Summarization of below To be sure, human smuggling remains a problem on the border,
and thousands of stash houses, buildings were smugglers keep
migrants or drugs, dot the landscape of many border cities. And
billions of dollars of cocaine and other drugs including deadly
substances like fentanyl - are smuggled across the border each
year. But more often than not, the interactions between the two
sides of the border are innocuous.
As the New York Times homeland security correspondent, I spend
a good amount of my time reporting on various bills and policy
proposals to secure the border. Much of this starts in government
agencies and press briefing rooms in Washington, far from those
who would be affected by the changes, which is why I try to visit
the border as often as I can to see how these policies shape the
lives of people living there.
There is a sense of interconnectedness between these borders
towns and their Mexican counterparts. Each day, about one million
people cross the border from either side for shopping, business and
recreation. It's common to see children coming into the United
States from Mexico to go to school, and thousands of United States
citizens who live in Mexican border towns commute to work in
American cities every day.
"We don't see people across the river as people living in another
country. We see them as our family, as part of the same
community" Pete Saenz, the mayor of Laredo, Tex., told me during
a trip there in August. That sentiment is widespread in many areas
along the border, where family ties on both sides go back centuries.
(To be sure, there are complaints from landowners about migrants
and drug smugglers crossing private property and many people
Who support building President Trump's border wall.)
I admit that as someone who grew up far from the border, I, like
most Americans, once had no idea just how linked these border
communities are. It's another reason there's a need for on-the-
ground reporting from these communities that challenges
narratives around them.
During my most recent trip to the southwest border, I went to San
Ysidro, just south of San Diego, days after border agents used tear
gas to to disperse about 500 migrants who overwhelmed Mexican
border guards and rushed the port of entry.
After a tour with officials from Customs and Border Protection, I
spent time driving around and talking to people at shopping malls,
barber shops and even IHOP (my go-to spot on the road). What I
found was a varietv of attitudes about the migrants. But most
people emphasized that the event in no way suggested that border
towns were any more dangerous than other American cities. "It's
just like anyplace else, there is good and there is bad here," a
barber at Supreme Barbershop in Chula Vista told me.
And despite claims that border communities are crime-ridden or
overrun by drug cartels, the truth is these towns and cities tend to
be safe: From 2011 to 2015, all but one of the 23 United States
counties along the border had violent-crime rates lower than the
national average for similar counties, according to federal crime
data analyzed by Christopher E. Wilson, deputy director of the
Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington.
While illegal border crossings and drug smuggling continue, years
of increased spending on border security means that federal
authorities now know more about what's happening on the border.
Apprehensions of migrants at the border, which are used by the
Department of Homeland Security as a measure of illegal entry,
have been on a general downward trend since the mid-2000s, data
shows. Predator drones fly over the border daily, along with
tethered surveillance blimps repurposed from their use by the
military to track the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Federal agents deploy thousands of sensors that can detect
movement. And there are more than 17,000 Border Patrol agents
patrolling on land and water, along with thousands of customs
officers manning the southwest border's 48 ports of entry. Nearly
700 miles of border are already fenced off - all before President
Trump's proposed border wall is completed. But still there is a
sense of normalcy there, of people just trying to get through their
days and weeks.
After years of reporting on border security issues from
Washington, it's easy to get lost in the policy debates and overlook
what's actually happening in places like Laredo. But by making
sure I make regular trips to the border, I can put the human
implications of policies in the forefront of my reporting.