Living in a border town

NICK EICHER, HOST: Well, coming next on The World and Everything in It: life in a border town.

Illegal immigration continues to overwhelm towns along the U.S.-Mexico border. With millions of people passing through, what’s it like for people who live there?

WORLD’s Bonnie Pritchett recently visited Eagle Pass, Texas, to find out.

JOSE ARANDA: My name is Jose Aranda. But you can call me Pepe…

BONNIE PRITCHETT: Aranda is a real estate broker in Eagle Pass. Before that he worked two decades in border towns for a Texas-based grocery store chain. He also owned a small business. And, served as Eagle Pass mayor and Maverick County Judge.

He knows this town. He knows this neighborhood.

ARANDA: I grew up just a block and a half from here, which is 600 feet from the river…

The Rio Grande flows below the bluff this neighborhood rests on. The houses here are a mix of modest, well-kept homes, abandoned buildings and everything in between. Aranda points to the shell of one building.

ARANDA: Juan Rodriguez, he was a butcher, he had a little store here, and then Celso Garcia had a grocery store over here. Moncho Hernandez, had that white building is another store...

He remembers other people from this neighborhood.

ARANDA: I can remember, you know, men running down the street here on Ferry Street, and asking my mom, “What is this? What's going on?” And she said, “Oh, no, don't worry, they're just crossing illegally, and they're coming into the United States. They’re looking for work. So, we've all our lives we've been exposed to people crossing and running…

AUDIO: [Metal door, Greetings]

Ana Santleben (left) and Sofie Gallo at Sanleben’s home overlooking the Rio Grande and Mexico Photo by Bonnie Pritchett

Sofie Gallo and Anna Santleben grew up with their parents and two brothers a couple of blocks from Aranda’s neighborhood. Their father still lives in their childhood home. The sisters are retired educators, like their dad.

Santleben’s home sits on a bluff overlooking the Rio Grande and Mexico beyond. In the living room the sisters reminisce about growing up in this border town. Santleben begins.

ANNA SANTLEBEN: We grew up in the downtown area. And back then downtown was the place to be. We had a blast down there. All our cousins would come and park their cars at our house and visit and then we'd all go downtown and you know, hit the stores…

Every Saturday the family went to dinner in Mexico.

GALLO: But as far as illegal crossing, I mean, it's always happened—just not to the extent that we have now…

Santleben and her husband, Al, a retired Border Patrol agent, often witness the problem from their backyard. After photographing the sisters for this story, we turned to admire the view and saw four people walking among the desert scrub near the river.

Border Patrols agents weren’t far behind. Al Santleben phoned in location information as he kept tabs on the group from his birds-eye view.

Near the sister’s childhood home is a popular bakery and café.

JENNIFER CHACON: My name is Jennifer Chacon. And we are in Eagle Pass at Sweet Tweets. I am the owner…

The lunch crowd is arriving and Chacon spares a few minutes to talk about her hometown.

CHACON: We are just blocks away from the whole chaos…

The chaos is Shelby Park: a green patch of land on the banks of the Rio Grande and the epicenter of the national debate over illegal immigration.

Chacon recounts, matter-of-factly, seeing people crossing the river from Mexico when she was a kid.

But now, she’s a business owner. And a mom. And the historic number of people crossing illegally, gives her pause.

CHACON: It becomes somewhat of a fear of your staff being safe, of your business being safe, and family and our customers being safe…

So, as a precaution, she adjusted her business hours to avoid high traffic times when illegal immigrants made their way through town.

CHACON: To be honest. We've never had a scare here at the business. I feel safer here than I do sometimes in my own home. There are nights that we see a lot of traffic in groups of like 10 to 20 or 30 people with kids and non-kids. But for the most part in that area, you see a lot of males, men, men passing by…

In March 2021, Customs and Border Protection reported a 71 percent increase in illegal immigration on the Southern border over the previous month.

It would only get worse.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott called out the Biden administration on its lack of action and took matters into his own hands.

ABBOTT: Texas is not going to shy away from stepping up and filling the gap that the federal government has left open…

Abbott launched Operation Lone Star, a state-funded effort to supply personnel and barriers all along Texas’s southern border. He concentrated security in one particular spot on the state’s 1200-mile border with Mexico – Shelby Park in Eagle Pass.

That caught some residents off guard. Gallo and Santleben describe what happened.

SANTLEBEN: All of a sudden, we saw the helicopters taking these huge train cars.

GALLO: Yeah, you could hear the helicopters carrying those. Especially at night, we could hear them, you know, flying over the house. It was crazy…

The helicopters with cargo containers dangling from their undersides flew low over Eagle Pass toward Shelby Park where they were placed along the banks of the Rio Grande. Then came the concertina wire on the ground. Then the more dangerous razor wire topping the containers and other fences.

The expansive green space with its baseball fields and boat ramp is now a national political, legal, and ideological battlefield. And Eagle Pass residents are caught in the crossfire.

SANTLEBEN: It’s awful. It’s awful. Nobody likes it.

GALLO: Shelby Park was a really nice place. Now, it looks like we're in some kind of war.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Bonnie Pritchett in Eagle Pass, Texas.

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