Border Cities Are Burdened With Calls for Help

The calls come in thick and fast from the border, just blocks from the fire station here. A woman suffered heatstroke in line at the port of entry. A person detained by customs officers complained of chest pain. An illegal immigrant broke his leg trying to hop the 20-foot wall that divides Calexico from its Mexican twin city, Mexicali. In each case, the Calexico Fire Department responded. All along the Southwest border, from San Diego to Brownsville, Tex., local fire departments respond to medical calls as they would to any emergencies within their city limits. But such calls for medical assistance at the border have become a growing burden on the finances and resources of fire departments in cities like this one, in the California desert 100 miles east of San Diego. Last year, with trips to the port of entry and the Border Patrol station and others to assist injured fence-jumpers, Calexico firefighters responded to 725 calls associated with the border — a fifth of all calls the department received. Chief Pete Mercado said the department’s lone ambulance would sometimes make 10 trips to the port of entry in a given day. For many of those, he said, the department is not able to collect payment, while the ambulance is rendered unavailable for other emergencies. “It’s a very difficult thing for us to continue to do without some type of funding,” Chief Mercado said. “We’ve absorbed the cost for all these years. I can’t express how difficult it is.” In San Diego, the Fire Department responded to more than 2,000 medical emergencies at border crossings last year. In San Luis, Ariz., at least 70 percent of the calls that the Fire Department receives come from the port of entry, officials said. A huge portion of the patients at the ports of entry or in Border Patrol custody have no health insurance, according to the fire departments, leaving the departments to cover the cost of care. In El Paso through the first six months of this year, the Fire Department collected reimbursement on 18 percent of the cost of calls to the ports of entry, compared with a collection rate of more than 50 percent for all calls. In Douglas, Ariz., the fire chief, Mario Novoa, estimated that about 15 percent of the department’s calls came from the port of entry. Firefighters also offer medical assistance to people the Border Patrol finds in the desert, more than 25 miles outside the city limits. Chief Novoa called the collection rate on trips associated with the border “dismal” and “a burden on the taxpayers.”...more