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Hang on, are you talking about legal immigrants or illegal immigrants? Illegal ones aren't crossing at border crossings unless they're hidden inside the vehicle or they have fake papers.
Illegals. Illegals still have to be transported to the border to cross it... even if not (obviously) at a legal port of entry.
Why is there seldom any mention of border issues in New Mexico
Quote:
Originally Posted by Yeledaf
Not trying to start a controversial thread here.
I am just curious why California, Texas and Arizona seem to have serious issues with illegal immigration, the border patrol, drug runners, etc., while one almost never hears about such controversies in NM.
I'd appreciate reasoned comments and observations.
Thanks in advance.
The border issues in New Mexico are mentioned. They just are not as great an issue as for California and Texas. Take a look at the maps of the area. New Mexico USA does not share large border cities like El Paso Texas USA and Juarez Mexico or California USA and Tijuana Mexico.
The Mexico–United States border is an international border separating Mexico and the United States. The total length of the border is 1,954 miles (or 1934 miles depending on the source of data). The New Mexico portion of that border is 180 miles... The Texas border is 1,241 miles, Arizona is 373 miles and California is 140 miles. California has a much larger population and therefore seems to attract more immigrants.
New Mexico is pretty isolated with a low population...
The Mexico–US border is the most frequently crossed border in the world, with approximately 350 million documented crossings annually.
The U.S. state of New Mexico is under attack by drug cartels and smugglers and little can be done to stop the border violence without federal troops.
This state's 180 mile border with Mexico is nearly devoid of human habitation. Isolated ranches and small farms dot the border area. Because the population is so small (less than two million in a state of 50,000 square miles) , little federal funding is available to build adequate border infrastructure.
Because New Mexico occupies such a strategic east - west position it has been favored with an extensive Interstate Highway System. The combination of fast roads and no people bodes catastrophe for the residents of this state. The drug cartels have taken over. Don't think that even the federal government will help. Even when smugglers and drug gangs are arrested, the embarrassingly under- funded federal prosecutors have to prioritize cases and that means some very bad people go free for lack of prosecutors to handle the cases. New Mexico has the fourth highest federal case load in the United States yet has but one city worth the name : Albuquerque.
This isolated town is home to one of the largest nuclear weapons facilities in the world. What it would take for the al Qaeda and Mexican criminals now operating in New Mexico's border areas to repeat the attack of 1916 but against a nuclear weapons facility is unknown but a nightmare worth Hollywood's attention.
The efforts of Texas to stem the flow of cross-border Mexican army troops and drug gang attacks plus new efforts to stem the flow of illegals in Arizona has put tremendous pressure on New Mexico. While Texas has gone high-tech by placing video cameras along the border accessible over the Internet. Showing border violence to the world has caused "civil rights" groups of all stripes to protest and New Mexico seems eager to keep its drugs and violence a secret to itself.
The 53 mile stretch of border near Columbus / Deming, the USBP has installed seven camera towers. This area also has some vehicle barrier systems.
Part of that vehicle barrier, 17 miles west of Columbus, N.M. was built in 2000 by Joint Task Force North out of Fort Bliss, Texas and it was discovered to encroach into Mexico territory between one and six feet along a 1.5-mile stretch.
The Mexican government threw a hissy fit and demanded that the vehicle barrier be removed pronto. What they refuse to acknowledge is that the entire border barrier along all 1,945 miles of our southern border is between one and six feet north of the border. This is done so that when the drug smugglers and illegal alien smugglers tear it apart our crews can repair it without entering the Republic of Mexico. By having our barrier north of the border we have handed Mexico a combined area of over 1,000 acres of US territory.
In places like Lordsburg, 52 agents are responsible for 81 miles of border and the 3,000 square miles of adjacent border area.
Unlike Texas and Arizona which have urban centers south of the border that operate as staging areas for the drug smugglers, in this part of the border the smugglers needed to be creative. Here, the smugglers use the public school buses to move their people and drugs from Mexican towns of Palomas and Las Chepas to the border twenty miles away. The smugglers also use abandoned mining towns and abandoned ranch homes in Mexico as operating bases. If the ranch wasn't abandoned when the smugglers arrived, it was when they started their smuggling operations.
Smuggler apprehensions have doubled over a single year -- from 2,588 in the first half of one year to 4,797 in the first half of the next.
During the 60's to 80's I had the opportunity to visit all or most all of the U.S. and Mexico border towns as well as some of the Mexico interior, and I also traveled to Central and South America while stationed in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas (and other locations)...
Some other articles of possible interest:
New Mexico ranchers frustrated with situation along U.S.-Mexico border
Chris Ramirez
January 27, 2019 12:39 PM
Quote:
KOB 4 asked if any of them had been victimized by people who they believe to be undocumented immigrants. All but one raised their hands to state yes.
“We've had vehicles stolen,” said Randy Massey.
“They've had bundles of weed, coke and carrying heavy artillery,” said Cammi Moore.
“The worst part of it, we had an employee kidnapped. And that was probably the worst night of my entire life until we got him back,’ said Elrock.
“It's getting to the point where these confrontations are getting more aggressive and more and more violent,” said Kris Massey.
Part of the problem, as the ranchers see it, is the lack of barriers between the U.S. and Mexico. In parts of Hidalgo County, the countries are separated, in some places, by Normandy barriers.
Normandy barriers are a series of 3 -5 feet high steel cross jacks that would deter a motorist, but humans could easily go under or over them. The boundary with Hidalgo County and Mexico is separated by a 5-foot high barbed wire fence. In some areas, there are gates that easily open.
New Mexico In Focus
The Line: Border Issues In New Mexico
March 22, 2019
Gene Grant and the Line opinion panelists examine New Mexico’s response to the influx of new immigrants. They look at the different definitions of a border “crisis” and debate the best way to handle migrants who are seeking asylum.
For Further Reading:
Four-part series on influx of migrant families seeking asylum – by Angela Kocherga, Albuquerque Journal
New Mexico cities mobilize as shelters take in more migrants – by Susan Montoya Bryan and Russell Contreras, Associated Press
Guatemalan faces up to life in prison for holding migrants in New Mexico – Associated Press
Ill immigrants bring dangerous complications that can spread far beyond NM – by Janice Arnold-Jones, for the Albuquerque Journal
The Santa Fe New Mexican On remote New Mexico border, a flood of migrants
By Nick Miroff | Washington Post Dec 22, 2018
The New Mexican Dec 27, 2018
Quote:
Two dead children in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Thousands more being held in facilities ill-equipped to care for children. An overall decline in illegal immigration, yet an administration that shouts emergency, even shutting down the government to raise funds for a border wall that won’t close off the country no matter how high it is built.
Now, Gov.-elect Michelle Lujan Grisham is announcing that she will explore how states can regulate federally run detention centers.
New Mexico has only one real population center right on the border - Columbus. AZ and CA have several much larger population centers that straddle the border. Nogales, AZ and Nogales, Sonora are but one such combined metro area. Not unlike El Paso, TX and Juarez, CH.
A scan along the border using Google aerial map views will show the vastness of the empty lands from El Paso to Yuma, and the few populated places along those state borders.
That probably is one of the reasons and if they are going to cross over into NM why not El Paso where there are more jobs available for them. I think the fact that NM is still more a rural state than a huge urban state might be part of the reason. Also as mentioned due to the small population there will obviously not be the high influx of illegals. I am sure there are more than many think.
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