Border Patrol

When I drive back from El Paso or south of Marfa or Big Bend National Park, I have to go through a Border Patrol checkpoint. An officer stands under a shelter on the road, and waves you through or signals you to stop. An Iowa license plate seemed to be a free pass through the checkpoint, but now with a Texas plate, I get a few questions, “Where are you going? Where have you been? What were you doing there? Where do you live? How long have you lived there?” and always, “Are you a citizen?” It is a relatively benign experience, but I’m an Anglo. I’ve never been asked for my papers or pulled over for a search. Actually, I’ve never talked with anyone who has.

When I drive to Marfa, I pass the blimp station that monitors the region from the sky. The large white unmanned blimp was a more chilling sight when I first moved here than it is today. At first I felt the government was watching everything I did, but now I have mixed feelings, and some days--particularly hot days--I'm actually happy to see it up in the air. If it is up there maybe some poor soul won’t try to make the trek across the river and through the desert. Maybe it is a deterrent for some.

It is about smuggling people and drugs, and the sad fact is people die in the desert trying to get across--more people than you think. Every issue of the paper has reports of drug arrests and there’s a long list of vehicles, cash, and drugs taken by law enforcement. There are also reports at times of bodies found on remote ranch land, some with identification and some without.

I never feel particularly unsafe here. I’m as wary as I would be exploring a new urban neighborhood, and I keep an eye out, but I don’t feel at risk. Most of you know I’m not reckless with my safety, and that’s no different here. Smugglers don’t want encounters with ordinary folks, just as urban criminals wouldn’t want to force contact with tourists. Visitors are safe. Anyone involved with contraband would take a detour around tourists tromping in the desert. They just don’t want to be seen. Besides, Border Patrol trucks are a frequent sight on the road; they’re checking fences and obvious hiding places, and following up on suspicious sightings from the blimp.

Most of you know that I have feelings against the use of illegal drugs, and living here has solidified that sentiment. In Iowa, it was easier to hold a “live and let live” philosophy…you do it, and it is your business. But here, even though drugs are a significant part of the economy and if they went away this part of Texas would really be hurting, I see how involvement in the transportation network to get them to the U.S. results in people dying in the desert alone.

The National Guard is here now, and they say they’re building fences and other “support activities.” With new “National Security” mandates, Van Horn is due to see our Border Patrol force grow from 16 to 175 in the next few years. That’s a lot of growth for a town of 2,500 with no available housing at all.

In Presidio across the border from Ojinaga, Mexico (the safest border town, they tell me), they had to build a compound for the influx of Border Patrol families. Behind a tall chain-link, barbed wire fence sits a large neighborhood of brand new suburban houses with new children’s toys on the lawns of green irrigated grass. The rest of Presidio is very, very poor and living in crumbling adobe and dingy trailers on dusty barren land. A Chamber of Commerce person in Presidio said most Hispanics even those with legal status, are afraid to cross over to Mexico for fear they’ll never get back because of document issues. This is an ugly dynamic to set up in any small town—a relatively wealthy community with visible material goods living in a fenced compound in the center of frightened, poor people with no easy way to get home.