Mr. Spector has at least 10 clients seeking asylum in the United States because the wholesale violence in Juárez  where freelance criminals now seem to act with impunity  has them distrusting their government, their military, their neighbor.

Image VASTLY DIFFERENT WORLDS A bridge from Ciudad Juárez to El Paso, a kind of sanctuary city for fleeing Juárez residents. Credit... Monica Almeida/The New York Times

Just the other day, he says, engineers from Juárez told him that masked men had come to their office to extort money. When they complained to the police, he says, they were told to “scratch your back with your own nails.” In other words: Go to El Paso.

Here, too, is Omar Herrera, who with two brothers recently opened Maria Chuchena, one of the many sleek Juárez restaurants resurfacing in El Paso. Sitting in a booth as the transporting voice of the singer Shakira surrounds him, he recalls how business in Juárez plummeted after the drug war began.

Now, Juárez’s once-bustling Lincoln Avenue, where the first Maria Chuchena opened and thrived, is deserted; the only glow, he says, is that of a solitary A.T.M. And the Maria Chuchena in the city of Chihuahua, 230 miles south of here, was burned down, he says, probably as a warning to anyone reluctant to pay tribute.

The brothers did not flee Juárez, Mr. Herrera points out, citing the Maria Chuchena that remains in the Campestre neighborhood  “the Beverly Hills of Juárez.”

Still, he often finds himself reminiscing about the vibrant Juárez of yesterday, and he is only 26.

“No one in Juárez came to El Paso for anything,” he says. “It was the other way around.”

And here in downtown El Paso is yet another Juárez light: A woman whose name will not be shared. A woman who, after telling her story, offers to show the scars that can be seen. She then lifts her shirt to reveal fresh confirmation of the bullet life in her home city, a few miles from where she hides.