Life on the Line: Help migrants or Border Patrol? It's a daily conflict for Roma, Texas, residents
ROMA, Texas - The bell over the door at J.C. Ramirez rang on a slow Wednesday afternoon as Border Patrol agents in green uniforms entered the western-wear store looking for an immigrant mother and baby.
Owner Cecilia Benavides let the agents search the plywood dressing rooms, back office, shelves stacked with straw cowboy hats and racks of George Strait Wrangler dress shirts. They left empty-handed.
Moments later, the bell sounded again. In walked an unfamiliar woman, a baby in her arms. Benavides, 75, glanced at her sales clerk, unsure what to do.
In Roma, a major thoroughfare for illegal immigration on the Texas-Mexico border, encountering Border Patrol agents and the immigrants desperate to evade them is an inescapable part of life.
Residents repeatedly face legal and ethical questions: Do you help and, if so, whom? The immigrants or the Border Patrol? Almost daily, they weigh fear against compassion, resentment against concern.
When a man arrived at Benavides' shop last year, soaked from the river and stinking after hiding all day in a trash can, she gave him fresh clothes and food in a hat box, so he wouldn't attract agents' attention. When Benavides saw the woman with the baby, she didn't call the Border Patrol either. Instead, she watched for signs of distress.
The woman didn't appear scared. She spoke Spanish, as do most people in Roma, asking about children's boots. And she posed another question: Why had Border Patrol agents approached her outside?
Benavides relaxed, explained who the agents were pursuing, and rang up $50 boots. She was spared having to make a decision.
Border Patrol agents once broke a shop window with their batons as they chased an
