The Texas Border Town at the Center of the Immigration Debate

Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.

Hey it's Sarah Today. We're bringing you an episode of The Big Take DC featuring reporting on the ground from the US Mexico border as asylum seekers make the dangerous journey across the Rio Grande. Here's my colleague Salamosen with more on the immigration debate shaping this year's election and the real life stakes.

In twenty sixteen, Donald Trump had a simple solution that he believed would stop the migrant crisis, build what he called a big, beautiful wall on the border between the US and Mexico. At the time, a lot of Americans, even some Republicans like Jeb Bush and Rick Perry, dismissed the IDEA simple fact is.

That his proposal is unrealistic.

It will cost hundreds of billions of dollars.

The cost, the time, the maintenance of that is not reality.

And for most of Maria voters, immigration was not at the top of the list for issues driving their votes. Today that's changed. A Harvard Caps Harris poll found immigration is now the top issue for voters over the economy, and one from Monmouth University found that a majority of Americans now support building a border wall.

One of the things we heard when we were in New Hampshire for the primaries Iowa South Carolina is that not only is the economy top of mind for voters this year, but also immigration and border security were coming up time and time again in all different places in the US.

That's Peggy Collins, Washington bureau chief for Bloomberg News, as the person shaping the newsroom's coverage of the election. Peggy is watched as the border has taken center stage in both Trump and Biden's campaigns, but she hadn't seen it for herself. So Peggy decided to go to the place at the heart of this issue to understand how national politics are playing out there. She flew down to Eagle Pass. That's a small city right on the border in Texas.

That you've walked and ridden trains and hitchhiked. You can just see in her face like she was gone.

Resources that we have.

That's the most that we can do, like the best that we can do.

Today on the show, we bring you voices from the US Mexico border after Bloomberg's Washington Bureau chief Peggy Collins went down there, How are the state and national policies that everyone is talking about playing out on the ground, and how could all of this shape the border conversation in the twenty twenty four election. From Bloomberg's Washington Bureau, this is the Big Take DC podcast. I'm Salaamoso Eagle Pass, Texas. It's a city of twenty eight thousand people right along

I mean, it really looks like you could throw a baseball across and hit it. You look across at the river and you think, oh, I could swim across that, no problem.

People drive multiple times a day from Eagle Pass, Texas to Padres Negress, Mexico, across a bridge connecting the communities physically, socially, and culturally. There were people we talked to who had grown up in Mexico, gone to school in Eagle Pass, become citizens, now have homes in Eagle Pass, but go back to Mexico to see family or for events in a given week. This proximity and just how narrow the river gets are what brings thousands of migrants a day

It's deceptive.

It looks really peaceful, right.

Pancha Navarus is a former Texas state representative who owns a ranch right along the border in Eagle Pass. He says, the Rio Grande may look narrow and ease it across, but it's actually really dangerous.

There's a lot of crevices and limestone where you can get caught. It'll kind of suck you in and drown you. Right.

The current is very strong, and many people have died by drowning when they tried across the border because the current is deceptibly fast. But thousands of people do make it across, leaving their wet clothes on the banks of the river. Telea, I can't express enough how when we drove up to this part of the border. There are mounds and mounds and mounds of clothes, Like when you step on it, you can't feel the ground because the clothes are stacked up and it's so thick.

Shirts, jeans, bras, children's sneakers. But making it across the river and into dry clothes is far from the end of the journey. Right on the water, right up against the piles of clothes are razor wire fences with rows and rows of sharp teeth.

It's really striking and emotional to see because it almost looks like it's possible to get through them, because they're kind of circles, and so it's almost like a bit like, wow, I think someone could actually get through that, But when you get closer, you realize that it's almost impossible to get through them without you know, really getting cut or scraped.

There are a few spots in the fence where people have found openings. Peggy sow one.

On this rancher's property, there was a part of the wire that had basically been opened or pushed down enough that people were able to come through. And because so many people have access to social media now, they have basically been able to message to lots of people that there's this opening and a place you can get through. Navarrees agreed to let the state put up that barbed wire fencing along his border, but before long he had

We came across as young girl. She was barefoot, carrying a child and pregnant. You know, we found out later after talking to her that she was seventeen years old. The child she was carrying was two and a half years old, and she had walked and ridden trains and hitchhiked all the way from Atlantida on nudahs. By the time we got to her, sar like you could just see in her face like she was done.

I spent.

She was gashed from the wire, but she had beat it. And so what it instantly told me is that somebody who's walked three thousand miles and ridden trains and hitch hike and probably been beaten and robbed is not going to be stopped by that. I've been talking to the guard I told him I want to shut out because it's any humane and doesn't do anything.

Generally, it's up to the Federal Border Patrol agents to police the US Mexico border, but Texas Governor Greg Abbot says the Biden administration isn't doing enough to prevent illegal crossings. In fiscal twenty twenty three, officials encountered almost four hundred thousand migrants crossing the border into the Del Rio region where Eagle Pass is located. So Abbot took matters into his own hands. He took aim at one place in particular,

It was a ship at Contatas first, and then it was a concertina wire. And then there's a new barrier. I'll show you right now. That's a cycle fence. It's called an anti clim barrier.

Lieutenant Christopher Olivarros works for the Texas Department of Public Safety. He showed Peggy the new reinforcements at Shelby Park.

