Public Radio International - The World
August 12, 2013
It’s a clear, breezy morning on the scrubby hills overlooking the Tijuana River Valley south of San Diego.
Border Patrol jeeps cruise the dirt roads that run up and down the hills along the fence that marks the US-Mexico border. One drags a makeshift rake behind it to comb the road, so agents can later spot fresh footprints.
Mike McCoy, a 71-year-old veterinarian, has spent more than half his life working to protect the estuary formed where this river meets the Pacific Ocean.
He's heading down toward a place called Smuggler’s Gulch.
“This was probably the most difficult cut for them, and the most problematic cut for us,” McCoy said.
By “us” he means the activists and local land managers who fought against a massive earth-moving project that filled in the deep gulch and built a road across it in 2009.
“Before (the road) was going down these switchbacks,” he said. “And that took a long time."
Now, he says, Border Patrol agents just fly right through.
Starting in the 1990s, this place became ground zero in the battle to secure the border.
Back then, hundreds of illegal immigrants swarmed down the hills nightly from Tijuana. The Army Corps of Engineers built a 10-foot high fence, but it wasn’t much of a deterrent. So in 1996, Congress authorized a triple-layer fence to be built along 14 miles of the border.
McCoy and other environmentalists challenged the project based on federal environmental laws.
“The fence, to me, was a real threat to what might occur in the estuary,” he said.
Conservationists worried especially that filling in Smuggler’s Gulch would disrupt the flow of water and change the estuary’s ecology.
And they succeeded in slowing down construction for years.
Then came 9/11, and Congress ordered a massive expansion of the fence project–from 14 miles to 700 miles along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Environmentalists challenged much of that as well, and again slowed construction in many spots.
Paul Ganster, of the Institute for Regional Studies of the Californias at San Diego State University, says that put the Department of Homeland Security in a tough spot.
“It was ordered by Congress to build so many miles of fence by a certain amount of time and they weren’t able to proceed to do this,” he said.
So Congress responded by giving DHS the right to waive all laws that could slow construction of the fence.
“And that removed a major tool of environmentalists and others opposed to the construction,” he said. “And it really removed a lot of the requirements for an open process, for public hearings, things that citizens and communities and environmentalists fought for, really from the '70s.”
Since then, DHS has waived dozens of federal and state laws to build new sections of the fence, some of it across protected land and habitat for endangered and threatened animals.
McCoy says deer and jaguar and Sonoran pronghorn are just some of the species being affected as the fences chop up their breeding grounds.
In some places, fencing has also contributed to flooding, erosion and destruction of habitat.
To date, about 650 miles of the nearly 2000-mile U.S.-Mexico border are fenced off.
But legislators concerned with border security say that’s still not enough.
Florida Republican Marco Rubio spoke on the Senate floor earlier this year in support of the border security component of the senate’s immigration bill. The bill called for hundreds of miles of more fencing, and it would give Homeland Security even more power to waive laws to build it.
“We have a sovereign right to protect out border. And we have a crisis on the southern border of the United States,” Rubio said at the time.
A handful of Democrats fought the waiver, led by Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon.
Wyden told his colleagues, “Strengthening our immigration system should not come at the cost of throwing our environmental laws aside.”
And Wyden argued that the bill should at least include a sunset clause for the waiver.
But the environmental concerns didn’t get much traction. The bill passed the Senate by a wide margin.
Back in San Diego, Shawn Moran of the Border Patrol agents union says more fencing is a good thing. He says the San Diego fence has slowed illegal traffic here to a trickle. And adding hundreds of miles of new fencing probably would help by funneling illegal traffic into areas agents can control, he added.
“It’s not the answer to border security, but it is a primary tool that the border patrol has to slow down things,” he said.
Walking along the border, activist Mike McCoy admits that the environmental impact of all this fencing through the Tijuana River estuary hasn’t been “all bad.” Illegal crossers used to tromp through sensitive areas in the estuary. And he does understand the need for a secure border.
“I just think that we could’ve done better, biologically and ecologically, than what we did with this approach,” he said.
What really rankles McCoy is the supreme trump card held by one federal agency.
“It’s kind of my way or the highway type thing. And that’s not the way America worked to me. We all had a say in what went forward.”
The fate of the new environmental waiver, and the broader immigration bill that it’s part of, is uncertain. The House of Representatives has said it will write its own immigration reform bill, rather than take up the Senate’s bill.
But whatever happens in the Capitol, it’s likely that as the debate over immigration and border security gets louder, environmental concerns will remain barely a whisper.
http://www.pri.org/stories/science/environment/u-s-border-fence-skirts-environmental-review-14659.html
Showing posts with label California. Show all posts
Showing posts with label California. Show all posts
Monday, August 12, 2013
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
A Rusted Gate In The Border Fence Opens For The First Time
KPBS
April 29, 2013
By Adrian Florido
SAN DIEGO — In 2008, the U.S. Border Patrol in San Diego replaced a flimsy fence with a tall, thick one at Friendship Park, a spot where families separated by the border have long come to talk through the fence. They built a gate into it to allow for maintenance on both sides. But it had never been opened, so it rusted shut.
Jim Brown, an architect, negotiated to get Border Patrol to open the gate for the first time ever this Sunday, just for a few minutes. They agreed.
“I came out with some WD-40," he said. "It was kind of comical — a little tiny can from a convenience store, spraying it on the hinges. No, it would not budge. So Border Patrol came out with some torches and what not, and popped it open.”
It just so happened that Sunday, Luis Angulo had come to meet his 5-year-old daughter for the first time — through the fence. She was born in Mexico. He lives in San Diego.
“My sister, she’s a lawyer in Mexico and she told me 'hey, you can try to see your daughter from here,'" he said, as the little girl stuck her fingers through the fence's tight mesh.
Bronwyn Ingram, San Diego Mayor Bob Filner’s fiancée, was standing nearby. She was there to help swing the gate open, and she said stories like Angulo's show that the ties that bind border cities are stronger than the fence that separates them.
“When you come here and you spend time, and you see the families talking together, putting their fingers through the fence to touch each other, it’s really moving," she said.
As crowds gathered on both sides of the fence, Ingram and Filner moved toward the gate. Brown removed a large steel beam lock and swung the gate open. The faces of people on the other side, usually obscured by the fence’s tight mesh, suddenly became clear. Cheers erupted on both sides.
Mayor Filner called Luis Angulo toward the opening. He hesitated, but then his daughter walked through, looking up at him. He picked her up and gave her giant hug.
A few minutes later, two Border Patrol agents secured the gate again. Brown said the Border Patrol had installed a greasing mechanism to keep the gate from rusting shut again. He said he hopes that means opening the gate in a gesture of binational friendship will become a more common occurrence.
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2013/apr/29/rusted-gate-border-fence-opens-first-time/
April 29, 2013
By Adrian Florido
SAN DIEGO — In 2008, the U.S. Border Patrol in San Diego replaced a flimsy fence with a tall, thick one at Friendship Park, a spot where families separated by the border have long come to talk through the fence. They built a gate into it to allow for maintenance on both sides. But it had never been opened, so it rusted shut.
Jim Brown, an architect, negotiated to get Border Patrol to open the gate for the first time ever this Sunday, just for a few minutes. They agreed.
“I came out with some WD-40," he said. "It was kind of comical — a little tiny can from a convenience store, spraying it on the hinges. No, it would not budge. So Border Patrol came out with some torches and what not, and popped it open.”
It just so happened that Sunday, Luis Angulo had come to meet his 5-year-old daughter for the first time — through the fence. She was born in Mexico. He lives in San Diego.
“My sister, she’s a lawyer in Mexico and she told me 'hey, you can try to see your daughter from here,'" he said, as the little girl stuck her fingers through the fence's tight mesh.
Bronwyn Ingram, San Diego Mayor Bob Filner’s fiancée, was standing nearby. She was there to help swing the gate open, and she said stories like Angulo's show that the ties that bind border cities are stronger than the fence that separates them.
“When you come here and you spend time, and you see the families talking together, putting their fingers through the fence to touch each other, it’s really moving," she said.
As crowds gathered on both sides of the fence, Ingram and Filner moved toward the gate. Brown removed a large steel beam lock and swung the gate open. The faces of people on the other side, usually obscured by the fence’s tight mesh, suddenly became clear. Cheers erupted on both sides.
Mayor Filner called Luis Angulo toward the opening. He hesitated, but then his daughter walked through, looking up at him. He picked her up and gave her giant hug.
A few minutes later, two Border Patrol agents secured the gate again. Brown said the Border Patrol had installed a greasing mechanism to keep the gate from rusting shut again. He said he hopes that means opening the gate in a gesture of binational friendship will become a more common occurrence.
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2013/apr/29/rusted-gate-border-fence-opens-first-time/
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Suspected drug smugglers try to leap border fence with Jeep, ramp
Los Angeles Times
October 31, 2012
by John M. Glionna
The rules of the smuggling game across the U.S.-Mexico border have been written unofficially for years: If a bad guy moving drugs or people encounters a border fence, you tunnel under it.
“That area is just west of the Arizona-California line,” spokesman Victor Brabble told the Times. “There’s a floating fence there that we move when the dunes move. I guess the only way to get past it is to scale it.”
In 2007, Border Patrol Agent Luis Aguilar was killed near the same area when he was deliberately struck by a vehicle while attempting to deploy a controlled tire deflation device.
The region, handled by the Border Patrol’s Yuma, Ariz., office, has been rife with underground tunnels allowing drug dealers to move product. This summer, U.S. authorities uncovered a 240-yard-long tunnel, which had been in use near Yuma for nearly three months. Agents characterize the bust as a "major" find, saying the tunnel included sophisticated work such as electricity and ventilation.
Authorities say that 156 tunnels have been uncovered along the U.S. Southwestern border since the early 1990s. Three out of four were discovered after 2001, the majority of which were incomplete.
Clever detective work and improved tunnel detection technology have made underground trafficking more difficult, authorities said. But the huge drug quantities heading across the border could also be explained by a surge in marijuana production in Mexico and, in particular, Baja California, where Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel has been expanding its influence.
In eight years, the U.S. Border Patrol’s biggest find was a nearly half-mile-long tunnel south of San Diego in 2006 – that’s the length of seven football fields.
But like in the recent Jeep incident, sometimes the evidence is right there before your eyes.
Agents from the Yuma station had been patrolling the Imperial Sand Dunes area when they spotted the silver Jeep Cherokee attempting to scale the fence. What the smugglers left behind was a 2,000-pound vehicle perched precariously on the precipice of the boundary.
Authorities say they seized both the vehicle and the ramp, adding that it wasn’t clear if the smugglers were trying to spirit drugs, people or both into the U.S.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-smugglers-jeep-border-ramp-20121031,0,6959278.story
October 31, 2012
by John M. Glionna
The rules of the smuggling game across the U.S.-Mexico border have been written unofficially for years: If a bad guy moving drugs or people encounters a border fence, you tunnel under it.
But a group of enterprising – or desperate –
smugglers got caught trying an alternative method. They built a flimsy makeshift
ramp and tried to drive over a U.S. Border Patrol fence
near the Imperial Sand Dunes in Southern California.
A U.S. Border Patrol spokeswoman in Arizona told
the Los Angeles Times that a pair of suspected smugglers
tried to drive over a 14-foot-high fence in southeastern Arizona just after
midnight Tuesday but abandoned the vehicle and fled back into Mexico as agents
approached.
“That area is just west of the Arizona-California line,” spokesman Victor Brabble told the Times. “There’s a floating fence there that we move when the dunes move. I guess the only way to get past it is to scale it.”
In 2007, Border Patrol Agent Luis Aguilar was killed near the same area when he was deliberately struck by a vehicle while attempting to deploy a controlled tire deflation device.
The region, handled by the Border Patrol’s Yuma, Ariz., office, has been rife with underground tunnels allowing drug dealers to move product. This summer, U.S. authorities uncovered a 240-yard-long tunnel, which had been in use near Yuma for nearly three months. Agents characterize the bust as a "major" find, saying the tunnel included sophisticated work such as electricity and ventilation.
Authorities say that 156 tunnels have been uncovered along the U.S. Southwestern border since the early 1990s. Three out of four were discovered after 2001, the majority of which were incomplete.
Clever detective work and improved tunnel detection technology have made underground trafficking more difficult, authorities said. But the huge drug quantities heading across the border could also be explained by a surge in marijuana production in Mexico and, in particular, Baja California, where Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel has been expanding its influence.
In eight years, the U.S. Border Patrol’s biggest find was a nearly half-mile-long tunnel south of San Diego in 2006 – that’s the length of seven football fields.
But like in the recent Jeep incident, sometimes the evidence is right there before your eyes.
Agents from the Yuma station had been patrolling the Imperial Sand Dunes area when they spotted the silver Jeep Cherokee attempting to scale the fence. What the smugglers left behind was a 2,000-pound vehicle perched precariously on the precipice of the boundary.
Authorities say they seized both the vehicle and the ramp, adding that it wasn’t clear if the smugglers were trying to spirit drugs, people or both into the U.S.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-smugglers-jeep-border-ramp-20121031,0,6959278.story
Saturday, October 6, 2012
Border Patrol promises consistent access to Friendship Park
San Diego Untion Tribune
October 6, 2012
by Jordan England-Nelson
October 6, 2012
by Jordan England-Nelson
IMPERIAL BEACH — The Border Patrol on Saturday made a new commitment to providing consistent access to Friendship Park, a concrete plaza split by the U.S.-Mexico border fence where friends and families on either side have gathered for generations.
Friends of Friendship Park, a coalition that has pushed for greater access and more regular hours of operation at the site, praised the new arrangement.
Access had been intermittent since 2009, when ground was broken for a secondary fence extending from Smuggler’s Gulch to the sea, said the Rev. John Fanestil, a Methodist pastor and a spokesman for the coalition. He said Border Patrol agents were not consistently on call to let visitors inside, leading to an “atmosphere of uncertainty” which meant that “for all intents and purposes, the park was not accessible in any meaningful way.”
Border Patrol spokesman Jerry Conlin said the park was never officially closed, but that “enforcement takes priority” and agents were not always available to let people in. Rotating staff will now be available Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Some groups have objected to Friendship Park because they see it as a way for undocumented immigrants to visit their families without having to return to Mexico. Others object to what the park has come to represent.
Peter Nunez, chairman of the Center for Immigration Studies, a research organization that calls for less immigration, said he has nothing against families coming together at the site. But he criticized the way immigrant advocates have exploited the park.
“The fence symbolizes in their minds the absurdity of immigration law,” Nunez said. “But the park was never meant to symbolize anything about immigration. It’s about friendship between two neighboring countries.”
