Veronica Escobar

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Trump empeora la crisis fronteriza

Durante este último mes, he viajado a El Paso y al sur de Nuevo México como parte de tres delegaciones del congreso. Hablamos con los cuerpos de seguridad federales, recorrimos centros de detención y estaciones de la Patrulla Fronteriza y escuchamos a defensores de derechos humanos y jurídicos que han trabajado con migrantes desde hace décadas.

Algunos de nosotros incluso vimos el lugar en el que Felipe Gómez Alonzo, un niño guatemalteco de 8 años que murió recientemente mientras se encontraba bajo la custodia de las autoridades fronterizas, y su padre fueron arrestados.

Evidentemente, El Paso y su área metropolitana, incluida Ciudad Juárez, en México, son solo un punto a lo largo de una frontera muy extensa, pero todo lo que vimos demostró por qué el llamado del presidente estadounidense, Donald Trump, para construir un muro es simplista y erróneo.…  Seguir leyendo »

Trump Worsens the Border Crisis

Over the last month, I have traveled in three congressional delegations to El Paso and southern New Mexico. We heard from federal law enforcement, toured detention centers and Border Patrol stations, and listened to human rights and legal advocates who have worked with migrants for decades.

Some of us even saw where Felipe Gómez Alonzo, an 8-year-old Guatemalan who recently died while in custody, and his father were apprehended.

Obviously, El Paso and its metropolitan area, including Ciudad Juárez, in Mexico, is just one point along a very long border. But everything we saw demonstrated why President Trump’s call for a wall is simplistic and misguided.…  Seguir leyendo »

There Is No Immigration Crisis in El Paso

To hear it from the White House, America’s southern border is a war zone. Things look a lot different up close. Here in El Paso, local governments collaborate closely with federal agencies in the United States and Mexico to ensure that our ports of entry — bridges connecting the two countries — can effectively and safely move more than 10 million people and $90 billion in trade back and forth each year.

Our ports are critical to our local, state and national economies, and they stand as proof that international cooperation can make the border work for both countries. Never did any of us imagine that the area around one of them, the Marcelino Serna Port at Tornillo, would someday be the site of the United States’s first tent city for detained immigrant children, or that it would bring us together to protest the separation of refugee families.…  Seguir leyendo »

Why the Border Crisis Is a Myth

To hear the national news media tell the story, you would think my city, El Paso, and others along the Texas-Mexico border were being overrun by children — tens of thousands of them, some with their mothers, arriving from Central America in recent months, exploiting an immigration loophole to avoid deportation and putting a fatal strain on border state resources.

There’s no denying the impact of this latest immigration wave or the need for more resources. But there’s no crisis. Local communities like mine have done an amazing job of assisting these migrants.

Rather, the myth of a “crisis” is being used by politicians to justify ever-tighter restrictions on immigration, play to anti-immigrant voters in the fall elections and ignore the reasons so many children are coming here in the first place.…  Seguir leyendo »