With Excess Doses, El Paso Is Giving the Vaccine to Mexican Truckers Crossing the Border
As El Paso tries to avoid a new COVID-19 wave, most Juárez residents can t travel into the States for the jab.
July 19, 2021
Commercial trucker and Juárez resident Martín Figueroa takes advantage of El Paso’s push to vaccinate truckers as they cross the border.
Photograph by Rachel Calcott
Martín Figueroa hit the brakes on his forty-ton dust-coated semi truck and drew to a halt just short of the pop-up vaccination tent on the Ysleta-Zaragoza International Bridge. It was 9 a.m., and he had just crossed the border from Juárez into El Paso. A U.S. customs official had alerted him about the opportunity to get vaccinated, and when he spotted the blue tent he pulled over and clambered out of the truck. Staffers in scrubs guided him toward a table, where they asked for his name and insurance details enough information to identify him but too little to determine his country of origin. Next, F