SANTA TERESA, N.M. — Chris Timmerman works on the edge of Texas, where he co-owns a livestock auction house right against the border, in the shadow of a towering fence that represents his own deeply held beliefs and contradictions.

Timmerman is a self-described "Trump man." He supports a taller fence, though he doubts one would do any good — and he says it certainly wouldn't stop people from escaping poverty and persecution or seeking a better life.

And he doesn't want any more undocumented immigrants in the United States. Except for the ones he already employs, the ones he'd "take a bullet for." In fact, he'd like a path to citizenship for them.

Timmerman splits his time between Wichita Falls and this crossing point in Santa Teresa, outside El Paso, where cattle from Mexico cross into the United States daily, headed to places as far away as Omaha, Neb., where his father runs a meatpacking house. The work, much of it done by immigrants, is brutal.

"I want them to become as American as you and me because they're really good people, good workers," said Timmerman. "It's based on hard work and showing up, and they show up. ... White people are smart, lazy and don't want to."

Contradictions like those expressed by Timmerman have long been part of life along the border, although many locals say they can't remember a time when they ran so deep and made life so complicated. The seemingly inconsistent way people on the U.S. side of the border look at immigrants dates back to when the first boundary lines were drawn and remains today, historians say, a reflection of the country's failure to fix its complex immigration laws.

Cattle rancher Chris Timmerman commutes between Wichita Falls and the border. Here he's in Santa Teresa, N.M., near El Paso, where he helps run the Santa Teresa Livestock Auction. He supports the man he calls "big daddy Trump" because he says he's the only man confronting immigration issues. (Alfredo Corchado / Staff)

Since Donald Trump's election, the border, its people and its economy have remained at the center of administration attacks during Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration. His goals appear to some to have seeped over into animosity against the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA.

"The border has long been the epicenter for policies of hatred, nativism," said historian David Dorado Romo, author of Ringside to a Revolution. "This is where the country's contradictions are carried out."

Last week, Trump said he planned to use U.S. troops to police the border with Mexico until he gets the money for what he's called his "big, beautiful wall." The White House later clarified that he meant the National Guard.

"The president is frustrated," said Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. "He has been very clear that he wants to secure our border."

Trump also has repeatedly threatened to end NAFTA, most recently this month in an effort to beef up border security, when he called the trade agreement Mexico's "cash cow."

Negotiations over the trade agreement, which Trump ordered redrafted, to the chagrin of Mexico and Canada, have dragged on and are now entering what some believe to be a crucial phase. Negotiators have completed work on six subject areas but about two dozen remain.

For Texas, though, the NAFTA cash cow is paying dividends, particularly in communities along the border, which have seen their unemployment rates plummet largely thanks to new business created by the trade agreement. In a letter sent to the administration last week, Gov. Greg Abbott defended NAFTA, saying it had been responsible for more than 1 million jobs in the state.

"What's troubling is the president's careless remarks about ending NAFTA," said state Rep. Cesar Blanco, D-El Paso, whose district is bookended by two ports of entry. "That suggests that he's not serious about modernizing the trade agreement. That is huge for us."

Living with anxiety

The latest threats by Trump — whether real, embellished or imagined — add to the anxiety of those who live along the Texas border.

"I talk to my family in Dallas and they ask me whether everything is fine," said Maria Davila, 50, a domestic worker from El Paso. "I want to invite Trump to visit us here, remind him we, too, are Americans. Look around; there's no crisis. We're normal people living in peace, safety. I'd wish he'd put that money to go toward education, and not to generate fear."

"I want to invite Trump to visit us here, remind him we, too, are Americans," says Maria Davila, a domestic worker in El Paso. "Look around; there's no crisis. We're normal people living in peace, safety. I'd wish he'd put that money to go toward education, and not to generate fear." (Alfredo Corchado / Staff)

Democratic state Sen. Jose Rodriguez of El Paso said constituents have come to his office to talk about their fears that la migra — the Spanish moniker for immigration authorities — has grown more aggressive in its enforcement over the past year.

Between the crackdown at the federal level and the state's new "sanctuary cities" law prohibiting local governments from protecting unauthorized immigrants, Rodriguez said, "we're at one of our lowest points in our country's history" when it comes to immigration policies, even though illegal immigration has fallen since Trump took office.

In 2017, border enforcement officials note, the number of people detained or stopped at the border was 26 percent lower than in 2016. The number caught trying to cross the border illegally in 2017 was 303,916, the fewest since 1971.

That is not surprising to El Paso residents like Yancey Antillon, an online engineer who moved back to the city after living in Asheville, N.C.

"I tell people back there that I live in one of the safest cities anywhere in the country," he said. "I wish the president could also see that. But he's too busy preaching to his small choir, his base, and unfortunately we have to pay the price."

The state's sanctuary cities law has also damaged the relationship between law enforcement agencies and local residents, said Democratic state Rep. Mary Gonzalez, whose district runs along the border between El Paso and the Big Bend.

