THE BORDER FENCE: BUILD IT AND THEY WON’T COME
De-Fence, De-Fence
A Border Patrol agent walks back to his vehicle along the border fence in San Diego in this November 2008 photo. The addition of razor-sharp wire… View Enlarged Image
Illegal Immigration: The government puts the brakes on a problem-plagued “virtual” fence on our border with Mexico. Whatever happened to the old-fashioned kind? If ever there was a shovel-ready project, this is it.
The much-ballyhooed “virtual” fence that was supposed to monitor and control illegal immigration doesn’t work and is being scrapped as we evaluate alternatives and rely on existing technology.
After years of delay and billions of dollars already spent, Secretary Napolitano on Tuesday halted work on SBInet. The system involves cameras, sensors and radars designed to let a small number of dispatchers watch the border on computer monitors and dispatch Border Patrol agents when and where they were needed.
At least that was the theory. “Effective immediately, the Department of Homeland Security will redeploy $50 million of Recovery Act funding originally allocated for the SBInet … to other tested, commercially available security technology along the Southwest border,” she said.
Like missile defense, the border fence seems to have become one of those study-forever-and-deploy-never types of projects. A secure border fence was first authorized by Congress in 2006. SBInet now isn’t expected to be finished until at least 2016. That’s after Homeland Security spent $3.7 billion on the project, according to the Government Accountability Office.
SBInet wasn’t what Congress had in mind. The Secure Fence Act of 2006 required the construction of 700 miles of new border fence along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border. “The Secretary of Homeland Security shall provide for at least two layers of reinforced fencing, the installation of additional physical barriers, roads, lighting, cameras and sensors,” the act said.
It was to be modeled on the success of the barriers in the San Diego sector of the U.S. border. The operative word was “secure.” Instead of this two-layer secure fence, what has been built consists of flimsy pedestrian fencing or vehicle fencing consisting of posts people can slither through.
The two-tier fence in San Diego runs 14 miles along the border with Tijuana. The first layer is a high steel fence, with an inner, high, anti-climb fence with a no-man’s land in between.
It has been amazingly effective. According to a 2005 report by the Congressional Research Service, illegal alien apprehensions in the San Diego sector dropped from 202,000 in 1992 to 9,000 in 2004.
Cameras and sensors played a part, but the emphasis was on physical barriers and roads that were patrolled by real live border guards, not robots. Then in 2006 the Democrats took back Congress and, in 2008, the White House. Former border state Gov. Napolitano reportedly once said: “You show me a 50-foot fence, and I’ll show you a 51-foot ladder at the border.”
The importance of border security was brought home last Saturday with the daylight slayings of a pregnant U.S. consular employee and her husband. Such violence may soon spill over the border.
Phoenix has become the kidnapping capital of the U.S., due largely to the activities of Mexican drug lords.
Speaking of existing technology, how about steel fences, barbed wire, concrete barriers and the like? We’ve never understood this fascination with technology as a substitute for and not a supplement to good old-fashioned brick and mortar and sharp edges.
Like other wars, the border war — which is a real war with real casualties — requires real hardware and real boots on the ground. With a real fence, illegal immigration plus the threats of cross-border violence, two-way transit of guns and drugs and a failed state in Mexico could all be greatly reduced, if not eliminated.
Build it and they won’t come.
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