Posted: 4:46 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 17, 2015
By Jonathan Tilove

In the middle of Saturday’s Texas Tribune Festival panel on the border and the Legislature, state Rep. César Blanco, an El Paso Democrat, asked two of his Republicans colleagues if there wasn’t something they could do to keep Donald Trump from exploiting the border for his own political benefit.

“Do you think any of us can control Donald Trump?” replied state Rep. Larry Phillips, the Sherman Republican who chairs the House Homeland Security and Public Safety Committee.

Perhaps not.

But the panel of border mayors that followed included Pete Saenz of Laredo, who hosted Trump on his whirlwind border inspection tour in July, and may have actually persuaded Trump during their two hours together to slightly moderate his plans for a great wall between Mexico and the United States.

As Saenz told the American-Statesman after the panel discussion, he was obligated to be a “gracious” host to Trump but also obliged during his border briefing for Trump to explain why the Republican presidential front-runner’s plans for a wall and mass deportations were ill-advised.

“I told him it was not practical,” Saenz said of the wall. “I told him aside from it being offensive to Mexico, which is our second- or third-largest trading partner, the cost is impractical, and it’s not practical inside Texas, where the Rio Grande sometimes throughout the year is a source of drinking water for livestock.”

“We’re a ranching community,” Saenz said. “What are you going to do — dam the tributaries?”

After being briefed by Saenz and Laredo’s city manger, Trump met with reporters, lavishing praise on the two local officials.

“He did change is his tone a little bit,” Saenz said. “He did say maybe the wall is not appropriate for the entire border and certain sections are not conducive for that.”

Trump had asked Saenz to meet Trump at the airport for his arrival, and “when he landed, he asked, ‘Is it safe for me to get down (off the plane)?’ In his mind, in his own consciousness, he perceived danger,” Saenz said.

Saenz said he told Trump there were some protesters but no danger.

As they were riding along in Trump’s Suburban, Saenz said, Trump took note of all the people who came out to see him, remarking, “Hey, the Hispanics love me.”

“I said: ‘No, they don’t. They’ve never see a white Republican before,’ ” Saenz recalled. Laredo is 96 percent Hispanic and solidly Democratic.

The border mayors said the state’s new $800 million investment in border security was both a blessing and a curse — pumping money into the local economy but doing untold damage to the reputation of their communities with people considering investing or visiting the region.

Blanco credited the legislation to a political atmosphere bracketed by Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s campaign for governor and Trump’s campaign for president.

But Rep. Tan Parker, chairman of the House Republican Caucus, said that ignores the very real threat to safety and security posed especially by drug cartels operating across an unsecured border.

Parker said the border plan, passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, is “not about politics; it’s about safety … pure and simple.”

But Rep. Poncho Nevarez, D-Eagle Pass, who lives on the border and represents the largest border district, said: “Borders are always going to be porous — that’s what borders are. The idea of sealing the border, it’s not going to happen.

“What I object to is being a political piñata,” he said.

Parker and Phillips said there is no intent to smear the reputation of border communities.

But Blanco said that whatever the intent, his city and others must contend with the unfair negative fallout, likening it to what Parker’s hometown of Flower Mound had to endure earlier this year because a couple of people held up a “white power” sign at a high school basketball game.

http://www.mystatesman.com/news/news...emper-b/nn5DC/