In Texas borderlands, wall fight hinges on nuance

摘要

SANTA ANA NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Texas — It's easy to find calm and solitude here, just a few miles from the nation's southern border with Mexico. At the visitor center and the nearby observation deck, there are a handful of sightseers, but the only hints of President Trump's national emergency along the U.S.-Mexico border are the numerous signs reminding visitors to report "suspicious activity" to the U.S. Border Patrol alongside information about bird conservation and how to recover tagged Monarch butterflies. Farther into the refuge, hiking for hours along single-track trails bordered by trees draped with Spanish moss and lush tall grasses, there is little more than nature: no telltale marks of migrants, no litter, no other visitors and no U.S. Border Patrol agents. The apparent calm belies the fact that the refuge is situated along a nearly 90-mile stretch in South Texas that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection says needs new barriers to address an influx of migrants, including plans for pedestrian fencing that can tower as high as 36 feet at some points. The Border Patrol's Rio Grande Valley Sector reported a five-year high arrest rate last month, when its officers apprehended 1,700 undocumented immigrants on a single weekday, including large groups in the cities of Roma and Mission, Texas, west of the refuge. According to statistics provided by CBP, officers apprehended more than 162,000 individuals in the 34,000- square-mile sector in fiscal 2018. The region includes 34 counties.