SAN LUIS, AZ — ABC15 recently traveled to San Luis, Arizona, a thriving border community in Yuma County, to listen to people about how proposed changes to the immigration system and border security when President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January could impact their everyday lives.
With talk of mass deportations, tariffs, and possibly using the military at the border, there were mixed reactions with people seeing both positives and negatives to those ideas.
For starters, San Luis has roughly 40,000 people, but according to city officials, about 2.5 million people cross from Mexico each year, which adds up to about 7,000 people each day. The relationship between San Luis, Arizona, and San Luis Rio Colorado in Sonora, Mexico, is very apparent and very important.
Just ask Angelica Felix, who manages a store that sells kid's clothing and school supplies just footsteps away from the port of entry.
She says now that winter is arriving, so is the harvest and so are the workers, which means better sales at her business. But at her shop, there's also talk of immigration.
"I think everything will be fine," she explains. "I don't really believe too much in what everyone is saying about maybe them shutting down the border or deporting people. At least, I hope not."
But Angelica admits not everyone feels as optimistic as she does.
"A lot of people are scared and think that they're starting removing more people or removing entire families."
San Luis also hosts a number of migrant farm workers who can cross into the U.S. every day to work with special visas. According to a recent University of Arizona study, 28% of the crop workers in Arizona are migrants.
Bea, who commutes daily from San Luis Rio Colorado, is one of those people. She has mixed feelings about some of President-elect Trump's proposals.
"I think they're going to be good and bad," she said.
Bea says she worries about some workers without visas who may not be able to support their families any longer in an environment where more deportations are happening, but as someone who is here on a work visa, she also says the mass deportations could be beneficial to people like her.
"If they deport more people, there will be more work for people with contracts like us, so that's a benefit to us," she says.
Jose, another field worker who crosses daily from Mexico, also says he's hopeful that a second Trump term will bring more economic fortune for people who live on both sides of the border.
"They're saying there will be a lot of opportunities, but we'll see what happens," he says.
When ABC15 traveled to San Luis in February for our 48 Hours on the Border special, a number of people complained about long wait times at the border, and it didn't matter if you were crossing into the U.S. or Mexico. Some people complained that 90-minute wait times were the norm and, on busy days, waiting three or four hours wasn't unheard of.
ABC15 noticed there is more construction happening at the port of entry, thanks to a project financed by the bipartisan infrastructure law with the goal of widening the port from eight lanes to 16. ABC15 was told the first phase of the project should be finished next fall.
