Thread: The fence worked in San Diego

I obtained this from www.americanpatrol.com but they change news daily so to post the link may not work for long but I'll show anyway.
As a result of building the fence in San Diego it increased apprehensions in Arizona.




They also cite their source as the Congressional Research Service:
http://www.americanpatrol.com/06-FEATUR ... 122006.pdf

A brief history of the San Diego border fence:

One thing many people don't remember, and was barely reported by the national media was that the building of the San Diego section of the fence came as a result of protests by San Diego residents. After many years of illegal crossings, with endess masses of aliens traipsing through people's backyards and criminal activity in the area, local residents tired of the invasion and danger posed by the numbers of crossers, smugglers and criminals began their own grassroots campaign to try to stop the invasion.

Their efforts to stop the massive flow of illegal aliens, smugglers, drug runners and criminal bandits through the Tijuana River Valley/San Ysidro corridor brought about the project called "Light Up The Border". People with moblie high powered spotlights and cars with their headlights on manned the border nightly at strategic areas to deter the illegal crossers and as well, to bring atttention to the problem. Before the fence and the LUTB campaign, every single night at the Tijuana River looked like the start of the Boston Marathon with panchos. Thousands of illegals and drug smugglers would gather at the river's edge, beginning at sundown, waiting for Border Patrol agents to move to other parts of the border and they would do a mad dash in the thousands, using the tactic that masses of crossers could not all be stopped if they ran over all at once. And it worked for many, BP agents could only stop so many, so most were able to get through. They would cross over by jumping over people's fences that bordered on the river valley region and make their way onto the streets where they could blend in and hop on busses, trolley cars or waiting smuggling cars.

Every night local residents might wake up to find 50-100 or more illegals running through their backyards, down their neighborhood streets, hiding in the area's canyons, even hopping their backyard fences to hide in their sheds, garages and even try to enter their homes. And along with the masses of illegals came gangs of criminally violent border bandits, there to prey upon the crossers, to steal their belongings, as many carried every bit of cash, jewelry or any other valuable they owned to begin a new life in the U.S.

Local police and the BP were nearly helpless to stop this tactic of mass dashes into the country, as even if they did catch some crossers, they would just be returned to Tijuana to try again the next night or the next, until they finally did succeed. Not until the project of lighting up the border with hundreds of cars and floodlights removing their cover of darkness, was anything able to stop the massive flow. When the government and local authorities began to see how embarrasing this grassroots effort was in exposing their total ineptness in stopping the invasion, did it finally persuade the Feds to propose the erection of the double fence, with a patrol road down the middle for BP vehicles to monitor the area.

As soon as the fence project was complete, dubbed "Operation Gatekeeper", the numbers of crossers, smugglers and crimes in the area dropped dramatically, over time something like 90%. Of course, the Feds did not want to give the project huge publicity, as it would show the public that building a secure fence and actively trying to stop illegal aliens actually worked. Environmental groups, so-called immigrant 'rights' activists and the Mexican Govt. blasted the fence as a destructive force, harming the ecosystem and causing more illegals to try to enter illegally in more remote areas, causing deaths in the dangerous mountain and desert regions of the border, from east of San Diego all the way to Arizona and beyond. So although fences like this one worked and if built along other areas of the border could help to reduce the numbers of crossers, it was never continued as the outcry by so many pro-illegal groups made it a negative PR issue that the weak and weasely Clinton and then Bush administrations refused to consider its extension.

So basically, in a nutshell that's where we are today, masses of illegals have moved east to try to enter through the Arizona sectors where there are no fences or barriers and the small section of fence in San Diego, while a huge success in deterring crossing and reducing crime is looked at by the media and pro-illegal alien groups as some kind of sideshow or fluke or worse, death-maker, rather than the success that it is.

So there you have it, the reason why we will never have a real secure fence along the rest of the border or in parts where the most numbers of illegals are crossing is due to one reason - it would work, and that is something the government simply cannot allow to happen.

I'm glad to see this pointed out by someone. I wondered why they kept saying a fence won't work when it obviously has!