EL PASO — To hear it from the White House, America’s southern border is a war zone. Things look a lot different up close. Here in El Paso, local governments collaborate closely with federal agencies in the United States and Mexico to ensure that our ports of entry — bridges connecting the two countries — can effectively and safely move more than 10 million people and $90 billion in trade back and forth each year.

Our ports are critical to our local, state and national economies, and they stand as proof that international cooperation can make the border work for both countries. Never did any of us imagine that the area around one of them, the Marcelino Serna Port at Tornillo, would someday be the site of the United States’s first tent city for detained immigrant children, or that it would bring us together to protest the separation of refugee families.

Maybe we should have seen it coming. Fearmongering about immigrants has long hinged on the notion that the border is a porous, lawless place — even though it is as safe and secure as ever.

For many of us in El Paso, the international ebb and flow of people is part of daily life and our location is a source of pride. In the 16th Congressional District, where I am running for a seat in the House, immigrants make up a quarter of our population; in 2014 alone, they paid over $983 million in taxes and provided $3.1 billion in spending power.