At the Arizona border, even a quiet day is busy

Helen Ramajo, 11 years old, reached the US-Mexico border before US presidents did.

As President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump prepared to hit the political stage of dueling visits to two Texas border towns, Helen slipped through a hole in the wall in southern Arizona on Tuesday morning, her fuzzy bear-eared hoodie pulled up against the cold. .

“A dream!” she said. She, her father and older sister left Guatemala a month ago, and they now trudged to a makeshift camp with other tired, dehydrated migrants to wait next to the wall to surrender to U.S. immigration authorities.

The number of illegal crossings across the southern border has fallen sharply in the past month, but even on a calm day dozens of migrants arrive every few hours, a ritual that has come to define life in border towns and nearby towns. Migrant aid workers say they often see up to 200 people crossing a day in this part of the border outside the small town of Sasabe, southwest of Tucson.

A visit from two presidential candidates looking to convince voters they can handle the border crisis could tick off an election year. But in this corner of southern Arizona, which now has the most undocumented crossings of any part of the entire southern border, farmers, first responders and other residents experiencing the border crisis said the problem had become too intractable and complicated for any politician to handle. tackle.

“I have no confidence that it will ever be resolved,” said Lori Lindsay, a rancher whose Tres Bellotas ranch runs along part of the border wall.

The increase in illegal crossings has become a threat to Mr. Biden’s re-election hopes and a political line of attack for Mr. Trump. There were 2.4 million migrant apprehensions along the southern border last fiscal year, the third record year in a row.

As dozens of migrants made their way along the border wall on Tuesday, some said they were undeterred by renewed construction to fill gaps along the 30-foot border wall or the threat of tough new enforcement action from Washington.

The camp on the Arizona side where Helen and her family waited sprung up on a corner of Ms. Lindsay’s ranch, built with tents and tarps supplied by local aid groups. Ms. Lindsay said she worried about the campfires that migrants light to keep warm, but that she never felt threatened by the arriving migrants as they changed their shoes and clothes, cooked bowls of ramen and waited to pass through the border. would be collected. Patrol.

Ms Lindsay said the reality of the humanitarian emergency unfolding outside her gates had been distorted by politicians who portrayed the border as a Mad Max war zone, infested with cartels and drug smugglers.

“The further they are from the border, the more of a crisis they think we are in,” she said. “We’ve never had a gang member or a cartel come to our house, and we’re here now.”

Ms. Lindsay, who typically votes Democratic, said she was against the wall and did not blame Mr. Biden for the record numbers of undocumented migrants. But she said she had become so disenchanted with Democrats on other issues that she would not vote for Biden in November.

Along the border, people’s reactions to the wave of migrants often undermine the party’s identity.

Very conservative ranchers leave water behind for people who cross the desert illegally. Contractors building new sections of the border wall share lunch with migrants. Left-wing volunteers committed to helping migrants are criticizing Mr. Biden after he threatened to close asylum and stepped up his rhetoric on border enforcement.

“He’s Trump without the noise,” said Paul Nixon, a volunteer with Green Valley Samaritans. “Maybe it wasn’t realistic for us to have high expectations for the Biden administration. But for anyone who considers themselves a humanitarian, it is a disappointment.”

On Tuesday morning, Mr. Nixon and his wife made a two-hour trek over bumpy dirt roads to hand out water, apples and hard-boiled eggs to migrants arriving outside Sasabe.

They groaned with disappointment when they reached the temporary migrant camp. There were shredded tarps, diapers and toilet paper strewn among the mesquite trees, empty food containers littered in the ground and trenches dug into makeshift toilets.

“This is a catastrophe, it is not sustainable,” Nixon said. “I wonder why the federal government refuses to acknowledge this.”

As they handed out water, a truck pulled up carrying a Fox News crew and Art Del Cueto, vice president of the National Border Patrol Council and a leading critic of the Biden administration’s immigration policies. Mr Del Cueto said Mr Biden’s planned trip to Brownsville, Texas, on Thursday was “too little too late.”

“It’s a political argument,” he said. “The elections are coming. Now the board wants to do something. They should have focused on what is happening from the beginning.”

Many Democrats and Republicans along the border said they felt misunderstood and ignored by leaders in Washington. They dismissed the border pilgrimages of Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump as political theater — a small window into a global migration crisis fueled by poverty, war and climate disaster.

“They don’t know a damn thing about the border,” said Jaye Wells, the managing partner of the rancho de la Osa, outside Sasabe, where many guests have canceled their reservations over concerns about violence.

Mr. Wells, who describes himself as a “George Will Republican,” said he disagreed with Trump’s rhetoric on migrant violence, but in the eight years since he bought the ranch he said he had gradually come around to support a border wall. . Still, he said he would never vote for Trump.

Richelle Valenzuela, who lives in a small rural community about 15 miles north of the border, said that since Mr. Biden took office, more and more migrants have been crossing her property and knocking on her door asking to charge their phones. She blamed Mr. Biden’s efforts to undo some of Trump-era immigration policies.

Ms. Valenzuela, who voted for Trump in 2020, said she would likely do so again. She said she felt less safe now that a nearby Border Patrol checkpoint is unmanned and more agents are being sent to process arriving migrants.

“I love the area, but it has completely changed,” she said. “It’s free for everyone.”

The frustration extends across the border, as far as Tucson, about 70 miles north of the border. Local governments and migrant aid workers said they were about to run out of federal money to shelter and transport migrants once they are released from immigration processing centers.

Pima County officials say they are spending $1 million a week to take migrants from small rural towns to a central shelter in Tucson, where they will receive food, shelter, medical care and help connecting with their families. Some are also getting help buying tickets to reach their final destinations in New York, Chicago, Denver and other major cities under pressure from the recent wave of migrants.

County officials say the federal money will run out next month. They said they likely would have gotten more money under a bipartisan immigration bill that Mr. Biden supported but that Republicans killed. Now local officials said they expected more migrants, but no more aid.

“They will be released onto the streets,” said Diego Piña Lopez, director of Casa Alitas, the main migrant shelter in Tucson, which houses about 900 to 1,200 migrants a day. “It won’t be a drop. You completely broke the tap.”