EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) — Many businesses located in the shopping district in Downtown El Paso and across from the Paso Del Norte port of entry are struggling with plummeting sales even through the holiday season.
The shopping district, which extends about half a mile north on El Paso Street until it meets San Antonio Avenue, has thrived for decades, largely dependent on a client base from Ciudad Juarez and other Mexican towns near the border.
However, shop owners and employees said their sales have been on a steady decline since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and have taken a steeper decline this year.
Many of them said that the sales decline is in large part due to fewer clients being willing to make the trip across the border.
“The street here used to be packed with people. We had people coming from everywhere,” Raquel Angeles, an employee at Sunrise, a wig and beauty supply shop that has operated in the district for about 35 years, said. “We were hoping that with the holiday season, our sales would rise a little bit, but it hasn’t been that way. In previous years, we had already reached our sales goals for the year by this point. Right now, we haven’t even reached a third of our goals.”
Raquel Angeles
Angeles pointed to three main reasons why she thinks people from Mexico are being discouraged from coming.
One, she said, she’s heard from clients that people are often having negative experiences being interrogated intensely by U.S. Customs at the port of entry. Two, the wait times at the ports of entry to cross both ways are increasingly long. And lastly, many report having been assaulted in Juarez after making their purchases in El Paso.
Pedro Padilla, an employee at a sports clothing shop in the district named J.K. Tennis, said their sales have dropped by about 80 percent this year compared to last. He said about 70 percent of their client base is from Juarez.
Padilla believes the stricter immigration policies of the Trump administration have instilled fear in customers from Juarez that their visas may be revoked.
“Our sales have been extremely low; they are not close to where we expected. Our sales were much better than before,” Padilla said. “Our sales have been steadily decreasing since the (COVID-19) pandemic, but the decrease has been more pronounced this year.”
Pedro Padilla
Padilla and Angeles also said that they have noticed customers have adopted a more frugal behavior when shopping in their stores since the pandemic.
“I think it’s mainly due to the current state of the economy. People don’t want to spend money. They’re saving the money for expenses, more important than gifts,” Padilla said.
“Since the pandemic, we also started noticing people were more conscious of how much they were spending. They used to ask for at least two to three pieces of the same item. Now it seems they are afraid they may need the money to cover other expenses,” Padilla said.
Jim Peach, a retired regents professor of economics at NMSU, said he believes the stricter immigration policies of the U.S., the high tariffs, and a strained economy are all to blame for the hurting retail sector in Downtown El Paso.
“If there was one thing that has always been here is that when uncertainty increases, border retail trade takes a hit. And these are very uncertain economic times,” Peach said.
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