents, and U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz — praised him for pushing for the border wall.

Evan Vucci / Associated Press

McALLEN — With funding for his border wall stymied by opposition in Congress, President Trump brought his lobbying campaign to far South Texas for a few hours Thursday, hammering on arguments that a barrier is needed to end what he calls a crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border.

“A lot of crime in our country is caused by what’s coming through here,” Trump said during a whirlwind visit to McAllen and the Rio Grande. “Whether it’s steel or concrete you don’t care. We need a barrier.”

Before returning to Washington, Trump repeated his threat to declare a “national emergency” over border security if congressional Democrats continue to deny $5.7 billion he has requested for a border “barrier” and other security items.

“We shouldn’t have to,” Trump said. “This is common sense.”

Such a move, to which Trump said Thursday he had an “absolute right,” could allow him to pay for wall construction with defense or other spending. It’s widely expected to be challenged in Congress and the courts.

In all, Trump spent around four hours on the border, including a few minutes viewing the Rio Grande at a county park that fronts the river. Across the narrow stream lies Reynosa, a violent city that’s acenter for illegal trafficking in humans and narcotics into the U.S.

Before his brief visit to the actual border, the president spent about an hour listening to several residents and Texas Republican politicians — including U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz — praise him for pushing for the wall.

To emphasize what they said was a need for the barrier, Border Patrol and Customs officials explained a display of weapons and narcotics confiscated near or at the border.

“That says it all,” Trump said. But much of the contraband on display was seized at international bridges, perhaps undercutting the president’s argument for an urgently needed barrier between such legal points of entry.

The president’s budget had called for $1.6 billion in new wall funding, matching last year’s funding, a figure that was acceptable to most Democrats and Republicans. The impasse began before Christmas when he increased the amount to $5.7 billion.

Some new fencing already is funded. Construction is scheduled to start next month on 14 miles of 18-foot-high steel bollard fencing in the Valley, at a cost of more than $300 million.

“The president’s trip this week has the feel of a bull in search of a china shop,” said Antonio “Tony” Garza, who served as the George W. Bush administration’s ambassador to Mexico and who grew up in the border city of Brownsville.

Like many other border residents and elected officials, Garza argues that enhanced border security would best be achieved by limited fencing combined with more enforcement boots on the ground, smoother processing of asylum-seekers and other migrants, and greater surveillance technology.

“If he keeps his eyes and ears open to folks who really know the region, he might realize there’s a better, smarter more responsible way of getting to the safe, secure and efficient border we all want,” Garza said.

Apprehensions plummet

But neither migrant advocates nor elected local officials — most of whom don’t support new wall building and bristle at descriptions of their bustling cities as being in crisis — were invited to speak.

Several thousand protesters lined the few miles of streets and avenues where Trump’s motorcade passed, shouting either support or opposition for him and the wall. A large helium blimp in the president’s likeness hovered above protesters across the road from the Border Patrol station where Trump met with the officials.

“Build the wall,” one group chanted. “No more wall,” countered another. Few seemed particularly incensed.

Residents along this border have been accustomed to being in the vortex of Washington debates about immigration, narcotics trafficking and other issues. Though presidential visits are rare, other politicians and officials flock here regularly attempting to drive home messages for a national audience.

In recent years, the Lower Rio Grande Valley, which runs along the border from downstream of Laredo to the Gulf of Mexico, has become the primary crossing point for immigrants, including thousands of Central American families with young children coming to request asylum.

Nearly half of the 304,000 undocumented migrants detained along the U.S. border in fiscal year 2017 were caught in the sector. Overall, border apprehensions have plummeted for years, from a high of almost 1.7 million arrests in 2000. Since then, the U.S. has more than doubled the size of the Border Patrol and spent tens of billions of dollars on fencing and other security measures.

“You know why we’ve been in the news?” asked Eddie Zamora, a gray-haired Trump supporter and Navy veteran. “Because McAllen is now ground zero for illegal immigration.”

Though many oppose new wall construction, residents on this stretch of border are keenly aware of the security threats across the Rio Grande.

Violence in Mexico

McAllen and other border cities rank among the safest U.S. cities in terms of violent crime — with murders here routinely in the single digits annually — but communities across the river have grown increasingly insecure.

As gangland violence has spiked in Reynosa and other Mexican border cities in the past dozen years, many people have stopped crossing the Rio Grande to shop or enjoy a night out in once-popular restaurants and bars.

Mexican officials said at least 21 people were killed Wednesday in a shootout between suspected rival trafficking gangs in the border town of Miguel Aleman, about 50 miles upriver from where Trump visited. The city sits between turf controlled by gangs that dominate much of that stretch of the border.

“The level of fear is higher than when I grew up. But a crisis? No,” said Thelma Molano, 56, a school nurse raised in Granjeno, a village just downstream from where Trump viewed the Rio Grande. “To me, the wall represents the anti-browning of America. They don’t want Hispanics here.”

Next door to Molano’s house, unemployed truck driver Andres Diego was sticking American flags into a front yard, to show support for Trump, who he hoped would pass through the village on the way to the riverfront.

A native of the borderlands, Diego, 41, and a father of six, said illegal immigration has hurt his own economic prospects because he’s had to compete for jobs with undocumented migrants. He echoed other Trump supporters in complaining about the cost to taxpayers of educating and providing health care for immigrants.

Diego argued that the surge in Central American families crossing the border in order to seek asylum threatens to put still more pressure on education and health services. That, he said, merited Trump’s branding the issue a “crisis.”

“I feel a wall is going to help the Border Patrol. We need it big time,” Diego said. “Finally, we have a president who supports us, the lower middle class.”

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