Friendship Park came about after First Lady Pat Nixon’s 1971 inauguration of Border Field State Park, where she told crowds on either side of the barbed-wire demarcation line: “I hate to see a fence anywhere.”
Fanestil has been visiting Friendship Park for years to administer Sunday Communion. He used to pass wafers through chinks in the fence and into the mouths of congregants on the other side, resulting in a distinct display of transnational transubstantiation.
Steel mesh was added to the primary fence earlier this year to prevent people from passing objects from one side to the other.
Fanestil, who plans on resuming border sacraments today, said he is looking for ways to continue his two-nations-under-God take on the holy rites. He is reaching out to a Mexican minister interested in simultaneously performing the service on the Mexican side of the fence. They even want to use the same loaf of bread, splitting it beforehand and taking one half to each side.
“Newcomers say it [the mesh] reminds them of visiting someone in jail,” Fanestil said. “But you can still strike up a conversation and make friends. That’s why the park is named that way.”
Thursday, July 12, 2012
'Extraordinary' U.S.-Mexico drug tunnel may be Sinaloa cartel's
Los Angeles Times
July 12, 2012
by William C. Rempel
The “fully operational” tunnel is a 755-foot passageway, tall enough for a 6-foot person to walk through, that burrows under the border fence, a park and a water canal. It connects a small, nondescript warehouse on the U.S. side to an inoperative ice manufacturing plant behind a strip club in Mexico.
It is outfitted with lights, fans and a ventilation system. The vertical shafts on both sides of the border descend 57 feet, creating what officials said were significant engineering challenges.
“I would suspect that professional engineers were cooperating with the builders, if not working on site,” said Doug Coleman, special agent in charge of the DEA's Phoenix field office. He said construction might have taken at least a year and cost an estimated $1.5 million to $2 million.
Two couriers were arrested, one of them a U.S. citizen. A third person also has been arrested in a case that Coleman said was “only beginning.” Coleman declined to answer questions about the continuing investigation.
DEA investigators who searched the warehouse found tons of sandy soil stored in dozens of 55-gallon drums. The stored dirt “suggested there must be a tunnel,” Coleman said at a news conference Thursday.
Access to the tunnel was located under a 2,000-gallon water tank that could be moved only with the use of a forklift. Investigators found the vertical shaft lined with 4-by-6-inch wooden planks. The tunnel itself is lined with plywood and reinforced with the same planks. It is about 6 feet 6 high and 4 feet wide.
On the Mexico side, access was found in the ice house, where investigators also found stacks of 200-pound seed bags apparently filled with additional tons of excavated sand and dirt. Entry to the vertical shaft was underwater. Investigators had to drain a large tank to get to it.
Asked to compare the tunnel to nearly 140 others found along the Mexican border with Arizona and California in the past 10 years, Coleman said he had seen nothing like it. “It's an extraordinary piece of engineering,” he said.
The one-story warehouse, part of a strip mall only a few steps from the San Luis border crossing, had been under surveillance by DEA agents for several months as a suspected stash location. The ice house also had been a suspect site in the past, raided at various times in recent years by Mexican drug agents without anything suspicious turning up.
Coleman said that although the people behind the tunnel had yet to be identified, “it's a good guess” that it will be tied to the Sinaloa cartel and people employed by drug boss Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman.
DEA officials said estimates that the tunnel could have cost as much as $2 million were based on initial analysis of the materials used in construction. They speculated that sophisticated underground sensors and directional devices might have been used to assure that the tunnel from the Mexico side actually met the vertical shaft under the San Luis warehouse.
Also found at the warehouse were two vans formerly operated by the U.S. Postal Service, faded remnants of their identifying decals still visible. Investigators believe the cartel intended to disguise some of its drug shipments as U.S. mail.
Jay Crede of Homeland Security Investigations said the tunnel was of obvious concern to his department, but he celebrated its discovery. He called the loss of the tunnel “a blow to … traffickers.”
Another DEA veteran, Coleman aide Chris Feistl, went further. “As drug cases go, we didn't get a whole lot of dope in this seizure,” he said, “but when you think about how much cartel time and effort and money went into this tunnel — we really ruined somebody's day.”
The 39 pounds of methamphetamine has an estimated wholesale value to the cartel of nearly $700,000. Its street value is about five times higher.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-drug-tunnel-details-20120712,0,612829.story
July 12, 2012
by William C. Rempel
SAN LUIS, Ariz. — The powerful Sinaloa drug cartel
is believed to be behind one of the most sophisticated and well-engineered smuggling
tunnels ever found along the U.S.-Mexico border,
according to U.S. drug enforcement officials who announced the discovery
Thursday in Yuma.
The “fully operational” tunnel is a 755-foot passageway, tall enough for a 6-foot person to walk through, that burrows under the border fence, a park and a water canal. It connects a small, nondescript warehouse on the U.S. side to an inoperative ice manufacturing plant behind a strip club in Mexico.
It is outfitted with lights, fans and a ventilation system. The vertical shafts on both sides of the border descend 57 feet, creating what officials said were significant engineering challenges.
“I would suspect that professional engineers were cooperating with the builders, if not working on site,” said Doug Coleman, special agent in charge of the DEA's Phoenix field office. He said construction might have taken at least a year and cost an estimated $1.5 million to $2 million.
It was unclear how much, if any, contraband may
have been smuggled through the recently completed tunnel, but authorities said
its existence was exposed by the seizure last week of a 39-pound load of methamphetamine.
The drugs were found by state police during a traffic stop on the highway
between San Luis and Yuma and then traced back to the warehouse.
Two couriers were arrested, one of them a U.S. citizen. A third person also has been arrested in a case that Coleman said was “only beginning.” Coleman declined to answer questions about the continuing investigation.
DEA investigators who searched the warehouse found tons of sandy soil stored in dozens of 55-gallon drums. The stored dirt “suggested there must be a tunnel,” Coleman said at a news conference Thursday.
Access to the tunnel was located under a 2,000-gallon water tank that could be moved only with the use of a forklift. Investigators found the vertical shaft lined with 4-by-6-inch wooden planks. The tunnel itself is lined with plywood and reinforced with the same planks. It is about 6 feet 6 high and 4 feet wide.
On the Mexico side, access was found in the ice house, where investigators also found stacks of 200-pound seed bags apparently filled with additional tons of excavated sand and dirt. Entry to the vertical shaft was underwater. Investigators had to drain a large tank to get to it.
Asked to compare the tunnel to nearly 140 others found along the Mexican border with Arizona and California in the past 10 years, Coleman said he had seen nothing like it. “It's an extraordinary piece of engineering,” he said.
The one-story warehouse, part of a strip mall only a few steps from the San Luis border crossing, had been under surveillance by DEA agents for several months as a suspected stash location. The ice house also had been a suspect site in the past, raided at various times in recent years by Mexican drug agents without anything suspicious turning up.
Coleman said that although the people behind the tunnel had yet to be identified, “it's a good guess” that it will be tied to the Sinaloa cartel and people employed by drug boss Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman.
DEA officials said estimates that the tunnel could have cost as much as $2 million were based on initial analysis of the materials used in construction. They speculated that sophisticated underground sensors and directional devices might have been used to assure that the tunnel from the Mexico side actually met the vertical shaft under the San Luis warehouse.
Also found at the warehouse were two vans formerly operated by the U.S. Postal Service, faded remnants of their identifying decals still visible. Investigators believe the cartel intended to disguise some of its drug shipments as U.S. mail.
Jay Crede of Homeland Security Investigations said the tunnel was of obvious concern to his department, but he celebrated its discovery. He called the loss of the tunnel “a blow to … traffickers.”
Another DEA veteran, Coleman aide Chris Feistl, went further. “As drug cases go, we didn't get a whole lot of dope in this seizure,” he said, “but when you think about how much cartel time and effort and money went into this tunnel — we really ruined somebody's day.”
The 39 pounds of methamphetamine has an estimated wholesale value to the cartel of nearly $700,000. Its street value is about five times higher.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-drug-tunnel-details-20120712,0,612829.story
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
One giant gesture: La Mano de la Paz
San Diego City Beat
March 21, 2012
by Kinsee Morlan
Standing at the western end of the United States / Mexico border fence is like being plopped into the middle of an awkward conversation between Frida Kahlo and Dick Cheney. Nowhere are the differences between the two cultures more apparent.
During the past few years, Playas de Tijuana has undergone a facelift. A nice, new wooden boardwalk runs alongside the beach, businesses are popping up and a handful of noisy vendors—hawking fresh coconuts, churros and frozen treats—pitch their goods. The bullring hovers in the distance as for-sale, fighting roosters run freely around a dusty lot nearby. Tourists and locals frequent the revamped park (recently renamed Parque del Mar, although locals don’t call it that), some to snap photos, others to take advantage of cell-phone signals that don’t always recognize the precise location of the international boundary. A large fiberglass sculpture of dolphins frolicking in the sea has been placed in the middle of a concrete slab in the park, just feet away from the fence.
On the U.S. side of the border, signs of new construction are visible, too. A huge crane casts a shadow across the fence. It’s parked a few feet in front of a temporary construction platform that stretches out into the Pacific Ocean. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is in the middle of replacing the old border fence—a rusted, ragtag wall made of recycled helicopter landing pads from the Gulf War—with a much higher, sturdier barrier. A new tower structure, complete with what appear to be video cameras, adds to the militarized feeling—one of the reasons few folks visit the surrounding state park these days. But no matter how high the fence is or how many Border Patrol agents sit at the ready, it all seems futile—the fence still ends abruptly in the ocean, met by the vastness of the sea.
Artists have already responded to the new fence, covering its brown, oxidized steel columns with white messages and images commenting on, and questioning the need for, a higher fence. One artist has taken the iconic street sign that warns freeway drivers about immigrant families darting across the road, flipped the image on its side and armed the father, who’s pulling a woman and child forward, with a small bundle of balloons.
“This should be a very, very important place, but it’s like nothing is here to let you know,” Youn Woo Chaa says, squinting in the afternoon sun as he looks out over the border fence. “It’s a little strange. And the dolphin piece, why is that here? It doesn’t make sense for me as an artist.”
Chaa, a Korean artist with long black dreads dangling down his back, first set foot on the site more than 15 years ago. It was different then—not as developed on either side— and he remembers being astounded by the openness of the border. Born in Seoul, his idea of an international border came from the one separating South Korea from North Korea. “You cannot cross through that border,” he laughs. “Maybe if you’re a 007 secret agent or something.”
The closest Chaa ever got to his hometown border was the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Three years of military service is required in South Korea (up to 10 years is mandatory in the North), and Chaa was stationed in the DMZ for a short time before too many deaths, mostly caused by friendly fire, exploding mines and other accidents, forced a commander to relocate his unit, Chaa says.
Chaa eventually married a woman from the United States and moved to Los Angeles. He liked the idea of being able to cross an international border whenever he wanted with relative ease—no mines or gunfire—so he started making regular trips to Tijuana. He began feeling strong connections to the Mexican people. The poverty in the region reminded him of Korea in the ’60s, and though he didn’t speak Spanish, he felt as though Mexican people understood him and vice versa.
“It’s like I can open the curtains to their minds,” he says. “I know who they truly are, what they want and how to talk to them. I feel much closer to Korean people when I’m here in Mexico.”
The language barrier is partially responsible for giving Chaa his big idea. He noticed that when Mexicans said hello to him, they often nodded their heads and threw up a quick peace sign, as if trying to communicate friendliness without having to understand words. The image stuck with him, and while visiting the border fence in Playas about a year ago, he suddenly knew exactly what he needed to do.
“La Mano de la Paz", a giant hand making a peace sign—that’s what the park needed. Nothing too kitschy or corny. Something elegant and interactive with a water feature at the base of the sculpture that misted, creating a rainbow at certain angles, plus an interactive component that responded to noise by generating the image of a snowflake on a circular LCD screen below the sculpture’s elevated base. The hand would need to be at least 15 feet high and made of galvanized steel wires, welded and wound together in a way that made each finger end in its own unique fingerprint.
“After I got the idea, I got stuck on it, and I started hating those stupid dolphins even more,” Chaa says. “That sculpture is falling apart, anyway. It’s fine for some hotel or resort front, but not here. The border is right there, you know?”
When Angel Hernández Huerta got the call from the elderly lady at a basket shop in Rosarito, he was skeptical. Probably just another gringo looking for a weaver to make a bunch of cheap goods, he thought. He arranged a meeting in a parking lot, and when he saw that Chaa was Asian, not American, his wariness grew. What was this guy really up to? Hernández pretended not to speak or understand any English. He listened as Chaa explained to the translator that he was an artist looking for a professional weaver who could collaborate on his art pieces. Eventually, Hernández decided that Chaa was harmless, maybe even interesting.
“Now Angel’s like a brother. We’ve been working together six or seven years,” Chaa says, patting the husky artisan on the back
But finding Hernández took much longer than that one parking-lot introduction.
Twelve years ago, Chaa stopped liking the art he’d been making. He was becoming known for his ancient-artifact-inspired work, but it was starting to feel fake. He wanted a more direct connection to primitive peoples and their art. While meditating in the desert one day, he got his answer: Go to the Amazon.
“I was, like, Amazon dot-com? What? Why?” he says.
Eventually, the voice in his head made it clear that he should go to the Amazon jungle. A few months later, he bought a one-way ticket, packed a backpack and made the trip. At first, he was interested in investigating the “art instinct.” He wanted to know if primitive people had an inclination to make and own art, or if it was ingrained through economics and other external influences.
“I didn’t have to go around asking that question, though, because they had hanging art in their house,” he says. “I asked, ‘What is the function?’ And it’s just beautiful—that is the function. So, I got my answer the first week.”
Chaa wandered from village to village, witnessing what had become of the indigenous peoples’ way of life, which had been devastated by the Brazilian government’s pursuit of the Amazon’s natural resources.
The Brazilian military wasn’t exactly accommodating—Chaa managed to get himself arrested and put in a makeshift prison. He escaped, but was shot with a pellet gun in the process. He calls getting shot “the big accident” that ultimately helped him find his way.
“I thought, ‘This is so bad; this is so, so bad. And I cannot do anything about this reality. What can I do?’” he recalls.
He left the Amazon knowing he had to make art that would tell the story of the plight of the indigenous people. He tried a couple of different methods before settling on weaving, a skill he’d seen on display in the villages he visited. With no background in textiles, he taught himself traditional weaving techniques but replaced the geometric patterns with portraiture and other real-life images. The process, though, took too long. His hands were starting to cramp and he couldn’t do the work himself or find anyone in L.A. willing to help. So, he went looking for a weaver and a better technique in Mexico.
