Crime along border pushes Mexicans into the US

"These days, we hang in Laredo, [Texas]," says Isidro, a 24-year-old in a leather jacket with slicked-back hair, as he leaves his parents' home in Nuevo Laredo for a night out across the border. "You grow up here, hearing about 'drug lords this and that,' " he says, "but you could stay clear of it. Now the gangs want money and just reach out and get it." He and his group of friends - all from wealthy families - feel anxious about going out in their hometown.

"They know who's who," says Isidro, who asked that his last name not be used for security reasons. "The gangs scope you out at clubs, ask others about you, then come up to you when you are getting into your car." It's not tourists being targeted, he stresses, "because [the criminals] don't know enough about the gringos.... It's us they want."

Those who can afford to, like Isidro's parents, are house hunting on the US side. "It's as if the end of the world was nearing," says Ana Salinas, a real estate agent in Nuevo Laredo with Texas Realty Co., who herself lived on the Mexican side until last year. She has shown twice as many lots and three times as many houses this month as last, and her new customers are overwhelmingly from Mexico, she says. For many of them, says Ms. Salinas, the US homes are a place to leave wives and children while the men continue to work in Mexico. "They are afraid," she says, "they tell me so, straight out."

According to the Austin Office of Economic Development and Tourism, Laredo and Texas border towns McAllen (across from Reynosa) and Brownsville (across from Matamoros) are among the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the US, in large part because of this influx from across the border.

Meanwhile in Mexico, it's a different story. At least 70 shops are up for rent in downtown Nuevo Laredo, says Fernando Villarreal, a local real estate agent. Two or three years ago, he says, there was no space to be found. The number of homes for sale has risen by at least 20 percent, he estimates, and prices are falling. Meanwhile, the hotels in town are running at 20 to 30 percent occupancy, according to the local Hilton.

It's Saturday night and the three border bridges spanning the Rio Grande here are jammed with pickups, cars, and pedestrians - the vast majority heading north. The usual hangouts on the Nuevo Laredo side - Hamilton's, the "F" bar, Harry's - are empty. The in-house cartoonist at El Dorado's is mindlessly sketching the band members, who sit, bored, up on their rickety stage, waiting for customers to show up. Isidro has picked up his girlfriend, crossed the border into Texas in his black Carerra, and is heading up I-35 to "Bourbon Street," a new favorite hang out, "on the safe side" as he calls it.

Over in the maternity ward, it's a busy night: five births. All of the mothers gave addresses in Laredo, but none spoke a word of English. Most likely, guesses Ms. Calvillo, none are from the US.

"That's life on the border," she shrugs. "It's not our role to find out who they are or why there are here or why more seem to be coming across now.... We just do what we do and say: 'Welcome to this world, little child.' "

• Ms. Harman is Latin America bureau chief for the Monitor and USA Today.

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