Sunland Park, NM - the only US town south of the Rio Grande - is a wonderful place

So this small NM town, whose mayor sent a cease & desist notice to the folks building the citizen-funded border wall, has a problem with corruption.

It’s well known that Sunland Park is a high traffic area for drug & human smuggling, so who would protest its construction?

The mayor’s nameis Javier Parea. This mayor has quite a history of corruption. At 24, he ended up the default mayor after a scandal-ridden election in which he was actually the 4th choice. He was basically appointed after the candidate ahead of him was caught getting a lap dance in his office...and another candidate was caught trying to blackmail him with a video of the incident.

During Javier’s reign, the city has been under state investigation on suspicion of embezzlement, a councilman was arrested on drug charges, another councilman was arrested for providing alcohol to a minor, and yet another councilman was evicted from his home after not paying rent for 7 years (he owed over $1M).

The city has also been investigated by the the FBI for more than 100 cases of voter fraud.

The city’s problems have gotten so bad that the residents have called for the city to be disbanded. Federal agents say fixing the town’s corruption is necessary before securing the border can happen. Border patrol estimates $1B in drugs flow across the border at Sunland Park annually.

The entire area is a Banana Republic with the mayor AND police chief of a neighboring town having been arrested for helping smuggle guns across the border.

The former mayor of SP would often boast that he had friends in the cartels and that he would have anyone killed who dared testify against him.