I CAN SEE MEXICO FROM MY HOUSE — Sometimes, after his bath and before bedtime, my almost 2-year old asks to go out on the balcony at the back of the house we rent in El Paso to look at cars. He doesn't know it, of course, but he's staring across the border at houses and mountains and cars in Ciudad Juárez. Aside from the dust storms, the desert heat and the abundance of cacti, the thing that has been most striking to me since we moved here last year is our closeness to Mexico. In cooler months, we picnic at the park in Chamizal National Memorial , which overlooks a border fence with giant steel slats emerging from the ground. When I met with Mexican journalists in Juárez last year, I walked from the park. My neighbor told me that she and her family plan to fly out of the Juárez airport when they go on vacation next month. Many of my kids' day care teachers have Mexican cell phone numbers that start with a +52 country code. It's that connectedness to Mexico — what life is really like in a border community — that local leaders are hoping to impress upon Vice President Kamala Harris Friday when she visits El Paso. Apprehensions of migrants have surged across the U.S.-Mexico border. Smugglers dropped two toddler sisters from Ecuador over a 14-foot border wall in March near El Paso. The video is shocking. The girls survived and were taken into custody to be reunited with their mom in the U.S. But the surge in apprehensions isn't that noticeable to El Paso residents as we go about our daily lives. Most of the activity is localized to a few spots. Once while driving to a farmers market in Sunland Park, N.M., a popular crossing spot, we saw border patrol agents detaining a handful of men. Otherwise the border is a calm and quiet place where we take walks downtown in the evenings past shops selling quinceañera dresses or go trainspotting on the weekends. Before the pandemic, both Americans and Mexicans regularly crossed one of the several bridges that connect El Paso and Juárez to shop, eat or go to school or work. When I crossed the Bridge of the Americas, which doesn't have a toll, by foot I paused briefly to flash my passport card and put my purse through a scanner before continuing to meet my sources in the park on the other side. Because of pandemic border restrictions, foot traffic was minimal but big trucks still waited in hours long lines to cross. Some Americans living in Mexico are getting Covid shots in El Paso. "A lot of people, in their mind, have a different image of what they think a border is like. They think of it as a no man's land kind of thing, like the Korean demilitarized zone," Bishop Mark Seitz of the Catholic Diocese of El Paso, told Nightly shortly after he was informed today that he would be meeting Harris during her visit. Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas), who is hosting Harris' visit here, likes to call El Paso the new Ellis Island. Republicans have criticized Harris' visit, saying she is going to the wrong place on the border. The Rio Grande Valley in South Texas has seen the most crossings in recent months, with more than twice the number of encounters as in El Paso from Oct 2020 through May 2021. "It's like visiting San Diego where there is an earthquake in L.A.," said Victor Manjarrez Jr, a former border patrol officer who is associate director of the University of Texas at El Paso's Center for Law and Human Behavior. But Escobar said it's important for Harris to see the large facilities in El Paso where migrants, who cross the border in smaller towns, are sent. This is where Harris can get a crash course in how migrants are apprehended and processed, how local officials are working with federal officials, she said. "El Paso is the capital of the border," Escobar said. "It will provide key context as she continues to address root causes." Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a motion Wednesday arguing that the administration isn't complying with Title 42, which allows the feds to keep migrants from entering the country because of the pandemic. Advocates say that the administration continues to enforce the policy too aggressively. Immigration advocate Ali Noorani said that the administration's muddled message is a part of its problem. "They're trying to be everything to everybody and in the end being no one to anybody," said Noorani, president and CEO of the National Immigration Forum, a nonpartisan group that promotes immigration. Harris doesn't seem likely to wade into the details of enforcement policy on Friday. Seitz and Escobar said Harris wants to stay focused on a narrow mission during her visit: addressing root causes of what keeps people coming. She will tour a central processing facility and meet with faith-based leaders and advocates, Harris' spokesman Symone Sanders said on a call with reporters tonight. "If you try to address the challenge at the border, it's too late," Beto O'Rourke, the former congressman from El Paso, told Nightly. But that is a long-term project. Migrants will continue to cross in the coming weeks and months. "I don't think there is a wrong part of the border for her to go to," said O'Rourke, who happens to also be a neighbor, addressing Republican criticism. "I hope she will visit other border communities too." Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas for us at rrayasam@politico.com, or on Twitter at @renurayasam.
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