Trumpzi cruel border incompetence causing humanitarian harm - will lead to economic desperate responses

Border commerce delays will cause hoarding as people are already stocking up on toilet paper.....

Report in the Dallas Morning News by Alfredo Corchado 

EL PASO — For years, Luis Garcia survived the drug violence in his hometown of Ciudad Juarez without having to move away like thousands of others have done for their safety.

So, he traveled back and forth across the Rio Grande from Juarez in Mexico to school at the University of Texas, at El Paso.

Sure, Juarez is crime-ridden, and that made Garcia cautious, but he has dual citizenship and is comfortable in the sprawling city of 1.5 million people.

But last week, Garcia, 26, did the unthinkable: He left his beloved Juarez and moved to El Paso, where he and a friend decided to rent an apartment in hopes of finding peace of mind.

Garcia couldn’t live with President Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again mercurial threats to shut down the border.

Students eat lunch in the cafeteria of La Fe Preparatory School in El Paso.

(Ryan Michalesko/Staff Photographer)
Indeed, the anxiety had become too much.

“I’m just weeks away from graduation,” said Garcia, who finishes school in May. “I don’t want to jeopardize all I have worked for because of one person’s stubbornness. Too much uncertainty.”

More than just avocado prices and auto parts are affected by Trump’s threats to close the southern border. On average, there are about 23,000 trips a day back and forth across the border between El Paso and Juarez. Those are legal crossings. And that’s just the foot traffic.

Many of these people live, work and shop in both Mexico and the U.S. Many have dual citizenship. As in Garcia’s case, many feel the decades-old dependency, intimacy and trust between both cities, and both nations, is threatened.

Where Trump’s actions in shutting down the border would threaten $1.7 billion in daily trade between Mexico and the U.S., his rhetoric alone is also having ripple effects, economically and psychologically, experts say. People here say they are anxious and some are changing their lives to cope.

“The damage done by Trump’s rhetoric and policies concerning a border closure is the creation of economic uncertainty, which discourages investment in border areas,” said Howard Campbell, a border anthropologist at UTEP. “A second source of harm is lessening Mexico's trust in the U.S., a trust that is always somewhat weak to begin with.”

No other state will feel the impact more than Texas and its border cities, including the 19th-largest U.S. city, El Paso. There are six international bridges in the region.
Trump’s (stupid) move to reassign 750 Customs and Border Protection agents — and as many as 2,000 in the coming days — to help care for record numbers of mostly Central American immigrants crossing to seek asylum is already dramatically slowing the pace at which commercial and other vehicle traffic can cross the bridges. The slowdown was expected to worsen over the weekend, confirmed Customs & Border Patrol, noting that the cargo facility at the Bridge of the Americas will be closed indefinitely.

The impact will be huge, said David Benitez, president of Arlington-based Intelligent Mexican Marketing, a company responsible for popularizing products such as Barcel's Takis snack foods, Gamesa cookies and Topo Chico mineral water.

And with each day that commercial trucks don’t show up on time, consumers will be hit at the grocery store checkout counter.

“In the next week or two, consumers will start feeling the pinch, if not already,” said Benitez, who was in Mexico City this week to call on Mexican leaders to join with Texas political and business leaders to do more to avoid what he calls a “mess on the border.”

“I predict prices will go up by about 10 percent, at a minimum,” he said. “We’re not talking about products for the Hispanic market, but mainstream American. It doesn’t get more mainstream than Corona, or Topo Chico. At this point, we’re all trying to figure what is Plan B, because this threat won’t go away anytime soon.”

Trump said on March 29 that he would completely shut down the border, but appeared to back down Thursday, saying he’d give Mexico one year to stem the flow of drugs and migrants into the U.S. On Friday during a visit to see replacement border fencing in Calexico, Calif., Trump said his one-year warning was “fake news” and emphasized that he could shut down the border in a single day.

In El Paso and all along the border, it seems almost everyone has a contingency plan.

