By MORGAN LEE

SUNLAND PARK, N.M. (AP) — The politics of immigration look different from the back patio of Ardovino’s Desert Crossing restaurant.

That’s where Robert Ardovino sees a Border Patrol horse trailer rumbling across his property on a sweltering summer morning. It’s where a surveillance helicopter traces a line in the sky, and a nearby Border Patrol agent paces a desert gully littered with castoff water bottles and clothing.

Robert Ardovino, a partner in a decades-old family restaurant business, surveys his property on the U.S. border with Mexico in Sunland Park, N.M., Thursday, Aug. 22, 2024. Ardovino has a close-up view of border enforcement efforts and bristles at politicians talking from afar about an “open border.” (AP Photos/Morgan Lee)

It’s also where a steady stream of weary people, often escorted by smugglers, scale a border wall or the slopes of Mount Cristo Rey and step into an uncertain future. It’s a stretch of desert where reports of people dying of exhaustion and exposure have become commonplace.

“It’s very obvious to me, being on the border, that it’s not an open border. It is a very, very, very difficult situation,” said Ardovino, who pays for private fencing topped by concertina wire to route migrants around a restaurant and vintage aluminum trailers that he rents to overnight guests.

“I wish the facts would rule this conversation, and being here, I know they do not.”

As immigration politics have moved to the forefront of this year’s presidential election, they’ve dominated contests across the country for congressional seats that could determine which party controls Congress. But the urgency of the situation is greater in some districts than others.

Three of 11 congressional district races along the southern U.S. border are hotly-contested rematches in districts that flipped in 2022 with the election of Democratic Rep. Gabe Vasquez in New Mexico and Republican Reps. Juan Ciscomani in Arizona and Monica De La Cruz in Texas.

A privately owned fence extends toward the U.S. border, with Mexico in the distance, where restaurant co-owner Robert Ardovino has attempted to route migrants around the center of his property, shown Thursday, Aug. 22, 2024 in Sunland, Park, N.M. Ardovino has a close-up view of border enforcement efforts and bristles at politicians talking from afar about an “open border.” (AP Photos/Morgan Lee)

A partner in a decades-old family business, Ardovino lives in one border district in Texas and works in Vasquez’s district in New Mexico. He was disappointed by the collapse in February of a bipartisan border bill in Washington, and he bristles at politicians talking from afar about an “open border.”

What he wants, more than anything, is a collective fix — one that doesn’t diminish the work of border agents or gloss over real-world challenges like migrants fleeing dictators.

“It’s frustrating for people who need a border bill of any kind, any time, to start dealing with the big picture,” Ardovino said. “I’d rather be running a restaurant than working on these fences.”

Democrats touting border solutions

Early voting starts Oct. 8 in Sunland Park, on the edge of a whiplashed congressional district that flipped in 2018, 2020 and again in 2022 with the election of Vasquez.

Democrats in Congress are promoting border enforcement as seldom before, including a half-dozen bills from Vasquez. He touts his knowledge of the region as the U.S.-born son of immigrants with relatives on both sides of the border.

“With migrant activity along the border, we have had to adjust our approach,” said Vasquez. “I can say here that the sky is blue for 50 years, but when it turns red, you have to admit that it’s turning red.”

Rep. Gabe Vasquez, D-N.M., talks about economic development and immigration at a town-hall style meeting, Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024, in Chaparral, N.M., an unincorporated “colonias” communities where many migrant workers settled over the past century on cheap plots of land, often with limited access to water or electricity. Vasquez, a first-term Democrat from New Mexico, touts his knowledge of the border region as the U.S.-born son of immigrants while seeking reelection in a rematch against former Republican Congresswoman Yvette Herrell. (AP Photo/Morgan Lee)

Here, border politics are literally matters of life and death. Federal and local authorities describe a new humanitarian crisis along New Mexico’s nearly 180-mile portion of the border, where migrant deaths from heat exposure have surged and merciless smuggling cartels inflict havoc.

Where Doña Ana County shares a 45-mile stretch of border with Mexico, the sheriff’s department reported 78 lifeless migrant bodies found between January and mid-August.

“The death toll, in my 21 years of working with the Doña Ana sheriff’s department, we have not had this,” said Major Jon Day.

In the Texas race, Democratic challenger Michelle Vallejo has taken a hard line on border enforcement, shocking progressive allies in her campaign to unseat De La Cruz. A recent ad from Vallejo describes “chaos at the border” and urges bipartisan cooperation to deploy more Border Patrol agents and fight human trafficking cartels.

