El Centro is a Border Patrol town, that is probably the largest employer (along with the hospital that delivers all those anchor babies .)
I drove through El Centro a couple of times to vacation in San Felipe. This was back in the 80’s. It was a terrible dump. I went into a large grocery store and OMG it was filthy. Cigarettes put out in the frozen vegtables, spilled ??? on the unmopped floors. Just plain awful. The whole town was filthy and disgusting. The only thing that made it half way presentable was it’s sister city, Mexicali. Talk about an ugly sister.
I wish all the people who think that open borders are great and that uncontrolled immigration brings positive things to communities could see El Centro (and Brawly, Indio etc).
Just creating the filth Americans won’t do.