PENDLETON Last week, Umatilla County Commissioner George Murdock joined roughly a dozen members of the National Association of Counties Immigration Reform Task Force on a visit to the United States southern border.

The trip allowed Murdock and several others to see inside of United States Border Patrol facilities in El Paso, Texas, as well as a refugee center in Juarez, Mexico, just across the border. Murdock, who returned last Thursday, spoke of the visit as a transformative experience, saying that the visit changed his perceptions of the border crisis for the better.

If 50 people suddenly showed up at your front door and you had to take care of them, it would be overwhelming and would certainly take time to make necessary adjustments, said Murdock. That was the situation in March. It is not the situation six months later.

On his first day in El Paso, Murdock recalls watching a pair of families give themselves up to U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents after crossing the Rio Grande River from Mexico into the United States.

Forty-five minutes later we encountered the Honduran mother and her three children at a processing center, Murdock said. As we passed, they smiled and waved.

Murdock said that his perceptions going into the week aligned predominantly with those he had seen in the news last March highly publicized scenes of terrible conditions and disorganization. Six months later, Murdock says that the facility they visited seemed much more organized; those seeking asylum spent no more than 30 to 36 hours in a holding facility before being turned back to Mexico to await an appearance before a U.S. judge who would determine the result of their request for asylum.

During their visit, the task force members encountered a group of unaccompanied children detained at the Border Patrol station at Del Norte crossing. According to Murdock, the children, ages 3 to 16, slept on portable beds and some watched cartoons as agents cared for them. The ability to provide food and clothing to detained youth marks a substantial improvement to the conditions that Murdock had seen in the media months earlier.

There is still trauma that people are experiencing, said Murdock. But that trauma is not a result of the conditions of the facilities.

Following a tour of the U.S. facility, Murdock and his fellow visitors crossed the border to visit the Leona Vicario Federal Refugee Center in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. The center, a former concert hall that is capable of housing 1,700 people, housed approximately 600 people at the time of the commissioners visit. The difficulty, Murdock said, is that Ciudad Juarez is a very poor city where the high numbers of refugees are forced to vie for jobs and opportunities alongside the other 1.3 million residents of the city while awaiting a response from the U.S. government a process that can take months.

If it were left to me, I dont know that I agree with putting them at that facility, Murdock said. I think I would feel more comfortable if the United States government were in charge of the center.

Later this week members of the NACo task force will meet to further debrief the visit and discuss policy initiatives that they hope will aid in the issues faced at the border. Murdock, the lone Oregonian on the 54-member task force, said that he hopes to find solutions to improve the number of migrant workers in Umatilla County. Murdock explained that the county relies on between 8,000 and 10,000 Hispanic workers across multiple industries with the majority of those jobs being in agriculture.

Unfortunately, immigration has become a political football of sorts, said Murdock. There are solutions to be had and it should be a nonpartisan issue, but one side is always afraid to compromise.

While Murdock says that he is still processing the trip and that it will take him awhile to fully unpack the details of it, he is comforted to see the improvements that have been made over the past few months to benefit both refugees and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol personnel.

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Murdock sees progress but still more room for improvement on southern border visit - East Oregonian