I mean this was ground zero used to be. If you remember back in December, there was a lot of I guess you know video images from other media outlets where you would see thousands that were kind of grouped here in this field. This is where that's where this was taking place.

Do you see a market difference in terms of the volume of people coming through here as a result.

Yeah, So December we're averaging probably in the last two years, a little over two thousand crossings a day a day in this area here at Shelby Park and even outside of Shelby Park in the close proximity. And then when National Guard took over the park, secured the park, put up more barriers, more fencing, more wire. Ever since then, it's been a ninety percent decrease in illegal crossings.

At Shelby Park.

Abbott and other Republican lawmakers count this as a win, but some argue that the dip in crossings could be seasonal, something we see every year during the winter, and Pancho Navarrees believes that even if crossings are down at Shelby Park, it just means that people will find another spot at the border to cross. He told Peggy that he sees all of this as a political stunt.

Having us under siege if you will makes it look good for them, and the truth is, we're fine. But what we need is people to stop believing that somehow this protects anybody, because it doesn't. You don't really care about this crisis other than to mine it for votes.

When it comes to using the issue for votes, it's worth noting that bipartisan immigration legislation has been held up in Congress. Biden has blamed Republicans for that, saying they don't want to pass it and let him take credit. Meanwhile, calling in the National Guard was just one of Governor Abbott's moves. The other one that's gotten a lot of publicity busing migrants to other states up north. We get into the political consequences and the human consequences of the

Plan to move migrants away from the Texas border.

This morning, more migrants arriving in New York City bus after bus, at least six pulling into the city's port authority.

Since then, the state has spent more than one hundred and forty eight million dollars doing just that. It's been a very effective tool enforcing the issue onto Democrats and President Biden's agenda. Biden is in a tricky spot. He can't tout high numbers of turnaways at the border without angering progressives who are pushing for a more sensitive and

I think in the last few months, as the issue has become so intense, and as the volume of people going through places like Eagle Pass has just exploded, the Biden administration has realized that it does have to have a stance on this, be able to point to ways that they are trying to help it, or ways that they can say, look, we tried to do this, but Republicans are not allowing us to do this.

In February, Biden took a visit to a border town some three hundred miles from Eagle Pass, and you can hear him trying to convince the people there that he's been trying to get stuff done with the most recent border bill that's making its way through Congress. But he says that Republican lawmakers are standing in his way.

I want the people to understand clearly what happened here. This bill was in the United States Senate, was on its way to be passed, and it was derailed by rank and file politicans ranked a partisan politics.

Meanwhile, down the river in Eagle Pass on the exact same day was his opponent.

This is a Joe Biden invasion.

This is a Biden invasion over.

The past three years.

Peggy spoke with a city official during her visit who said that all these stump speeches are not helping people on the ground.

They said that sometimes it's frustrating because people will come and take a photo op and then leave, and they feel like they need help now, and they can't wait till the election, and they don't want to be pawns in this political back and forth. What we need is for people to really sit down and try to do immigration reform in some ways.

Peggy also met migrants who had just crossed the border into Eagle Pass. One of them was Nancy Lopez, a mother of two Sally PORKI.

I left because I was attacked by the father of my children, and I was afraid of being there, so I left. I came here with my kids to give them an education and to work.

Nancy said she traveled nearly eighteen hundred miles all the way from Honduras, soial.

I borded the train to cross the river. And I was worried the whole way because I was traveling with my kids and it's not safe. You feel afraid, like I said.

Nancy hoped that once she arrived she could find her way north. She said her sister lives in North Carolina, so she planned to save up enough money for bus fare for her. Governor Abbott's busing program might actually be a welcome offer, and she's not alone.

We have received people that come and rite when they enter our place, They're like, we want to go in the free buses.

That's Valerio Wheeler, the executive director of a nonprofit called Mission Border Hope. The organization gives recently arrived migrants basic support, shelter, clothing, food, phone lines to call their families. Valeria said that those migrants have been increasingly showing up and asking about Abbot's buses, which they heard about on TikTok.

It's like, Hi, I'm in New York I took a boss from Middle Past to New York for free.

Critics say that Abbot's busing program is using migrants as human political tools, trying to overwhelm social services in northern cities that are unprepared for this sort of influx. But it's complicated for people like Valeria, who are on the ground providing care to hundreds of thousands of migrants who crossed the border into her city each year. Valeria told Peggy, she said.

You know, I understand that, and we don't want to be a burden to other places. But we are Eagle Pass and we are very small town and doing the best that we can with hundreds and sometimes thousands of people, as we were told in December across the border in one day.

The least think we want to create iscare and difficult situation in other places with the resources that we have. That's the most that we can do, like the best that we can do.

And she was saying, look, I hear you, but also we're very small and places like New York and Chicago are much bigger, so we do need some help here. Peggy saw things that stunned her.

We saw children who were there in a nurse's station that was set up because a lot of the migrants that are crossing have walked for days, weeks, and sometimes even months, and so their feet are severely damaged. We saw one child where they were taking tweezers and taking some things out of the bottom of their feet, and she heard about problems that were regular occurrences in eagle paths.

I asked Peggy, what's stuck with her from her visit to the border and what she'll be thinking about as she steers coverage of the immigration debate going into the twenty twenty four election. That felt like when we were in Eagle Pass and on the Texas border, that it has reached a breaking, if not inflection point. We do need to figure out a way to improve our immigration system because the flow of migrants is not going to stop. Thanks for listening to The Big Take DC podcast from