So many shoelaces lie in the dirt. Robert Ardovino can’t collect them all.
He says he’s picked up thousands on his property over the past few years. Along with abandoned belts.
The U.S. Border Patrol makes people remove these items when apprehended on the southern border. The practice is meant to prevent migrants from hurting others or themselves. Many have crossed into the United States illegally through this stretch of desert in Sunland Park, New Mexico. Mr. Ardovino, a business owner, finds all sorts of things they’ve left behind – purses, trash, a toothbrush.
Why We Wrote This
Illegal border crossings between Mexico and the U.S. have dropped to historic lows, yet left-behind items linger. One property owner ponders border security through the objects left on his property.
“What would it take for me and my family to literally walk out the door with toothpaste in my back pocket?” he says.
Mr. Ardovino often reflects on the meaning of the items left behind. Shoelaces and belts spiked as illegal border crossings hit historic highs during the Biden administration. With the border quiet now, since the return of President Donald Trump, he’s pondering how to memorialize what transpired on his land. He envisions an art project. Perhaps some message on empathy, he says.
On an afternoon in May, Mr. Ardovino revs up his utility vehicle and drives off-road. He’s trailed by Cha Cha, Sadie, and Waldo, three dogs.
Behind him is a restaurant that he co-owns, where handmade pasta is a popular request. Jasmine tints the air sweet outside this place, Ardovino’s Desert Crossing and Roadside Inn.
“I put ‘crossing’ in there for a reason,” he says. “It’s always been a migration point.”
Mr. Ardovino grew up in the area, on the west side of El Paso, Texas. He calls Ciudad Juárez, just south of the border, a sister city. In high school, he’d walk down to Juárez to grab a burrito for lunch. Like so many locals, he’s seen migration as a fact of life.
Originally, Mr. Ardovino’s establishment was run by a great-uncle who emigrated from Italy. The family’s 35 acres sit beneath a local landmark, Mount Cristo Rey, where a limestone statue of Jesus stands on a cross, arms out.
In front of Mr. Ardovino snakes the slatted border wall. A green-and-white Border Patrol vehicle has been rumbling through his property. The U.S. Army just moved into newly formed “national defense areas” nearby, set up to allow the military to detain unauthorized immigrants for trespassing. Up on a mesa, what appears to be an armored Stryker vehicle adds a new dimension to his view.
Mr. Ardovino still finds leftover shoelaces to collect – grays, blacks, blues – curled in the dirt. He stops and grabs a handful, giving rise to fine dust. He shakes his head at a sun-bleached teddy bear.
“It’s hard when you see people – like entire families – with absolutely nothing, trying to get here,” he says.
On the whole, to him, migration is complicated. He watched uncomfortably as illegal border crossings became what he calls a “business.” Immigration officials say cartels often control who crosses when and where.
There have also been strains to his own business, like cuts made to his fencing so migrants can pass. Over the past 25 years on the land, though, he says he’s felt danger once: when he encountered what appeared to be a “coyote,” or smuggler, waiting for migrants in a car.
Many border crossers, he says, “don’t want to cause a problem. … They want to keep moving. There’s processing plants in Ohio that are ready to hire them.”
His idea for an art project is still taking shape.
For now, he loops the laces through a chain-link fence, tallying lives that went north.
