The following description about the wild days of illegal border crossings in El Paso comes from an article yesterday in the Fort Wayne, Indiana, "Journal Gazette". The time-frame described is probably 20-30 years ago.

'One recent morning, Reyes stood in the dust of the frontier at the end of the infamous “black bridge,” the old rail trestle where a friend and fellow agent was hit over the head and killed, where hundreds of would-be immigrants would mass on the Mexican side and sprint across in “banzai runs,” overwhelming the Border Patrol.

“To appreciate the peace and tranquility that is here now, you’ve got to imagine what it was like,” he says.

It was chaos.

When the river was dry, the Mexicans walked over. When the river flowed, entrepreneurs set up ferry services; peddlers sold Cokes and snacks. There were crazy hot-pursuit chases on downtown streets, through backyards, even across the campus of a high school on the border.

Enough! decided the first Hispanic sector chief in Border Patrol history. One Sunday morning in 1993, El Paso and Juarez awoke to find the border sealed by 400 agents spread along 20 miles.

At first there was an uproar. Protesters threw rocks, closed bridges, burned effigies. Merchants fretted about lost sales. The Catholic Church pleaded for mercy. The Mexican government complained to the State Department. Even Border Patrol brass in Washington gave Reyes a hard time.

...Daily illegal crossings plummeted from up to 10,000 to a few hundred.'

Apparently, illegal immigration from Mexico to the U.S. became significant in the 1970s. Currently, 10% of Mexico's population lives in the U.S., half of whom are there illegally.

About 80% of El Pasoans are hispanic, and 67% speak Spanish at home. That seems to also be true of the greater El Paso part of Texas.