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Sunland Park — a 13-square-mile patch of rugged mountains, unforgiving desert and an unpredictable Rio Grande — is mired in a growing entanglement of immigrant crossings that is straining the patience and resources of this New Mexico community of 17,000.
“It’s every day, during the day and during the night. Even at midnight and after midnight, you can see a lot of people crossing, sometimes 20 to 30 at a time,” said Jose Hernandez, a resident of Sunland Park...
“You hear them during the night jumping the fences,” he said. “They use a rope, or whatever they can. Sometimes they hide in that trailer. You see how they broke the window,” said Hernandez, pointing to an abandoned mobile home on a dusty lot at the foot of rising slopes that extend into Mexico a few dozen yards away.
The fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 had the highest number of U.S. Border Patrol encounters on record — 1.95 million nationally, which eclipsed the previous high of 1.692 million encounters in 1986, according to government data. The number of encounters at the Mexican border during that period was 1.73 million, which includes 628,761 children and family members. The number of children and families encountered at the border during the 2019 surge was 608,697.
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From Oct. 1, 2020, through Sept. 30, 2021, the U.S. Border Patrol encountered 1,105,925 single adults, more than the previous three years combined.
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Residents here have become accustomed to the chopping sound of helicopter blades hovering over their homes, the roaring engines of vehicle chases through their streets, government all-terrain-vehicles tearing through vacant lots and desert, and mounted horse patrols sweeping through their neighborhoods...
Decreased staffing
Despite the current record surge along the border, staffing of the Border Patrol has dropped since 2013, when 18,610 agents were stationed along the border. The latest figures available show 16,731 agents staffed along the border.
The El Paso sector, which includes all of New Mexico, had its highest number of agents in 2010, with 2,752. The latest records show that 2,160 agents are now stationed in this sector.
Isabel Marshall, a Sunland Park resident who was picking up aluminum cans near a mobile home, said she is puzzled by how immigrants can often make their way through her neighborhood without any Border Patrol agents confronting them.
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Richard J. Barragan, a supervisory Border Patrol agent, said the Sunland Park area is served by the Santa Teresa Border Patrol station, “the busiest station within the El Paso Sector,” accounting for 46% of all encounters in the sector. He also said it is “one of the busiest stations along the Southwest border”
The Santa Teresa station chief, agent Gerardo Galvan, said the current immigrant flow in Sunland Park “continues to challenge the Santa Teresa Border Patrol station’s capacity to provide security to the residents and businesses of the communities we serve.”
“The challenges go beyond immigration and exposes vulnerabilities, which have far-reaching impacts to the residents and the very same individuals who are being exploited by transnational criminal organizations looking to profit from the current situation,” he said.
Despite the increased immigrant activity, encounters in the El Paso sector are not at historic highs. In the mid-1980s, this sector had an average of 249,000 annual encounters, and during the early 1990s it had an average of 242,000 encounters each year. The highest number of undocumented apprehensions on record for the El Paso sector is 285,781 in 1993.
For the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, the El Paso sector recorded 193,918 apprehensions.
In New Mexico alone — independent of the El Paso sector encounters — 125,630 migrant apprehensions by the Border Patrol were recorded in that period. The highest was in May, which had 15,302 encounters. The latest numbers show that Border Patrol agents intercepted 12,539 migrants entering the United States through New Mexico in September.
Asylum-seekers
The border is still predominantly closed to immigrants.
Title 42 — the U.S. public health initiative that expels most asylum-seekers as a COVID-19 precaution — remains in effect; and the Migrant Protection Protocols, which force immigrants to await U.S. immigration hearings in Mexico, is poised to be reinstated, as ruled upon by a Texas court. So although the border was opened last week to nonessential travelers from Mexico, there are still considerable obstacles that prohibit entry by many immigrants.
Raquel Morales, a 24-year-old mother of three children — ages 6, 5 and 3 — said she had just completed a two-day bus ride to Juárez from her home in western Mexico and had hopes to apply for asylum at the U.S. port of entry downtown.
“Things in Michoacan are very difficult, too hard to stay there for my children,” she said. She was waiting on the Juárez side of the bridge with about 10 others, all expecting to learn how they might enter the United States to apply for asylum. “I don’t know who I am waiting for, or what I should do,” she said.
A teenager wearing the blue shirt and sandals indicative of expelled immigrants was soon escorted from the port and released on the Mexican side of the international bridge. He was holding a small zip-close bag containing a few hundred pesos and a cellphone. His name was Miguel Tojin, he was 18 years old and from Guatemala, he said. He stood amid the moving crowd, looking confused.
“Where is Mexico? Is it here? Should I walk over here?” he asked, and moved against the flow of the bridge’s pedestrian traffic, unaware that he had been ejected from the United States on the wrong side of the bridge, and would have to cross to the other side, across multiple lanes of vehicle traffic, to be able to walk into Mexico.
Human smugglers
Many immigrants like Morales and Tojin decide to avoid the confusion of the ports of entry and the typically prompt removal from the United States, and venture instead to the polleros — “chicken herders” or “coyotes” — the human smugglers who are paid to bypass legal obstacles and take migrants into U.S. border communities like Sunland Park.
Along the international boundary, about 15,000 of the Guardia Nacional — the Mexican National Guard — patrol the Mexican side of the border. Two members of the Guardia Nacional are typically posted in Anapra, the Mexican colonia directly opposite Sunland Park. Wearing desert camouflage uniforms and armed with FX-05 Xiuhcoatl assault rifles, they alternate in 15-day shifts, watching the Mexican side of the border for unauthorized entry into the United States.
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This Mexican National Guard patrol station is about 50 feet from the border, and agents say they have found rope ladders used by smugglers to cross migrants over the border wall. From their station, they can overlook Sunland Park and its surrounding desert — inhospitable and barbed with acres of cactus and yucca.
Border Patrol records show that more than 7,800 migrants have died along the border since 1998. In the El Paso sector, there have been 264 official deaths during that time, but officials say it is impossible to know exactly how many migrants have died along this stretch of the border.
Last year, the El Paso sector recorded 10 deaths, and this year Sunland Park alone has had eight migrant deaths within its city limits, according to information provided by the city of Sunland Park.