‘A responsibility to enforce the law’

In Arizona’s 6th Congressional District, Republican incumbent Ciscomani calls border enforcement his No. 1 priority. But he has distanced himself from former President Donald Trump’s sometimes caustic anti-immigrant rhetoric and avoided presidential campaign events in swing-state Arizona. Instead, Ciscomani tells an immigrant’s story — about his own arrival in the U.S. at age 11 from Hermosillo, Mexico. He received citizenship in 2006 and says he is determined to fix the border.

“We have a responsibility to enforce the law on the border, and we also are a community of immigrants — myself included — that came here to this country, and we’re seeking opportunity.”

Experts say voters near the border have tangible concerns about smugglers and contraband but know the benefits of authorized cross-border commerce and commuting.

“There is, I think, more of a nuanced view,” said Samara Klar, a pollster and professor at the University of Arizona School of Government and Public Policy.

Border patrol arrests on the southwest border plunged to a 46-month low in July after Mexican authorities stepped up enforcement and President Joe Biden temporarily suspended asylum processing. But in New Mexico, where the decline has been less pronounced, surging migrant deaths prompted coordinated U.S. law enforcement raids in August on stash houses where smugglers hide migrants.

Rep. Gabe Vasquez, D-N.M., holds up a hand as he talks to guests at a “carne asada” campaign picknick, Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024, in Chaparral, N.M. (AP Photo/Morgan Lee)

Vasquez, looking to be the first Democrat to win reelection in New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District since 1978, has pitched legislation to improve detection of fentanyl coming across the border and to disrupt cartel recruitment of young Americans to ferry migrants to hiding places — quick trips that offer $1,100 — amid a scourge of addiction and proliferation of homeless encampments in cities along the Upper Rio Grande.

But he also has plans to improve conditions at migrant detention centers and offer permanent residency to immigrants who fill critical jobs in the U.S.

Republicans walk a tightrope

Vasquez ousted one-term Republican Congresswoman Yvette Herrell by only 1,350 votes in 2022 after Democrats redrew congressional maps to split a conservative oil-producing region into three districts.

Herrell, seeking the seat for the fourth consecutive time, has described an “absolute chaotic scene” at the border, and joined Republican House leaders in claiming that Democrats undermined U.S. elections by opposing a proof-of-citizenship requirement for new voters.

“It’s one or the other,” Herrell said at a rally in Las Cruces with Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson. “It’s our sovereignty over the open border.”

FILE – Republican U.S. House candidate Yvette Herrell of New Mexico speaks to attendees of a campaign event in Las Cruces, N.M., Aug. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Andres Leighton, File)

Noncitizens already are prohibited from voting in federal elections under penalties including prison or deportation, and Vasquez says the new requirement would make participation more difficult for legitimate voters, including Native Americans who couldn’t vote in New Mexico until 1948. Data from states indicate that voting by noncitizens happens — though not in high numbers.

Herrell’s rhetoric on immigration takes aim at voters in a district Trump lost by a roughly 6% margin in 2020.

“It’s a tightrope that she’s got to walk in trying to get any of the pro-Trump enthusiasm,” said Gabriel Sanchez, director of the University of New Mexico Center for Social Policy.

The district’s voting age population is 56% Hispanic — with centuries-old ties to Mexican and Spanish settlement and a smaller share of foreign-born residents than the national average.

“Republicans have been focused more and more on the Hispanic vote because they sense that they can make some inroads,” Albuquerque-based pollster Brian Sanderoff said. “And in fact the Hispanic vote in southeastern New Mexico is split. If you’re a Hispanic right now in Lea County (in New Mexico), you’re almost as likely to be voting Republican as Democrat.”

Recently retired Border Patrol agent Cesar Ramos of Alamogordo says he felt stymied by limitations on prosecuting undocumented immigrants, whose arrival he says contributes to higher prices for housing and essentials. He applauds Herrell’s tough talk.

“People here in Alamogordo are 110% behind legal immigration, but despise that there are criminal acts of smuggling, and just breaking into the U.S. with no legal documentation,” said Ramos, a registered Republican of Puerto Rican heritage.

In Sunland Park, a working-class community nestled between the border and a quarterhorse racetrack, Democratic Party orthodoxy is being tested, too.