The result was stunning. With Hernández by his side, Chaa is able to make large-scale weavings that, from afar, look as well-done as a Renaissance painting. Close up, viewers see that the images are created through carefully woven colored fibers, similar to the those found in baskets. An exhibition of the work is on view at the Universidad Tecnologica de Tijuana through April 29.
Chaa’s been weaving for a decade now, but his idea for the peace-sign sculpture required learning a new skill: welding. Because of his experience with weaving, he knew he could do it as long as he found the right teacher.
Victor Chavez has run a successful welding shop and storefront in Rosarito for 12 years. At the height of his business, back when tourism was booming, he had 40 workers in his factory making everything from custom gates to those giant, familiar ants made of welded rebar and rocks. Chavez is actually working on a book about the ants—he claims his shop was the first to carry them, and they’ve since become one of the most popular Mexican souvenirs.
Chaa and Hernández knew Chavez was their guy. They showed him the drawing of the sculpture and asked if it was possible. Chavez didn’t know, but he was willing to try.
“Art, I start with Chaa,” Chavez says proudly. “Before I made artisan things for tourists. I do real art with him. It’s different when you’re making art. It’s different than the things I normally make. When you’re making art, you don’t want to stop, you know?”
Chavez says Hernández learned to weld in three days. Chaa’s getting it, too, and he’s teaching himself how to galvanize steel because he wants more control over the end result. The ragtag team has made three small-scale hand sculptures so far, and they estimate that about 1,000 hours were spent on each one.
“Even with my weaving pieces, people say it’s between art and insanity,” Chaa says, holding up one of the hands. “This is really insane.”
Back at the park near the border, Hernández tells me he might like welding more than weaving. He doesn’t mind staying up all night with Chavez and Chaa working on the hands. He and Chavez both say the project is the biggest, most exciting thing they’ve ever worked on. And they’re starting to hate the dolphin sculpture almost as much as Chaa does.
“A lot of Mexican people, we don’t want that thing,” Hernández says. “It’s so sad for me; the border line. It keeps going up and up, higher and higher. So, we need to do something nice to break that feeling.”
Jorge Conde, director of cultural affairs at the Universidad Tecnologica de Tijuana, is somewhat of a bigwig in the Tijuana art scene. He says he’s behind “La Mano de la Paz” 100 percent.
“I really love the location of the piece,” he says as he shows Chaa’s exhibition, which he curated. “The concept is very important to say, ‘Latin America is a continent of peace.’ And it won’t be kitsch at all. Not in the hands of Chaa.”
Conde stands back from one of Chaa’s large-scale pieces, a woven portrait of a nude woman with her back to the viewer. “This one is my favorite. Just look at it, see the shadow on her back?”
Conde will be a driving force behind getting the necessary permits and approval for removing the dolphins and mounting “La Mano de la Paz.” He’s joined forces with Martina Montenegro, director of the arts nonprofit Casa de Cultura Playas, who’s also a fan of the project.
“It’s very important because it’s related to hope, peace and fraternity between two countries,” Montenegro says. “The fence has a very negative impact, when you’re talking about two countries that are supposed to be friends. This is not the way you treat your friends.”
Funding for the project will come through a Kickstarter campaign. The team is hoping to raise $50,000 through crowd-sourcing, offering small versions of the sculpture and things like T-shirts and hoodies in exchange for higher bids; they say they’ll secure the rest of the funding through grants and private donations. If enough money is raised, Chaa, Hernández and Chavez will begin work on the full-size version of the hand this summer. They hope to have the piece done and installed by the end of the year.
The biggest hurdle, though, could be figuring out who has jurisdiction in the park.
“That’s a good question,” laughs Margarita Diaz, director of the nonprofit Proyecto Fronterizo de Educación Ambiental. “The land is everyone’s and no one’s.”
Diaz, another supporter of “La Mano de la Paz,” says the land is being transferred from state to city property and that her nonprofit, which was selected by a dozen nonprofits to represent them, has submitted a formal request to have the land turned over to them. She says that since Mexican President Felipe Calderón and his wife came to visit Playas de Tijuana in 2010, demanding the region be redeveloped, the state stepped in and did a lot of quick construction—including adding the dolphin sculpture—without first checking with the community.
“It’s a mess,” Diaz says. “And no one likes those dolphins. They’re falling apart and dangerous. I want to rip them down with my bare hands.”
Getting the Instituto Municipal de Cultura y Arte (IMAC), the organization that oversees Tijuana’s public-art program, on their side could be a challenge, too. Elsa Arnaiz Rosas, director of IMAC, says she enjoys the present art.
“I’ve seen the dolphins, and I know they do need maintenance, but I think they’re lovely,” she says. “I wouldn’t want to see the sculpture go.”
On the way back from touring Chaa’s art show at the university, the “La Mano de la Paz” team is spread out in a big van. Conde slows the vehicle after it merges onto one of Tijuana’s main highways and points toward two huge construction projects near El Trompo, Tijuana’s children’s museum.
“That’s going to be the Human Rights Museum,” he says. “And that will be the Centro Estatal de Las Artes, a new art center.”
Chavez smiles and says that things in Mexico are starting to improve. He’s seen his business drop by more than 80 percent since drug-war violence erupted a few years ago and tourism plummeted, but he hopes things will get better.
“How long do you think before Americans forget all this violence stuff and come back?” he asks. “I think one, maybe two years. I think ‘La Mano de la Paz’ could help. Peace—we have a lot to learn here in Mexico, but this sculpture could be a start.”
http://www.sdcitybeat.com/sandiego/article-10316-one-giant-gesture-la.html
March 21, 2012
by Kinsee Morlan
Standing at the western end of the United States / Mexico border fence is like being plopped into the middle of an awkward conversation between Frida Kahlo and Dick Cheney. Nowhere are the differences between the two cultures more apparent.
During the past few years, Playas de Tijuana has undergone a facelift. A nice, new wooden boardwalk runs alongside the beach, businesses are popping up and a handful of noisy vendors—hawking fresh coconuts, churros and frozen treats—pitch their goods. The bullring hovers in the distance as for-sale, fighting roosters run freely around a dusty lot nearby. Tourists and locals frequent the revamped park (recently renamed Parque del Mar, although locals don’t call it that), some to snap photos, others to take advantage of cell-phone signals that don’t always recognize the precise location of the international boundary. A large fiberglass sculpture of dolphins frolicking in the sea has been placed in the middle of a concrete slab in the park, just feet away from the fence.
On the U.S. side of the border, signs of new construction are visible, too. A huge crane casts a shadow across the fence. It’s parked a few feet in front of a temporary construction platform that stretches out into the Pacific Ocean. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is in the middle of replacing the old border fence—a rusted, ragtag wall made of recycled helicopter landing pads from the Gulf War—with a much higher, sturdier barrier. A new tower structure, complete with what appear to be video cameras, adds to the militarized feeling—one of the reasons few folks visit the surrounding state park these days. But no matter how high the fence is or how many Border Patrol agents sit at the ready, it all seems futile—the fence still ends abruptly in the ocean, met by the vastness of the sea.
Artists have already responded to the new fence, covering its brown, oxidized steel columns with white messages and images commenting on, and questioning the need for, a higher fence. One artist has taken the iconic street sign that warns freeway drivers about immigrant families darting across the road, flipped the image on its side and armed the father, who’s pulling a woman and child forward, with a small bundle of balloons.
“This should be a very, very important place, but it’s like nothing is here to let you know,” Youn Woo Chaa says, squinting in the afternoon sun as he looks out over the border fence. “It’s a little strange. And the dolphin piece, why is that here? It doesn’t make sense for me as an artist.”
Chaa, a Korean artist with long black dreads dangling down his back, first set foot on the site more than 15 years ago. It was different then—not as developed on either side— and he remembers being astounded by the openness of the border. Born in Seoul, his idea of an international border came from the one separating South Korea from North Korea. “You cannot cross through that border,” he laughs. “Maybe if you’re a 007 secret agent or something.”
The closest Chaa ever got to his hometown border was the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Three years of military service is required in South Korea (up to 10 years is mandatory in the North), and Chaa was stationed in the DMZ for a short time before too many deaths, mostly caused by friendly fire, exploding mines and other accidents, forced a commander to relocate his unit, Chaa says.
Chaa eventually married a woman from the United States and moved to Los Angeles. He liked the idea of being able to cross an international border whenever he wanted with relative ease—no mines or gunfire—so he started making regular trips to Tijuana. He began feeling strong connections to the Mexican people. The poverty in the region reminded him of Korea in the ’60s, and though he didn’t speak Spanish, he felt as though Mexican people understood him and vice versa.
“It’s like I can open the curtains to their minds,” he says. “I know who they truly are, what they want and how to talk to them. I feel much closer to Korean people when I’m here in Mexico.”
The language barrier is partially responsible for giving Chaa his big idea. He noticed that when Mexicans said hello to him, they often nodded their heads and threw up a quick peace sign, as if trying to communicate friendliness without having to understand words. The image stuck with him, and while visiting the border fence in Playas about a year ago, he suddenly knew exactly what he needed to do.
“La Mano de la Paz", a giant hand making a peace sign—that’s what the park needed. Nothing too kitschy or corny. Something elegant and interactive with a water feature at the base of the sculpture that misted, creating a rainbow at certain angles, plus an interactive component that responded to noise by generating the image of a snowflake on a circular LCD screen below the sculpture’s elevated base. The hand would need to be at least 15 feet high and made of galvanized steel wires, welded and wound together in a way that made each finger end in its own unique fingerprint.
“After I got the idea, I got stuck on it, and I started hating those stupid dolphins even more,” Chaa says. “That sculpture is falling apart, anyway. It’s fine for some hotel or resort front, but not here. The border is right there, you know?”
When Angel Hernández Huerta got the call from the elderly lady at a basket shop in Rosarito, he was skeptical. Probably just another gringo looking for a weaver to make a bunch of cheap goods, he thought. He arranged a meeting in a parking lot, and when he saw that Chaa was Asian, not American, his wariness grew. What was this guy really up to? Hernández pretended not to speak or understand any English. He listened as Chaa explained to the translator that he was an artist looking for a professional weaver who could collaborate on his art pieces. Eventually, Hernández decided that Chaa was harmless, maybe even interesting.
“Now Angel’s like a brother. We’ve been working together six or seven years,” Chaa says, patting the husky artisan on the back
But finding Hernández took much longer than that one parking-lot introduction.
Twelve years ago, Chaa stopped liking the art he’d been making. He was becoming known for his ancient-artifact-inspired work, but it was starting to feel fake. He wanted a more direct connection to primitive peoples and their art. While meditating in the desert one day, he got his answer: Go to the Amazon.
“I was, like, Amazon dot-com? What? Why?” he says.
Eventually, the voice in his head made it clear that he should go to the Amazon jungle. A few months later, he bought a one-way ticket, packed a backpack and made the trip. At first, he was interested in investigating the “art instinct.” He wanted to know if primitive people had an inclination to make and own art, or if it was ingrained through economics and other external influences.
“I didn’t have to go around asking that question, though, because they had hanging art in their house,” he says. “I asked, ‘What is the function?’ And it’s just beautiful—that is the function. So, I got my answer the first week.”
Chaa wandered from village to village, witnessing what had become of the indigenous peoples’ way of life, which had been devastated by the Brazilian government’s pursuit of the Amazon’s natural resources.
The Brazilian military wasn’t exactly accommodating—Chaa managed to get himself arrested and put in a makeshift prison. He escaped, but was shot with a pellet gun in the process. He calls getting shot “the big accident” that ultimately helped him find his way.
“I thought, ‘This is so bad; this is so, so bad. And I cannot do anything about this reality. What can I do?’” he recalls.
He left the Amazon knowing he had to make art that would tell the story of the plight of the indigenous people. He tried a couple of different methods before settling on weaving, a skill he’d seen on display in the villages he visited. With no background in textiles, he taught himself traditional weaving techniques but replaced the geometric patterns with portraiture and other real-life images. The process, though, took too long. His hands were starting to cramp and he couldn’t do the work himself or find anyone in L.A. willing to help. So, he went looking for a weaver and a better technique in Mexico.
The result was stunning. With Hernández by his side, Chaa is able to make large-scale weavings that, from afar, look as well-done as a Renaissance painting. Close up, viewers see that the images are created through carefully woven colored fibers, similar to the those found in baskets. An exhibition of the work is on view at the Universidad Tecnologica de Tijuana through April 29.
Chaa’s been weaving for a decade now, but his idea for the peace-sign sculpture required learning a new skill: welding. Because of his experience with weaving, he knew he could do it as long as he found the right teacher.
Victor Chavez has run a successful welding shop and storefront in Rosarito for 12 years. At the height of his business, back when tourism was booming, he had 40 workers in his factory making everything from custom gates to those giant, familiar ants made of welded rebar and rocks. Chavez is actually working on a book about the ants—he claims his shop was the first to carry them, and they’ve since become one of the most popular Mexican souvenirs.
Chaa and Hernández knew Chavez was their guy. They showed him the drawing of the sculpture and asked if it was possible. Chavez didn’t know, but he was willing to try.
“Art, I start with Chaa,” Chavez says proudly. “Before I made artisan things for tourists. I do real art with him. It’s different when you’re making art. It’s different than the things I normally make. When you’re making art, you don’t want to stop, you know?”
Chavez says Hernández learned to weld in three days. Chaa’s getting it, too, and he’s teaching himself how to galvanize steel because he wants more control over the end result. The ragtag team has made three small-scale hand sculptures so far, and they estimate that about 1,000 hours were spent on each one.
“Even with my weaving pieces, people say it’s between art and insanity,” Chaa says, holding up one of the hands. “This is really insane.”
Back at the park near the border, Hernández tells me he might like welding more than weaving. He doesn’t mind staying up all night with Chavez and Chaa working on the hands. He and Chavez both say the project is the biggest, most exciting thing they’ve ever worked on. And they’re starting to hate the dolphin sculpture almost as much as Chaa does.
“A lot of Mexican people, we don’t want that thing,” Hernández says. “It’s so sad for me; the border line. It keeps going up and up, higher and higher. So, we need to do something nice to break that feeling.”
Jorge Conde, director of cultural affairs at the Universidad Tecnologica de Tijuana, is somewhat of a bigwig in the Tijuana art scene. He says he’s behind “La Mano de la Paz” 100 percent.
