El Paso, Texas in the context of "List of cities in Texas by population"

Las Cruces (/lɑːsˈkruːsɪs/; Spanish: [las 'kruses]; lit. 'the crosses') is a city in Doña Ana County, New Mexico, United States, and its county seat. The population was 111,385 at the 2020 census, making it the second-most populous city in New Mexico, and the largest in both Doña Ana County and southern New Mexico. It is the principal city of the Las Cruces metropolitan statistical area, which encompasses all of Doña Ana County and had an estimated 230,000 residents in 2024. The city is also part of the larger El Paso–Las Cruces combined statistical area.

Las Cruces is the economic and geographic center of the Mesilla Valley, the agricultural region on the floodplain of the Rio Grande, which extends from Radium Springs to the west side of El Paso, Texas. The Organ Mountains, 10 miles (16 km) to the east, are dominant in the city's landscape, along with the Doña Ana Mountains, Robledo Mountains, and Picacho Peak. Las Cruces lies 225 mi (362 km) south of Albuquerque, 42 mi (68 km) northwest of El Paso, and 41 mi (66 km) north of the Mexico–United States border.

The international boundary separating Mexico and United States extends from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. The border traverses a variety of terrains, ranging from urban areas to deserts. It is the most frequently crossed border in the world, with approximately 350 million documented crossings annually. Illegal crossing of the border to enter the United States has caused the Mexico–United States border crisis. It is one of two international borders that the United States has, the other being the northern Canada–United States border; Mexico has two other borders: with Belize and with Guatemala.

Four American Sun Belt states border Mexico: California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. One definition of Northern Mexico includes only the six Mexican states that border the U.S.: Baja California, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, Sonora and Tamaulipas. The total length of the continental border is 3,145 kilometers (1,954 miles). From the Gulf of Mexico, it follows the course of the Rio Grande (Río Bravo del Norte) to the border crossing at Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, and El Paso, Texas. Westward from El Paso–Juárez, it crosses vast tracts of the Chihuahuan and Sonoran deserts to the Colorado River Delta and San Diego–Tijuana, before reaching the Pacific Ocean.

A border wall has been built along portions of the Mexico–United States border in an attempt to reduce illegal immigration to the United States from Mexico. The barrier is not a continuous structure but a series of obstructions variously classified as "fences" or "walls".

Between the physical barriers, security is provided by a "virtual fence" of sensors, cameras, and other surveillance equipment used to dispatch United States Border Patrol agents to suspected migrant crossings. In May 2011, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said it had 649 miles (1,044 km) of barriers in place. A total of 438 miles (705 km) of new primary barriers were built during Donald Trump's first presidency, dubbed the "Trump wall", though Trump had repeatedly promised a "giant wall" spanning the entire border and that Mexico would "pay for the wall," neither of which were done. The national border's length is 1,954 miles (3,145 km), of which 1,255 miles (2,020 km) is the Rio Grande and 699 miles (1,125 km) is on land.

The Southwestern United States, also known as the American Southwest or simply the Southwest, is a geographic and cultural region of the United States that includes Arizona and New Mexico, along with adjacent portions of California, Colorado, Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas, and Utah. The largest cities by metropolitan area are Phoenix, Las Vegas, El Paso, Albuquerque, and Tucson. Before 1848, in the historical region of Santa Fe de Nuevo México as well as parts of Alta California and Coahuila y Tejas, settlement was almost non-existent outside of New Mexico's pueblos and Spanish or Mexican municipalities. Much of the area had been a part of New Spain and Mexico until the United States acquired the area through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 and the smaller Gadsden Purchase in 1854.

While the region's boundaries are not officially defined, there have been attempts to do so. One such definition is from the Mojave Desert in California in the west (117° west longitude) to Carlsbad, New Mexico, in the east (104° west longitude); another says that it extends from the Mexico–United States border in the south to the southern areas of Colorado, Utah, and Nevada in the north (39° north latitude). In another definition, the core Southwestern U.S. includes only the states of Arizona and New Mexico; others focus on the land within the old Spanish and Mexican borders of the Nuevo México Province or the later American New Mexico Territory.

The Rio Grande rift is a north-trending continental rift zone. It separates the Colorado Plateau in the west from the interior of the North American craton on the east. The rift extends from central Colorado in the north to the state of Chihuahua, Mexico, in the south. The rift zone consists of four basins that have an average width of 50 kilometres (31 mi). The rift can be observed on location at Rio Grande National Forest, White Sands National Park, Santa Fe National Forest, and Cibola National Forest, among other locations.

The Rio Grande rift has been an important site for humans for a long time, because it provides a north–south route that follows a major river. The Rio Grande follows the course of the rift from southern Colorado to El Paso, where it turns southeast and flows toward the Gulf of Mexico. Important cities, including Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Taos, Española, Las Cruces, El Paso, and Ciudad Juárez, lie within the rift.

Cathedral High School (CHS) is a private, Roman Catholic, high school for boys in El Paso, Texas, United States. It was established in 1925 and is part of the Roman Catholic Diocese of El Paso.

The International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC, Spanish: Comisión Internacional de Límites y Aguas, CILA) is an international body created by the United States and Mexico in 1889 to apply the rules for determining the location of their international boundary when meandering rivers transferred tracts of land from one bank to the other, as established under the Convention of November 12, 1884.

The organization was created as the International Boundary Commission by the Convention of 1889 between the United States and Mexico. It was given its present name under the 1944 Treaty relating to the Utilization of Waters of the Colorado and Tijuana Rivers and of the Rio Grande. Under these agreements, the IBWC has a U.S. section and a Mexican section, headquartered in the adjoining cities of El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. The U.S. section is administered by the Department of State, and the Mexican part by the Secretariat of Foreign Relations.

Ciudad Juárez (US: /sjuːˌdɑːd ˈhwɑːrɛz/ sew-DAHD HWAR-ez; Spanish: [sjuˈðað ˈxwaɾes] ; "Juárez City"), commonly referred to as just Juárez (Lipan: Tsé Táhú'ayá), is the most populous city in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. It was known until 1888 as El Paso del Norte ("The North Pass").

It is the seat of the Juárez Municipality with an estimated metropolitan population of 2.5 million people. Juárez lies on the Rio Grande (Río Bravo del Norte), south of El Paso, Texas, United States. Together with the surrounding areas, the cities form El Paso–Juárez, the second largest binational metropolitan area on the Mexico–U.S. border (after San Diego–Tijuana), with a combined population of over 3.4 million people.