OPINION:
El Paso, Texas, has once again been used as the flashpoint for the border wall national discourse. President Trump in his 2019 State of the Union address, stated:
“The border city of El Paso, Texas, used to have extremely high rates of violent crime — one of the highest in the country, and considered one of our nation’s most dangerous cities. Now, with a powerful barrier in place, El Paso is one of our safest cities.”
Others, such as former Congressman Beto O’Rourke, have argued vehemently that “El Paso was one of the safest communities in the United States before the fence was built here.”
However, the debate surrounding the relationship between a fence/wall and crime is complex. It is also riddled by misconceptions and flawed assumptions on both sides. In fact, both statements from above are incorrect.
Any informed discussion on the topic must start with Operation “Hold-the-Line,” which began in September 1993 and continued through 1995 when the strategy was adopted as day-to-day operations. The operation developed a three-prong strategic approach: Personnel, technology, and border infrastructure (repairing a dilapidated fence in El Paso’s downtown area and extending it outward). The approach remains the cornerstone of the current border security strategy.
With those details in mind, we set out to examine violent crime (homicides, forcible rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults per 100,000 people) in cities with populations greater than 500,000 by using the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program. The figure below presents those violent crime rates from 1995-2017 among the largest 33 cities in the United States — comparing El Paso to the others.
Myth: El Paso used to have extremely high rates of violent crime — one of the highest in the country, and considered one of our nation’s most dangerous cities.
Fact: Prior to Operation “Hold-the-Line,” serious criminal activity in the city was disproportionately located in the 8th representative district, which follows the U.S.-Mexican border throughout the south and west of the City of El Paso and includes the downtown area. A significant amount of highly visible criminal activity such as vandalism, shoplifting and other petty theft, prostitution, and minor drug offenses occurred within the district. Today, this is no longer the case. Still, Mr. Trump and his administration have focused narrowly on violent crime.
El Paso’s violent crime rate has fallen steadily since the implementation of Operation “Hold-the-Line,” largely mirroring crime trends in other large cities and the country as whole. Generally, the crime rate decline in El Paso is sharper than the national trend. Violent crime in El Paso has been substantively lower than the average violent crime rate of the other 32 cities throughout the entire period we studied. In fact, El Paso has been in the top 10 (out of the 33) in terms of safety (i.e., lowest levels of violent crime) beginning in 1995, and has consistently ranked among the top 5 safest since 2004.
Myth: El Paso was one of the safest communities in the United States before the fence was built. The statement, in addition to a number of fact-checking exercises, typically refers to the more sophisticated fence/wall built in 2008-2009.
Fact: The 2008-2009 fence/wall was not the first, but rather a replacement and expansion of an old fence. While the 1990s fence/wall was simply a glorified chain-linked fence and often cut, the fence served its purpose.
Although violent crime in El Paso was never one of the highest in the nation, it is indisputable El Paso realized a steady decline in violent and petty crime since the inception of Operation “Hold-the-Line,” which included the use of a fence/wall as part of a border security strategy. The city’s violent crime rate has gone down by nearly 500 percentage points over the last few decades. The trend continued declining until 2012 when the trend simply flat lined.
One thing does stand out to us. A wall in and of itself solving our problems does little to propel productive debate on the topic forward. It stymies much-needed discussion on the Department of Homeland Security’s border security three-prong strategic approach of personnel, technology, and border infrastructure (fences/walls, etc.). The smart application/combination of personnel, technology, and border infrastructure varies in urban, rural, and remote operational environments.
It is clear that a border fence/wall serves a purpose in helping reduce chaos and clutter that is a result of uncontrolled immigration. The tool combined with personnel and technology works especially well in urban and in some rural areas. The tool is not a waste of taxpayer money, if applied correctly. We hope this commentary will serve as a springboard for better educating policymakers on understanding the key to border security is determining the smart combination of resources in each operational environment.
• John Shjarback is an assistant professor in the department of criminal justice at the University of Texas at El Paso. Victor M. Manjarrez Jr., a retired chief patrol agent for the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, is the associate director of the Center for Law and Human Behavior at the University of Texas at El Paso.
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