Residents of Hachita, in southwest New Mexico, vexed by surge of migrants

If you live in this tiny town at the entrance to New Mexico’s Bootheel region, population 34 (or 70, depending on the source), it’s easy to have a siege mentality. You have dogs. You erect a fence around your property. You call the Border Patrol when you hear people rustling around in the abandoned double-wide next door. This unincorporated community is the last populated place on the highway to the Antelope Wells port of entry, which has seen a surge in migrants apprehended after they cross the border illegally in recent months. Hachita is 45 miles north of the border. Border Patrol officials say there has been an increase in migrants crossing at Antelope Wells to seek asylum because it’s easier to gain access to the country at the remote desert crossing. They come after the port of entry closes at 4 p.m., usually at night, and walk around the barriers. They don’t try to avoid detection. They want to be caught, Border Patrol officials say, because once apprehended, they will be bused to the Border Patrol station at Lordsburg, and will begin the process to be considered for asylum. Border Patrol officials say that smugglers in Mexico are transporting large groups of migrants from places like Juárez to a few miles from the Antelope Wells port of entry because it has become more difficult to enter the country at busier border crossings in places like El Paso. The changing migrant pathways are making residents of this former mining town, and the country that surrounds it, nervous. There’s not much here anymore. There’s a single store and gas station. There’s still a post office. Bonnie Denzler, who retired to Hachita with her husband three years ago, said she is awaken in the middle of the night several days a week by dogs barking next door. She’s heard talking outside near her house late at night, too. “I’ve heard stuff and it makes me wonder,” she said. “I don’t want to look outside, because you never what’s outside your window. It’s really disconcerting because you don’t know what’s going on.” She is concerned about the increase in migrants crossing the border in the Bootheel region because, she said, there are too few law enforcement agents — Border Patrol and county sheriff’s deputies — to cover a vast and largely empty region. A retired medical assistant from Pueblo, Colorado, she was angry when New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham chose to visit the border earlier this month but went to Santa Teresa, rather than southwestern New Mexico, and then concluded that there is no crisis on the border, contrary to the opinion of President Donald Trump. “She needs to come down here to this area — to see how wide open it is and how easy it is for people to jump the fence,” Denzler said. “People need to see what’s down here and that it’s not as safe as they’re spouting it is. When you have that many people coming across the border at the same time, it doesn’t make a lot of sense that they believe it’s so safe down here.”...MORE