YOU CAN'T GO HOME ANYMORE

...people are wondering whether the levee will be closed or gated, and whether checkpoints will be placed along the roads.

By Juan Montoya

Pam Taylor still has a hint of the slightly clipped British accent when she speaks to you.

She left England more than six decades ago and settled with her husband John Garza Taylor in Brownsville. The couple thought they had found heaven in their three-acre spread out by Monsees Road (or Esperanza Road, if you choose). Surrounded by fields of sorghum, citrus groves and cotton, and bounded on the south by the Rio Grande and on the north by the river levee, they were used to seeing Mexicans cross the river and walk by their home on the way to Milpa Verde, Southmost, and on to the rest of the city.

Like Rusty Monsees, their neighbor, they accepted it as part of the package of living along the river. They developed a good relationship with the Border Patrol, and often called them to report illegal immigrants trekking past their property.

Pam worked as a nurse in Birmingham, England in an Army barracks. She met her husband, a G.I. from Brownsville, while she worked there.
Two years later they boarded a boat for the two-week trip to the Unites States, and then on to Brownsville, some 6,000 miles away.

She is now 80, and suddenly, after they got the notice that the federal government was going to build a wall to prevent illegal immigration, she found out that she and her family were going to be fenced off from their adopted country.

"We need representation and protection, not a fence," reads a large sign she placed with an American flag at the entrance to Nogales Road leading to her home.

Neighbors often point out the British flag she still flies near her home, a reminder of her native country. Suddenly, she finds herself literally a woman without a country, in a kind of no-man's land. Her American Dream has turned into a nightmare.

Like Taylor, people through the southern edges of Southmost are wondering what is going to happen to their ability to travel on Esperanza, whether the levee will be closed or gated, and whether checkpoints will be placed along the roads.

"They've already got one at Boca Chica, and I hear that another one is going to go up at the Puente de los Lobos (by the boat ramp on Highway 48)," said a man who would identify himself only as "La Pigua." "Some people say that there will be another at Laguna Vista, to control the traffic coming out of Port Isabel."

For now, not Taylor, "La Pigua," or anyone else, knows exactly where the feds will place the choke points in and around Brownsville. But one thing is for sure, if you thought it was a bother to go to Boca Chica because of the checkpoint, it is going to get even more bothersome and intrusive as the final plans are put in place.