AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Some form of a border wall has existed for years in urban areas along the southern border. In some neighborhoods, the wall has helped reduce foot traffic and crime. Elsewhere, it's made a less tangible impact. And not everyone is convinced that the wall has made them safer. Monica Ortiz Uribe reports.
MONICA ORTIZ URIBE, BYLINE: At Ardovino's Desert Crossing, an Italian restaurant in southern New Mexico, it's not unusual for diners to look up from their gnocchi and see Border Patrol outside, aiming flashlights at the ground.
MARINA ARDOVINO: Say - sometimes it definitely feels like a movie out here.
URIBE: Maria (ph) Ardovino co-owns the restaurant, which is within sight of a border wall. The barrier cuts down a desert mesa like an iron ribbon. The old chain-link fence that used to separate the two countries was recently replaced by a tall curtain of steel slats, the kind President Trump proposed in his Oval Office address. Ardovino is not impressed.
ARDOVINO: It's hard for me to be polite with what I truly think about that. I just think the border wall is such a ridiculous waste of money.
URIBE: In her 21 years running the restaurant, Ardovino says she's never felt unsafe. The restaurant has an open-air deck for marriage ceremonies where couples say their vows overlooking the border wall. Despite the wall, Ardovino says migrants still make it over.
ARDOVINO: I know the people that - they're still crossing through. The Border Patrol is still here. The people that I've come in immediate contact with, which throughout the years has declined - they want some water and a phone.
URIBE: Just down the road from Ardovino's, Isabel Marshall lives along a row of trailer homes about a two-minute jog from the border. Twenty-five years ago, she floated into the U.S. from Mexico on a tire over the Rio Grande to clean American homes and pick American crops. She later married an American and is now a naturalized citizen.
ISABEL MARSHALL: (Speaking Spanish).
URIBE: "A lot of money is spent on the wall," she says, "when there's other things, like schools and hospitals, that benefit us more." Marshall says she'd also prefer access to more affordable healthcare. A congressional delegation visiting the border this week characterized the situation here not as a security crisis but a humanitarian crisis. The latest arrivals are mostly families fleeing violence and poverty.
VICTOR MANJARREZ: We confuse border security and immigration as one and the same, and they're not.
ARDOVINO: Victor Manjarrez is a retired Border Patrol agent in El Paso. He worked at national headquarters in the early 2000s when the border was more porous and the agency asked the president to double its manpower and build 700 miles of fencing. Back then, apprehensions at the southern border topped a million people per year, among the highest ever recorded.
MANJARREZ: The problem we've faced since then - no one defines what success looks like.
URIBE: Today, apprehensions are at a 20-year low. The State Department reports there is no credible evidence of terrorists moving across the southern border. And the more harmful narcotics, like meth, are smuggled mostly in vehicles through the official ports of entry. For Manjarrez, expecting a fully sealed border is as unrealistic as expecting a city to eliminate all crime. Building a wall, he says, is not a blanket solution.
MANJARREZ: There has to be a right mix. And it's really three things. It's a mix of that infrastructure, personnel and technology.
URIBE: This week, all nine House representatives who serve the southern border, including one Republican, told CBS News that they oppose funding President Trump's border wall. For NPR News, I'm Monica Ortiz Uribe in El Paso.