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Margo: A U.S. border shutdown would be ‘crippling’ to El Paso

Shutting down the southern U.S. border would be “crippling” to not just El Paso, but also to Texas and the U.S., the city’s mayor told ABC-7 on Wednesday.

He made the assessment in the days after President Donald Trump threatened to close down the border in the wake of the massive uptick of migrants — a majority of them from Central America, according to reports — flocking to the U.S.-Mexico border to seek asylum.

Mayor Dee Margo listed data his office received from El Paso’s Economic Development Department and the Federal Reserve of Dallas.

“We have $101 billion in annualized trade going through our port,” Margo said.

Margo said there are 36,000 private vehicles and over 20,000 legal pedestrians that come north every day from Mexico.

“And when you look at the cargo crossings — it’s almost 2,600 trucks a day, with an average value of $212 million per day. That’s what’s critical,” Margo said.

Margo said there are 115,000 jobs north of the Rio Grande and 559,000 jobs in Mexico that are related to Mexican factories, known as maquilas.

“You’ve got 94 Fortune 500 companies in Mexico, everything from medical products to auto products,” Margo said. “It would be an absolute crippler for our economy, and our region, and the state and the nation.”

Margo seemed exasperated that no one — neither those who represent El Paso and Texas in Washington, D.C., nor the White House — has reached out to him to talk on Capitol Hill about the impact of a border shutdown.

“I offered months ago to U.S. Sen. (John) Cornyn, R-Texas, that if a hearing occurred in the Senate, that they — if they wanted me to participate I’d be happy to, and I’ve never heard anything. But the White House has never reached out,” he added.

Margo again said that the lawmakers of both major political parties seem to lack “intestinal fortitude” to make any decision about immigration — a phrase he used last week when the city agreed to allocate $20,000 from its budget to the United Way of El Paso to fund a volunteer coordinator to help manage the movement of migrants around the city as they maneuver through the asylum process.

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