When A Crisis Is Over

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EL PASO, Texas — This week, I went to the border city singer Marty Robbins had a soft spot for, so much so he wrote a musical trilogy. While it wasn’t my first time being back at the southern border since President Donald Trump has been in office, this was the first time I was able to go to international line with U.S. Border Patrol in over four years.

The last time I was able to do a ride along with Border Patrol was in the El Paso Sector with then-Acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan in October 2020, right before that election. He took me and the sector’s chief out to New Mexico in a Blackhawk to showcase the new wall system that was being built way out in the desert. It was replacing Normandy-style barriers. Those X-style barriers can stop cars, if they’re not cut through, but they did nothing to stop human traffic.

With Joe Biden’s campaign promises to undo Trump’s actions at the border, I asked Morgan what would happen if Biden became president. The answer was obvious, but to hear Morgan’s prediction of doom and gloom and then see it come to fruition only a few months later was shocking to see.

I went to El Paso many times during the border crisis. From seeing the downtown area become an open-air homeless shelter because Border Patrol had no place to hold them to hearing of this new gang called Tren de Aragua that was among the people being released into the country, El Paso had been through its fair share of the Democrats’ open border policies.

Now, it’s over. Just like that.

Trump is building the wall again and Border Patrol agents can do the job they actually signed up to do.

The hotel I stayed at in the historic downtown area, not far from a port of entry, had a clear view of a street that had previously been filled with released illegal immigrants. Now, it’s just another street. No longer was there a massive line of illegal immigrants waiting on the U.S. side of the Rio Grande to be let in by Border Patrol.

(Downtown El Paso. December 2022)

(U.S.-Mexico border. December 2022)

No evidence of their hectic arrival remained.

It was a weird emotion. Covering the border crisis opened up a new world for me. I got to know the places and people of the Rio Grande Valley, western Texas, the remote city of Yuma, Arizona, and California’s mountainous borderlands. Like the 2020 riots, covering the border crisis provided me a long-lasting mission. It was a problem that I truly hoped would be solved and now that it is, I have that “what now?” feeling.

Even though, yes, now the new mission is focusing on the Trump administration’s efforts to clean up the Biden-Harris mess, it makes me sad not knowing the next time I’ll be in El Paso or McAllen or Yuma. Each place was unique and I had grown to appreciate them. I probably spent just under a year total in those places chasing that story. Away from friends and family, going to right up to the line where the U.S. ends and a whole different world beings.

The souther border will still have problems, that is not going to change. But the nation-ending invasion of the past four years is done for the foreseeable future.

What do you do when a crisis is over? In my case, report on the end and then find the next one. With the far-left’s reaction to the deportations and the Trump administration as a whole, I’m confident there will be a new one.