Businesses and schools remain in crisis mode, with educators drawing up plans to find shelter for hundreds or thousands of students, if need be.

Juarez is home to about 350 maquiladoras — border factories largely the result of NAFTA trade — including 90 that are part of Fortune 500 companies, employing 225,000 employees. Many of them commute daily from El Paso. Some companies have been asking workers to stay home and work online.

In recent days, some residents waited in line as long as four or five hours to cross the border.

People are buying bikes to bypass vehicle lines. And truckers with cargo headed for the Midwest and other parts of the U.S. have waited twice as long to pass inspection and cross.

Half of fruit and produce bought in the U.S. comes from Mexico, and the delays are leading to concerns over produce spoilage.

Lucia Rodriguez, 48, crossed to El Paso to stock up on toilet paper, paper towels, dairy products, groceries and produce, which arrives at the stores in season and cheap. A native of Juarez, she shops once a month across the border because prices on some items are cheaper. She waited one day this week in blue jeans and a denim shirt to cross back into Juarez.

“I bought $120” worth of stuff, she said. “I don’t think your president is stupid enough to shut down the border, today, tomorrow, or next year, but he does know how to mess up our lives. Part of me doesn’t want to come here anymore, spend money in a thankless country, but I have too many family members here.”

Lines were so long that the city government of Ciudad Juarez has placed portable toilets along different points of the lines for waiting motorists and pedestrians. The city also offered free bottled water.

As students prepare for finals, stress is particularly acute.

Outgoing UTEP President Diana Natalicio said in a message to the UTEP community that she and faculty “were dismayed” by the threats and long lines that disrupted the lives of students. She vowed a series of measures, including temporary free housing on campus for students.

Students eat lunch in the cafeteria of La Fe Preparatory School in El Paso. (Ryan Michalesko/Staff Photographer)

Some students are already staying with grandparents and other relatives or friends on the U.S. side to avoid lines at the border.

Many are showing signs of emotional whiplash, or just seem downright demoralized from the past two weeks of long lines and closure threats.

“The last thing I want to do is focus on my homework,” said 13-year-old Celia Ramirez, alongside her sister Belen, 10. Both are dual citizens, but they live in Juarez with their parents. Last week, they spent part of their time with their aunt in El Paso to avoid the lines and make sure they got to Guillen Middle School on time.

The impact was especially felt at Lydia Patterson High School, established in 1913 in large part by the Methodist Church led by Lydia and Millard Patterson.

About 80 percent of the school's 312 students live in Mexico, though many are U.S. citizens. Others crossed with I-20 student visas. Tuition is $500 monthly, though many qualify for scholarships, said Ernesto Moreno, the school's principal.

“I know the focus is avocados, but this is about so much more,” Moreno said. “It’s about providing a quality education for young people in our region.”

Now some students wake up at 3:45 a.m. to get to the international bridge line by 4:30 a.m. so they can get to classes on time. That’s the case for Alan Chung Ma, 16, born in Leon, Guanajuato, and now a Juarez resident. He wanted to join the swim team, but he can’t make it on time for training. By the time he crosses, he heads for classes that begin at 8:30 a.m.

The idea behind Lydia Patterson was to immerse students from both sides of the border in English as a second language, and then send them off to colleges along the border and throughout the U.S. to compete as bilingual, bicultural students.

The way the school’s mission conflicts with the message about closing off physical traffic to Mexico leaves students like Gisell Zamora, 17, confused.

“This is very perplexing because we’re supposed to be the generation that helps form a bridge of understanding between our two countries, but now we worry about things we cannot control,” she said.

Ruth Moreno, 17, said she has friends and family in El Paso, but, “I want to be home where I belong. I wish our leaders would grow up. We’re just trying to be students, get an education to help our region.”

Others are studying their options.

Pablo Gomez Gallegos, 17, and Diego Zamarripa, 17, are both seniors and looking at attending a university. If it’s El Paso, both said, they will rent an apartment. “School is stressful as it is,” Pablo said. “We can do without the extra craziness.”