Here’s what you need to know about the border wall
Data, research sheds light on complex issue
SAN DIEGO – In President Donald Trump’s public push for $5.7 billion to extend existing border fencing by 215 miles, he has painted a dire picture filled with deadly drugs, violent criminals and bloodshed.
Meanwhile, congressional Democrats argue the border crisis Trump is referring to either doesn’t exist or was manufactured for political reasons. Besides, they contend, a wall wouldn’t solve many of the problems Trump has identified.
It is a debate filled with facts – facts offered by each side that tend to support their own perspectives and agendas.
The truth – as it often does – lies somewhere in between.
It doesn’t help that immigration is an incredibly complex issue, one that Congress has struggled to agree on and failed to comprehensively reform for decades.
Here is what the data, research and expert analysis show.
– Two-thirds of the 1,933-mile southwest border is not divided by any type of man-made barrier.
The majority of that gap is in Texas, where the Rio Grande acts as a natural obstacle of sorts and swaths of private land extend to the international line.
In Texas, 91 percent of the state is without any fence or wall, compared with 36 percent of New Mexico and 18 percent of Arizona, according to 2017 Border Patrol data.
California’s border with Mexico is the most heavily fortified,
with all but 23 miles not fenced to some degree. In the unfenced areas, mountains and treacherous wilderness areas act as natural barriers.
The types and condition of fencing along the southwest border vary greatly. Taller, stronger pedestrian fencing is concentrated around cities and towns – in some areas three layers deep, such as Friendship Park – while rural areas typically have barriers designed to keep vehicles from driving through but are easy for people on foot to breach.
The border along Texas, particularly the Rio Grande Valley – where Trump visited earlier this week – has in the past several years become the hotspot for illegal crossings.
The region’s Chief Border Patrol Agent Raul Ortiz told Trump during his visit that while there are 55 miles of fencing already in the sector, 90 percent of the illegal traffic occurs in areas without fencing.
– Fencing helped slow and shift illegal immigration in San Diego – but only when combined with increased enforcement and use of technology.
San Diego’s border with Mexico was largely without any barrier before the 1950s. Residents on both sides of the border at that time remember crossing easily back and forth – to work, to visit family, to play.
Some barbed wire was strung up in more populated areas, but it was easily breached. It was more of a visual reminder of the border line than an actual deterrent.
The scene on the border changed dramatically by the 1980s as Mexican migration spiked, largely single men crossing for economic opportunity. Thousands would gather on any given night in Tijuana and wait to cross illegally under cover of darkness. They would run into the U.S. in droves, overwhelming Border Patrol agents. (Border Patrol polices the areas between legal ports of entry, while Customs and Border Protection officers enforce vehicle and pedestrian traffic entering at the ports of entry).
The primary fencing that covers the 14-mile stretch between the Pacific Ocean and Otay Mountain started going up in 1989, constructed of Vietnam-era landing mat up to 10 feet high.
But, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, the “primary fence, by itself, did not have a discernible impact on the influx of unauthorized aliens coming across the border in San Diego.”
So Operation Gatekeeper was launched in 1994 during the Clinton administration, focusing on the first five miles of border. The campaign brought increased manpower to the area and deployed agents in three layers at the border, first to deter illegal entry and then apprehend. Vehicle checkpoints were set up inland. Agents were also much better equipped with night vision goggles, portable radios, light towers, and all-terrain vehicles. Technology such as seismic sensors came into play.
A secondary layer fencing came in 1996.
Apprehensions in San Diego dipped significantly, cut in half from nearly 484,000 in 1996 to nearly 284,000 in 1997.
With the border hardened in San Diego, migrants headed east, with apprehensions in the El Centro Sector spiking in the late 1990s as a result. More fencing was constructed there, and illegal crossing routes moved to Arizona’s remote deserts.
But with the shift to remote wilderness areas came an increase in migrant deaths. of