“I really love the location of the piece,” he says as he shows Chaa’s exhibition, which he curated. “The concept is very important to say, ‘Latin America is a continent of peace.’ And it won’t be kitsch at all. Not in the hands of Chaa.”
Conde stands back from one of Chaa’s large-scale pieces, a woven portrait of a nude woman with her back to the viewer. “This one is my favorite. Just look at it, see the shadow on her back?”
Conde will be a driving force behind getting the necessary permits and approval for removing the dolphins and mounting “La Mano de la Paz.” He’s joined forces with Martina Montenegro, director of the arts nonprofit Casa de Cultura Playas, who’s also a fan of the project.
“It’s very important because it’s related to hope, peace and fraternity between two countries,” Montenegro says. “The fence has a very negative impact, when you’re talking about two countries that are supposed to be friends. This is not the way you treat your friends.”
Funding for the project will come through a Kickstarter campaign. The team is hoping to raise $50,000 through crowd-sourcing, offering small versions of the sculpture and things like T-shirts and hoodies in exchange for higher bids; they say they’ll secure the rest of the funding through grants and private donations. If enough money is raised, Chaa, Hernández and Chavez will begin work on the full-size version of the hand this summer. They hope to have the piece done and installed by the end of the year.
The biggest hurdle, though, could be figuring out who has jurisdiction in the park.
“That’s a good question,” laughs Margarita Diaz, director of the nonprofit Proyecto Fronterizo de Educación Ambiental. “The land is everyone’s and no one’s.”
Diaz, another supporter of “La Mano de la Paz,” says the land is being transferred from state to city property and that her nonprofit, which was selected by a dozen nonprofits to represent them, has submitted a formal request to have the land turned over to them. She says that since Mexican President Felipe Calderón and his wife came to visit Playas de Tijuana in 2010, demanding the region be redeveloped, the state stepped in and did a lot of quick construction—including adding the dolphin sculpture—without first checking with the community.
“It’s a mess,” Diaz says. “And no one likes those dolphins. They’re falling apart and dangerous. I want to rip them down with my bare hands.”
Getting the Instituto Municipal de Cultura y Arte (IMAC), the organization that oversees Tijuana’s public-art program, on their side could be a challenge, too. Elsa Arnaiz Rosas, director of IMAC, says she enjoys the present art.
“I’ve seen the dolphins, and I know they do need maintenance, but I think they’re lovely,” she says. “I wouldn’t want to see the sculpture go.”
On the way back from touring Chaa’s art show at the university, the “La Mano de la Paz” team is spread out in a big van. Conde slows the vehicle after it merges onto one of Tijuana’s main highways and points toward two huge construction projects near El Trompo, Tijuana’s children’s museum.
“That’s going to be the Human Rights Museum,” he says. “And that will be the Centro Estatal de Las Artes, a new art center.”
Chavez smiles and says that things in Mexico are starting to improve. He’s seen his business drop by more than 80 percent since drug-war violence erupted a few years ago and tourism plummeted, but he hopes things will get better.
“How long do you think before Americans forget all this violence stuff and come back?” he asks. “I think one, maybe two years. I think ‘La Mano de la Paz’ could help. Peace—we have a lot to learn here in Mexico, but this sculpture could be a start.”
http://www.sdcitybeat.com/sandiego/article-10316-one-giant-gesture-la.html
Monday, February 20, 2012
Pot-smuggling tunnels in Tijuana grow more elaborate
McClatchy / Boston Herald
February 20, 2012
by Tim Johnson
TIJUANA, Mexico _ When smuggling goes smoothly for the marijuana division of the huge Sinaloa Cartel, cross-border deliveries unfold with clockwork precision.
Harvested marijuana arrives in plastic-wrapped bales to a depot hidden among the rundown warehouses on the Mexican side of the concrete U.S. border fence.
Once enough marijuana is collected, workers drop the vacuum-packed bales through shafts leading to the ever-more-elaborate tunnels that cross underneath the border through the clay-laden soil.
U.S. agents have been waging war against the tunnels for years, using a range of high-tech devices from ground-penetrating radar to seismic sensors to find and destroy them. But despite the efforts, drug smugglers continue to build the tunnels, often spending $1 million to dig a single pathway equipped with lighting, forced-air ventilation, water pumps, shoring on walls and hydraulic elevators.
Lately, new tunnels have included railways. The bales move on electric mining carts with hand throttles that roll at up to 15 mph.
"A tunnel represents an incursion into the U.S., and it’s a national security event," said Jose M. Garcia, who oversees the federal multi-agency San Diego Tunnel Task Force.
The location of the tunnels helps explain why agents have such difficulty finding them. The area where the most advanced tunnels have been found is adjacent to the Tijuana international airport, where scores of planes take off and land daily. Nearby warehouses buzz with legitimate activity.
"All that noise from the airport is a great advantage to them," said Victor Clark Alfaro, an anthropologist and human rights activist in Tijuana who also lectures at San Diego State University. "This border is perforated like an anthill."
U.S. officials say they have found more than 160 tunnels since 1990 along the 1,954-mile border, mostly in the stretch of Mexico that borders Arizona and California. In the past 15 months, U.S. agents have busted increasingly sophisticated tunnels.
Geography and geology make the intensely urban Tijuana-San Diego corridor ideal for the tunnels. Tijuana is Mexico’s sixth largest city, with 1.3 million people, while San Diego is the eighth largest U.S. city, with several interstate highways. Moreover, soil here has a composition that’s easy to dig.
In a two-week span last November, U.S. agents shut down two sophisticated tunnels that led from an area near Tijuana’s airport to the Otay Mesa industrial park on the U.S. side. Some 49 tons of marijuana were seized. The discoveries marked the second year in a row in which elaborate tunnels were found within a mile of the busy Otay Mesa border crossing.
U.S. officials are sensitive about a public view that they aren’t finding the tunnels.
"Understandably, American citizens react to news stories about the discovery of a large tunnel, complete with plumbing, lights, ventilation and a rudimentary railway system, with a mixture of surprise, indignation, alarm and dismay," Laura E. Duffy, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California, told the Senate drug caucus last June.
"How, they ask, can such a sophisticated illegal structure be constructed right under our noses?"
Part of the difficulty, she said, is that drug traffickers use horizontal drills that cost up to $75,000 and can cut without disturbing topsoil. The tunnels run anywhere from 30 to 90 feet deep, avoiding greater depths, which would hit underground water tables.
Drug traffickers also have been adept at setting up bogus U.S. companies to rent space in bustling Otay Mesa and its 600 warehouses and 12,000 businesses. Many firms are unaware of activities by their neighbors, perhaps noticing only if there’s truck traffic at unusual hours.
Garcia said that even with devices such as seismic sensors, a majority of tunnel busts came from tip-offs by informants or suspicious warehouse operators.
Big tunnels are thought to be the work of the Sinaloa Cartel, which has seized control of Tijuana from the local Arellano-Felix cartel after years of bloody conflict and now is operating in tandem with remnants of the group.
Sinaloa operatives employ mining engineers and architects to help construct their tunnels, while keeping knowledge of locations to as few people as possible.
Experts on the San Diego Tunnel Task Force say "some tunnel excavators in Mexico are killed when the job is done to prevent them from spreading the word on the location," Duffy told senators.
Marijuana growers are turning to ever-larger plantations to meet the capacity of bigger tunnels. Last July, soldiers found a 300-acre screened and irrigated marijuana plantation near San Quintin, 150 miles south of Tijuana, which was four times larger than any such site that had been seized before. Eight months earlier, soldiers seized 148 tons _ 134 metric tons _ of pot in Tijuana, a record.
U.S. and Mexican agents say that tunnel digging, using pneumatic spades, generally is limited to teams of six or seven men. They live at the Tijuana site where the tunnel begins, and excavation is timed to conclude with the harvesting of marijuana crops in late summer and early autumn, so there’s little time for the tunnel to sit idle and be detected.
"The process is tedious," Garcia said, involving working day and night and lugging bags of dirt along the shaft for removal.
But even with million-dollar investments, Garcia said, the tunnel builders "recoup that by making just one trip, given the value of the narcotics we’ve seized."
Most bales of marijuana carry stickers, often fanciful images such as Donald Duck, Captain America, Budweiser or Homer Simpson. The stickers indicate ownership and destination, U.S. agents said.
Tunnel operatives make sure to recoup their investments first.
"The way it works is the tunnel guys build it, so their stuff gets through first. Once it gets through, they start hiring out" to other drug organizations, said Louis Gomez, the supervisor of the San Diego Tunnel Task Force, which includes agents of Customs and Border Protection, the Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement.
Tunnel shafts on the Tijuana side that a McClatchy Newspapers journalist visited included one hidden in the floor of a walk-in freezer in a warehouse that’s only two football fields away from warehouses on the U.S. side of the border.
Another shaft was hidden in a unique fashion: "It was the entire floor of a bathroom that went up and down, and they used a hydraulic lift like you’d see in a service station," Garcia said.
Tijuana Police Chief Alberto Capella Ibarra said the tunnels kept growing in sophistication.
"It speaks of the strength and economic power of the cartels, because these tunnels are a huge investment for them," Capella said.
http://news.bostonherald.com/news/international/americas/view.bg?&articleid=1405102&format=&page=1&listingType=intamer#articleFull
February 20, 2012
by Tim Johnson
TIJUANA, Mexico _ When smuggling goes smoothly for the marijuana division of the huge Sinaloa Cartel, cross-border deliveries unfold with clockwork precision.
Harvested marijuana arrives in plastic-wrapped bales to a depot hidden among the rundown warehouses on the Mexican side of the concrete U.S. border fence.
Once enough marijuana is collected, workers drop the vacuum-packed bales through shafts leading to the ever-more-elaborate tunnels that cross underneath the border through the clay-laden soil.
U.S. agents have been waging war against the tunnels for years, using a range of high-tech devices from ground-penetrating radar to seismic sensors to find and destroy them. But despite the efforts, drug smugglers continue to build the tunnels, often spending $1 million to dig a single pathway equipped with lighting, forced-air ventilation, water pumps, shoring on walls and hydraulic elevators.
Lately, new tunnels have included railways. The bales move on electric mining carts with hand throttles that roll at up to 15 mph.
"A tunnel represents an incursion into the U.S., and it’s a national security event," said Jose M. Garcia, who oversees the federal multi-agency San Diego Tunnel Task Force.
The location of the tunnels helps explain why agents have such difficulty finding them. The area where the most advanced tunnels have been found is adjacent to the Tijuana international airport, where scores of planes take off and land daily. Nearby warehouses buzz with legitimate activity.
"All that noise from the airport is a great advantage to them," said Victor Clark Alfaro, an anthropologist and human rights activist in Tijuana who also lectures at San Diego State University. "This border is perforated like an anthill."
U.S. officials say they have found more than 160 tunnels since 1990 along the 1,954-mile border, mostly in the stretch of Mexico that borders Arizona and California. In the past 15 months, U.S. agents have busted increasingly sophisticated tunnels.
Geography and geology make the intensely urban Tijuana-San Diego corridor ideal for the tunnels. Tijuana is Mexico’s sixth largest city, with 1.3 million people, while San Diego is the eighth largest U.S. city, with several interstate highways. Moreover, soil here has a composition that’s easy to dig.
In a two-week span last November, U.S. agents shut down two sophisticated tunnels that led from an area near Tijuana’s airport to the Otay Mesa industrial park on the U.S. side. Some 49 tons of marijuana were seized. The discoveries marked the second year in a row in which elaborate tunnels were found within a mile of the busy Otay Mesa border crossing.
U.S. officials are sensitive about a public view that they aren’t finding the tunnels.
"Understandably, American citizens react to news stories about the discovery of a large tunnel, complete with plumbing, lights, ventilation and a rudimentary railway system, with a mixture of surprise, indignation, alarm and dismay," Laura E. Duffy, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California, told the Senate drug caucus last June.
"How, they ask, can such a sophisticated illegal structure be constructed right under our noses?"
Part of the difficulty, she said, is that drug traffickers use horizontal drills that cost up to $75,000 and can cut without disturbing topsoil. The tunnels run anywhere from 30 to 90 feet deep, avoiding greater depths, which would hit underground water tables.
Drug traffickers also have been adept at setting up bogus U.S. companies to rent space in bustling Otay Mesa and its 600 warehouses and 12,000 businesses. Many firms are unaware of activities by their neighbors, perhaps noticing only if there’s truck traffic at unusual hours.
Garcia said that even with devices such as seismic sensors, a majority of tunnel busts came from tip-offs by informants or suspicious warehouse operators.
Big tunnels are thought to be the work of the Sinaloa Cartel, which has seized control of Tijuana from the local Arellano-Felix cartel after years of bloody conflict and now is operating in tandem with remnants of the group.
Sinaloa operatives employ mining engineers and architects to help construct their tunnels, while keeping knowledge of locations to as few people as possible.
Experts on the San Diego Tunnel Task Force say "some tunnel excavators in Mexico are killed when the job is done to prevent them from spreading the word on the location," Duffy told senators.
Marijuana growers are turning to ever-larger plantations to meet the capacity of bigger tunnels. Last July, soldiers found a 300-acre screened and irrigated marijuana plantation near San Quintin, 150 miles south of Tijuana, which was four times larger than any such site that had been seized before. Eight months earlier, soldiers seized 148 tons _ 134 metric tons _ of pot in Tijuana, a record.
U.S. and Mexican agents say that tunnel digging, using pneumatic spades, generally is limited to teams of six or seven men. They live at the Tijuana site where the tunnel begins, and excavation is timed to conclude with the harvesting of marijuana crops in late summer and early autumn, so there’s little time for the tunnel to sit idle and be detected.
"The process is tedious," Garcia said, involving working day and night and lugging bags of dirt along the shaft for removal.
But even with million-dollar investments, Garcia said, the tunnel builders "recoup that by making just one trip, given the value of the narcotics we’ve seized."
Most bales of marijuana carry stickers, often fanciful images such as Donald Duck, Captain America, Budweiser or Homer Simpson. The stickers indicate ownership and destination, U.S. agents said.
Tunnel operatives make sure to recoup their investments first.
"The way it works is the tunnel guys build it, so their stuff gets through first. Once it gets through, they start hiring out" to other drug organizations, said Louis Gomez, the supervisor of the San Diego Tunnel Task Force, which includes agents of Customs and Border Protection, the Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement.
Tunnel shafts on the Tijuana side that a McClatchy Newspapers journalist visited included one hidden in the floor of a walk-in freezer in a warehouse that’s only two football fields away from warehouses on the U.S. side of the border.
