|
'Troop deployment creates tense atmosphere on US border
Translation: The Troop Deployment is already working.[AP] BROWNSVILLE, Texas (AP) ‐ As the first active-duty military troops sent to the U.S. border with Mexico installed coils of razor wire on a bridge and a riverbank Friday, a sense of unease spread across Texas’ Rio Grande Valley. President Donald Trump’s portrayal of a border under siege by drug smugglers and other criminals is at odds with what residents in towns along the 1,954-mile (3,126-kilometer) divide with Mexico see in their daily routines, with U.S. border towns consistently ranking among the safest in the country. Some Valley residents question the need for a large military presence and fear it will tarnish the area’s image. And some are afraid of violence if and when the caravan of Central American migrants that the troops have been sent to confront reaches the U.S. border. While the southern tip of Texas is the busiest corridor for illegal crossings, border agents make many arrests far from public view, on uninhabited banks of the Rio Grande and on nearby dirt paths and roads lined by thick brush. "I feel safer here than when I go up to bigger cities," lifelong Rio Grande Valley resident Emmanuel Torres said Friday while working at a coffee shop in Brownsville, the region’s largest city, with about 200,000 people. Torres, 19, said the area feels "a lot like family," and he worries the military presence will fuel outsiders’ perceptions of a dysfunctional border. "People that don’t live here are just going to create a bigger negative image," Torres said. When Trump pledged this week to send up to 15,000 troops to the border in response to the slow-moving caravan of migrants, he unnerved the economically struggling region of 1 million people that stretches over flat, sun-drenched citrus groves and farms of cotton, sugar cane and vegetables. Posted by: Besoeker 2018-11-03 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=526851 |