From Ciudad Juárez to El Paso, Bridge Spans Many Gaps
CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico — The short trek from danger to calm starts before dawn. First, there is the grind of a turnstile — total cost: 3 pesos, or 25 cents — then thousands of legs push forward, broomlike, onto the Paso del Norte bridge and away from Ciudad Juárez.
It takes about 250 long strides to reach the middle, where the United States begins and the view changes slightly: a large billboard advertising Bud Light, in Spanish, practically blots out the sun.
Most of the 14,000 people here who cross over the Rio Grande daily seem to barely notice. This mound of a bridge, which American officials estimate to be the busiest of all cross-border footpaths between Mexico and the United States, used to be just a simple connector between the shopping districts of Ciudad Juárez and El Paso. But these days, it has deeper meaning.
[…]
Spending time in the United States is, of course, no guarantee of safety; last week, three Ciudad Juárez teenagers, including two American citizens who had attended schools in El Paso, were gunned down at a car dealership on the Mexican side of the border.
Still, the number of students crossing appears to be growing. Last April, after noticing an increase in morning foot traffic, United States Customs and Border Protection assigned a special lane to students who cross between 7 and 9, a result of a push by Mexican parents to place their children in American schools.
On one recent morning, Damaris Girón, 18, shy, in a blue pleated skirt and wearing heavy makeup, was one of many carrying book bags on the bridge. She said that all 25 of her classmates at a Methodist school in El Paso lived in Ciudad Juárez.
[…]
Read the whole thing, it’s not long.
American officials estimate the Paso del Norte bridge to be the busiest of all cross-border footpaths between Mexico and the United States. Katie Orlinsky for The New York Times