Tim Steller's column: Closed crossings violate promise of borderland life

There are times when it seems the U.S. government would prefer Americans just stay in our country.

And they’d prefer that foreigners — even those with visas, money and family in the United States — stay out.

The government implicitly tells us that cross-border travel is a luxury we don’t deserve right now.

It happened during the Trump administration, when stricter asylum policies led to waits of up to 12 hours to get into the country at the DeConcini port of entry in downtown Nogales. Americans were forced to pee in bottles in their cars as they waited to get home.

And it’s happening now, with the closure of the port of entry at Lukeville, the primary route to the Sonoran coastal town of Puerto Peñasco, or Rocky Point.

U.S. government agencies are giving dangerously contradictory instructions about travel from Arizona to Sonora. While the Department of Homeland Security has told people they can use the San Luis or Nogales ports of entry instead of Lukeville, the State Department says travelers shouldn’t use those routes to travel to Puerto Peñasco.

The effects of the closure range from profound (devastation to the tourism economy from Puerto Peñasco to Gila Bend) to serious (preventing American expatriates from going to appointments in the United States or even getting their mail) to the simpler annoyance of forcing Arizonans either to cancel holiday-time trips to the ocean, or take dangerous routes to get there.

The message is: Things will be fine if you stay on your side of the line.

But that’s simply not how life works in the borderlands. People have jobs, family, homes and schools on the other side of the line, and that’s not a luxury. It’s a longstanding way of life.

When the government interrupts that way of life, a holiday tamalada, or tamale feast, may become an unaffordable extravagance, and be replaced by donated canned goods.

Ruben Cordova Jr. is in the process of delivering close to 500 food bags to families who have lost their income due to the port of entry’s closure — resort workers, beach vendors and the like. In a separate effort, Nalelly Fimbres Soto has been doing much the same but with different families affected by the closure, including tour boat operators.

“There are thousands of people not making any money now, here in Peñasco and in Southern Arizona — Why, Gila Bend, Lukeville,” she said via Facebook. “Our community is really small and yet so strong — Americans helping Mexicans and Mexicans helping Americans.”

A shift in migration

The reason for the interruption of this way of life, as usual, is international migration and our reaction to it. For obscure reasons, the smugglers who direct migration across Mexico have shifted their main routes to the remote desert around Lukeville. CBP officials suspect that they are trying to overwhelm the Border Patrol in certain areas through sheer numbers.

Sometimes thousands of migrants per day are crossing through holes cut in the fence or other locations, and waiting to present themselves to border agents for processing. They typically ask for asylum, though past experience says most will not qualify in the end.

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It’s undeniably a hard-to-handle situation. But fortunately, the Border Patrol has about 3,700 agents it can draw from in the Tucson sector alone. There are many more in the adjacent Yuma sector.

However, the way Customs and Border Protection has chosen to handle it has been to take the relative handful of employees who run the small Lukeville Port of Entry, and use them primarily as drivers, transporting migrants from the fence to the Ajo Border Patrol station.

This strikes me as a misuse of important resources. While I’m sure these port officers are good drivers and have some relevant training, the balance of what’s gained versus what’s lost by using them that way is way off.

What’s gained is a small bit of help, but it’s help that probably could be provided by someone else. What’s lost is a legal, common and relatively safe way of life that happens to cross the international border.

As Margarita Bernal, a former local judge in Tucson and occasional traveler to Rocky Point, put it: “They’ve hurt lots of folks who had nothing to do with the border crisis.”

Hobbs declines to act

The blame for the continued closure of Lukeville doesn’t just rest with CBP. Gov. Katie Hobbs, after pulling National Guard troops from the border earlier this fall, has sent them back in a support role, but has specifically declined to place them at the port of entry, because she wants the federal government to handle that expense.

That’s shortsighted.

As Bernal explained, “I voted for Hobbs and I love the governor, but her insistence that the feds pay for it is going to cost more in the long run.”

But goodness knows that there are tens of thousands of CBP employees around the country who could help with the migration problems and allow the Lukeville port of entry to stay open.

The state of Vermont, along its 90 miles of border with Canada, has 15 ports of entry, more than Arizona’s nine, despite the fact that Arizona’s border with Mexico is four times longer at about 370 miles. Why not close one of them and use their personnel?

I’m sure the Vermonters and Quebecois can more easily drive the extra 20 minutes between, say, the Enosburg Falls Port of Entry and the Richford Port of Entry than Arizonans and Sonorans can drive the extra 2-3 hours to use the Nogales or San Luis ports of entry.

The closure also reflects Congress’ continual misunderstanding of the Mexican border as a place where migrant crises and smuggling occur but legal crossings are a minor afterthought. They’ve repeatedly funded the hiring of thousands of Border Patrol agents while approving minimal increases in port inspectors.

Of course, it’s not surprising that the many members of Congress living in the interior United States don’t get it. They only know the border as a problem.

What everyone in government needs to know is that the establishment of a port of entry is not a casual promise, revocable on a whim. It’s a commitment to a way of life — a commitment and an obligation.