Four days, almost 1,000 miles from Santa Fe and back, and visits to three migrant shelters, a homeless program in El Paso, two mental asylums, a school for Tarahumara students, a house building program, two brothers who are dealing with major health problems, and a tour of the border wall between Sunland Park, New Mexico and Anapra, Mexico.
This was my fifth trip to the border this year in an effort to keep up with the ever-changing politics of immigration and to check on various friends and organizations.
In terms of Juárez and Palomas to the west, I’ve probably made close to 200 trips since late 2010. It’s the only way to get a feel for what is really happening and to continue relationships with friends and organizations I work with, many of which have enormous needs.
What was learned on this whirlwind trip.
First, Mexico’s President, Claudia Sheinbaum. Her approval ratings are about 80%, staggering and unexpected numbers. When we were in Mexico City on June 2 for the presidential elections which she won in a landslide with almost 60% of the vote, almost everyone we interviewed saw her – and all politicians – with great skepticism. Now, in contrast to her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) she has stepped up her attacks on the drug cartels as evidenced by her recent extradition of 29 cartel leaders to the US, including Rafael Caro-Quintero who had served 28 years in prison in Mexico for his role in the kidnapping and killing of DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena in 1985. There are few worse fates than ending up in a US prison like the “supermax” in Florence, Colorado where El Chapo Guzman is.
She has also deployed some troops to Juárez as part of her commitment to President Trump. We spoke to several soldiers at a checkpoint on the west edge of the city and saw other small convoys within the city but there were none at the wall between Anapra and Sunland Park, formerly a high crossing area.
Late last year, her forces seized the equivalent of 20 million doses of fentanyl.
Will her efforts be enough to hold off the 10% tariffs threatened for next Tuesday?
We visited three migrant shelters and saw no evidence of a buildup of migrants. The doors were locked at the Punto Beta shelter in Palomas. There was one family at the Tierra de Oro shelter in El Modelo. Consuela, the wife of that family said they had been there for thirteen months but since they have all found work, their lives are OK. The Tierra de Oro shelter in Palomas has also been closed.
The migrant population in Respettrans in the center of Juárez has a population that shifts from about 50 to 80 or more and they have a continuing need for items like diapers and food.
The biggest issue is the continuing lack of a health care system. On the west edge of Anapra, I visited two brothers – Francisco and Fernando – who had a tire repair shop for forty years. Francisco has dementia plus Parkinson’s; Fernando and his wife, Maria were watching out for him until Fernando lost both feet due to diabetes. Now he has a kidney issue in addition.
At Visión en Acción, a mental asylum I’ve been helping for about fourteen years, there are a number of young women who are there for drug problems. They are brought in drugged up, dry out and recuperate and then go home but there is no follow-up system to ensure that they don’t relapse. As a result, two of them have relapsed, gone out into the night again and been murdered.
The other asylum, Punto Zero houses about 30 patients, offers little medical care and is basically just a shelter. But it does provide physical safety, decent living conditions, regular meals, and a caring environment. That counts for a lot in this impoverished area of the city.
Regarding education, for about twelve years, a dedicated young woman named Lorena Solares was the teacher at the Tarahumara school on the west edge of Juárez. Once when I asked her if she missed her family in Chihuahua, she pointed to the students and said, “This is my family.” Now there is a new teacher but the school has been closed for the day on our last two visits. What will happen to these kids if they don’t at least learn some Spanish?
Sheinbaum has spoken out on the need for the US to control the flow of weapons into Mexico and when I crossed the border at the Santa Teresa port of entry in late January, two agents stopped my car and asked if I had weapons. This was the first time this has ever happened and I thought that maybe President Trump had taken seriously Sheinbaum’s request. I was wrong. No one checked us this time and when we exited Mexico later that day, the agent who inspected our car knew nothing about any new policy to control weapons.
What happens next? Will our president impose ten percent tariffs as has been reported? Wouldn’t that be unfair to Sheinbaum who has taken major steps in just the first four months of her presidency? Shouldn’t both countries be doing their share in this ugly war?
Editor’s Note: The above guest column was penned by Morgan Smith, a New Mexico-based writer who travels to the border at least once a month to document conditions there and assist several humanitarian organizations. He can be reached at Morgan-smith@comcast.net.
