The politics of immigration play differently along the US-Mexico border

Associated Press

SUNLAND PARK, N.M. (AP) — The politics of immigration look different from the back patio of Ardovino’s Desert Crossing restaurant.

That’s where Robert Ardovino sees a Border Patrol horse trailer rumbling across his property on a sweltering summer morning. It’s where a surveillance helicopter traces a line in the sky, and a nearby Border Patrol agent paces a desert gully littered with castoff water bottles and clothing.

It’s also where a steady stream of weary people, often escorted by smugglers, scale a border wall or the adjacent Mount Cristo Rey and step into an uncertain future. It’s a stretch of desert where reports of people dying of exhaustion and exposure have grown commonplace.

“It’s very obvious to me, being on the border, that it’s not an open border,” said Ardovino, who pays for fencing topped by concertina wire to route migrants around his property. “It is a very, very, very difficult situation.”

As immigration politics have moved to the forefront of this year’s presidential election, they’ve also dominated contests for hotly contested congressional seats that could determine which party controls Congress. The urgency is greater in some districts than others.

Three of 11 districts on the Southwest border are rematches in districts that flipped in 2022 with the election of Democratic Rep. Gabe Vasquez in New Mexico and Republican Reps. Juan Ciscomani in Arizona and Monica De La Cruz in Texas.

A partner in a decades-old family business, Ardovino lives in one border district in Texas and works in Vasquez’s New Mexico district.

“It’s frustrating for people who need a border bill of any kind, any time, to start dealing with the big picture,” Ardovino said.

Early voting starts Oct. 8 in Sunland Park, where partisan control flipped in 2018, 2020 and again in 2022 with the election of Vasquez.

Democrats in Congress, including Vasquez, are aggressively touting border initiatives. He emphasizes his knowledge of the region as the U.S.-born son of immigrants with relatives on both sides of the border.

“With migrant activity along the border, we have had to adjust our approach,” said Vasquez. “I can say here that the sky is blue for 50 years, but when it turns red, you have to admit that it’s turning red.”

Here, border politics are literally a matter of life and death. Federal and local authorities describe a new humanitarian crisis along New Mexico’s nearly 180-mile portion of the border, where migrant deaths from heat exposure have surged.

In the Texas race, Democratic challenger Michelle Vallejo has taken a hard line, shocking progressive allies. She openly courts Republican allies in her campaign against De La Cruz. One of her recent ads describes “chaos at the border” and calls for more Border Patrol agents.

In Arizona’s 6th Congressional District, Republican incumbent Ciscomani calls border enforcement his top priority but has distanced himself from Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. Instead, Ciscomani tells an immigrant’s story — about his own arrival in the U.S. at age 11 from Hermosillo, Mexico. He received citizenship in 2006.

“We have a responsibility to enforce the law on the border, and we also are a community of immigrants – myself included,” he said.

U.S. Border Patrol arrests of migrants on the Southwest border plunged to a 46-month low in July. In New Mexico, where coordinated law enforcement raids in August targeted houses where smugglers hide migrants, the trend has been less pronounced.

Vasquez, looking to become the first Democrat to win reelection in New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District since 1978, has pitched legislation to disrupt cartel recruitment of young Americans as migrant couriers and stepped up efforts to detect fentanyl at the border.

In 2022, after Democrats redrew congressional maps to split a conservative oil-producing region into three districts, Vasquez ousted one-term Republican Congresswoman Yvette Herrell by 1,350 votes.

Herrell, running for the seat for the fourth consecutive time, joined Republican House leaders in alleging that Democratic rivals undermined U.S. elections by voting against a proof-of-citizenship requirement for new voters.

“It’s our sovereignty over the open border,” said Herrell at a rally in Las Cruces.

Noncitizens already are prohibited from voting in federal elections. Vasquez says the requirement would make participation harder for legitimate voters.

Some say Herrell’s rhetoric could alienate a voting-age population that’s 56% Hispanic.

“It’s a tightrope that she’s got to walk in trying to get any of the pro-Trump enthusiasm,” said Gabriel Sanchez, director of the University of New Mexico Center for Social Policy.

Herrell’s approach resonates with retired Border Patrol agent Cesar Ramos of Alamogordo.

“People here in Alamogordo are 110% behind legal immigration, but despise that there are criminal acts of smuggling, and just breaking into the U.S. with no legal documentation,” he said.

Elsewhere in the district, concerns about border enforcement and inflation are testing Democratic Party allegiances.

Luis Soto, of Sunland Park, said migrants who cross the border impact his efforts to open a cannabis dispensary.

“I’m waiting for a fire marshal inspection and he’s busy saving people in the desert, rescuing bodies from the river, helping people out that are locked in a trailer,” said Soto, 43, the son of immigrants from Mexico in a family of lifelong Democrats, “We come from immigrants as well, but I think if the system was fixed, it would work out even better for them as well as for us.”

Vasquez in New Mexico and Ciscomani in Arizona are near ideological opposites, but they’ve co-sponsored bills to modernize temporary farmworker visas, spur local manufacturing and combat opioid trafficking.

“Juan and I play basketball together, and he has become a good friend,” Vasquez said. “There are solutions on the border that we can do today that may not look like comprehensive immigration reform.”

Ciscomani said he’s eager to collaborate with Democrats. His Democratic challenger, Kirsten Engel, scoffs at that notion, saying Ciscomani publicly rejected a major bipartisan border bill in February, days after Trump told GOP lawmakers to abandon it. The $20 billion bill would have overhauled the asylum system and given the president new powers to expel migrants when asylum claims become overwhelming.

“We’re very disappointed that it was rejected so swiftly by the very elected officials that talk about having border solutions,” said Engel, a law professor and former state legislator.

At Sunland Park, an off-road Border Patrol vehicle kicks dust into the morning air. An unmarked bus arrives for detained migrants. Ardovino, from his deck, gazes at Mount Cristo Rey and wonders aloud what it will take to make this work for people coming in search of a better life — and for those already here.

“The whole desert is unfortunately littered with people’s lives,” he said.

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Valerie Gonzalez contributed to this report from McAllen, Texas.