Op-ed: Got-Away Traffic Drops Like A Rock At This Notorious Stretch Of The Border
As one young man in Juarez put it, “The mafia isn’t smuggling anyone right now.”
By Todd Bensman on March 20, 2025
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico – “Hit the gas!” I barked at my translator behind the wheel of our rental car. “Let’s get the f*** out of here!” We tore off, leaving the reflections of two cartel gunmen, a shiny handgun in the waistband on one, shrinking in our rearview mirror.
The confrontation happened one year ago on the Juarez, Mexico side of the U.S. border along a locally notorious, miles-long stretch of steel mesh border wall that closely paralleled Mexican Highway 174 and made it a natural human smuggling corridor tightly controlled by the ultra-violent La Linea Cartel.
It was April 2024, and I’d gone to this dangerous stretch of the border opposite Santa Teresa, New Mexico, to observe a phenomenon that few Americans ever saw during the worst, four-year mass migration event in U.S. history — hundreds of immigrants the U.S. Border Patrol calls “runners” who become “got-aways” were crossing every day here by cutting holes in an old border wall along Mexico Highway 174.
https://cis.org/Bensman/Oped-GotAway-Traffic-Drops-Rock-Notorious-Stretch-Border
