{"id":3467,"date":"2025-10-14T19:47:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T19:47:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/3467\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T19:47:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T19:47:06","slug":"in-juarez-a-militarized-border-makes-drug-use-more-deadly-puente-collaborative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/3467\/","title":{"rendered":"In Ju\u00e1rez, a militarized border makes drug use more deadly | Puente Collaborative"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s Note: This story is a collaboration between Puente News Collaborative and the Texas Observer.<\/p>\n

CIUDAD JUAREZ – As the health care workers approach the small collection of makeshift shelters along the train tracks that cut through the northern Mexico industrial hub of this border city, the people who gather in this place to use drugs prepare for their arrival.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re ready to exchange used syringes for clean ones, a practice that helps prevent injury and disease. They prepare their kits in anticipation of the small packets of distilled water in which they can more safely cook heroin. The workers for Programa Compa\u00f1eros, a nonprofit that provides supplies and assistance to vulnerable populations in Ju\u00e1rez, have invested years building relationships with people who use heroin in Ju\u00e1rez\u2019s picaderos (a colloquial term equivalent to \u201cshooting galleries\u201d). Some of these locations are essentially tolerated by local authorities, allowing Programa Compa\u00f1eros to develop established services; the group calls these \u201cdrug consumption sites.\u201d<\/p>\n

But even at sites where there\u2019s little effort at coordinated narcotics enforcement, gathering in one place leaves people vulnerable to abuses from Mexico\u2019s military and police forces, who are increasingly flooding the city of 1.5 million across the Rio Grande from El Paso.<\/p>\n

The border has long been one of the most heavily policed parts of both the United States and Mexico. Since taking office this year, U.S. President Donald Trump has deployed additional troops to the already-militarized region and put pressure on Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum to do the same. Research about past border deployments has shown that they make it more difficult for health workers on both sides of the border to reach vulnerable populations.<\/p>\n

A 38-year-old man at the consumption site by the tracks who identified himself only as Erick said that, when he first met the Programa Compa\u00f1eros outreach workers, he was suspicious of the men in jeans and slacks and fresh T-shirts offering needles.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought they were like, honestly, some kind of police or something like that,\u201d Erick said.<\/p>\n

He could hardly be blamed for thinking that. The presence of military forces in Ju\u00e1rez is obvious throughout the city. The skeleton of what\u2019s called the Torre Centinela, the future command center for the state of Chihuahua\u2019s massive surveillance program<\/a>, rises above Ju\u00e1rez\u2019s downtown. White Guardia Nacional pickups with machine guns mounted behind the cab and masked soldiers crammed in the bed can be seen cruising the city. All-black Mexican army trucks patrol as well. Erick said security forces do show up at the site\u2014but rarely to make arrests.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey come here, and they get the guy that\u2019s selling and beat him up,\u201d Erick said. \u201cThe cops and the military. If you have money on you, you\u2019d better hide it, because if they stop you here and you have money in your pockets, they\u2019ll take it away from you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Erick grew up in Ju\u00e1rez and crossed the border at age 19, he said, living first in El Paso and later in New Mexico. Two years ago, after an arrest for driving while intoxicated, he said he was deported to Ju\u00e1rez. Erick had been involved in a gang in New Mexico and before his deportation was jailed at an immigration detention center in the West Texas town of Pecos, where he started using heroin. Back in Ju\u00e1rez after a 15-year absence, the only community he could find was in the picaderos.<\/p>\n

Despite his suspicions, Programa Compa\u00f1eros was already well known among the other heroin users he\u2019d found. The organization\u2019s staff say their nonjudgmental approach and willingness to provide supplies that people who use drugs want, like needles, helps them build trust and direct people to other services. Erick said he now goes to the group\u2019s headquarters, where services like showers, clean clothes, counseling, and medical and dental care are offered.<\/p>\n

