State of local emergency declared with border patrol checkpoints closed: NPR

Normally, if you are traveling from Las Cruces to Alamogordo, New York, on US Route 70, you must go to a federal inspection post. An agent in green suit asks if you are an American citizen, while another with a dog sniffs your car looking for drugs.

Today, traffic passes over the orange cones that block the entrance to the control point. The Customs and Border Protection has closed the six checkpoints of the El Paso area, which covers western Texas and New Mexico. Checkpoints elsewhere along the southern border are functioning normally.

It annoys Couy Griffin. He wears a wide-brimmed cowboy hat and has a nearby barbeque cafe whose trademark is a giant replica of a six-barrel. "Where we are right now … this border patrol checkpoint is closed, it's in place to provide security, and now it's left to be abandoned," says Griffin, standing in the empty halls of the inspection pavilion.

Griffin, chairman of the Otero County Board of Trustees, was behind the surprise decision taken last week when the county declared state of emergency on the checkpoint closed.

"What I really hope to get out of [this emergency declaration] it is that our governor will put back into service the National Guard that she pulled out of the border earlier this year, "he said.

Earlier this year, Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham withdrew 118 soldiers from the National Guard on the southern border of New Mexico, calling President Trump's policy a "border terror charade".

Since then, the El Paso area has been submerged by smugglers. They apprehend 600 migrants a day, an increase of 1,600% compared to the same period last year.

For example, Otero commissioners – all Trump supporters – asked the Democratic Governor to redeploy the National Guard at checkpoints to replace the overburdened border officials.

The governor said that if Otero County wanted the checkpoints to be staffed again, they should write a letter to CBP, not to the governor's office.

"They did not give me information about an emergency at the state or county level, except that they are crazy that the checkpoint is closed" , she said during a phone interview from Santa Fe. "The National Guard can not do the immigration work so they can not control this checkpoint. not arrest, it does not make sense. "

There is no doubt that the 71 border patrol checkpoints along the southwestern border capture a lot of dope. Since Oct. 1, checkpoint agents have discovered seven tons of marijuana and nearly a ton and a half of methamphetamine in vehicles, according to CBP's own statistics.

Otero County Sheriff David Black is convinced that the loss of the checkpoint on US Highway 54, south of Alamogordo, has been a boon for smugglers. "We are currently witnessing a massive drug influx – I mean, the highway is wide open, there is no checkpoint, nothing," he says.

Before the checkpoints were closed, Black sent his drug investigators two to three times a week to make drug arrests. He says that informants are now telling him that Mexican traffickers know if they can transport their goods across the Rio Grande – the border with Mexico – without having to go north. He says his deputies are doing more prohibitions on highways to search vehicles, but they can not compensate for the loss of the federal inspection post.

"It's my home town," says Black, "born and raised here, in Otero County, I have grandchildren in the schools, and that stuff keeps coming back." rage in our community. "

Officials from Otero County are not the only ones complaining. CBP has reassigned 750 officers from entry points to help deal with the wave of asylum seekers. The commercial interests of the United States and Mexico, on both sides of the border, are frightened by the fact that the border crossings are understaffed, the expectation of commercial traffic is now in hours and hours. not in minutes.

In a statement, CBP writes: "This is a temporary measure and the checkpoints are an integral part of the border patrol's security mission."

No date has been given for their reopening.