Juarez and El Paso - Juarez - TravBuddy

As the largest U.S. city on the border, El Paso has long had a front-row seat to the complexities and trade-offs of the nation's immigration laws. Founded by the Spanish before the English settlement of Jamestown and Plymouth, and with claims to creating both the margarita and Thanksgiving, El Paso-Juarez is an easygoing but hardworking region that has grown into a "borderplex" of 2 million residents.

Now North America's fourth-largest manufacturing hub -- after Los Angeles, Chicago and Dallas-Fort Worth -- El Paso and Juarez's surrounding state of Chihuahua have 270,000 manufacturing jobs, three times as many as Detroit, in 400 maquiladoras, or duty-free factories. About 78 percent of residents are Hispanic, and 25 percent are foreign-born. Families send breadwinners across the bridge daily to work, and children to study. We saw many children crossing the bridge in school uniforms.

The construction of new U.S. border walls is an issue stoking anger in the region. While proponents of physical barriers insist the walls will guard against terrorists, deter illegal immigrants and curb drug traffickers, opponents, including most Texas border city mayors, contend the million-dollar structures will divide sister cities, intrude on private lands, create flood hazards, threaten ecosystems and wildlife like rare jaguars, and funnel undocumented immigrants to deadlier, isolated desert crossings.

More than 200 migrants have died trying to cross the border in the Arizona-Sonora corridor alone since October of last year. The Arizona-Sonora border is "the epicenter of the war on immigrants".