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Trump shutting Mexico border would 'cripple' El Paso
Dee Margo warned Donald Trump that closing the border would have a ‘detrimental, almost draconian’ impact on the region
The Republican mayor of El Paso, the largest American city on the US border with Mexico, has warned Donald Trump that if he goes ahead this week with his threat to close the border it would have a “detrimental, almost draconian” impact on the entire region.
“It would be a critical killer to us, frankly”, the mayor, Dee Margo, said.
In an interview with the Guardian at city hall, Margo reflected the views of a community that is now on tenterhooks over the US president’s next move. Trump began threatening last Friday morning that he would shut the border unless the Mexican authorities do more to block Central American asylum-seekers from reaching the US.
Margo spoke in impassioned terms about the “trepidation” he was feeling about the threat.
“It would be a crippler. It would be exceptionally detrimental to our economy – I shudder to think about it,” he said.
He added that it was difficult precisely to predict the impact on American families, given that such an event had never happened. But he said: “If you can’t cross the border to get to your job to earn money for your family, that’s a problem.”
Margo’s stark warning carries additional weight in that he is a member of Trump’s own party. The mayor’s grandchildren are fifth generation El Pasoans.
He said that as a sovereign nation, America needs border security and what he called a “rational” approach to immigration that would include some border fencing, increased personnel in the area, as well as comprehensive immigration reform for those undocumented immigrants already inside the US. Closing the border, he said, was not part of such a rational plan.
From the Pacific coast of southern California to the Gulf of Mexico in eastern Texas, the US-Mexico border is almost 2,000 miles long and runs across scorching desert, desolate mountains, farmland, military ranges and wilderness, along river and gorge, and through towns and cities.
Trump tweeted last Friday: “If Mexico doesn’t immediately stop ALL illegal immigration coming into the United States through our Southern Border, I will be CLOSING … the Border, or large sections of the Border, next week.”
The Guardian