Home Care In Vado, NM

CRIME

El Paso Times

U.S. Border Patrol agents apprehended 134 migrants and seized more than $600,000 worth of methamphetamine over two days at three separate stash houses in San Elizario and New Mexico.

Agents located 67 migrants Thursday who were trying to hide inside a trailer in Chaparral, New Mexico, U.S. Border Patrol officials said.

Officials said 44 of the migrants were from Guatemala, 16 from Ecuador, five from Mexico, and one each from El Salvador and Honduras. Two of the Guatemalan migrants were unaccompanied children.

Agents also found a stash house Wednesday in San Elizario with 43 migrants hiding inside, officials said.

The migrants included 20 from Ecuador, 11 from Peru, 10 from Mexico, one from Honduras and an unaccompanied child from Guatemala, officials said.

Agents also seized 19.85 pounds of methamphetamine worth an estimated street value of $635,200 found inside the stash house, officials said.

The same day, agents found another stash house in Vado, New Mexico, with 24 migrants hiding inside.

The migrants included 18 from Ecuador, four from Guatemala and two from Mexico, officials said.

According to Border Patrol officials, of the 134 migrants apprehended over the two days, 131 were single adults and three were unaccompanied children.

The three unaccompanied children from Guatemala were taken to the El Paso Central Processing Center for further processing, officials said.

Officials said the children were “rescued from dire conditions that are commonly found in stash houses.”

The other migrants were deported to Mexico, officials said.

“Our Border Patrol agents will continue to work together with other law enforcement agencies to rescue migrants from these deplorable living conditions where they are held for long periods of time,” U.S. Border Patrol El Paso Sector Chief Patrol Agent Gloria I. Chavez said in a statement. “No human being should be treated like a commodity.”

The investigations into the stash house were conducted by the U.S. Border Patrol, U.S. Homeland Security Investigations, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Don?a Ana County Sheriff’s Office.

Aaron Martinez may be reached at 915-546-6249; [email protected]; @AMartinezEPT on Twitter.

El Paso Times

The Vado Speedway Park in Vado, New Mexico, will play host to its first-ever professional boxing card on Saturday and Sunday which will is being billed as the "First Annual Johnny Tapia Boxing Invitational."

Who is promoting the fight and who is Johnny Tapia?

Teresa Tapia, the wife of the late Johnny Tapia is promoting the event, which also includes amateur boxing on Oct. 5 and Oct. 6.

Johnny Tapia was from Albuquerque. N.M., and was a popular fighter particularly in the Southwest, who finished with a record of 59-5-2 and beat the likes of Danny Romero Jr., Hugo Soto, Manuel Medina and Jorge Eliecer Julio.

Johnny once defended his bantamweight title at the Pan American Center in Las Cruces in May of 2000.

Who is on the pro fight card

El Paso super featherweight Abel Mendoza will be on the card against Mexico's Gustavo Molina in a six-round main event.

Unbeaten El Paso middleweight Zach Prieto will put his 8-0 record on the line against 11-13 Ernesto Berrospe from Mexico.

Las Cruces welterweight prospect Savion Kent and San Antonio unbeaten featherweight Henry Arredondo are also set to fight.

There are a total of six professional fights scheduled and the card is subject to change.

How much are tickets and contact information

Tickets range from $15-50 for the pro card. The Vado Speedway is located between El Paso and Las Cruces. The contact number is 575-524-7913 and the address is 15900 Stern Dr, Vado, N.M.

More: El Paso middleweight looks to stay perfect

More: Tyson Fury retains heavyweight championship

Felix F. Chavez may be reached at 546-6167; [email protected]; @Fchavezeptimes on Twitter

VADO, N.M. - When Ruben Lugo sees children skateboarding, bicycling and playing on Vado’s dusty, unpaved streets, he says a lightning bolt of sadness strikes his gut.

Many residents of the rural southern Don?a Ana County community, like Lugo, have said they have to get their cars repaired every few months because of the damage inflicted by the uneven roads.

As Vado residents know, the colonia’s roads are not merely an inconvenience and financial nuisance.

“Last December, (a woman’s) husband had a heart attack, and the ambulance and emergency services weren’t able to get to the house on time (because the roads were unpassable), and the husband passed away and left behind three children,” said Johana Bencomo, who works as a community organizer for New Mexico Comunidades en Accio?n y de Fe (CAFe?).

CAFe? is a Las Cruces-based nonprofit community organizing group that seeks to effect systemic change, Bencomo said.

Through hundreds of conversations with Vado residents, Bencomo said, CAFe? learned the condition of Vado’s roads was as big an issue to its residents as immigration and poverty.

Vado’s roads are particularly hazardous when it’s raining, Bencomo said – not only because they are unpaved and not level, but also because of the community’s location within the Organ Mountains' floodplain, which makes rainstorms such as the recent downpour on May 18 all the worse.

“You can’t even tell where the road is sometimes (because of flooding) and a lot of these neighborhoods only have one way in and out,” Bencomo said. “So community members are stuck — literally stuck — in these neighborhoods and on these roads that aren’t safe.”

Efforts to get county and state governments to help haven’t brought the road improvements many residents say they need. Legal issues and scarce money are among the roadblocks. But Vado residents are finding some help.

In January, Don?a Ana County Commissioners Billy Garrett and Wayne Hancock held a community meeting to discuss the conditions of Vado's roads. More than 160 of the community's 3,000 people, attended, Bencomo said.