Luis Soto of Sunland Park, N.M. works on wiring and talks outside at his cannabis dispensary, Sunshine Essentials, Thursday, Aug. 22, 2024. Soto said migrants who cross the border have impacted his efforts to open the cannabis dispensary in a former small-town post office. He’s a registered Democrat who remembers better economic times under former President Donald Trump. (AP Photos/Morgan Lee)

Sunland Park native Luis Soto said migrants who cross the border impact his own efforts to open a cannabis dispensary in a former post office.

“I’m waiting for a fire marshal inspection and he’s busy saving people in the desert, rescuing bodies from the river, helping people out that are locked in a trailer,” said Soto, 43, the son of immigrants from Mexico in a family of lifelong Democrats. “We come from immigrants as well, but I think if the system was fixed, it would work out even better for them as well as for us.”

He is leaning toward Herrell, and associates Trump with better times.

“There was more money, more money rolling around,” Soto said. “Now there’s money, but it’s money to pay off bills.”

Incumbents try to find common ground

Vasquez in New Mexico and Ciscomani in Arizona — youthful by congressional standards at 40 and 42 — are near ideological opposites, but they’ve co-sponsored at least three bills to modernize temporary farmworker visas, spur local manufacturing and combat opioid trafficking. Those bills haven’t gotten a floor vote, while the Republican-led House approved Ciscomani’s initiative to deter deadly highway pursuits of migrant smugglers by law enforcement.

“Juan and I play basketball together, and he has become a good friend,” Vasquez said. “There are solutions on the border that we can do today that may not look like comprehensive immigration reform, but it’s biting off chunks and pieces.”

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Ciscomani said he’s eager to collaborate when he can. His Democratic challenger in Arizona’s 6th district, Kirsten Engel, scoffs at that notion, saying Ciscomani publicly opposed a major bipartisan border bill in February, days after Trump told GOP lawmakers to abandon the deal.

The $20 billion bill would have overhauled the asylum system and given the president new powers to expel migrants when asylum claims become overwhelming.

“It was actually a pretty conservative bill and (Ciscomani) rejected it right after Trump told him to,” said Engel, a law professor and former state legislator. “This is the kind of solution that … a lot of voters here really supported.”

Engel lost in 2022 by about 5,000 votes. She hopes to win this time with a campaign against consumer price-gouging and for abortion rights. A constitutional amendment to ensure abortion rights on the statewide ballot could help turn out Democratic voters.

Engel supports the abortion amendment and opposes a ballot proposal to allow local police to make arrests near the border, which she calls an unfunded mandate. Ciscomani did not say how he would vote on the initiatives but says he opposes a national abortion ban.

At Sunland Park, an off-road Border Patrol vehicle kicks dust into the morning air. An unmarked bus arrives for detained migrants. Ardovino, from his deck, gazes at Mount Cristo Rey and wonders aloud what it will take to make this work for people coming in search of a better life — and for those already here.

“The whole desert is unfortunately littered with people’s lives,” he said.

Robert Ardovino, a partner in a decades-old family restaurant business, surveys his property on the U.S. border with Mexico in Sunland Park, N.M., Thursday, Aug. 22, 2024. (AP Photos/Morgan Lee)

Associated Press reporter Valerie Gonzalez in McAllen, Texas, contributed to this report.

By ZEINA KARAM and KAREEM CHEHAYEB

BEIRUT (AP) — Chris Knayzeh was in a town overlooking Lebanon’s capital when he heard the rumbling aftershock of the 2020 Beirut port blast. Hundreds of tons of haphazardly stored ammonium nitrates had exploded, killing more than 200 people and injuring thousands.

Already struggling with the country’s economic collapse, the sight of the gigantic mushroom cloud unleashed by the blast was the last straw. Like many other Lebanese, he quit his job and booked a one-way ticket out of Lebanon.

Knayzeh, now a lecturer at a university in France, was visiting Lebanon when news broke Tuesday of a deadly attack in which thousands of handheld pagers were blowing up in homes, shops, markets and streets across the country. Israel, local news reports said, was targeting the devices of the Hezbollah group. Stuck in Beirut traffic, Knayzeh started panicking that drivers around him could potentially be carrying devices that would explode.

Within minutes, hospitals were flooded with bloodied patients, bringing back painful reminders of the port blast four years ago that left enduring mental and psychological scars for those who lived through it.

A day later, a similar attack struck walkie-talkies. In total, the explosions killed at least 37 people and injured more than 3,000, many of them civilians. Israel is widely believed to be behind the blasts, although it has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility.

“The country’s state is unreal,” Knayzeh told The Associated Press.