Another shaft was hidden in a unique fashion: "It was the entire floor of a bathroom that went up and down, and they used a hydraulic lift like you’d see in a service station," Garcia said.
Tijuana Police Chief Alberto Capella Ibarra said the tunnels kept growing in sophistication.
"It speaks of the strength and economic power of the cartels, because these tunnels are a huge investment for them," Capella said.
http://news.bostonherald.com/news/international/americas/view.bg?&articleid=1405102&format=&page=1&listingType=intamer#articleFull
Saturday, January 28, 2012
New Border Fences Cut Off Access To Border Monuments
Fronteras
January 28, 2012
By Adrian Florido
SAN DIEGO — Before there was a fence, all that marked the border between Mexico and the United States were stone and steel monuments, 276 of them dotting the southwestern landscape. They were installed by Mexican and American surveyors starting in 1850, after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War and the two countries agreed to define their shared border.
But as the U.S. Border Patrol has reinforced the boundary with a new fence, many of these bi-national monuments have been left entirely on the Mexican side of the barriers.
On the scenic stretch of coast where San Diego meets Tijuana, Mexico, the Border Patrol is making the border fence taller and thicker - impenetrable, it hopes, to drug smugglers and illegal crossers.
But peering through the new vertical bars and double mesh on a recent day, you could still make out a marble, pyramid-shaped monument on the other side.
It marks the precise point where Mexico and the U.S. meet, and visitors on opposite sides of the border were once able to approach the monument from both sides and talk through the fence.
But late last year, the Border Patrol moved its fence three feet to the north, fencing the monument out
This has been happening at monument sites across the Southwest. It began when border fencing started going up in the early 1990s and has continued since 2006, when Congress approved the construction of 700 miles of new fence.
In 2008, the Border Patrol signed an accord with the agency responsible for maintaining the monuments - the International Boundary and Water Commission – agreeing not to disturb the monuments during fence construction.
So, in many places along the border, like San Diego, the Border Patrol built the fence a few feet north of the actual international boundary.
“The fence itself is constructed inside the United States,” said Jerry Conlin, a Border Patrol spokesman. The agreement between the two agencies, he said: “is that any type of construction around a monument would be set back three feet.”
Sally Spener is a spokeswoman for the boundary and water commission, which reviews the Border Patrol’s plans to ensure the fence is not inadvertently built on Mexican territory. She said commission officials had been willing to work with the Border Patrol to maintain access to the monument in San Diego.
She would not say whether the agency responded, but in any case, bi-national access was eliminated.
Now San Diego activists are hoping to convince the Border Patrol to change its fence design to restore access to the monument from both sides.
“A border monument needs to be on the border, not just on one side or the other. It’s a shared marker between two nations,” said Jim Brown, a local architect and activist. “To have the fence jog around and have it be almost ownership by Mexico doesn’t make any emotional sense, it makes no physical sense, it makes no common sense.”
Brown is a member of the Friends of Friendship Park, a group of activists that takes its name after the area where loved ones used to chat through the border fence until access was blocked.
Brown said he’s come up with a relatively simple design change that would make the monument accessible from both sides again.
Conlin said the Border Patrol was willing to listen, but stressed that border security was the agency’s mandate and priority.
David Taylor, an art professor at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, has been photographing all 276 monuments since he realized the new fencing was going to make many of them inaccessible from the U.S.
He believes the monuments, once a symbol of bi-national cooperation, have become casualties of the push for greater border enforcement.
“It’s one of those very unfortunate situations where this thing that’s part of our shared heritage with Mexico isn’t easily accessible.”
On the other side, visitors have expressed their thoughts too.
An engraving on the monument warns vandals that defacing it is a crime punishable by Mexico or the United States. But someone recently used purple ink to cross out the words, United States
http://www.fronterasdesk.org/news/2012/jan/26/new-fences-block-access-us-mexico-border-monu/
January 28, 2012
By Adrian Florido
SAN DIEGO — Before there was a fence, all that marked the border between Mexico and the United States were stone and steel monuments, 276 of them dotting the southwestern landscape. They were installed by Mexican and American surveyors starting in 1850, after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War and the two countries agreed to define their shared border.
But as the U.S. Border Patrol has reinforced the boundary with a new fence, many of these bi-national monuments have been left entirely on the Mexican side of the barriers.
On the scenic stretch of coast where San Diego meets Tijuana, Mexico, the Border Patrol is making the border fence taller and thicker - impenetrable, it hopes, to drug smugglers and illegal crossers.
But peering through the new vertical bars and double mesh on a recent day, you could still make out a marble, pyramid-shaped monument on the other side.
It marks the precise point where Mexico and the U.S. meet, and visitors on opposite sides of the border were once able to approach the monument from both sides and talk through the fence.
But late last year, the Border Patrol moved its fence three feet to the north, fencing the monument out
This has been happening at monument sites across the Southwest. It began when border fencing started going up in the early 1990s and has continued since 2006, when Congress approved the construction of 700 miles of new fence.
In 2008, the Border Patrol signed an accord with the agency responsible for maintaining the monuments - the International Boundary and Water Commission – agreeing not to disturb the monuments during fence construction.
So, in many places along the border, like San Diego, the Border Patrol built the fence a few feet north of the actual international boundary.
“The fence itself is constructed inside the United States,” said Jerry Conlin, a Border Patrol spokesman. The agreement between the two agencies, he said: “is that any type of construction around a monument would be set back three feet.”
Sally Spener is a spokeswoman for the boundary and water commission, which reviews the Border Patrol’s plans to ensure the fence is not inadvertently built on Mexican territory. She said commission officials had been willing to work with the Border Patrol to maintain access to the monument in San Diego.
She would not say whether the agency responded, but in any case, bi-national access was eliminated.
Now San Diego activists are hoping to convince the Border Patrol to change its fence design to restore access to the monument from both sides.
“A border monument needs to be on the border, not just on one side or the other. It’s a shared marker between two nations,” said Jim Brown, a local architect and activist. “To have the fence jog around and have it be almost ownership by Mexico doesn’t make any emotional sense, it makes no physical sense, it makes no common sense.”
Brown is a member of the Friends of Friendship Park, a group of activists that takes its name after the area where loved ones used to chat through the border fence until access was blocked.
Brown said he’s come up with a relatively simple design change that would make the monument accessible from both sides again.
Conlin said the Border Patrol was willing to listen, but stressed that border security was the agency’s mandate and priority.
David Taylor, an art professor at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, has been photographing all 276 monuments since he realized the new fencing was going to make many of them inaccessible from the U.S.
He believes the monuments, once a symbol of bi-national cooperation, have become casualties of the push for greater border enforcement.
“It’s one of those very unfortunate situations where this thing that’s part of our shared heritage with Mexico isn’t easily accessible.”
On the other side, visitors have expressed their thoughts too.
An engraving on the monument warns vandals that defacing it is a crime punishable by Mexico or the United States. But someone recently used purple ink to cross out the words, United States
http://www.fronterasdesk.org/news/2012/jan/26/new-fences-block-access-us-mexico-border-monu/
Friday, December 30, 2011
New fencing doesn’t stop illegal crossings
Washington Post
December 30, 2011
by Nick Miroff
CALEXICO, Calif. — A decade ago, when illegal immigration from Mexico was at an all-time high, this stretch of border was as good a place as any to sneak into the United States.
Migrants and smugglers could slip through the alfalfa fields outside town or plow their pickup trucks through the desert, where the biggest worries were stuck tires and getting safely across the irrigation canals.
But in the past five years, the international border here has become a harder, tougher, taller barrier — an American Great Wall. Miles of steel fencing now ride the desolate sand dunes west of Calexico, and to the east, giant jack-shaped “Normandy” barriers block off old smuggling routes, named for their resemblance to the defenses that once lined the beaches of northern France in World War II.
Overall, the United States has added 413 miles of new fencing to its southern boundary since 2006, raising to 649 miles the total length of border that has some form of man-made barrier to people or vehicles. The Rio Grande creates a natural partition along another 1,252 miles, and the government has been putting new fencing there, too.
Now the question is: How much more should be built?
Border Patrol officials say their current plans are to construct just one more mile of fence, in Texas. But as illegal immigration takes an increasingly central role in Republican campaign debates, several GOP candidates have renewed calls to fence the entire 1,969-mile boundary.
President Obama has made light of such proposals, saying fence advocates won’t be satisfied until the U.S. builds “a moat” stocked with “alligators.” But leading Republican candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have vowed to barricade the entire U.S.-Mexico divide, with Gingrich signing a pledge to install a “double fence” while campaigning in Iowa earlier this month.
With such an endeavor projected to cost tens of billions of dollars, this stretch of California desert might be as good a place as any to assess how the existing border fence actually works.
The new barriers have been particularly effective at stopping vehicles from coming across, Border Patrol agents say. Along one stretch of desert here, the number of drive-through incursions plunged from 350 in 2007 to four so far this year.
But agents also say it is not the case that smugglers and illegal migrants on foot simply go to the place in the desert where the fence ends, and walk around it.
“Anywhere is a good place to sneak across if we’re not watching,” said Special Agent Jonathan Creiglow, a Border Patrol officer assigned to the agency’s El Centro sector here.
But there are also sections of 18-foot fencing right in the middle of downtown Calexico, opposite its sprawling sister city of Mexicali, where border jumpers can be up and over the wall in a matter of seconds, melting into shops and residential streets once they land on the other side.
At night, smugglers toss Hail Marys of pot-stuffed footballs and fling golf-ball-sized heroin nuggets over to waiting receivers. Stealthy ultra-light aircraft bomb the lettuce fields outside town with bundles of dope, then swoop back into Mexico, well below radar but high above the fence.
Then there are rugged sections in the desert where fencing is porous or nonexistent, but crossings rare. And those who do try to slip through are tracked by the Border Patrol’s growing array of sensors, high-powered night-vision cameras and surveillance drones.
In short, agents say, fencing is a tool and a first line of defense, but it does not bestow border security by its mere existence. “Without the fencing we wouldn’t have as much time, but nothing is going to stop them from going over or cutting through it,” explained Creiglow, who, at 26, is one of the many recent hires at the Border Patrol, which has doubled in size since 2002, with 18,500 of its 21,500 agents now deployed along the U.S.-Mexico frontier.
A costly barrier
Most of the barrier does not sit on the actual international boundary, but slightly north of it, allowing maintenance workers to access both sides without technically crossing into Mexico. Upkeep for the existing 649 miles of fencing is projected to cost $6.5 billion over the next 20 years, according to a 2009 report by the Government Accounting Office, and U.S. Homeland Security officials say the fence was breached 4,037 times in the government’s 2010 fiscal year, at an average cost of $1,800 per repair.
With most of the remaining unfenced stretch of border in Texas, the debate has shifted to the question of walling off the Rio Grande. Even in areas where the river can be shallow enough to wade across, putting a fence along the river’s sinuous levees is both costly and unpopular with local ranchers who want to preserve riparian access for thirsty cattle.
In Arizona, where Border Patrol agents catch more illegal migrants than anywhere else, lawmakers are soliciting public donations to put barriers along the remaining unfenced 82 miles of the state’s 370-mile boundary with Mexico. Such a structure would need to climb up and over steep mountain areas where construction costs are exorbitant and the deterrent value is questionable, enforcement experts say.
“I think the question is: What are you trying to achieve? Just to be able to say that you built a fence on top of a mountain?” said Thad Bingle, who was the Border Patrol’s chief of staff from 2007 to 2009. “If someone climbs 10,000 feet to the top of a mountain they aren’t going to be deterred by a 10-foot fence.”
Construction in rugged areas is made even more pricey because every stretch of new fence needs an accompanying road for maintenance and patrols, he added.
Fewer arrests
While the agency tallies the number of migrants it catches, it does not plot the locations of those apprehensions. But after hitting an all-time high of 1.6 million apprehensions in the government’s 2000 fiscal year, the number of arrests dropped to 327,577 in the 2011 period which ended Sept. 30, the lowest level since 1972.
Migration experts attribute the decline primarily to the weak U.S. job market — especially the lack of construction jobs — as well as growing fears of kidnapping gangs in northern Mexico. At the same time, average family sizes have fallen dramatically in Mexico, employment opportunities have improved, and the United States is letting more Mexicans in through the front door.
Mexican workers received 516,000 temporary work visas in 2010, “the highest number since the Bracero Program of the late 1950s,” said Douglas Massey, an expert on Mexican migration at Princeton University.
Tougher enforcement on the U.S. side has also been a factor, driving up the costs of getting across as well as the difficultly. But migrant smugglers on the Mexico side say the fence is hardly their biggest concern.
“There’s too much surveillance now,” said Luis, a husky guide-for-hire known as a pollero, standing in the Niños Heroes park in downtown Mexicali, where recent deportees and would-be border crossers gather. “The Migra [Border Patrol] has cameras everywhere,” he said.
Luis wouldn’t give his last name, but he said for $500 smugglers will get customers over the fence by creating elaborate diversions for the Border Patrol and deploying teams of helpers with roll-up ladders and ropes, even forming cheerleader-style human pyramids Better yet, Luis said, for $3,000 a guide will take you over the fence and through the desert at night, and $6,000 buys a legitimate U.S. visa rented from a look-alike with legal status.
“There’s always a way in,” he said with a wily grin.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/americas/new-fencing-doesnt-stop-illegal-crossings/2011/11/28/gIQAbLdBQP_story.html
December 30, 2011
by Nick Miroff
CALEXICO, Calif. — A decade ago, when illegal immigration from Mexico was at an all-time high, this stretch of border was as good a place as any to sneak into the United States.
Migrants and smugglers could slip through the alfalfa fields outside town or plow their pickup trucks through the desert, where the biggest worries were stuck tires and getting safely across the irrigation canals.
But in the past five years, the international border here has become a harder, tougher, taller barrier — an American Great Wall. Miles of steel fencing now ride the desolate sand dunes west of Calexico, and to the east, giant jack-shaped “Normandy” barriers block off old smuggling routes, named for their resemblance to the defenses that once lined the beaches of northern France in World War II.
Overall, the United States has added 413 miles of new fencing to its southern boundary since 2006, raising to 649 miles the total length of border that has some form of man-made barrier to people or vehicles. The Rio Grande creates a natural partition along another 1,252 miles, and the government has been putting new fencing there, too.
Now the question is: How much more should be built?
Border Patrol officials say their current plans are to construct just one more mile of fence, in Texas. But as illegal immigration takes an increasingly central role in Republican campaign debates, several GOP candidates have renewed calls to fence the entire 1,969-mile boundary.
