The fair place to meet is Kansas City, MO — the city closest to the midpoint of Detroit and El Paso. From the farther side that’s about 17 hr 36 min of driving.
Recommended midpoint
Kansas City, MO
From Detroit
13 hr 29 min
643 mi to Kansas City
From El Paso
17 hr 36 min
839 mi to Kansas City
Detroit has the shorter trip; the split is off by about 4 hr 7 min. The alternatives below can even it out. Detroit and El Paso are about 1,477 miles apart.
Detroit and El Paso are about 1,477 miles apart by road. Split the difference and you arrive near Kansas City, the city closest to the halfway point between them. That puts roughly 13 hr 29 min of driving on the Detroit side and 17 hr 36 min on the El Paso side — the fairest single meeting point among the cities near the middle.
Over this distance most people will fly rather than drive the whole way. Kansas City still makes a fair, central place for Detroit and El Paso to converge, splitting the travel instead of asking one side to cross the country.
If Kansas City doesn't have what you're after, Oklahoma City and Memphis are also close to the midpoint and worth a look — each keeps the drive reasonably balanced between Detroit and El Paso.
Kansas City, abbreviated KC or KCMO, is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri by both population and area. It is located on the Missouri River at its confluence with the Kansas River, within Jackson, Clay, Platte and Cass counties. Read more →
Detroit is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is situated on the bank of the Detroit River across from the Canadian city of Windsor, Ontario. It is the 26th-most populous city in the United States and the largest U.S. Read more →
El Paso is a city in and the county seat of El Paso County, Texas, United States. It is the 22nd-most populous city in the U.S., sixth-most populous city in Texas, and the most populous city in West Texas with a population of 678,815 at the 2020 census. Read more →
City descriptions adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA); photos via Wikimedia Commons, credited above.
Estimates use straight-line distance and typical road speeds; real drive times vary with route and traffic.