Thread: 'It works': Yuma's fence, manpower make border nearly impenetrable

'It works': Yuma's fence, manpower make border nearly impenetrable

By William La Jeunesse
Published October 21, 2015 FoxNews.com




YUMA, Arizona – When Americans think of a secure border, whether they know it or not, they see Yuma, Ariz., and the 20-foot high steel curtain separating it from Mexico.

Beyond the imposing wall is 75 yards of flat, sandy, no man’s land, monitored by cameras and sensors and agents in SUVs. If an illegal immigrant successfully runs that gauntlet, they face another tightly woven steel fence and a third cyclone fence topped by barbed wire.

“It works,” said Border Patrol Agent Richard Withers. “This is the most secure area of the border. It is pretty hard for a guy to cross here. But they try.”

It wasn’t always this way. In 2005, Yuma was chaos. Pushed out of San Diego by Operation Gatekeeper in the late 1990s, drug and human smugglers targeted San Luis, a sleepy little border town just over the California state line south of Yuma.

"It is pretty hard for a guy to cross here. But they try.”

- Richard Withers, Border Patrol agent

That year, illegal immigrants overwhelmed Yuma. Border agents made on average 800 arrests a day, and watched hundreds of suspects run away. Stolen vehicles laden with drugs raced over the border at high speeds unhindered and unmolested. An estimated eight trucks a day sped out of Mexico onto Interstate 8 and disappeared into the American heartland, stuffed with immigrants or drugs.

“It was the Wild West out here,” said Yuma sector chief Anthony Porvaznik.

Video of the Yuma chaos made its way to Washington, where then-President George Bush pledged to fix it. In 2006, Congress passed the Secure Fence Act. Three years later every mile of Yuma’s border with Mexico contained a fence or vehicle barrier.

“We essentially apprehend 92 percent of all entries through the Yuma sector,” said Porvaznik, as he steered a white and green Chevy Tahoe through the sand. “That is 126 miles of border, which includes 12 miles of these sand dunes. On a scale of 1 to 10 we are a 9.”

Today, Yuma has triple the manpower and apprehends just 15 illegal immigrants a day, a 96 percent reduction. Instead of 2,700 vehicle penetrations, this year’s total is just 27.

“It’s pretty quiet here,” Withers said.

While the fence is the most important factor in Yuma’s success, Porvaznik said it isn’t the only one.

“Unless you give them a reason not to come back, they will,” he said.

“When we started Operation Streamline, fewer deportees tried to cross. It was simple. They didn’t want to go to jail. Our first-time offenders went to jail for 15 days. We took them out of their smuggling cycle.”

Porvaznik said some immigrants quit, while others just moved farther into the desert where the fence ended. And that’s the challenge of border security. Unless every mile is protected, smugglers and would-be illegal immigrants simply find a soft spot and exploit it.

“It used to be overwhelming,” said veteran agent Tomas Diaz. “It isn’t as active, but we still see the Mexicans trying to swim across, or they get smuggled in little boats.”

Diaz pilots one of two Customs and Border Protection boats on the Colorado River where it empties into Mexico. The CBP also has airplanes, helicopters and drones backing up the agents, giving agents greater awareness even when they can’t catch an illegal crosser.

Immigrants no longer try crossing alone. Passage is arranged and controlled by criminal organizations that charge on average $3,000 for a Mexican, $6,000 for a Central American and up to triple that for an Asian, according to sources.

But the fence has also produced negative consequences. Smugglers have been forced to risk travel through the merciless Sonora desert, where only the fittest can survive the 80-mile hike from Mexico to a pick-up site. Some make it, but more than 2,000 did not in the last decade, dying from dehydration or heat stroke, according to immigrant advocate groups.

Yuma’s fence, along with agents who patrol the border and police and prosecutors willing to jail alien felons are a powerful example of border security could look like, if Congress and the President agreed on a goal. But the biggest draw remains employment, and agents say until the federal government is serious about interior and worksite enforcement, where employers are fined or jailed and compelled to check immigration status of employees, the problem won’t go away – no matter how many billions of taxpayer dollars are spent on enforcement.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/10/21...?intcmp=hphz09

See the hilltop in the background. Just a vantage point like that---and there are many of them on the US side---can give a human observer many extra miles of view. There could even be portable high ground observation towers---moved to wherever the crossing hotspots are. For nearly a century the Pacific NW has utilized fire observatory platforms---where fires spotters can see for tens of miles across terrain much more rugged than the border area.

Sky Tower - mobile Border Patrol observation post along Cocaine Alley. The corridor is also known as OTM Alley (Other Than Mexican Alley) because of the high number of non-Mexican illegal aliens apprehended in the area.

http://www.desertinvasion.us/invasion_pictures/invasion_sasabe.html

NFLEXION™ -
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Inflexion with IR Camera + 3m HDNL with Radar
Border Patrol by Plasan

https://www.google.com/search?q=bord...tJvW3pVSKiM%3A

Feds virtual fence along Arizona-Mexico border
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A mobile observation tower manned by members of the Texas National Guard watches the for people

https://www.google.com/search?q=bord...bvb5sjfrZtM%3A

Panoramio - Photo of Border patrol tower, Montezuma Passwww.panoramio.com687 × 1024Search by imageBorder patrol tower, Montezuma Pass

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Border patrol tower, Montezuma Pass

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents ride ATVs near the US-Mexico border

There are so many methods to enforce our border that it is just down right lying and deception with a purpose that it has not been secured by now. We go to the moon, but can't secure our border??

I will say this, I never saw a mexican in Philadelphia Pa till gw bush's reign and of course, O will fly them in. Plus, now our political representatives want to admit possible jihadist without screening.

One would be accepting of small amounts of immigration, but it has to be legal with proper background checks and health checks. Certainly should not be a burden on Americans via paying social services, jobs taken Americans should have or criminal rapists, child molesters, killers as we are seeing daily. An American citizen child molester's face is all over the internet - the SNEAKERS, we don't know if they are or not. Sneak your way into a country, take a job in a restaurant or even white collar now, even illegals as lawyers, lie your way into the voting booth (who will prosecute the felony?), have a few anchor babies and this admin is with you. That is reality!

And the drugs, they are addicting our citizens, especially our vulnerable youth to hard core meth, cocaine, heroin all across America. Notice how doj eric holder got rid of the Italian mafia to clear the way for the hispanic control. This does not happen by itself.

Mobile Camera Towers images
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a Mix of Camera Towers