President Obama has made light of such proposals, saying fence advocates won’t be satisfied until the U.S. builds “a moat” stocked with “alligators.” But leading Republican candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have vowed to barricade the entire U.S.-Mexico divide, with Gingrich signing a pledge to install a “double fence” while campaigning in Iowa earlier this month.
With such an endeavor projected to cost tens of billions of dollars, this stretch of California desert might be as good a place as any to assess how the existing border fence actually works.
The new barriers have been particularly effective at stopping vehicles from coming across, Border Patrol agents say. Along one stretch of desert here, the number of drive-through incursions plunged from 350 in 2007 to four so far this year.
But agents also say it is not the case that smugglers and illegal migrants on foot simply go to the place in the desert where the fence ends, and walk around it.
“Anywhere is a good place to sneak across if we’re not watching,” said Special Agent Jonathan Creiglow, a Border Patrol officer assigned to the agency’s El Centro sector here.
But there are also sections of 18-foot fencing right in the middle of downtown Calexico, opposite its sprawling sister city of Mexicali, where border jumpers can be up and over the wall in a matter of seconds, melting into shops and residential streets once they land on the other side.
At night, smugglers toss Hail Marys of pot-stuffed footballs and fling golf-ball-sized heroin nuggets over to waiting receivers. Stealthy ultra-light aircraft bomb the lettuce fields outside town with bundles of dope, then swoop back into Mexico, well below radar but high above the fence.
Then there are rugged sections in the desert where fencing is porous or nonexistent, but crossings rare. And those who do try to slip through are tracked by the Border Patrol’s growing array of sensors, high-powered night-vision cameras and surveillance drones.
In short, agents say, fencing is a tool and a first line of defense, but it does not bestow border security by its mere existence. “Without the fencing we wouldn’t have as much time, but nothing is going to stop them from going over or cutting through it,” explained Creiglow, who, at 26, is one of the many recent hires at the Border Patrol, which has doubled in size since 2002, with 18,500 of its 21,500 agents now deployed along the U.S.-Mexico frontier.
A costly barrier
Most of the barrier does not sit on the actual international boundary, but slightly north of it, allowing maintenance workers to access both sides without technically crossing into Mexico. Upkeep for the existing 649 miles of fencing is projected to cost $6.5 billion over the next 20 years, according to a 2009 report by the Government Accounting Office, and U.S. Homeland Security officials say the fence was breached 4,037 times in the government’s 2010 fiscal year, at an average cost of $1,800 per repair.
With most of the remaining unfenced stretch of border in Texas, the debate has shifted to the question of walling off the Rio Grande. Even in areas where the river can be shallow enough to wade across, putting a fence along the river’s sinuous levees is both costly and unpopular with local ranchers who want to preserve riparian access for thirsty cattle.
In Arizona, where Border Patrol agents catch more illegal migrants than anywhere else, lawmakers are soliciting public donations to put barriers along the remaining unfenced 82 miles of the state’s 370-mile boundary with Mexico. Such a structure would need to climb up and over steep mountain areas where construction costs are exorbitant and the deterrent value is questionable, enforcement experts say.
“I think the question is: What are you trying to achieve? Just to be able to say that you built a fence on top of a mountain?” said Thad Bingle, who was the Border Patrol’s chief of staff from 2007 to 2009. “If someone climbs 10,000 feet to the top of a mountain they aren’t going to be deterred by a 10-foot fence.”
Construction in rugged areas is made even more pricey because every stretch of new fence needs an accompanying road for maintenance and patrols, he added.
Fewer arrests
While the agency tallies the number of migrants it catches, it does not plot the locations of those apprehensions. But after hitting an all-time high of 1.6 million apprehensions in the government’s 2000 fiscal year, the number of arrests dropped to 327,577 in the 2011 period which ended Sept. 30, the lowest level since 1972.
Migration experts attribute the decline primarily to the weak U.S. job market — especially the lack of construction jobs — as well as growing fears of kidnapping gangs in northern Mexico. At the same time, average family sizes have fallen dramatically in Mexico, employment opportunities have improved, and the United States is letting more Mexicans in through the front door.
Mexican workers received 516,000 temporary work visas in 2010, “the highest number since the Bracero Program of the late 1950s,” said Douglas Massey, an expert on Mexican migration at Princeton University.
Tougher enforcement on the U.S. side has also been a factor, driving up the costs of getting across as well as the difficultly. But migrant smugglers on the Mexico side say the fence is hardly their biggest concern.
“There’s too much surveillance now,” said Luis, a husky guide-for-hire known as a pollero, standing in the Niños Heroes park in downtown Mexicali, where recent deportees and would-be border crossers gather. “The Migra [Border Patrol] has cameras everywhere,” he said.
Luis wouldn’t give his last name, but he said for $500 smugglers will get customers over the fence by creating elaborate diversions for the Border Patrol and deploying teams of helpers with roll-up ladders and ropes, even forming cheerleader-style human pyramids Better yet, Luis said, for $3,000 a guide will take you over the fence and through the desert at night, and $6,000 buys a legitimate U.S. visa rented from a look-alike with legal status.
“There’s always a way in,” he said with a wily grin.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/americas/new-fencing-doesnt-stop-illegal-crossings/2011/11/28/gIQAbLdBQP_story.html
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Border fence blocks access to important historical site
San Diego City Beat
December 21, 2011
by Kinsee Morlan
Before fences marked the U.S.-Mexico border, a series of small obelisks dotted the landscape and identified the line separating the two countries. Fifty-two monuments were erected between 1849 and 1857, and then, due to population growth in the border region and questions about where the international border actually was, more than 200 more monuments were built from 1891 to 1894, bringing the total to 258.
One of the original 52 monuments, Border Monument 258, still stands inside Border Field State Park, just a few hundred feet from the Pacific Ocean. It was the first monument built after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War and set the international boundary. Historian Charles W. Hughes is among those who believe that two time capsules are buried under Monument 258—one placed in 1840 when the temporary monument went up and one possibly placed in 1851 when the permanent structure was built.
Made of a block of polished marble, Monument 258 was a hotspot for tourists on their way to or back from Tijuana. Some visitors would even chip off a piece of the marble and take it with them as a souvenir.
“If you came to San Diego between the 1850s up into the early 1900s, it was one of the places to go,” said Hughes, who published an article on the history of the monument in Journal of San Diego History in 2007 and considers it to be one of the oldest and most important historical sites in San Diego. “It was like going out to Cabrillo National Monument.”
Hughes said the U.S. military used Border Field State Park as a training ground and tested drones, or unmanned aircraft, just before World War II, which dramatically decreased visitations to the park. Since then, the park has remained largely underused, except by people separated by immigration status who continue to use the park as a way to meet up with family members and friends on the other side of the border. In 1971, First Lady Pat Nixon dedicated the land surrounding Monument 258 as Friendship Park, a symbol of the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico and recognizing the binational use of the land.
Last week on CityBeat’s Canvassed blog, we reported that a replacement fence had gone up at Border Field State Park, completely blocking access to Border Monument 258 from the U.S. side by three feet. The new fence, which was sited by the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC), replaces the original border fence, which had bisected Monument 258, allowing access from both sides of the border.
Even in 2008, when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) erected a double fence at Friendship Park, activists with Friends of Friendship Park made sure access to the monument was maintained, even if limited by a gateway that was locked outside of set hours. Members of Friends of Friendship Park said they were shocked and disappointed when they saw the new location of the fence last week.
“Those in the U.S. have a right to access the monument without having to get in their car, cross the border and drive to Las Playas,” said Nathan Trotter of Friends of Friendship Park. “I think it’s a crime for the IBWC or Border Patrol to deprive us of an object of such historical interest.”
Bruce Coons, executive director of Save Our Heritage Organisation, agreed. “First of all, it’s American territory, and it belongs to us,” Coons said. “It’s really asinine to put the monument on the other side of the fence.”
IBWC spokesperson Sally Spener said the commission has yet to receive any complaints about the location of the replacement fence, but if it does, she said IBWC might be willing to relocate the fence.
“In regards to Monument 258, we are certainly willing to work with the community if they have specific concerns because of the unique nature and the unique role that Monument 258 has played in border history,” she said.
Coons and Trotter said they weren’t aware the fence was going to be relocated until construction began last week, so they’ve just begun lodging complaints with IBWC and elected officials.
“No notifications went out, so nobody in the community knew about this,” Trotter said. “So, I guess it’s good to hear [IBWC] might be willing to negotiate with us in moving the fence and allowing access to the monument again.”
James Brown, an architect and Friends of Friendship Park volunteer, said that IBWC isn’t allowed to build anything within three feet of the monument. He said even with that requirement, there’s a design solution.
“I wish I would have known earlier about the decision to relocate the fence,” Brown said. “The solution is simple—they just need to put the posts three feet away, and they can surround the monument with all the mesh they want.”
http://www.sdcitybeat.com/sandiego/article-9964-border-fence-blocks-access-to-important-historical-site.html
December 21, 2011
by Kinsee Morlan
Before fences marked the U.S.-Mexico border, a series of small obelisks dotted the landscape and identified the line separating the two countries. Fifty-two monuments were erected between 1849 and 1857, and then, due to population growth in the border region and questions about where the international border actually was, more than 200 more monuments were built from 1891 to 1894, bringing the total to 258.
One of the original 52 monuments, Border Monument 258, still stands inside Border Field State Park, just a few hundred feet from the Pacific Ocean. It was the first monument built after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War and set the international boundary. Historian Charles W. Hughes is among those who believe that two time capsules are buried under Monument 258—one placed in 1840 when the temporary monument went up and one possibly placed in 1851 when the permanent structure was built.
Made of a block of polished marble, Monument 258 was a hotspot for tourists on their way to or back from Tijuana. Some visitors would even chip off a piece of the marble and take it with them as a souvenir.
“If you came to San Diego between the 1850s up into the early 1900s, it was one of the places to go,” said Hughes, who published an article on the history of the monument in Journal of San Diego History in 2007 and considers it to be one of the oldest and most important historical sites in San Diego. “It was like going out to Cabrillo National Monument.”
Hughes said the U.S. military used Border Field State Park as a training ground and tested drones, or unmanned aircraft, just before World War II, which dramatically decreased visitations to the park. Since then, the park has remained largely underused, except by people separated by immigration status who continue to use the park as a way to meet up with family members and friends on the other side of the border. In 1971, First Lady Pat Nixon dedicated the land surrounding Monument 258 as Friendship Park, a symbol of the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico and recognizing the binational use of the land.
Last week on CityBeat’s Canvassed blog, we reported that a replacement fence had gone up at Border Field State Park, completely blocking access to Border Monument 258 from the U.S. side by three feet. The new fence, which was sited by the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC), replaces the original border fence, which had bisected Monument 258, allowing access from both sides of the border.
Even in 2008, when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) erected a double fence at Friendship Park, activists with Friends of Friendship Park made sure access to the monument was maintained, even if limited by a gateway that was locked outside of set hours. Members of Friends of Friendship Park said they were shocked and disappointed when they saw the new location of the fence last week.
“Those in the U.S. have a right to access the monument without having to get in their car, cross the border and drive to Las Playas,” said Nathan Trotter of Friends of Friendship Park. “I think it’s a crime for the IBWC or Border Patrol to deprive us of an object of such historical interest.”
Bruce Coons, executive director of Save Our Heritage Organisation, agreed. “First of all, it’s American territory, and it belongs to us,” Coons said. “It’s really asinine to put the monument on the other side of the fence.”
IBWC spokesperson Sally Spener said the commission has yet to receive any complaints about the location of the replacement fence, but if it does, she said IBWC might be willing to relocate the fence.
“In regards to Monument 258, we are certainly willing to work with the community if they have specific concerns because of the unique nature and the unique role that Monument 258 has played in border history,” she said.
Coons and Trotter said they weren’t aware the fence was going to be relocated until construction began last week, so they’ve just begun lodging complaints with IBWC and elected officials.
“No notifications went out, so nobody in the community knew about this,” Trotter said. “So, I guess it’s good to hear [IBWC] might be willing to negotiate with us in moving the fence and allowing access to the monument again.”
James Brown, an architect and Friends of Friendship Park volunteer, said that IBWC isn’t allowed to build anything within three feet of the monument. He said even with that requirement, there’s a design solution.
“I wish I would have known earlier about the decision to relocate the fence,” Brown said. “The solution is simple—they just need to put the posts three feet away, and they can surround the monument with all the mesh they want.”
http://www.sdcitybeat.com/sandiego/article-9964-border-fence-blocks-access-to-important-historical-site.html
Saturday, December 17, 2011
US-Mexico immigration: Even oceans have borders
BBC
December 16, 2011
By Valeria Perasso
The US government is erecting a fence in the ocean to divide California from Tijuana, Mexico. Immigration and environmental activists say it is a costly, dangerous endeavour that will do little to keep out unauthorised migrants.
On a sunny strip of beach south of San Diego, California, the US government is literally battling the tide of illegal immigration.
Border authorities are building a fence extending 300ft (91m) into the surf, in an effort to prevent would-be migrants from walking over the frontier from Mexico's Tijuana Beach to Imperial Beach, California, during low tide.
The US government's latest King Canute-like effort will make an existing fence longer, higher, tougher to scale and, officials say, more resilient to the tide.
'Operational need'
Border officials note that during November officers caught several undocumented migrants swimming in the Pacific Ocean or landing ashore in small fishing boats.
"There is a clear operational need for this development," says Michael Hance, field operation supervisor with the border patrol in the San Diego sector.
"The southern side of the border is densely populated and in the past many people found an easy way into the US through these beaches. We need physical infrastructure as well as border agents in the area."
But critics say the $4.3m (£2.79m) extension is unnecessary, noting that heavy surveillance near San Diego has driven most of the migrant flow eastward into the Arizona desert. And environmental activists fear the heavy metal barrier sunk into the ocean will harm marine life.
Meeting place
That physical infrastructure has interrupted the sandy landscape of the Tijuana and San Diego beaches since the early 1990s, when the first fence was built to run 22km inland from the Pacific shore.
On the beach, the fence is made of iron bars sunk into the sand, and further inland, the bars are replaced by graffiti-marred corrugated iron sheets, bent and torn by the marine wind.
The sections extending into the surf remain under construction, and today a visitor sees a pier constructed to allow heavy kit to pound support piles into the sand.
On the southern side of the wall, the Playa de Tijuana teems on weekends with families from the poor neighbourhoods along the border.
The beach is also a meeting place for friends and loved ones on either side of the border. Here, people chat and hug through the fence.
