Back to the border battle
By: James Carafano
Examiner Columnist
March 15, 2010

Spring break is coming. Soon college students will flock to the beach parties. But authorities hope fewer will flock as far south as Mexico this year.

Early this month, the Texas Department of Public Safety urged "spring breakers" to avoid Mexican border towns. Why? Too dangerous.

How bad is it? Bad enough that the U.S. State Department has now closed its consular office in Reynosa. The gun battles in that border town were just too commonplace.

The danger sometimes spills north of the border. Last fall, stray bullets from a cartel firefight struck a parked car and campus building at the University of Texas at Brownsville.

Border violence has not been much in the news of late. That will change in a New York minute when the administration reintroduces an "amnesty" bill to grant permanent status to the millions living in the United States unlawfully.

Immigration policy has major consequences, not just on national sovereignty issues, but on public safety and border security as well. When Congress granted amnesty in the 1986 immigration reform act, the border immediately got more, not less, porous. Amnesties just encourage more illegal border crossing.

This year, the administration will promise to do more to secure the border. Again. And the anti-amnesty faction will insist that the security improvements happen first, before any movement on amnesty.

Neither side is likely to offer any new ideas. That's because border security debates now start by time-warping back to 2006, before the U.S. government amped up its presence on the border.

Those opposing amnesty will likely clamor for more border walls and more border guards. The problem is that Washington has already "been there, done that." Since 2006, we've built hundreds of miles of wall and hired thousands of border patrol agents.

That is not to say that these investments were not worth it. It makes sense to build physical obstacles where the geography is right. When backed by a guard force, obstacles constructed at crossings close to population centers and transportation networks can cut down illegal traffic quite effectively.

But, those investments have already been made at the most promising locations. Taxpayers will get a very low return on any future investment in even more fencing and more hiring of border agents.

The debate should move to new approaches that can keep up with the threat. Topping that list is technology: the kinds that can find tunnels, track smugglers and spot small groups crossing rough terrain at night far across the border.

Don't think of it as a "virtual fence." That term has been much maligned, mostly because the idea was poorly understood and poorly implemented. But the Homeland Security Department really does need technologies that can guide border agents to the right place at the right time to thwart creative, innovative and adaptive criminals.

Specifically, security demands: fixed towers with sensors on established smuggling routes, mobile sensors that can be shifted around rough terrain, and unmanned aerial vehicles both short and long range. These systems must be able to share information with each other in real time.

We also need the right kind of boots on the ground. State and local police are vital to combating illegal border activity. Federal, state and local officers should work cooperatively in Border Enforcement Security task forces.

Finally, we need to help Mexico. The Bush administration started an aid program called the Merida Initiative. The Obama White House should follow up with a full-blown plan of strategic cooperation to help the Mexican government fight back.

When immigration reform heats up in a few weeks, the last thing we should be talking about is "the wall."

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