Thread: CA: Fence makes good neighbor

http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/ne ... 539434.php

Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Fence makes good neighbor
GORDON DILLOW
Register columnist
GLDillow@aol.com CHULA VISTA – You can argue about the costs or the aesthetics or even the morality of the thing. But if you take a good look at the new fence system along the U.S.-Mexico border in western San Diego County – and if you remember how it used to be before the fences were there – there's really only one logical conclusion:

Border fences or barriers can drastically reduce illegal border crossings – but they can't work alone.

More than 20 years ago, while on a "ride along" with the U.S. Border Patrol, I stood on a hill near here looking down at a broad, flat, dusty area on the U.S. side of the border known as "the Soccer Field." It was the first time I'd seen this section of the border by Tijuana, a border that back then was delineated by nothing more substantial than intermittent sections of rusty chain link fence with gaping holes.

And seeing it, I could hardly believe my eyes.

Down on the Soccer Field, on the U.S. side of the line, there were hundreds of would-be illegal immigrants, men, women, even some children, some of them kicking a ball around – hence the name – some buying food from vendors who had set up shop to cater to the crowds, some just milling about. They were all waiting for the sun to go down so they could start creeping through the gullies and across the fields, trying to slip past the relative handful of Border Patrol agents who were waiting to try to stop them.

And most of the illegal immigrants made it through – and not only from the Soccer Field. At the international port of entry at San Ysidro, at the levee along the Tijuana River, from all along this section of the border, illegal immigrants would stage what Border Patrol agents called "banzai runs," simultaneously swarming across by the hundreds, knowing there was no way the Border Patrol could catch all of them, or even most of them.

Sure, the Border Patrol would snag big groups of them – 20 here, 30 there, 50 over there. They would send them back across the border by the hundreds of thousands every year.

Still, it was like trying to hold back the tides; the Border Patrol was simply overwhelmed.

But it's different now, at least along this small section of the border. As Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Robert Harvey told me, "The difference between then and now is like night and day."

And part of the reason is the fence.

Actually it's not so much simply a fence as a security system. It's short – just 9 1/2 miles long, with 4 1/2 miles still in the works – which means it covers only a tiny fraction of the 2,000-mile-long U.S.-Mexico border. But its impact on that fraction has been astonishing.

Part of it is called the "primary fence," a 10-foot-high steel barrier right on the border line that was built in the early 1990s with military-surplus aircraft "landing mats." By itself it wasn't much of a deterrent to illegal border crossers, although it did reduce illegal cross-border vehicle traffic.

So in 1996 construction began on a second fence, roughly parallel to the first fence, with an improved access road between the two. The second fence is mostly a steel mesh that rises vertically for 10 feet and then angles out, making it more difficult to climb over.

But there's more than just a couple of fences. The 9 1/2 -mile, $31 million double-fenced section of the border is also packed with high-tech security gear: motion sensors, cameras, infrared scopes, stadium-style lights to illuminate the "enforcement zone" along the fences.

And there are also more than twice as many Border Patrol agents in the San Diego sector as there were 20 years ago, some 1,700 of them. That's part of a Border Patrol expansion that has boosted the number of agents nationally from a mere 3,600 two decades ago to about 13,000 today – and the Border Patrol expects to add 6,000 in the next two years.

In short, this small section of the border uses a mix of technology (the sensors, cameras, etc. ), "tactical infrastructure" (the fences and roads) and extra manpower to deter illegal immigration all along its length.

Does it always work? Of course not. Illegal immigrants still climb over the fences, using ladders and even grappling hooks. Drug- and human-smugglers also go under the border through tunnels, more than a dozen of which were discovered in the San Diego sector last year. Just as no local police chief would ever promise to reduce crime to zero, the Border Patrol won't promise that the fences and other measures will ever completely eliminate illegal border crossings.

But consider these numbers. In 1992 there were 360,000 apprehensions of illegal immigrants within the Imperial Beach and Chula Vista Border Patrol stations, which cover the now double-fenced portion of the border. But in 2004, after the introduction of the fences and the technology and the increased manpower, the number of apprehensions had plummeted to about 19,000 – a decrease of 95 percent.

Generally speaking, fewer apprehensions means fewer people are trying to illegally cross that section of the border – far fewer in this case.

In fact, compared with the wild old days, some Border Patrol agents say working this double-fenced section of the border now is almost "boring."

True, the short section of border fences in western San Diego County hasn't had much impact on illegal border crossings nationally, as many illegal immigrants and smugglers have simply moved eastward, beyond the fences.

But what if we built an additional 800 miles of similar fencing – as Congress said last fall it wanted to do – or even fenced off the entire 2,000-mile border in the same way?

Could we do it? Should we do it? Would it work?

More on that in Sunday's column.

Build that darn border fence, NOW!