Visiting Border, Trump To Push Again On Immigration
Speaker 1: 00:00 This is KPBS mid day edition. I'm Maureen Cavenaugh. The border town of Calexico is not used to the national spotlight, but it's dealing with it today. President Trump visits the imperial county city to hold a forum on Border Security and to view a section of border fence replacement. Yeah. That now bears a plaque with Trump's name on it. The president's visit has drawn media protesters, supporters, activists to Calexico. The city's Mayor Lewis Pacheco has his hands full, but spared a few minutes to speak with us. Mayor, welcome to the program. Speaker 2: 00:34 Thank you for having me. Speaker 1: 00:35 What do you think about the president's visit? Is it a good thing for your city? Speaker 2: 00:39 You know what, the actual is not going to be with any city officials or the actual city itself or the county. He's coming in to have a round table with the port of entry and homeland security and border patrol agents and to get a snapshot view of the security around here and the police chief. Speaker 1: 01:01 So you will not be meeting, Speaker 2: 01:03 he had made nutsy no contact any type of, of a, a meeting with us or, or whether council, no. Speaker 1: 01:11 Well, president Trump seems to have backed off from his threat of an immediate shutdown of the border and I believe you were relieved to hear that. Can you tell us why? Speaker 2: 01:21 Basically we're a city of 40,000 our neighbor to the south has 1.5 million. They are the life of this city and the county. I mean they come across and they, it's a, it's commerce. It's them spending their pencils and their dollars in our community and they do make the tax dollars works for us of the revenue comes from them and then it's part of our give and take with our southern borders. Here are our friends, but the big issue is if you were to shut down the border, a lot of folks work on this side of the border in important jobs that are agricultural. There's the farm workers, they come across and they work at the hardest jobs that there is and they're up early. In any given day in our city, it blows up to 10 15,000 additional residents because of the actual influx of the border crossers. Speaker 1: 02:18 Besides the economic connections between Calexico in Mexicali. What other kinds of ties do you have? Speaker 2: 02:24 Well, you know, they're our sister city. We get together and, and we joined their 116th anniversary three weeks ago. We were invited to their ceremony and they're going to perform for us on our state of the city programs or we're going to utilize their orchestra. There are musicians and we trade off. Yeah. Speaker 1: 02:44 How's your city taking a stand on whether Calexico supports the president's efforts to build a border wall? Speaker 2: 02:50 No, actually we, we took a stance Wednesday night to declare the closing of the, the port. We were opposition of that and we have a, but now the fences is a seat through fence in, it allows our border patrolmen access to see who was across the border news, throwing rocks at them. They get to see who's actually doing it for RBS. Before it was just a fence, just blocking the, and you couldn't see through the fence. Speaker 1: 03:16 What do you hope the president learns about your city and the border today? Speaker 2: 03:20 You know what? He's not gonna learn much because he made no contact. He's not actually dealing with our rule committee and our and our actual city needs. We have the worst. We have a river that collects the sewage from our neighbor, comes across the raw sewage, and this creates the dirtiest river in the u s we need help with that. Pollutions and other thing. We, this water runs to a little seat called the salt and sea and that the beds are drying up and all that dust is going up in the air and everybody's breathing them. So we do have pollution. You do have that raw sewage. We need more boots on the street. Yes, we do. Speaker 1: 04:04 I've been speaking with Calexico is mayor Lewis Pacheco and thank you so much. Speaker 2: 04:10 Well, thanks for having me. Speaker 1: 04:11 Joining me now by Skype is Calexico Resident Angel Esparza. He runs a company called me Calexico, which is hosting a binational march of unity today. And Angel, welcome to the program. Speaker 3: 04:24 Hi. Thank you for having me. Speaker 1: 04:25 So the binational march of unity is now underway. Speaker 3: 04:30 Yes. We just got to the end point of the march. Uh, we've been having speakers speaking on different issues with the march. Just ended. We're just waiting for the arrival of the precedent. Speaker 1: 04:41 How many people would you say took part in this March? Speaker 3: 04:44 I think there's about four to 500 people here from both sides of the border. Speaker 1: 04:49 Is this March a protest against the president's visit? Speaker 3: 04:53 No. We're just taking this opportunity and this spotlight to highlight issues that we believe are bigger than the immigration or the border. Speaker 1: 05:01 What are the issues that you want to highlight? Speaker 3: 05:03 Number one, our unemployment rate is 27.5% to put into context, the Great Depression was at 24 so our unemployment rate is worse than the Great Depression. We also have the most polluted river in the United States flowing through our city, and we have the seventh most polluted air quality in the United States, so we definitely have issues here and it's not the border. Speaker 1: 05:28 You know, the president has been saying that the southern border is being overrun with border crossers. W what is your experience, Angel? You're living right there on the border. Speaker 3: 05:38 I do see people jump over the fence, but it's not like an invasion. There's not like hundreds of people just going over. It's one here and there. Sometimes they even see women's kids families, but it's, it's just like trickled in which it's been like that for a while. The border didn't really stop that. The, the wall that we have right now. Speaker 1: 05:58 Do you expect president Trump to perhaps stop and listen to the speakers of your binational March? Speaker 3: 06:05 I Dunno if, if, if Trump will, because he's only meeting with the border patrol sector and the chief of police. I know, but other than the local officials last I heard, they didn't have a chance to speak with them. So he's pretty much selecting who he's going to talk to and just go take a picture and do a press conference in front of the wall. And that's pretty much it. Speaker 1: 06:27 I've been speaking with Calexico Resident Angel Esparza. He runs the company called me Calexico and it's one of the hosts of the binational march of unity in Calexico today. Thank you so much. Thank you.