Local agencies like the sheriff's departments have tried to mitigate that damage by increasing their outreach to the community about their policies on immigration enforcement. But it's tedious for local officials to have to clean up after faraway politicians who don't understand life on the border, Gonzalez said.

"People are just exhausted of the border being used as a political tool. It's been that way for decades, but it's now more prevalent after the presidential election," she said. "People talk about the border in political terms and don't realize that these are people's lives."

People like Rodrigo Vasquez, 44, a mechanic in El Paso, are frustrated with their community being portrayed as a no-man's land. On a recent afternoon, while waiting in his pickup for his daughter to end her shift at Whataburger, he quietly contemplated the perceptions of the border as unsafe.

Vasquez stared into Bowie High School, which sits across the border fence from Ciudad Juarez, watching student athletes only a few years older than his daughter play soccer and baseball — considered by some to be the national sports of the countries on either side of the border.

"You try not to listen to the xenophobia and live life as normal as possible," he said. "But you know these are not normal times."

He's wary of Trump's plan to beef up Border Patrol efforts with several thousand National Guard troops.

"We don't need the military, or the National Guard," he said. "If the president believes we need more security, which I don't agree with, then add more Border Patrol agents. That's their job."

The contradictions today aren't so different from those in the past. The first federal general immigration law was passed in 1882, meaning arrivals before then mostly came in legally.

That same year, the Chinese Exclusion Act took effect. Ironically, around that time many of the immigrants on the border were Chinese who toiled in the railroad industry, connecting the United States to Mexico. After the work was finished, the U.S. government decided there were too many of them and moved to stem the flow of newcomers.

Locally, business leaders, led by newspapers, called for fences to go up to keep the Chinese out. Many of the Chinese went underground, or crisscrossed the border, passing as Mexicans, poignant scenes described in Romo's book.

"In our history there's always been a tendency to find scapegoat," the author said. "They're necessary for the us-vs.-them narrative."

In the late 1970s, the first fence went up, dubbed the "tortilla curtain," followed by Operation Hold the Line in the 1990s, which generated xenophobia and ushered the first Hispanic from El Paso to Congress, Silvestre "Silver" Reyes. Reyes, the former Border Patrol chief, was architect of the operation, which soon spread along the border into similar operations in Arizona and California.

The differences today

While many border residents and border politicians are ambivalent about Trump's border policies and call for a wall, the state's most powerful politicians say he's on target.

Speaking on Fox News' Ingraham Angle show, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said, "Thank God for Donald Trump. ... People get that this president stands for Americans and not criminals coming to this country illegally."

Patrick, who pushed through the Texas sanctuary cities laws and who, like Gov. Greg Abbott, is a strong supporter of the border wall, said of the military forces being sent to the border, "We welcome them, and I hope he leaves them here until hell freezes over or the wall is built. ... We're all in in Texas with President Trump on this issue."

But Trump's high-profile crackdown on illegal immigration has already separated hundreds of families and sent others into hiding. Every few months, the Border Network for Human Rights in El Paso reunites deported family members with those still in the United States, an event known as Hugs Not Walls. They stand in the shadow of the looming border fence.

"Here we live this sad reality every day, of family separations, of deportations, of uncertainty," said Bishop Mark J. Seitz of the Catholic Diocese of El Paso, one of the organizers of the event. "The values that represent the dignity of a human person, a sense of freedom, melt away on the border."

Lilliana Dominguez, 27, traveled from Houston to the border fence near El Paso to marry her boyfriend, Rogelio, who had been deported a year ago. In May, they will be reunited in an organized event on the border. (Alfredo Corchado / Staff)

Heart-wrenching conflicts play out. There are emotional family separations, or reunions — sobs breaking the quiet of the day. The last event was in December. Lilliana Dominguez, 27, traveled from Houston to reunite with her boyfriend, Rogelio Dominguez.

The two had met at a concert in Houston. Rogelio was the sound engineer. He had lived illegally in the country for much of his life. In February of last year, he was deported. In December, a priest married the couple as they held hands across the fence. Next month, the two will be reunited.

"The wall represents tears, sadness, separation for so many families," said Lilliana Dominguez. Asked what the fence meant to her personally, Dominguez paused. "Hurt," she said.

Mixed feelings

Timmerman has mixed feelings about the fence, the National Guard deployment, the everyday drama taking place on the border. It's become a daily conversation between him and his wife, he said, with no easy answers.

He supports the president, who he calls "big daddy Trump," figuring he's the only one actually trying to tackle the issue.

But he says talk about the military is a "ploy, a publicity stunt," which leaves Timmerman, a guy looking for real solutions, conflicted.

"The contradictions are real," he said. "Farther north, people just don't get it. They don't know. They have no idea. [They say] 'Let's kick them all out.' 'Let's all Kumbaya.' But that someone is also saying someone has to do the laundry, care for my children and cut my grass."

"Bottom line we have to secure our border, but before we do anything we need to fix the immigration laws in this country," Timmerman said. "Before we go build a wall, before we get the National Guard, we need to fix what has been so screwed up from the very beginning."

He returned to his cattle, turned and reminded:

"I'm still a Trump man. Who else is out there?"