Despite Lukeville opening, problems remain at Arizona's southern border
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The federal government reopened the Lukeville Port of Entry last week, but officials in Phoenix and at the border said the underlying issues that prompted the closure remain.
Closing the Lukeville crossing had disastrous consequences on the ground, because local communities and economies on both sides of the border rely on business from tourists heading to places like the Sonoran beach town of Puerto Peñasco, as well as Mexican visitors headed north.
Pima County Supervisor Adelita Grijalva said that travel has come to a standstill over the past month.
“It’s called Muerto Peñasco right now, instead of Puerto Peñasco, because nobody is there,” she said.
And the economic impact extended beyond the border, Grijalva said.
“The ripple was to Phoenix and to Tucson and all over,” she said. “The commerce that wasn’t able to go back and forth. Those impacts — I don’t think that we’ve even sort of been able to gather that data together.”
Grijalva was one of a handful of local leaders who spoke with media and local community members at the Lukeville border crossing when it reopened Thursday morning. Federal officials said the closure was necessary so that the staff working at the port could help Border Patrol agents process migrants instead.
But Grijalva said pulling that small number of customs officers working at the port to other jobs just didn’t make sense.
“I was very concerned, because I wondered what the 23 people that were here, what they were actually going to accomplish, wherever they were,” she said. “Even the presence of the National Guard … what are they going to be able to help with?”
Grijalva is one of many Arizona Democrats who did not shy away from criticizing the Biden administration’s decision.
Gov. Katie Hobbs, too, was openly critical of the decision to close the Lukeville Port on Dec. 4, saying it wasn’t the right solution to address the uptick in migrant arrivals along the border.
“Again, this was a bad decision,” she said in late December. “We need the federal government to step in and listen to our local leaders and respond to the needs that we’re seeing on the ground.”
Hobbs wrote a letter to Biden on Dec. 8, asking him to send National Guard troops in Tucson to Lukeville to reopen the port. Biden did not heed Hobbs’ call, and the governor ended up sending National Guard troops herself through an executive order she signed on Dec. 15.
But those troops were sent under state orders and not by the president. That means their mission is limited to assisting with state and local law enforcement activities — even though those sometimes occur far from the border itself. That includes police efforts to disrupt the drug trade and human trafficking.
Even with the Lukeville port reopened, the governor said those troops will remain in place for now — but they won’t be assisting the Border Patrol agents who are processing migrants and asylum seekers.
The Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector has seen some of the highest numbers of apprehensions border-wide for the last few months. Asking for asylum along the border is legal, and many of those coming to the Arizona border right now are seeking out border officers to start that process.
Late last year, Border Patrol agents were encountering and processing hundreds of migrants and asylum seekers along a stretch of desert in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, just north of the Lukeville crossing.
Sector Chief John Modlin said before Hobbs deployed National Guard troops a few weeks ago, the Tucson Sector has had help from Department of Defense personnel like national guardsmen.
“But in very limited roles,” Modlin said. “They do a lot of surveillance work for us, work on surveillance systems, I should say, and limited to things like that. But not interactions with migrants.”
He said the latest deployment is not involved with Border Patrol personnel. And, despite a dip in migrant encounters along the Arizona border over the last week, agents here expect that number to rise again.
Modlin said these days, Tucson Sector agents are responding to higher numbers of families and individuals looking for agents to turn themselves in and ask for asylum.
“In terms of resources, you know, Tucson Sector has a lot of agents, Tucson Sector has a lot of technology, but right now it’s being focused on this,” Modlin said.
Hobbs acknowledged the impact of the troops she deployed is limited, and the governor said there is still a need for additional federal resources.
“I think the bigger issue is the level of additional support personnel that’s needed to be able to address the increase, influx of migrants that we’re seeing … and to keep the border secure and to keep commerce flowing and tourism,” Hobbs said.
Hobbs praised the decision to reopen the port, but she stopped short of saying she is confident another closure won’t happen in the future.
“Confident is a strong word that I wouldn’t use based on my conversations, but I’m thankful that it’s open now and hopeful that the path we’re on continues,” Hobbs said.
Officials in Pima County have been working with the federal government since 2019 to assist with things like medical screenings and transportation for asylum seekers released by the Border Patrol to await court dates in the U.S.
The county gets federal funding for that effort — but the future of that program is still in flux.
Meanwhile, Grijalva said people will still arrive at the border — because the things driving them to leave their countries haven't gone away.
“A need for people to be able to escape different situations in their communities, and their nations, and so, what we’re dealing with is this sort of microcosm of all these things, and this is the result,” Grijalva said.
She said without a real effort in Washington to reform the immigration system, that’s not likely to change anytime soon.
