A state of emergency? What Is The Emergency?

The news that Donald Trump wants to declare a national emergency, achieved Freddy Guerra at his office in the city of Roma, a focal point of illegal immigration on the border with Mexico. The Deputy chief Executive is watching in his office, paneled walls, aggressive set, air conditioning, on his cell phone, glances over the message, pulls up the eyebrow and speaks.

a state of emergency? What Is The Emergency?

a Few kilometres further down the Rio Grande, in the Texas settlement of Los Ebanos. Who is attacking the line here on the river that separates the United States from Mexico, travels back in the 1950s – a time without helicopters and drones in the sky, there are no border guards with night-vision devices, without a President in the White house, warns in strident tones against an Invasion in the South. Here in Los Ebanos is a ferry, on the almost three cars in a row place back, transported passengers to the other side of the Rio Grande, from the US to Mexico and back, three dozen Times a day. It is the last hand operated ferry in North America.

The six men, the drag on this Thursday afternoon through the sluggish water, wear Jeans, flannel shirts, and gloves, a whistle, a song, another collected of the passengers, the fee: The border guards on the American side of the Rio Grande, to look in front of a house bored, as the ferry, in the Mexican Diaz Ordaz, two station wagons, charges and returns. The cars drive on the worn Erdrampe high, the driver will show through the open window of your passport, the border officer nods. A state of emergency?

100 illegal immigrants per day

The ferry from Los Ebanos is one of well fifty official border crossings between the United States and Mexico. Since it went into operation in 1950 in, she saves the people in the area, countless kilometers by car, you would have to put back, to cross the Rio Grande on one of the bridges further upstream or downstream. The boat is a reminder of the times in which the local authorities were on both sides much more closely intertwined. As the river was always to the limit, but the daily life of the people, not so embossed.

"A strange way, with our neighbors in Mexico to deal": Freddy Guerra is not a proponent of the planned wall through the Rio Grande. Photo: Alan Cassidy

Today, this section of the Rio Grande between Brownsville on the Gulf of Mexico and the city of Roma one of the most notorious stretches of the border. 137’500 illegal immigrants were stopped by the border guard in 2018 alone in this sector, more than in any other. Not everywhere Idyll so – certainly not in Roma, the old Spanish colonial town located on a hill above the river. 100 illegal immigrants coming here across the border every day, says Freddy Guerra, the Deputy head of the municipal administration. . The 32-Year-old shows out of the window, in front of the palms: "Just this morning, a group ran past here." The people cross the river by swimming or in boats, and the steep slope to climb then, and then disappear in the streets of the town.

"they Mostly come at dawn," says Guerra, "and most of the time, the border guard, too late to be able to react to it." For the inhabitants of the city, the migrants were not in danger because of violence are rare. As in many border cities, the crime in Roma in the past years, on the decline: "We are, according to a new survey, the fifth-safest city in Texas," says Guerra. He also holds little of the fear-mongering Donald trump. "The migrants suffer from the fact that the Asylum system is overwhelmed. This is a humanitarian crisis. But as far as safety, there is no state of emergency."

border wall should be detached 200 million Dollar cost

Already in the summer could start in Roma, the construction of the border walls, the Congress has spoken in the past year, money from the recent dispute in Washington. On Guerra's office table a sketch of how the wall should look like: a nearly two-Meter-high concrete Foundation, with five and a half metres high, steel plates that are strung along the Rio Grande to each other. It would be a turning point for the city, says Guerra: "A strange way, with our neighbors in Mexico." Guerra has. like almost all the people here, half of the family on the other side of the river, in the town of Miguel Aléman, even for lunch, he goes with the office colleagues regularly across the border

Here, the boundary should run in a wall section of the Rio Grande between USA and Mexico. Photo: Alan Cassidy

$ 200 million in the construction of the wall section in the case of Roma costs. "This is the same as the cumulative value of all properties in the city," says Guerra. There are better ways to increase border security. Nevertheless, you do not fight in Roma, in principle, against the wall – that would have no purpose. Instead, city administration and environmentalists try to minimize the damage caused to areas of the historic core and the surrounding nature. The irony is that the Federal government had declared Roma was once to protect the values of the historic place. "Now it is the government that removes this protection of the wall."

Guerra hopes that the Federal government can at least get to build the wall so that the front country of backfill and, thus, a landscaped Promenade to create. "And then you will get your wall," says Guerra, "and we have something".

(editing Tamedia)

Created: 15.02.2019, 13:44 PM