Border security or boondoggle?

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 2/25/6 | Tyche Hendricks

[SmithL]

A plan for 700 miles of Mexican border wall heads for Senate -- its future is not assured.

A proposal to build a double set of steel walls with floodlights, surveillance cameras and motion detectors along one-third of the U.S.-Mexican border heads to the Senate next month after winning overwhelming support in the House.

The wall would be intended to prevent illegal immigrants and potential terrorists from hiking across the southern border into the United States. It would run along five segments of the 1,952-mile border that now experience the most illegal crossings.

The plan already has roiled diplomatic relations with Mexico. Leaders in American border communities are saying it will damage local economies and the environment. And immigration experts say that -- at a cost of at least $2.2 billion -- the 700-mile wall would be an expensive boondoggle.

The December House vote of 260-159 is the strongest endorsement yet for building a wall, which Rep. Duncan Hunter, a San Diego County Republican, has been pushing for two decades as a tactic against illegal immigration. Support for the wall was even stronger than for the bill it was attached to -- a larger plan to curb terrorism and illegal immigration sponsored by Wisconsin Republican Rep. James Sensenbrenner that passed 239 to 182.

"It is a tangible demonstration of the seriousness of the United States in not permitting illegal migration into the country," said Jack Martin, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, an advocacy group in Washington, D.C., that favors tighter immigration controls.

[Tammy8]

The "Teddy Roosevelt" road is really just a federal right of way, and in most of NM there is NO road, and lots of miles of terrain so rough you could not drive along it if you wanted to. Also at least here in NM it is treated as a federal right of way only and the public at large has no right to travel there. The majority of NM border is the perimeter of a very few large ranches that are entirely closed to the public, and they enforce trespass laws against anyone found on the ranch. There are no gates to access only the border fence, and if you were not a government official they would charge you with trespassing for attempting to drive along the border fence.

I don't know how it is in CA, AZ, or Texas, but that is how it is here. We could ask each rancher how many miles of fence are on their ranch, but my hubby has worked on several of these big ranches and he already knows the answer. The whole border here is just pasture fence, it is maintained by the ranchers, just for the purpose of keeping livestock in, and it all is really old.

NM is totally fenced with pasture fence, there are only three ports of entry in NM; Antelope Wells, Columbus, and Santa Theresa. Antelope Wells has pasture fence even at the port, there is not even a Gov't fence on the port property, just pasture fence. There is a fence planned for the port property itself, but there is not one there now. Columbus POE only has a tiny piece of Chain link at that POE, same at the Santa Theresa crossing.

If you figure out the miles of border fence in NM and deduct 1 mile total for Gov't fence at the ports you would be generous in deducting the mile. There is NO part of the border that has any type of fence other than pasture fence in NM other than small pieces at the ST and Columbus POEs.

Hubby estimating 170 miles in NM, but you could get a much closer figure by getting an accurate map and measuring on the map.

[Travis McGee]

This is what most of the Cali border I've seen looks like, and plain folks may hike along the right of way between the runway mat wall and the ranchers' property. As you can see in this photo, the runway mats are no hinderence to illegals crossing. If anything, they help to hide groups of illegals from the BP until they have driven out of sight.

I don't know about NM, but in Cali, there is plenty of evidence that land owners on the US side are involved in smuggling.