Despite progress, many say border not secure
Once, the mesas and canyons extending east of the Pacific Ocean held the most popular routes for illegal immigrants heading into the U.S. Dozens at a time sprinted across the border into San Diego, passing agents who were too busy herding others to give chase.
Now, crossing would mean scaling two fences, passing a phalanx of agents and eluding cameras.
In pure numbers it is this: Where border agents made 530,000 arrests in San Diego in fiscal year 1993, they had fewer than 30,000 in 2012.
There is no simple yardstick to measure border security. And yet, as the debate over immigration reform ramps back up, many will try.
“Secure the border first” has become a litmus test for many upon which a broader overhaul is contingent. As U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio said recently: “We need a responsible, permanent solution” to illegal immigration. But first, added the Florida Republican, “we must follow through on the broken promises of the past to secure our borders.”
In fact, the 1,954-mile border with Mexico is more difficult to breach than ever.
Two decades ago, fewer than 4,000 Border Patrol agents manned the entire Southwest border. Today there are 18,500. Apprehensions, in the meantime, have plummeted to levels not seen since the 1970s — with 356,873 in FY2012. Compare that with 1.2 million in 1993, when new strategies began bringing officers and technology to border communities.
But for those who live and work along the boundary, “secure” means different things. In Arizona, ranchers scoff at the idea. And in Texas, residents firmly believe that reform itself would finally help steady the flow of people and drugs.
San Diego
Don McDermott spent most of his 21 years in the Border Patrol working the San Diego sector. He remembers the “banzai runs,” when immigrants would storm border inspection booths, scattering as they ran past motorists.
“Hopefully you would catch more people than you saw going past you,” said McDermott, who retired in 2008.
The tide turned when the U.S. government launched “Operation Gatekeeper” in 1994, bringing 1,000 additional agents to San Diego. They parked their trucks against a rusting 8-foothigh fence made of Army surplus landing mats, and refused to yield an inch.
As apprehension numbers fell, home values skyrocketed.
But more than manpower helped curb the problem. In 2009, an 18foot-high, 14-mile-long steel mesh fence was completed. This past year the San Diego sector made fewer arrests than in any year since 1968.
“I’m not going to say it’s impossible, but it’s a lot more difficult to cross the border here,” said agency spokesman Steven Pitts.
El Paso, Texas
Burglar bars still protect homes in the Chihuahuita neighborhood near downtown El Paso, Texas, a reminder of when immigrant crossers would break in looking for food. Patricia Rayjosa, a resident of Chihuahuita for 18 years, remembers when migrants crossed the border 50 at a time, or waded north across the Rio Grande.
“One morning, as I went out to feed my dogs, I found … wire cutters. I didn’t see them but I could tell they went across my backyard,” said Rayjosa, 53. Now: “It’s not easy to cross.”
In the early 1990s, El Paso ran second to San Diego in illegal immigrants coming north. Then, in 1993, the Border Patrol launched “Operation Hold the Line,” the first of a series of enforcement actions intended to gain “operational control” of the Southwest border.
It was a shift in strategy from apprehending migrants already in the U.S. to preventing entry in the first place. Within months, illegal crossings in El Paso went from up to 10,000 a day to 500, according to a Government Accountability Office report at the time. Burglaries and car thefts decreased.
To El Paso Mayor John Cook, hinging reform to calls for a “secure bor- der” seems absurd given the changes in his city.
Nogales, Ariz.
Everywhere he goes on his cattle ranch, Jim Chilton has a gun at the ready. He has guns at his front door, guns in his truck, guns on his saddle. His fear? Coming across a bandit or a smuggler on his land northwest of Nogales, Ariz.
Cattleman Gary Thrasher frequently encounters immigrants run- ning through his property east of Douglas, Ariz., and his family lives in dread. Towns right along the border are secured, he said. The result?
“It sends the traffic right into our backyards.”
The question of border security hits close to home to those in southern Arizona. It was here, in 2010, that cattle rancher Robert Krentz was gunned down while checking water lines on his property near Douglas. Authorities believe the killer was involved in smuggling activity.
“The border is not secure,” said Chilton. “Period. Exclamation mark.”
The crackdowns in Texas and California in the1990s turned Arizona’s border into the busiest for smuggling for 15 years running now.
In Nogales, Sheriff Tony Estrada blames border issues not only on the cartels but also on the American demand for drugs. Until that wanes, he said, nothing will change.