An integrated ecological approach to countering targeted violence on the U.S.-Mexico border: Insights and lessons learned

Abstract

Well-integrated and productive communities are an asset to the development and advancement of our nation, and they have an important role to play in planning, learning, and enforcing safety to enhance national and border security. REACH (Resilience, Education, Action, Commitment, and Humanity) is a community-based project housed at The University of Texas at El Paso that aims to prevent targeted violence and domestic terrorism in El Paso County. We integrated three frameworks (i.e., Whole Community Preparedness, Socio-Ecological Model, and Global Citizen Education) to involve local residents in efforts to combat and mitigate targeted violence. REACH had two goals: to (1) prevent targeted violence and domestic terrorism through education, outreach, and community capacity-building aimed at identifying and deterring radicalization (primary prevention) and (2) reduce the short-term and long-term impact and prevent re-occurrence of targeted violence and domestic terrorism (secondary and tertiary prevention). Overall, our project served 8,934 participants directly and reached many more through our media cavmpaigns and outreach efforts during our 2 years of project implementation (2021–2023). Our project design may serve as an implementation model for other community-based projects on the U.S.-Mexico border and can be replicated with other target populations in the U.S. Insights and lessons learned from this project are discussed.

Keywords:

• Domestic terrorism
• targeted violence
• violence prevention and intervention

Acknowledgments

The project team thanks U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3), UTEP Center for Law and Human Behavior, Family Service of El Paso, El Paso Child Guidance Center, Project Vida Health Center, UTEP Research Evaluation and Assessment Services, UTEP Police Department, all community partners, collaborators, consultants, and student assistants for their assistance/support in this project.

Disclosure statement

The authors declared no conflict of interest.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

REACH (Resilience, Education, Action, Commitment, and Humanity) was funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, opportunity number DHS-21-TTP-132-00-01. All opinions expressed in this article are the authors’ and do not necessarily reflect the policies and views of DHS.