FOCUS: California border agents busier than ever, 11-30-08
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By Dan Keane
The Herald News
Posted Nov 28, 2008 @ 04:50 PM

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TIJUANA, Mexico — In a flash the two men were over the double fence and into the San Diego parking lot.

As a waiting pickup truck sped them away, the smuggler who boosted them over the 15-foot walls scrambled toward Mexico.

Border Patrol agents could only tag Juan Garcia’s black sweatshirt with pepper spray bullets as he escaped back over the wall to Tijuana, red-eyed and coughing but $30 richer for a few seconds of daring labor.

It’s just another night along the most heavily guarded stretch of U.S.-Mexico frontier, where Border Patrol apprehensions of illegal crossers have increased 28 percent since 2005 — even as apprehensions have dropped nearly 40 percent border-wide over the same period. While illegal crossings are impossible to count, experts look to Border Patrol apprehensions as the best indicator of migrant traffic.

The Tijuana area’s surprising increase is a booming business for cut-rate daredevils like Garcia, who are willing to try almost anything to get their clients across.

“I’ll get you a bicycle, and I’ll throw you over the fence with the bike,â€