For nearly 40 years, Programa Compa\u00f1eros has practiced harm reduction, a broadly defined strategy for providing services to people who use drugs without attaching stigma or strict parameters and involving people who use drugs in planning and implementing that strategy. Fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid often produced in Mexico to meet U.S. demand, is now on the streets in that country as well, creating a public health crisis. In May, a batch of powdered cocaine tainted with fentanyl killed five people in Ju\u00e1rez<\/a> over the course of two hours, local officials said.<\/p>\n

Ju\u00e1rez\u2019s location on the border with Texas creates unique challenges for providing harm-reduction services. Migrants from all over Mexico and the globe flock to the border, fleeing violence or instability and looking for work, either in Ju\u00e1rez or in the United States. There\u2019s also the community of recent deportees, like Erick, oftentimes dropped into a country they barely know. Health workers in the region must provide services to a particularly vulnerable population whose members sometimes speak little or no Spanish. The increased militarization of the border then pushes those vulnerable populations further into the shadows and makes them harder to reach, health workers and activists say.<\/p>\n

The atmosphere of militarization and surveillance is pervasive on both sides of the border. This only increased in February, when Mexico launched Operativo Espejo to \u201cmirror\u201d the militarization on the U.S. side. The effort, both governments said, was aimed at deterring both immigration and drug smuggling. In Mexico, Sheinbaum deployed 10,000 troops to the border, with nearly 2,000 to Ju\u00e1rez.<\/p>\n

The border \u201cis hypermilitarized, as we\u2019ve never seen,\u201d said Dr. Patricia Gonzalez Zuniga, a physician who\u2019s done research and volunteer outreach in Tijuana, across the border from San Diego, California. \u201cNow if you go, like, to a shopping center, just to the store or a market, you will find a lot of military trucks full of soldiers. I work with people who are homeless, and the stories that they told us are very awful.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"1830.png\"<\/p>\n

Mar\u00eda Elena Ramos Rodr\u00edguez, the director of Programa Compa\u00f1eros in Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez, gives a tour of the organization\u2019s headquarters, where they conduct needle exchanges and offer services like counseling and wound care.<\/p>\n

Jason Buch<\/p>\n

Whether it involves distributing clean needles and the overdose-reversal drug naloxone, or just providing food, clean clothes, and medical care, harm reduction focuses on diminishing the negative impacts of drug use rather than insisting that people quit. Research has found that needle exchanges not only reduce the spread of disease but are a gateway to other services; people who use syringe exchanges are more likely to enter recovery<\/a>, research has found.<\/p>\n

The El Paso-Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez region, which includes parts of Texas and New Mexico and the Mexican state of Chihuahua, offers a stark example of the opportunities and challenges harm-reduction workers face along the border.<\/p>\n

The region suffers from a lack of investment. \u201cWe\u2019ve been underfunded,\u201d said Julia Lechuga, an associate professor of health psychology at the City University of New York\u2019s Hunter College who has conducted research about harm reduction in El Paso and Ju\u00e1rez. \u201cFrankly, it\u2019s an uphill battle. There are not enough resources to provide harm reduction and provide intervention and treatment.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Trump administration\u2019s spending cuts, which have targeted progressive policies including harm reduction, have shrunk resources for programs nationwide. The State of Texas has targeted services for immigrants, which creates uncertainty for organizations working in border communities, which have large undocumented populations.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_1952.png\"<\/p>\n

Volunteers with the El Paso Harm Reduction Alliance at an abandoned campsite near the state line with New Mexico.<\/p>\n

Jason Buch<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery organization in El Paso that provides substance-use services has lost funding, and it has already had an impact in our ability to serve,\u201d said Jamie Bailey, a peer recovery specialist and the co-chair and co-founder of the El Paso Harm Reduction Alliance. \u201cIt\u2019s a very difficult position to be in because you want to continue to be able to serve your community \u2026 and you also don\u2019t want to turn away people that need help based on their immigration status.\u201d<\/p>\n

But being on the border also provides some benefits. Just as ideas about treatment and outreach flow back and forth between Texas, New Mexico, and Chihuahua, so does lifesaving medication. Programa Compa\u00f1eros, for instance, works its way around Mexico\u2019s restrictions on naloxone by accepting donations from groups in Texas.<\/p>\n

