In this photo taken Jan. 5, residents walk past a Chicano mural in the Segundo Barrio of El Paso, Texas. No longer the desolate space it was a few years ago, downtown El Paso is ripe with new bars, hotels, restaurants and developments at a time when throngs of visitors are expected to visit the city in the hope of getting a glimpse of Pope Francis, who will cap a five-day visit to Mexico in Juarez on Wednesday.
The far West Texas city is ready to shed its longheld reputation as a center of illegal immigration and show off its revitalized streets to the tens of thousands of tourists hoping to get a glimpse of Pope Francis, who will cap a five-day visit to Mexico on Feb. 17 in neighboring Ciudad Juárez with a Mass in a large field near the border that many will be able to see from downtown.
El Paso’s renewed energy stems from many young people who left the economically challenged city in search of better opportunities but returned to make a difference. Mexicans who left Juárez at the height of its violence also contributed to the city’s growth, opening businesses across the border and coming here to shop.
“Ten years ago, I remember friends telling me this was ‘Hell Paso’ and they wanted to move away,” said Rep. Claudia Ordaz, who at 30 years old is the youngest member of the City Council and lived in Washington, D.C., and Austin before coming home and running for office.
Decades ago, El Paso was one of the busiest places for illegal immigration, second only to San Diego. Residents who lived along the border described regularly seeing migrants in or around their backyards. But the Border Patrol shifted its policies in the 1990s, and within months, the number of illegal crossings in El Paso dipped from 10,000 daily to 500.
And the notion that El Paso and its downtown in particular were unsafe grew as extreme violence in Juárez — at one point considered a homicide capital with multiple daily murders — took shape around 2006. But El Paso is continually ranked one of the safest of its size: The city of about 680,000 reported just 2,671 violent crimes in 2014, about half of that in smaller cities like Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Kansas City, Missouri.
El Paso still has its issues. The median household income is only about $40,000 a year and only 23 percent of residents over the age of 25 hold bachelor’s degrees or higher, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
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