The latest $4.3m renovation, just under way, will extend the fence further into the ocean and increase its height to about 18ft (5.4m) from about 13ft, allowing it to protrude above the surface no matter the tide.
The steel poles holding up the wall will be treated with an anti-corrosion coating. The poles will also be given a slick coating to make them harder to climb.
The wall is scheduled to be completed in March and is expected to last 30 years.
'Symbolic move'
For all the expense and effort the government is throwing into fencing off the ocean, statistics show arrests in the area are already at an all-time low.
Border patrol agents detained 68,000 undocumented immigrants in 2010 in the San Diego sector, down from 630,000 in 1986, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency statistics.
Local immigration activists put the decline down to a steady increase in manned patrols and surveillance over the last six years.
"We don't understand why they are spending so much money here: it is just a symbolic move to say that they are actually doing something to prevent undocumented immigration," says Pedro Rios of the San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium.
"The new surf fence is being built in what is probably the area where the rate of border crossings has gone down most dramatically."
Wildlife affected
Furthermore, environmental organisations say the metal barrier in the water is an invasion of the ocean that will most certainly take its toll on the local fauna.
"The wall could block the circulation of species, especially surface marine species," says Matt Clark, spokesman for Defenders of Wildlife.
Dan Millis, borderlands team coordinator at the Sierra Club, says sections of the wall erected in the Arizona desert have had "a major effect on the migration patterns of desert species".
Architect Teddy Cruz of the University of California at San Diego predicts the fence will increase sedimentation and flooding in the Tijuana estuary.
"There are natural canyons in the region that cross the border without following political conventions," Mr Cruz says. "The effect will be worse for those http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifthat live in settlements on the Mexican side of the border, the waste from these settlements flows towards the estuary blocking water circulation."
The Border Patrol argues the surf fence's environmental impact will be minimal.
"Our experts have done environmental assessments and they did not find any evidence that the habitat will be damaged," says Mr Hance.
"We do what we have to do. And this project, both in terms of design and investment, is appropriate for the safety requirements in the San Diego area."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16164451
December 16, 2011
By Valeria Perasso
The US government is erecting a fence in the ocean to divide California from Tijuana, Mexico. Immigration and environmental activists say it is a costly, dangerous endeavour that will do little to keep out unauthorised migrants.
On a sunny strip of beach south of San Diego, California, the US government is literally battling the tide of illegal immigration.
Border authorities are building a fence extending 300ft (91m) into the surf, in an effort to prevent would-be migrants from walking over the frontier from Mexico's Tijuana Beach to Imperial Beach, California, during low tide.
The US government's latest King Canute-like effort will make an existing fence longer, higher, tougher to scale and, officials say, more resilient to the tide.
'Operational need'
Border officials note that during November officers caught several undocumented migrants swimming in the Pacific Ocean or landing ashore in small fishing boats.
"There is a clear operational need for this development," says Michael Hance, field operation supervisor with the border patrol in the San Diego sector.
"The southern side of the border is densely populated and in the past many people found an easy way into the US through these beaches. We need physical infrastructure as well as border agents in the area."
But critics say the $4.3m (£2.79m) extension is unnecessary, noting that heavy surveillance near San Diego has driven most of the migrant flow eastward into the Arizona desert. And environmental activists fear the heavy metal barrier sunk into the ocean will harm marine life.
Meeting place
That physical infrastructure has interrupted the sandy landscape of the Tijuana and San Diego beaches since the early 1990s, when the first fence was built to run 22km inland from the Pacific shore.
On the beach, the fence is made of iron bars sunk into the sand, and further inland, the bars are replaced by graffiti-marred corrugated iron sheets, bent and torn by the marine wind.
The sections extending into the surf remain under construction, and today a visitor sees a pier constructed to allow heavy kit to pound support piles into the sand.
On the southern side of the wall, the Playa de Tijuana teems on weekends with families from the poor neighbourhoods along the border.
The beach is also a meeting place for friends and loved ones on either side of the border. Here, people chat and hug through the fence.
The latest $4.3m renovation, just under way, will extend the fence further into the ocean and increase its height to about 18ft (5.4m) from about 13ft, allowing it to protrude above the surface no matter the tide.
The steel poles holding up the wall will be treated with an anti-corrosion coating. The poles will also be given a slick coating to make them harder to climb.
The wall is scheduled to be completed in March and is expected to last 30 years.
'Symbolic move'
For all the expense and effort the government is throwing into fencing off the ocean, statistics show arrests in the area are already at an all-time low.
Border patrol agents detained 68,000 undocumented immigrants in 2010 in the San Diego sector, down from 630,000 in 1986, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency statistics.
Local immigration activists put the decline down to a steady increase in manned patrols and surveillance over the last six years.
"We don't understand why they are spending so much money here: it is just a symbolic move to say that they are actually doing something to prevent undocumented immigration," says Pedro Rios of the San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium.
"The new surf fence is being built in what is probably the area where the rate of border crossings has gone down most dramatically."
Wildlife affected
Furthermore, environmental organisations say the metal barrier in the water is an invasion of the ocean that will most certainly take its toll on the local fauna.
"The wall could block the circulation of species, especially surface marine species," says Matt Clark, spokesman for Defenders of Wildlife.
Dan Millis, borderlands team coordinator at the Sierra Club, says sections of the wall erected in the Arizona desert have had "a major effect on the migration patterns of desert species".
Architect Teddy Cruz of the University of California at San Diego predicts the fence will increase sedimentation and flooding in the Tijuana estuary.
"There are natural canyons in the region that cross the border without following political conventions," Mr Cruz says. "The effect will be worse for those http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifthat live in settlements on the Mexican side of the border, the waste from these settlements flows towards the estuary blocking water circulation."
The Border Patrol argues the surf fence's environmental impact will be minimal.
"Our experts have done environmental assessments and they did not find any evidence that the habitat will be damaged," says Mr Hance.
"We do what we have to do. And this project, both in terms of design and investment, is appropriate for the safety requirements in the San Diego area."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16164451
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Feds find 32 tons of pot in Calif. border tunnel
Associated Press / MSNBC
November 30, 2011
by Elliot Spagat
The discovery of a cross-border tunnel equipped with electric rail cars, a hydraulic lift and end-to-end wood floors has ended in seizures of more than 32 tons of marijuana, one of the largest pot busts in U.S. history, authorities said Wednesday.
The 600-yard passage linking warehouses in San Diego and Tijuana included a wooden staircase, lighting and ventilation, said Derek Benner, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's special agent in charge of investigations in San Diego. It was tall and wide enough to move comfortably inside.
"This is an incredibly efficient tunnel designed to move a lot of narcotics," Benner told The Associated Press.
Authorities recovered nearly 17 tons of marijuana at the warehouse in San Diego's Otay Mesa area, nearly 12 tons inside a truck in Los Angeles and about 4 tons in Mexico, Benner said. Several arrests were made.
Tuesday's find was the latest in a spate of secret passages found to smuggle drugs underground from Mexico, a response to heightened enforcement on land. In an emerging seasonal trend, many are turning up shortly before the winter holidays in what authorities believe is an effort to take advantage of the Mexican harvest season.
Two weeks ago, authorities seized 17 tons of marijuana in connection with a tunnel linking warehouses in San Diego and Tijuana.
Raids last November on two tunnels linking warehouses in San Diego and Tijuana netted a combined 52 of marijuana on both sides of the border. Those secret passages were lined with rail tracks, and had lighting and ventilation.
Authorities believe the latest tunnel began operating recently but declined to provide details.
"I would say it's probably as sophisticated as any we've ever seen," William Sherman, acting special agent in charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in San Diego told the AP.
More than 70 tunnels have been found on the border since October 2008, surpassing the number of discoveries in the previous six years. Many are clustered around San Diego, California's Imperial Valley and Nogales, Ariz.
California is popular because its clay-like soil is easy to dig with shovels. In Nogales, smugglers tap into vast underground drainage canals.
San Diego's Otay Mesa area has the added draw of plenty of warehouses on both sides of the border to conceal trucks getting loaded with drugs. Its streets hum with semitrailers by day and fall silent on nights and weekends.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45496653/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/
November 30, 2011
by Elliot Spagat
The discovery of a cross-border tunnel equipped with electric rail cars, a hydraulic lift and end-to-end wood floors has ended in seizures of more than 32 tons of marijuana, one of the largest pot busts in U.S. history, authorities said Wednesday.
The 600-yard passage linking warehouses in San Diego and Tijuana included a wooden staircase, lighting and ventilation, said Derek Benner, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's special agent in charge of investigations in San Diego. It was tall and wide enough to move comfortably inside.
"This is an incredibly efficient tunnel designed to move a lot of narcotics," Benner told The Associated Press.
Authorities recovered nearly 17 tons of marijuana at the warehouse in San Diego's Otay Mesa area, nearly 12 tons inside a truck in Los Angeles and about 4 tons in Mexico, Benner said. Several arrests were made.
Tuesday's find was the latest in a spate of secret passages found to smuggle drugs underground from Mexico, a response to heightened enforcement on land. In an emerging seasonal trend, many are turning up shortly before the winter holidays in what authorities believe is an effort to take advantage of the Mexican harvest season.
Two weeks ago, authorities seized 17 tons of marijuana in connection with a tunnel linking warehouses in San Diego and Tijuana.
Raids last November on two tunnels linking warehouses in San Diego and Tijuana netted a combined 52 of marijuana on both sides of the border. Those secret passages were lined with rail tracks, and had lighting and ventilation.
Authorities believe the latest tunnel began operating recently but declined to provide details.
"I would say it's probably as sophisticated as any we've ever seen," William Sherman, acting special agent in charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in San Diego told the AP.
More than 70 tunnels have been found on the border since October 2008, surpassing the number of discoveries in the previous six years. Many are clustered around San Diego, California's Imperial Valley and Nogales, Ariz.
California is popular because its clay-like soil is easy to dig with shovels. In Nogales, smugglers tap into vast underground drainage canals.
San Diego's Otay Mesa area has the added draw of plenty of warehouses on both sides of the border to conceal trucks getting loaded with drugs. Its streets hum with semitrailers by day and fall silent on nights and weekends.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45496653/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/
Saturday, November 26, 2011
U.S. to extend border fence 300 feet into Pacific
Los Angeles Times
November 25, 2011
by Richard Marosi
Reporting from Imperial Beach— Pounding surf and corrosive sea air have stymied efforts for years to erect a sturdy fence at the westernmost edge of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Now, the U.S. Border Patrol is trying again, with a $4.3-million project that would extend a nearly quarter-mile barrier 300 feet into the Pacific Ocean and remake one of the more scenic spots on the border.
When completed early next year, a steel fence 18 feet tall will replace a teetering, gap-riddled barrier that did little to discourage people from crossing back and forth on a wide beach linking Tijuana and Imperial Beach.
The "Surf Fence Project" comes as the federal government winds down barrier-building projects that have fortified about 670 miles of the frontier in recent years. Fences have been built atop sand dunes and mountain slopes, through remote deserts and urban streetscapes.
Fortifying the border where it plunges into the Pacific, however, presents unique logistical challenges. Before construction even begins, a government contractor must build a long pier to hold a crane, which will pound the fence posts into the sand. On a recent day, people on the Tijuana side of the beach marveled at the temporary structure, which is under construction, mistakenly believing it would be used for fishing or for docking boats.
Though border fencing efforts have long drawn criticism, no significant opposition has emerged for the surf project, mainly because one kind of barrier or another has existed here since the early 1990s. A fence is necessary, border officials said, to block a gap that opens when the waters recede at low tide.
In the late 1980s and early '90s, hundreds of illegal immigrants would cross at a time and head toward the distant San Diego skyline. More recently, the beach became a popular spot for demonstrators protesting illegal immigration policies. Last year, a group of deported immigrants walked across the line in the sand at the border, in a symbolic protest march. Some of them threw rocks and bottles, said U.S. authorities.
"It still has the potential to be very dangerous, as beautiful as it is," said Assistant Chief Patrol Agent Bruce Parks.
Previous fences couldn't withstand the tidal battering. A barrier constructed of oil-drilling pipes in the early 1990s quickly corroded. Waves washed away some of the steel posts, and others broke off. In 2006, U.S. Marine divers tried to erect a fence made of train rails by maneuvering the rails in the water so they could be pounded in by a pile driver.
It was difficult and dangerous because the rails would swing around at the end of the crane boom as the divers tried to manually place them next to one another in the surf.
For the latest effort, U.S. authorities have turned to a private contractor, Granite Construction Co., which recently built fencing at the base of Otay Mountain east of San Diego. The material used this time will be sturdier: 6-inch steel piping, coated with rust-proof material. The work, Parks said, comes with a 30-year warranty.
Longtime beachgoers think the agency better keep the warranty paperwork. Netza Tapia, 40, said he remembers the days when he would slip through the corroded section of the fence to continue his family walks on the Imperial Beach side of the beach. Jonathan Parra and his friends used to breach the wave-battered gaps regularly to play soccer on Imperial Beach's relatively empty stretch of sand.
The sea, Parra said, doesn't recognize borders. "The strength of the ocean will eventually knock the fence down," Parra said.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-border-fence-20111124,0,6662761.story
November 25, 2011
by Richard Marosi
Reporting from Imperial Beach— Pounding surf and corrosive sea air have stymied efforts for years to erect a sturdy fence at the westernmost edge of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Now, the U.S. Border Patrol is trying again, with a $4.3-million project that would extend a nearly quarter-mile barrier 300 feet into the Pacific Ocean and remake one of the more scenic spots on the border.
When completed early next year, a steel fence 18 feet tall will replace a teetering, gap-riddled barrier that did little to discourage people from crossing back and forth on a wide beach linking Tijuana and Imperial Beach.
The "Surf Fence Project" comes as the federal government winds down barrier-building projects that have fortified about 670 miles of the frontier in recent years. Fences have been built atop sand dunes and mountain slopes, through remote deserts and urban streetscapes.
Fortifying the border where it plunges into the Pacific, however, presents unique logistical challenges. Before construction even begins, a government contractor must build a long pier to hold a crane, which will pound the fence posts into the sand. On a recent day, people on the Tijuana side of the beach marveled at the temporary structure, which is under construction, mistakenly believing it would be used for fishing or for docking boats.
Though border fencing efforts have long drawn criticism, no significant opposition has emerged for the surf project, mainly because one kind of barrier or another has existed here since the early 1990s. A fence is necessary, border officials said, to block a gap that opens when the waters recede at low tide.