\"1838.png\"<\/p>\n

At the picadero along the train track, Montelongo and Rojas accept used syringes and hand out new ones.<\/p>\n

Jason Buch<\/p>\n

In April, Programa Compa\u00f1eros workers Juli\u00e1n Rojas and David Montelongo picked their way along a rocky path running between a cinder-block wall and the train tracks that pass by the consumption site in Ju\u00e1rez.<\/p>\n

Rojas carried a black backpack with the supplies for their day\u2019s mission. Montelongo carried a red plastic container for the used needles they\u2019d be collecting. Over the course of the day, they stopped at a house in a residential neighborhood and an abandoned building in the city\u2019s historic downtown. While passing through the heavily patrolled centro, close to bridges that connect Ju\u00e1rez to El Paso, they were cautious, subtly exchanging needles. When asked if he thought syringe exchanges encourage people to try heroin, a criticism levied by opponents, Rojas, who said he has personal experience with drug use, scoffed. It\u2019s not a question of whether people will use, he said. It\u2019s a question of whether they\u2019ll use safely.<\/p>\n

Programa Compa\u00f1eros workers said the worst period for militarization in Ju\u00e1rez was during the 2010s, when the Mexican government deployed troops to curb open warfare between criminal organizations. They heard from people who\u2019d been beaten with boards and stabbed with their own syringes by Mexican security forces.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe violence still persists, mainly by the municipal police, the National Guard at times,\u201d Rojas said. \u201cBut not with the same intensity as in those years.\u201d<\/p>\n

But if targeting of the picaderos for shakedowns continues, and the people who use drugs there are forced further into the shadows, it will be harder for Programa Compa\u00f1eros to reach people who need its services. The new troop deployments have raised concern among people who work in harm reduction that violence against people who use drugs will spike. In 2023, Lechuga, the health psychology professor, published a study that found the 2010s military deployment in Ju\u00e1rez \u201cpromoted engagement in behaviors that increased drug use and health harms, including HIV risk.\u201d The Mexican military deployment\u2019s impact also spilled over the border, she said in an interview, as increased militarization on the Mexican side led to \u201cincreasing harsh police tactics\u201d on the U.S. side.<\/p>\n

In El Paso, both the state and federal governments have rolled out highly publicized border enforcement operations in recent years. Earlier this year, videos circulated online purporting to show immigration officials knocking on doors in El Paso. News stations showed immigrants crowded onto deportation flights out of Fort Bliss, the 1,700-square-mile U.S. Army post headquartered on the city\u2019s edge. In March, the Trump administration deployed armored combat vehicles to the borderlands. The under-construction Torre Centinela project will share information with Texas law enforcement and is visible from El Paso.<\/p>\n

All that can rattle drug users who may have suffered mistreatment from officers or may be experiencing paranoia, said Joey Montes, outreach lead at the Recovery Alliance of El Paso.<\/p>\n

\u201cI could imagine what they\u2019re feeling when they see actual authorities out there in vests with their badges, big guns, just roaming the streets,\u201d Montes said. \u201cSo I\u2019m pretty sure that\u2019s scaring a lot of them into hiding.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jason Buch is an independent investigative journalist in Austin. A native of Texas, he\u2019s covered the border since 2007, writing about everything from money laundering to alligator gar in the Rio Grande.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Editor\u2019s Note: This story is a collaboration between Puente News Collaborative and the Texas Observer. CIUDAD JUAREZ –…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3468,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[3908,138,140,139,3907,584,3909,3911,3910,3912,27],"class_list":["post-3467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-el-paso","tag-ciudad-jurez","tag-el-paso","tag-el-paso-headlines","tag-el-paso-news","tag-harm-reduction","tag-health","tag-needle-and-syringe-programmes","tag-psychoactive-drugs","tag-social-aspects-of-psychoactive-drugs","tag-social-issues","tag-texas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}