In the busiest Border Patrol sector on the southwest frontier — the Rio Grande Valley, where a tent city was opening this week to ease overcrowding at packed migrant processing centers — there is one 23-mile stretch where there is no border “crisis.”
Brownsville Station.
Some stations along the 1,900-mile border have recently been apprehending hundreds of migrants a day. Brownsville gets 35 to 45, on average. Some Border Patrol stations routinely nab mega-loads of drugs, like the 925 pounds of marijuana intercepted the other day near Rio Grande City, Tex. In Brownsville, 150-pound loads are the average.
What’s the secret?
The Border Patrol employs a three-pronged concept as a kind of operational mantra when it comes to securing the border: personnel, technology and infrastructure. In other words, boots on the ground, high-tech gadgets and fencing.
Brownsville Station has some of each.
The result, Border Patrol officials say, is that smugglers tend to push most of the drugs and migrants to less-fortified areas farther west.
In an area of South Texas where heavy drug smuggling and unauthorized migration helped prompt President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency on the border, Brownsville has been quietly providing the Border Patrol with a rare success story.
“This is the anomaly in the Rio Grande Valley sector,” said Jorge L. Gonzalez, the patrol agent in charge of the Brownsville Station. “We feel that this is a more secure part of the border, where it’s harder to actually smuggle things across.”
Mr. Gonzalez spoke in a briefing room at the station’s headquarters one recent morning. Everyone calls him “J.L.” A short and stocky father of three, Mr. Gonzalez grew up in the Rio Grande Valley, in Mission, Tex., and the Border Patrol has defined his personal and professional life. A neighbor who worked for the Border Patrol told him when he was a teenager that he’d make a good agent, and it stuck with him. He joined the agency at 22. He’s now 41.
“Besides working at a grocery store, this is the only job I’ve had,” he said.
The wall of digital maps, charts and images behind him illustrated his A.O.R., agency parlance for area of responsibility. The border fence in downtown Brownsville is topped by razor-wire and mesh to prevent people from scaling the wall with ladders. There are roughly 150 sensor-equipped cameras snapping pictures in the area, part of a state program called Operation Drawbridge. Several other surveillance-camera systems pump live video feeds into the station’s control room. And that’s on top of sensors that detect movement in the brush, plus other sections of border wall that extend outside of town. Some of Mr. Gonzalez’s agents patrol the local university on bicycles, to better blend into the campus environment.
“It’s a system of systems,” Mr. Gonzalez said. “They all complement each other. One stand-alone portion of this will not get it done.”
Smuggling patterns are perpetually shifting. In the early 1990s, California’s San Diego sector was the busiest. Then the action shifted in the early 2000s to Arizona’s Tucson sector. Now, it’s the Rio Grande Valley’s turn. About 20 years ago, the Brownsville Station was a smuggling hub and had the highest level of illegal activity in the sector. Border Patrol and local officials believe a decade-long buildup of resources has paid off. And it’s not all about the wall: the station patrols 23 miles of the border, but only has about nine miles of completed fencing.
“I call it smart money,” said Tony Martinez, the mayor of Brownsville. “They spent their money in a smart way.”
Not everyone agrees. Migrant advocates and the agency’s critics say the Brownsville Station’s low apprehension and seizure numbers may have more to do with the cartel-related smuggling dynamics on the other side of the Rio Grande in Mexico than with Border Patrol strategy — the smugglers may have their own reasons for targeting other areas of the valley.
It’s not that they don’t try, though. Later that day, Mr. Gonzalez walked on a dirt road beneath a bridge on the American side of the border. A young man across the river, on the Mexican side, took pictures of him — possibly a scout gathering information, Mr. Gonzalez noted.
The smugglers “nickle-and-dime us,” he said, but large dispatches of migrants or drugs were unlikely to get through — not here.
“There’s a higher probability that we’re going to catch their cargo,” he said. “Whatever that is.”
Manny is one of a team of New York Times journalists reporting on the border. Each week they share a slice of their reporting about the border and the people who spend time on both sides of it.
Last month we offered a reporter’s take on the essential books to read about the border, and we asked for your own suggestions on what we missed. Here is a selection of books Crossing the Border readers recommend to better understand what’s happening between the United States and Mexico.
“Storming The Wall, Climate Change, Migration and Border Security,” by Todd Miller, and “This Land Is Our Land, An Immigrant’s Manifesto,” by Suketu Mehta.
Reader Ross Connelly writes: “These books make clear that although border security is big in the news in the United States, the issue is global. We need to address the many aspects of the U.S.-Mexican border — The Wall — but there is far more to understand.”
“All the Agents and Saints: Dispatches from the U.S. Borderlands,” by Stephanie Elizondo Griest.
Diana Berry writes that she read the book “after meeting the author at a Writer’s Conference in Greensboro, N.C. She tells the stories of both our borders and how they share some issues.”
“Down by the River: Drugs, Money, Murder, and Family,” by Charles Bowden.
From Robert Collins: “I found it a fascinating tapestry of the interwoven lives of the citizens of El Paso and Juarez.”
From Elizabeth Carr: “Any book by Charles Bowden is worthwhile. He was prolific until his death five years ago. I heard him speak once. He spent his life exploring the border area and had a lot to say.”
“Borderlands/La Frontera,” by Gloria Anzaldúa.
David J. Morris writes: “I just taught Borderlands/La Frontera to my mostly Latinx class here at UNLV and they really took to it. None of them had read Anzaldúa before. The book played a big role in my life because I read it right after I left active duty in the Marines in 1998 and then I took a six-month-long surfing road trip to Oaxaca and back via Baja California. Reading Anzaldúa changed my perception of myself and my sense of America because I’d grown up on the border but I’d always just considered myself an American in the most general sense. After reading Anzaldúa I began to think of myself as something of a border citizen.”
“The Coyote’s Bicycle: The Untold Story of Seven Thousand Bicycles and the Rise of a Borderland Empire,” by Kimball Taylor.
Patricia Noell writes: “This story is set in San Diego/Tijuana. The reader will learn much of the culture and values of the area, as well as how many people cross the border.”
“The Devil’s Highway,” by Luis Urrea.
Many readers, including Peter Maille and Michael Cuslidge, shared this suggestion, which recounts a tragic 2001 crossing that left 16 Mexican migrants dead after they were abandoned by their guide.
Mr. Urrea wrote that the Sonoran Desert, home to the Devil’s Highway, or El Camino del Diablo, “is known as the most terrible place on earth.”
But, like many places along the border, it can be terrible, dangerous and beautiful all at once. Writing for the Times Travel section this week, Michael Benanav explores the contradictory nature and history of the 130-mile dirt road that runs between Yuma and Ajo, Ariz., which is on the National Register of Historic Places.
“The scenery is vast and mesmerizing,” he writes:
Ocotillos sprout from arid basins, their spiky tendrils and bright red blossoms swaying in the breeze like some kind of weird desert anemone. There are sand dunes and lava flows and knife-edged mountains slicing skyward from the desert floor. Owls roost in saguaro cactuses, endangered antelopes browse sparse grasses, bighorn sheep leap among rugged crags.
Conquistadors, missionaries, prospectors, traders and others traversed it, beginning in 1540, usually heading to or from California. So many perished along the way, in this place that can feel as hot as hell, that it became known as the Devil’s Highway. Historians believe there may been more than 2,000 fatalities in the last half of the 19th century alone.
For more information, go to: http://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/
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