Posted on 08/06/2006 10:48:50 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
TECATE
The number of immigrants illegally jumping the California-Mexico border appears to be increasing as enforcement gets tougher in Arizona, Border Patrol arrest statistics suggest.
It's known as the water-balloon effect: Squeeze one spot and illegal immigration will bulge elsewhere along the 1,952-mile frontier.
While overall arrests have fallen a modest 3 percent since October, they are up sharply in some places, including the San Diego area. Thanks to a surge in hiring new agents, the Border Patrol says it's ready for a shift in traffic. Skeptics aren't so sure.
In the early 1990s, San Diego was overrun by border crossers. Hundreds at a time stormed the world's busiest border crossing, paralyzing motorists on Interstate 5. Migrants waltzed freely over to vendors who catered to them in nearby canyons.
A crackdown launched in 1994 and modeled on a similar effort in El Paso, Texas, pushed many migrants away from the border's two largest cities and into Arizona's mountains and deserts. Total arrests ebbed and flowed over the last decade but changed little: 1.3 million in 1995 versus 1.2 million in 2005.
Arrests in the Border Patrol's sector around Tucson, Ariz., are down 9 percent to 345,973 since October compared to the previous year, though it is still the busiest corridor. Meanwhile, arrests rose 19 percent to 175,324 between the two sectors that span all but a few miles of California's border with Mexico.
The recent arrest spike in and around San Diego comes as the Border Patrol grows from 11,800 agents today to 18,000 by the end of 2008. That force will be supported by up to 6,000 National Guard troops.
Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar said last month that San Diego is "very well prepared."
Skeptics say that no matter how many agents there are or where they are positioned, the rush of border crossers would continue as long as jobs were easy to get.
"You can put a million agents along the U.S.-Mexican border and that alone is not going to stop the pressure and flow of migrants," said David Shirk, director of the University of San Diego's Trans-Border Institute.
The spike in traffic is invisible to most San Diego residents because migrants cross in rugged terrain east of the seaside city of 1.3 million people.
The mountains and canyons are scorching in summer and freezing in winter. Unlike Arizona, tall trees and dense chaparral offer shade and hiding places. It is not an easy place to patrol.
At midnight one muggy July night, Nicholas Coates and other Border Patrol agents converged on an area where sensors suggested a group of about 10 migrants was walking. He tracked fresh footprints and broken twigs on a dirt path, then wrestled thick brush.
"They could be right here," he said around 2:30 a.m., shortly before giving up. "If they get in the brush, it's very hard to see them."
As an early sun burned, he captured three migrants in another large group after a two-hour chase, mostly on foot and with an assist from a helicopter and other agents.
The mountains surround California's Tecate, about 35 miles east of San Diego, which is home to little more than a small strip mall.
Mexico's Tecate is a pleasant town of about 60,000 people with a shaded central square, a spa that draws American tourists and a hulking brewery that bears its name. It doesn't look like a pit stop for border crossers.
A migrant shelter will grow from 20 beds to 200 when it moves to a new building in a few months, but the bus station is tiny and quiet, and there are few boarding houses. Unlike other border towns, few men with backpacks mill around.
Border crossers hop off a bus or taxi somewhere outside the city on a short trip from Tijuana, a city of 1.2 million people whose airport and bus station teem with smugglers looking for business.
Many migrants rest at Tijuana's red-light district hotels before the trek, which lasts at least two days. Drivers wait for them on the U.S. side to take them to a safe house.
"People come here when they tried elsewhere and failed," said Daniel Rivera, 63, who works for smugglers looking for customers near the 'Aqui Te Espero' ('I'll Wait for You Here') cafe in Tijuana's red-light district.
He said it costs $1,600 to be guided through the mountains near Tecate, typically in groups of four or five men, up from about $300 in the early 1990s. That inflation reflects how much harder it has become since the U.S. government tightened the noose in urban areas.
Word that hundreds of migrants have died crossing Arizona's unforgiving deserts may also contribute to the shift to California, said Wayne Cornelius, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego. His interviews this year with 724 people in the Mexican state of Yucatan found San Diego was by far the favored crossing area.
Jose Reyes, 32, had enough of Arizona after he and 16 others were picked up by the Border Patrol three months ago. After crossing near Douglas, they walked five days and drank water from cattle tanks.
"We turned ourselves in (to the Border Patrol); they were our salvation," said Reyes, who spoke at a Tijuana migrant shelter. He planned to attempt another crossing, this time near Tecate, on his way to a dishwasher job in San Francisco.
No. It should be called the "Not Enough Enforcement Resources on the Border" effect.
Ditto. Unless the laws for hiring and abetting illegals in this country are enforced, and fines and sentences are increased dramatically for the Americans who hire them, nothing will change. As long as the illegal demand for their labor continues, they'll get into this country one way or the other. You can slow it down, you can shift the method and route of entry, but again, unless the Americans who knowingly choose to break the law and hire them (including illegals from all over the world not just south of the border), this problem will continue. And you can throw in the whore politicians who allow for illegals to collect benefits at taxpayers expense, too. They should be shown the door with a firm footprint on their backside. The long-term implications of this problem are only beginning to be realized.
We do need a government that is interested IN CLOSING THE BORDER AND ENFORCING OUR EXISTING LAWS. And we know we do not have one....a wall is easily built and would cost far less than what Washington has no guilt in stealing from REAL American citizens and giving to illegals for votes.
Thats a little too organized for me.. squeeze one place the overflow happens somewhere else?..
Organization expertise seems to be happening quite above the heads of some 'coyote' or even of some "Alpha Coyote".. it almost seems government controlled.. Occams razor demands thats it is..
That is a HUGE assumption they're making. Congress has yet to fully fund the hiring of the first 2,000 new agents.
That force will be supported by up to 6,000 National Guard troops.
The Guard is scheduled to leave in 2008 and I expect to see them leave the border region long before then.
ping
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.