Hezbollah members carry the coffins of two of their comrades who were killed on Wednesday when a handheld device exploded, during a funeral procession in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

The port blast was one of the biggest nonnuclear explosions ever recorded, and it came on top of a historic economic meltdown, financial collapse and a feeling of helplessness after nationwide protests against corruption that failed to achieve their goals. It compounded years of crises that have upended the lives of people in this small country.

Four years after the port catastrophe, an investigation has run aground. The ravaged Mediterranean port remains untouched, its towering silos standing broken and shredded as a symbol of a country in ruins. Political divisions and paralysis have left the country without a president or functioning government for more than two years. Poverty is on the rise.

On top of that and in parallel with the war in Gaza, Lebanon has been on the brink of all-out war with Israel for the past year, with Israel and Hezbollah trading fire across the border and Israeli warplanes breaking the sound barrier over Beirut almost daily, terrifying people in their homes and offices.

“I can’t believe this is happening again. How many more disasters can we endure?” asked Jocelyn Hallak, a mother of three, two of whom now work abroad and the third headed out after graduation next year. “All this pain, when will it end?”

A full-blown war with Israel could be devastating for Lebanon. The country’s crisis-battered health care system had been preparing for the possibility of conflict with Israel even before hospitals became inundated with the wounded from the latest explosions. Most of the injuries received were in the face, eyes and limbs — many of them in critical condition and requiring extended hospital stays.

Still, Knayzeh, 27, can’t stay away. He returns regularly to see his girlfriend and family. He flinches whenever he hears construction work and other sudden loud sounds. When in France, surrounded by normalcy, he agonizes over family at home while following the ongoing clashes from afar.

“It’s the attachment to our country I guess, or at the very least attachment to our loved ones who couldn’t leave with us,” he said.

FILE – A protester holds up a Lebanese national flag as he walks in front of burning tires that are blocking a main road, during a protest in downtown Beirut, on March 3, 2021. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar, File)

This summer, tens of thousands of Lebanese expatriates came to visit family and friends despite the tensions. Their remittances and money they spend while there help keep the country afloat and in some cases are the main source of income for families. Many, however, cut their vacations short in chaotic airport scenes, fearing major escalation after the assassinations of Hezbollah and Hamas commanders in Beirut and Tehran last month, blamed on Israel.

Even in a country that has vaulted from one crisis to another for decades, the level of confusion, insecurity and anger is reaching new heights. Many thought the port blast was the most surreal and frightening thing they would ever experience — until thousands of pagers exploded in people’s hands and pockets across the country this week.

’’I saw horrific things that day,” said Mohammad al-Mousawi, who was running an errand in Beirut’s southern suburb, where Hezbollah has a strong presence, when the pagers began blowing up.

“Suddenly, we started seeing scooters whizzing by carrying defaced men, some without fingers, some with their guts spilling out. Then the ambulances started coming.”

It reminded him of the 2020 port blast, he said. “The number of injuries and ambulances was unbelievable. “

“One more horror shaping our collective existence,” wrote Maha Yahya, the Beirut-based director of the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center.

“The shock, the disarray, the trauma is reminiscent of Beirut after the port explosion. Only this time it was not limited to a city but spread across the country,” she said in a social media post.

In the aftermath of the exploding pagers, fear and paranoia has taken hold. Parents kept their children away from schools and universities, fearing more exploding devices. Organizations including the Lebanese civil defense advised personnel to switch off their devices and remove all batteries until further notice. One woman said she disconnected her baby monitor and other household appliances.

Lebanon’s civil aviation authorities have banned the transporting of pagers and walkie-talkies on all airplanes departing from Beirut’s Rafik Hariri International Airport “until further notice.” Some residents were sleeping with their phones in another room.

In the southern city of Tyre, ahead of a speech by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, city resident Hassan Hajo acknowledged feeling “a bit depressed” after the pager blasts, a major security breach for a secretive organization like Hezbollah. He was hoping to get a boost from Nasrallah’s speech. “We have been through worse before and we got through it,” he said.

In his speech, Nasrallah vowed to retaliate against Israel for the attacks on devices, while Israel and Hezbollah traded heavy fire across the border. Israel stepped up warnings of a potential larger military operation targeting the group.

Another resident, Marwan Mahfouz, said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been threatening Lebanon with war for the past year and he should just do it.

“If we are going to die, we’ll die. We are already dying. We are already dead,” he said.

Karam reported from London. Associated Press writer Hassan Ammar contributed to this report.