“We were able to gain some media attention, and the regional coordinator of the (Environmental Protection Agency) was there – and she reached out to (CAFe?) after the meeting,” Bencomo said.

Debra Tellez, Region 6 coordinator for the EPA, put CAFe? in contact with a Texas-based recycling company that had a surplus of asphalt shingles, which are typically used as roofing material. Usually sent to landfills, the EPA has a demonstration project to see if shingles can be reused in asphalt roads, Tellez said.

The recycling company is donating the paving materials, but Vado residents still have to pay for machinery, labor and delivery.

To help raise the funds, CAFe? members and Vado residents, including Lugo, sold burritos and bottled water at the rally for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders held in their community May 21.

PHOTOS: Bernie Sanders in Vado, N.M.

The effort raised more than $900, which community leaders estimate is enough to start road improvements, beginning with the paving of Cebolla Road in a couple of weeks, Bencomo said.

In the past, Vado residents have successfully pushed for services including gas, sewer and water, Bencomo said, but “roads have really been a huge barrier.”

Bencomo, who started working for CAFe? a year ago, learned about the condition of Vado’s roads by talking to residents.

Once CAFe? better understood the situation, the organization began working to help find a solution. CAFe? and Vado residents hit a wall with county government, which said many roads could not be fixed with public funds because they are privately owned – often by a patchwork of multiple landowners.

“County maintenance of a private road is illegal,” Commissioner Garrett wrote in an email to NMPolitics.net. He cited the anti-donation clause in New Mexico’s Constitution, which doesn’t allow spending public funds for private benefit.

The county has grappled with the issue of roads in colonias before. More than 10 years ago, after people in many unincorporated communities complained, the Don?a Ana County Commission passed Resolution 05-22 that allowed residents to deed a portion of their property to the county so it could legally maintain and even upgrade a road.

This was a lengthy and sometimes complicated process that required the agreement of all people who owned parts of a road. The county paved several roads using this process, Bencomo said, but in 2013 the county commission suspended the ordinance that made it possible.

“The reason they gave was it’s too time consuming and it takes too much money,” Bencomo said.

Garrett elaborated, saying the process was more expensive and cumbersome than expected.

“Title searches and surveying for a single road could cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he said. “Just one property owner could hold up the potential transfer of a road used by dozens of families by refusing to participate.”

Garrett also said turning a potentially endless number of private roads into county roads could deplete the county Roads Department’s operating funds and conditions would decline on existing county roads.

Garrett said Don?a Ana County is responsible for more than 1,300 miles of road, about 550 of which are paved. “Every year the county accepts a few more miles of road to the system it maintains,” he said.

With 05-22’s suspension, Vado residents are left to deal with roads that are still privately owned, Bencomo said, “which of course is very expensive for families.”

Lugo said Vado residents attempted to fix the roads on their own, which settled the issue for a time. Then, about a year ago, the Lower Rio Grande Public Water Works Authority came into the area to install new water lines along Cebolla Road.

“They left (the roads) in bad condition,” Lugo said..

NMPolitics.net contacted Karen Nichols, projects manager for the water authority. “I would disagree with (Lugo’s) assessment,” she said.

Nichols said the water authority, which owns and operates the water pipes beneath Vado’s roads, was not aware that any improvements to Vado’s roads had been made, nor did Vado residents produce proof of improvements at a meeting between CAFe? representatives, Vado residents, water authority representatives and Garrett and Hancock several weeks ago.

In a memo from Vencor Engineering, which oversaw work for the water authority, Hector Vasquez said installation of the new water lines left Vado’s roads in “similar or better conditions” – as the contractor was mandated to do.

Nichols said, from what she has seen, Cebolla Road looks fine.

But Vado residents disagree and so, once again, they attempted to talk with commissioners about fixing their roads. That didn’t lead to a solution. The donated shingles are, at this point, the community’s best bet for improvements to private roads.

Beyond the roads, Lugo said, the real problem is that Vado residents do not feel part of their own county.

“In Vado, you can live well and happy, but the problem is that they (elected officials) have forgotten us,” said Lugo. “We feel (cast) to the side because we are walking on dirt roads.”

Bencomo said Vado’s federal designation as a colonia — defined as a community near the U.S.-Mexico border that lacks sufficient housing and infrastructure such as roads, sewer, water and gas hook-ups — gives county and state officials the idea that “we don’t have to place as much priority on it.” Because the communities also have a lot of undocumented migrants, it makes it easier for elected officials to ignore the needs of these communities, she said.

The issue of county-private roads in colonias “is among the most difficult of the challenges we face because of the potential financial impact on the county as well as the anti-donation prohibition,” Garrett said.

Garrett acknowledged people in colonias often do not have the financial means to fix their roads.

“At the same time, governmental agencies in New Mexico cannot work on private roads,” he said. “I’ve never heard of an (non-governmental organization) interested in taking on this issue.”

Garrett made no mention of reinstating the resolution that let the county take ownership of private roads.

“When it comes to roads in colonias, we have a serious disconnect between legal authorities, financial capacity and standards of living,” he said. “The ‘system’ just doesn’t work. I don’t know what the answer is yet, but I can’t see anything substantial being done unless the public sector has an expanded role in the effort.”

Billy Huntsman is a freelance writer for NMPolitics.net.