The US-Mexico border as depicted on the campaign route or seen on the news can easily make all border towns seem lawless and chaotic.
But the reality is more nuanced, as a CBS News team learned during a 1,000-mile trip from McAllen, Texas, to the California coast.
Laredo, Texas, was ranked among the safest cities in the state, according to analysis by the CBS News data team. Mayor Victor Trevino said his city is not the Wild West he often sees depicted.
“The cartels, there’s crime and this and that, which is not true,” Trevino told CBS News.
He points to a different kind of surge, in which $320 billion worth of microchips, automotive products and parts from General Motors and Tesla arrive each year by rail and truck through the Port of Laredo, the world’s largest port of entry. frequented from the United States.
About 500 miles west in Presidio, Texas, restaurant owner Hector Armendariz sees people leaving Presidio for better-paying jobs, including his three children.
“They’re gone and they’re not coming back,” Armendariz said. “All our children leave and don’t come back.”
Presidio Mayor John Ferguson says the local economy relies on hundreds of Mexican citizens who cross the border legally every day to work in restaurants or in oil fields. Ferguson believes Presidio would be in “serious trouble” if it were more difficult for Mexican residents to cross the border for work.
“Like, you know, the pandemic, where you didn’t have enough workers and things would slow down and…certain sectors might kind of dry up,” Ferguson said.
Philip Skinner, mayor of Columbus, New Mexico, says that without border trade, many border towns would decline, leading to unintended consequences. For example, Skinner said, there are no dentists in Columbus, but there are about 10 just across the border in Puerto Palomas, Mexico. Columbus residents who need dental care will travel to Mexico, Skinner said.
Arizona borders Mexico for over 350 miles and is a drug trafficking hotspot. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, in fiscal year 2024, 66% of fentanyl seized at the U.S.-Mexico border occurred in the Tucson sector, which covers all border ports in the ‘Arizona.
Donald Huish, mayor of Douglas, Arizona, favored the bipartisan border bill that was the focus of the presidential campaign. The bill is dead after criticism from former President Donald Trump.
“That would help us because we would have had more Border Patrol agents,” Huish said. “…I can understand why people didn’t like the whole bill, but why stop talking about it?”
Frustration is everywhere along the border, including for Mark Dannels, sheriff of Arizona’s Cochise County, who is battling the influx of drug mules and human smugglers.
Dannels says he’s not necessarily optimistic or pessimistic about Cochise’s future, just uncertain.
“It’s more of an unknown because politics and the country are very divided right now,” Dannels said.
Omar Villafranca
