Border crime in El Paso

Power Line:

I wanted to alert you to a local news item near my home in El Paso, Texas and offer a little perspective. It’s hard to an illustrative example this profound. On the very night the president held a rally here, prompting the predictable chorus of denunciations and media “fact” checking about his assertions that walls work to keep Americans safe, more than 300 illegal immigrants were apprehended entering the country at a spot where existing fencing stops. This happened about six and a half miles from where the president spoke.

I agree with the president’s critics that violent crime here was never anywhere near as terrible as we’ve seen in places like Chicago and Detroit and that the reduction in our crime rate started well before the current fencing was installed along the border. But statistics don’t tell a complete story here. I can vividly remember a time when “border bandits” used to enter the country at night and rob motorists on a road that runs along the border between the suburb of Sunland Park, NM and downtown El Paso. The prevailing wisdom was to never use Paisano Drive after dark. Bandits would block the road with old couches or other obstructions, conduct their robberies, and then slip back into Mexico before U.S. authorities could arrive.

In the late 1990s, the wall/fence went up in this area, and the robberies ceased. I couldn’t immediately find local news reports about this little crime wave, but here is an AP wire storyfrom 1995. I now freely travel on Paisano Drive at night without concern for my family’s safety.

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The significance of El Paso to the drug trade coming out of Mexico can be seen by the crime statistics for Juarez where the cartels still fight turf battles over access to the I-10 corridor in El Paso.  The fence channels that traffic and makes it easier to detect smuggling at ports of entry.  Beto O'Rourke suggestion of removing the fence is just nuts unless you favor drug smugglers and cartels.