The U.S. southern border is featured on nearly every news channel, newspaper or website several times a week if not several times a day. From the Pacific Ocean to west Texas, immigrants are making their best efforts to gain entry into this country for a better life. Some get lucky, but others are stopped and turned away. But most who are turned away simply bide their time and wait for another opportunity to enter.
While most of those looking to enter the country are from Mexico or other Latin American countries, there are thousands of others from nations many times zones removed from this hemisphere. Customs and Border Patrol officials say they are encountering border crossers from Asia, Europe, Russia, and Africa.
The reasons for the recent surge in immigration, said Laura Lunn of the Denver-based Rocky Mountain Immigration Advocacy Network, are no different than the motivations that brought millions of others to this country in centuries past. Certainly, she said, many come to have a better life and to provide opportunities for their children, but many others come to escape the violence of their home countries.
Gangs, drugs and everyday violence are common in many Central and South American nations. It is not unusual for young children, including many under age ten, to be recruited into gangs. Until that cycle is broken, immigration advocates say, people will have a reason to risk everything to come to this country.
According to the Pew Research Center, the number of migrants trying to cross into the U.S. from Mexico hit a twenty-year high in 2022. At the end of 2022, border officials recorded more than 206,000 encounters at the border. The pandemic also impacted the number of people leaving their countries.
But for many, getting out of their home country and making it to the border involves a whole new set of challenges. Among them are human traffickers and violence encountered along the way. Still, arriving at the border comes with its own challenges, none more heartbreaking than what occurred just weeks ago.
On March 28th in Cuidad Juarez, a city that borders El Paso, Texas, a fire at a migration center killed 38 people. NBC News reports that the fire was a protest begun by migrants detained at the facility after learning they would be deported to their home countries.
“The loss of life was avoidable,” said Lunn. “People were held in jail settings.” The government, she said, needs to rethink how it holds these men, women and families and treat them more humanly.
It’s also a view shared by many clergy, including Father Carlos Alvarez, who ministers to many in Alamosa. Immigrants, he said, “have blessed our country and returned the blessing in their lives…I try to see each immigrant as that dusty pilgrim on the road to heaven, seeking liberty and a better life.”
Then, there is also Title 42, a part of U.S. law that deals with public health and civil rights. It allows the government to execute emergency action to keep communicable disease out of the country. The Trump administration used it to curtail immigration during the pandemic. The Biden administration has tried repeatedly tried to end it but it remains in place.
Another logjam at the border has been problems with an app called CBP One. It allows asylum seekers from Mexico or Central America to upload biographical information to request appointments at a port of entry in border states. But bugs in the system along with high volumes of immigrants trying to get through have made it a daily challenge. In addition, the window for getting through is narrow.
But current border arguments are nothing new. At a recent House Judiciary Committee hearing, California Democratic Congressman Ted Lieu criticized his Republican colleagues for politicizing the situation. Lieu said the border and border policy have been issues for the past half century going back to the presidency of Richard Nixon. Drugs, especially fentanyl, have only increased the volume.
The National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics says 53% of all drug overdoses are linked to fentanyl, a drug so deadly that even contact with the skin can be dangerous. It’s estimated that 0.007% of an ounce can cause death.
But Representative Lieu said most of the fentanyl coming into the country is not brought here by migrants. In fact, border officials say fentanyl is smuggled by U.S. citizens (into the country) by U.S. citizens, adding, it is coming in through ports of entry.
The border, said Lieu, has been a generational challenge. In fact, it was actually shut down for three weeks in 1968 by then president, Richard Nixon. It is also not, said the California congressman, a Biden problem, but a problem that has vexed U.S. presidents for generations.
Migration is embedded in human DNA. “It is natural,” said Lunn. It is also the way ancestors of those most critical of immigration got here. The excuse of ‘My ancestors got here the right way,’ is a fallacious response, she said. People migrate for a better life.
Father Alvarez, whose father, grandmother and great grandfather all came to Colorado from Mexico says, ultimately, America is an immigrant nation. Also, a moral one. “Rather than consider how their (immigrants) presence might impact us, I try to ponder how I can alleviate the suffering and worry which comes when one has to leave home.” The Bible, he said, teaches us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and welcome the stranger. The lesson, said the Pueblo native, is that simple
