How residents of this US-Mexico border town reacted to US troops, migrants’ influx

Mario Tama/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- As a caravan of thousands of migrants arrived near the U.S.-Mexico border, the residents of Brownsville, Texas, have found themselves on the frontlines in the debate over border security.

After President Trump ordered more than 5,000 U.S. troops to the border ahead of the arrival of a caravan of thousands of Central American migrants seeking asylum in the U.S., about 1,000 of those troops were deployed to Brownsville, which is located just steps away from the port of entry to Mexico.

Residents of what was a quiet community are now caught between the outside pressures from Washington of a perceived crisis and the reality of the migrants’ plight on the ground.

"We've become a political football is what’s really happened," said Mike Seifert, a Brownsville resident for 30 years.

Just this weekend, after months of rising tension over the caravan travelling north, chaos erupted over 1,500 miles away in another border town, Tijuana, Mexico – south of San Diego.

Several hundred Central American migrants were protesting at the border. First, they clashed with Mexican police in riot gear, then skirted pickup trucks and barriers into the maze of canals near the San Ysidro border terminal.

Behind coils of barbed wire, dozens of heavily armed U.S. Border Patrol officers unleashed a wall of tear gas.

Hundreds beat a frantic retreat. Among those engulfed, mothers clutched their children.

This weekend’s violence comes after repeated threats by President Trump to close the border with Mexico.

Copyright © 2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.