In the late 1980s and early '90s, hundreds of illegal immigrants would cross at a time and head toward the distant San Diego skyline. More recently, the beach became a popular spot for demonstrators protesting illegal immigration policies. Last year, a group of deported immigrants walked across the line in the sand at the border, in a symbolic protest march. Some of them threw rocks and bottles, said U.S. authorities.
"It still has the potential to be very dangerous, as beautiful as it is," said Assistant Chief Patrol Agent Bruce Parks.
Previous fences couldn't withstand the tidal battering. A barrier constructed of oil-drilling pipes in the early 1990s quickly corroded. Waves washed away some of the steel posts, and others broke off. In 2006, U.S. Marine divers tried to erect a fence made of train rails by maneuvering the rails in the water so they could be pounded in by a pile driver.
It was difficult and dangerous because the rails would swing around at the end of the crane boom as the divers tried to manually place them next to one another in the surf.
For the latest effort, U.S. authorities have turned to a private contractor, Granite Construction Co., which recently built fencing at the base of Otay Mountain east of San Diego. The material used this time will be sturdier: 6-inch steel piping, coated with rust-proof material. The work, Parks said, comes with a 30-year warranty.
Longtime beachgoers think the agency better keep the warranty paperwork. Netza Tapia, 40, said he remembers the days when he would slip through the corroded section of the fence to continue his family walks on the Imperial Beach side of the beach. Jonathan Parra and his friends used to breach the wave-battered gaps regularly to play soccer on Imperial Beach's relatively empty stretch of sand.
The sea, Parra said, doesn't recognize borders. "The strength of the ocean will eventually knock the fence down," Parra said.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-border-fence-20111124,0,6662761.story
Thursday, November 17, 2011
14 Tons of Marijuana Seized After Border Tunnel Is Found
Associated Press / New York Times
November 17, 2011
SAN DIEGO (AP) — An estimated 14 tons of marijuana was seized after the discovery of a tunnel that the authorities said on Wednesday was one of the most significant drug smuggling passages ever found on the United States-Mexico border.
The tunnel stretched about 400 yards and linked warehouses in San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico, the authorities said.
The authorities in the United States seized 9 to 10 tons of marijuana on Tuesday inside a truck and at the warehouse in San Diego’s Otay Mesa area, said Derek Benner, Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s special agent in charge of investigations in San Diego. Mexican authorities recovered about five tons.
Photos taken by the Mexican authorities show an entry blocked by bundles that were most likely stuffed with marijuana, said Paul Beeson, chief of the Border Patrol’s San Diego sector. Wooden supports lined the walls, and power cords led to the Mexican entrance, suggesting lighting and ventilation systems.
The depth and the width of the tunnel were unknown. Several arrests were made. Mr. Benner declined to give details.
As the United States intensifies enforcement on land, more than 70 tunnels have been found on the border since October 2008, surpassing the number of discoveries in the previous six years.
Many are clustered in San Diego, California’s Imperial Valley and Nogales, Ariz. California is popular because its claylike soil is easy to dig. In Nogales, smugglers tap into vast underground drainage canals.
Raids last November on two tunnels linking San Diego and Tijuana netted a combined 50 tons of marijuana on both sides of the border, two of the largest such seizures in United States history. Those secret passages were lined with rail tracks, lighting and ventilation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/17/us/us-mexico-tunnel-leads-to-tons-of-marijuana.html
November 17, 2011
SAN DIEGO (AP) — An estimated 14 tons of marijuana was seized after the discovery of a tunnel that the authorities said on Wednesday was one of the most significant drug smuggling passages ever found on the United States-Mexico border.
The tunnel stretched about 400 yards and linked warehouses in San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico, the authorities said.
The authorities in the United States seized 9 to 10 tons of marijuana on Tuesday inside a truck and at the warehouse in San Diego’s Otay Mesa area, said Derek Benner, Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s special agent in charge of investigations in San Diego. Mexican authorities recovered about five tons.
Photos taken by the Mexican authorities show an entry blocked by bundles that were most likely stuffed with marijuana, said Paul Beeson, chief of the Border Patrol’s San Diego sector. Wooden supports lined the walls, and power cords led to the Mexican entrance, suggesting lighting and ventilation systems.
The depth and the width of the tunnel were unknown. Several arrests were made. Mr. Benner declined to give details.
As the United States intensifies enforcement on land, more than 70 tunnels have been found on the border since October 2008, surpassing the number of discoveries in the previous six years.
Many are clustered in San Diego, California’s Imperial Valley and Nogales, Ariz. California is popular because its claylike soil is easy to dig. In Nogales, smugglers tap into vast underground drainage canals.
Raids last November on two tunnels linking San Diego and Tijuana netted a combined 50 tons of marijuana on both sides of the border, two of the largest such seizures in United States history. Those secret passages were lined with rail tracks, lighting and ventilation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/17/us/us-mexico-tunnel-leads-to-tons-of-marijuana.html
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Border Fence Into Pacific Ocean To Be Rebuilt
KPBS
November 3, 2011
By Ruxandra Guidi
SAN DIEGO — The "surf fence" runs 300-feet into the Pacific Ocean. It was originally built between 1993 and 1994 as a barrier to illegal border crossers and smugglers.
The new fence will look essentially the same: Metal pipes, 6-inches in diameter, rising out of the sand, with 4-inches in between. But it is designed to stay in good shape for as long as 30 years.
"The fencing is just another tool that we have," said Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Michael Jimenez, referring to its design. "It helps to slow down the entry of these people to give our agents a chance to make an arrest. Because a fence alone isn't going to stop people from coming in."
But the fence is designed to be wide enough for fish and other wildlife to make it back and forth across the border.
Rebuilding efforts in this and other parts of the Southwestern border fence have been delayed over the years, due to environmental impact assessments for things like land use, geology, and protected species.
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2011/nov/03/mexico-illegal-immigration-tijuana-san-diego/
November 3, 2011
By Ruxandra Guidi
SAN DIEGO — The "surf fence" runs 300-feet into the Pacific Ocean. It was originally built between 1993 and 1994 as a barrier to illegal border crossers and smugglers.
The new fence will look essentially the same: Metal pipes, 6-inches in diameter, rising out of the sand, with 4-inches in between. But it is designed to stay in good shape for as long as 30 years.
"The fencing is just another tool that we have," said Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Michael Jimenez, referring to its design. "It helps to slow down the entry of these people to give our agents a chance to make an arrest. Because a fence alone isn't going to stop people from coming in."
But the fence is designed to be wide enough for fish and other wildlife to make it back and forth across the border.
Rebuilding efforts in this and other parts of the Southwestern border fence have been delayed over the years, due to environmental impact assessments for things like land use, geology, and protected species.
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2011/nov/03/mexico-illegal-immigration-tijuana-san-diego/
Thursday, October 6, 2011
2 illegal immigrants die in San Diego-area maritime accidents
One is found dead inside a smuggling boat washed ashore at Pacific Beach and the other dies in an attempt to swim around a border fence.
Los Angeles Times
October 6, 2011
by Richard Marosi
Reporting from San Diego -- An illegal immigrant was found dead inside a smuggling boat that came ashore at San Diego's Pacific Beach and another died in a failed attempt to swim around a border fence in separate maritime incidents since Tuesday, according to federal authorities.
Early Wednesday morning, U.S. Border Patrol agents inspecting a 16-foot panga boat near Law Street at Pacific Beach discovered a dead Mexican man and another unidentified person. Following footprints along the beach, the agents found 13 additional illegal immigrants hiding in a residential area.
Eleven of the immigrants were hospitalized and released. One man suffering from dehydration and hypothermia remained in the hospital, according to Border Patrol spokesman Scott Simon.
The group of nine men and six women were all Mexican nationals, he said. Authorities are investigating whether a smuggler also was aboard the boat. The immigrant's cause of death has yet to be determined.
The skiff appeared to be caught in turbulent waters during the trip from Baja California. Smuggling groups often depart from as far away as Ensenada on journeys in rickety boats that can take 12 hours or more.
In another recent incident, seven immigrants were rescued a mile off San Diego's Mission Beach after their boat broke down Sunday.
Smugglers show no signs of letting up on their maritime trafficking attempts. Border authorities arrested 633 illegal immigrants in 183 maritime incidents during the federal fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Illegal immigrants also continue trying on their own. On Tuesday night, a 43-year-old man died attempting to swim around a border fence that extends into the breakers at San Diego County's Border Field State Park.
He was not wearing a wet suit or flotation device, Simon said. Two other illegal immigrants who tried to swim around the border fence were arrested.
Over the last year, four people have died in maritime smuggling incidents, including two immigrants who died while their boat tried to land at Torrey Pines State Beach, north of San Diego.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-1006-smuggling-boat-20111006,0,7261822.story
Los Angeles Times
October 6, 2011
by Richard Marosi
Reporting from San Diego -- An illegal immigrant was found dead inside a smuggling boat that came ashore at San Diego's Pacific Beach and another died in a failed attempt to swim around a border fence in separate maritime incidents since Tuesday, according to federal authorities.
Early Wednesday morning, U.S. Border Patrol agents inspecting a 16-foot panga boat near Law Street at Pacific Beach discovered a dead Mexican man and another unidentified person. Following footprints along the beach, the agents found 13 additional illegal immigrants hiding in a residential area.
Eleven of the immigrants were hospitalized and released. One man suffering from dehydration and hypothermia remained in the hospital, according to Border Patrol spokesman Scott Simon.
The group of nine men and six women were all Mexican nationals, he said. Authorities are investigating whether a smuggler also was aboard the boat. The immigrant's cause of death has yet to be determined.
The skiff appeared to be caught in turbulent waters during the trip from Baja California. Smuggling groups often depart from as far away as Ensenada on journeys in rickety boats that can take 12 hours or more.
In another recent incident, seven immigrants were rescued a mile off San Diego's Mission Beach after their boat broke down Sunday.
Smugglers show no signs of letting up on their maritime trafficking attempts. Border authorities arrested 633 illegal immigrants in 183 maritime incidents during the federal fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Illegal immigrants also continue trying on their own. On Tuesday night, a 43-year-old man died attempting to swim around a border fence that extends into the breakers at San Diego County's Border Field State Park.
He was not wearing a wet suit or flotation device, Simon said. Two other illegal immigrants who tried to swim around the border fence were arrested.
Over the last year, four people have died in maritime smuggling incidents, including two immigrants who died while their boat tried to land at Torrey Pines State Beach, north of San Diego.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-1006-smuggling-boat-20111006,0,7261822.story
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Crossing Over, and Over
New York Times
October 2, 2011
by Damien Cave
AGUA PRIETA, Mexico — "My wife, my son — I have to get back to them," Daniel kept telling himself, from the moment he was arrested in Seattle for driving with an expired license, all the way through the deportation proceeding that delivered him to Mexico in June.
Nothing would deter him from crossing the border again. He had left his hometown at 24, he said. Twelve years later, he spoke nearly fluent English and had an American son, a wife and three brothers in the United States. "I’ll keep trying," he said, "until I’ll get there."
This is increasingly the profile of illegal immigration today. Migrant shelters along the Mexican border are filled not with newcomers looking for a better life, but with seasoned crossers: older men and women, often deportees, braving ever-greater risks to get back to their families in the United States — the country they consider home.
They present an enormous challenge to American policy makers, because they continue to head north despite obstacles more severe than at any time in recent history. It is not just that the American economy has little to offer; the border itself is far more threatening. On one side, fences have grown and American agents have multiplied; on the other, criminals haunt the journey at every turn.
And yet, while these factors — and better opportunities at home — have cut illegal immigration from Mexico to its lowest level in decades, they are not enough to scare off a sizable, determined cadre.
"We have it boiled down to the hardest lot," said Christopher Sabatini, senior director for policy at the Council of the Americas.
Indeed, 56 percent of apprehensions at the Mexican border in 2010 involved people who had been caught previously, up from 44 percent in 2005. A growing percentage of deportees in recent years have also been deported before, according to Department of Homeland Security figures.
For the Obama administration, these repeat offenders have become a high priority. Prosecutions for illegal re-entry have jumped by more than two-thirds since 2008. Officials say it is now the most prosecuted federal felony.
President Obama has already deported around 1.1 million immigrants — more than any president since Dwight D. Eisenhower — and officials say the numbers will not decline. But at a time when the dynamics of immigration are changing, experts and advocates on all sides are increasingly asking if the approach, which has defined immigration policy since 9/11, still makes sense.
Deportation is expensive, costing the government at least $12,500 per person, and it often does not work: between October 2008 and July 22 of this year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement spent $2.25 billion sending back 180,229 people who had been deported before and come back anyway. Many more have returned and stayed hidden.
Some groups favoring reduced immigration say that making life harder for illegal immigrants in this country would be far more efficient. They argue that along with eliminating work opportunities by requiring employers to verify the reported immigration status of new hires, Congress should also prohibit illegal immigrants from opening bank accounts, or even obtaining library cards.
"You’d reduce the number of people who keep coming back again and again," said Bob Dane, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform. The alternative, says Doris Meissner, the country’s top immigration official in the mid-1990s, is to accept that illegal immigrants like Daniel "are people with fundamental ties to the United States, not where they came from."
"Our societies are so deeply connected," Ms. Meissner said, referring primarily to the United States and Mexico, the main source of illegal immigrants. "And that is not reflected at all in policy."
The administration acknowledges that immigrants like Daniel are rooted in the United States and typically have otherwise clean criminal records. But under its new plan introduced in August — suspending deportations for pending low-priority cases, including immigrants brought to the United States as children — repeat crossers are singled out for removal alongside "serious felons," "known gang members" and "individuals who pose a clear risk to national security."
Administration officials say they are trying to break the "yo-yo effect" of people bouncing back, as mandated by congress when it toughened laws related to illegal re-entry in the 1990s.
But some experts argue that this commingling actually undermines security. After a decade of record deportations, critics argue, it has become even harder to separate the two groups that now define the border: professional criminals and experienced migrants motivated by family ties in the United States.
"If you think drug dealers and terrorists are much more dangerous than maids and gardeners, then we should get as many visas as possible to those people, so we can focus on the real threat," said David Shirk, director of the Transborder Institute at the University of San Diego. "Widening the gates would strengthen the walls."
Crime and the Border
The border crossers pouring into Arizona a decade or two ago were more numerous, but less likely to be threatening. David Jimarez, a Border Patrol agent with years of experience south of Tucson, recalled that even when migrants outnumbered American authorities by 25 to 1, they did not resist. "They would just sit down and wait for us," he said.
Over the past few years, the mix has changed, with more drug smugglers and other criminals among the dwindling, but still substantial, ranks of migrants.
The impacts are far-reaching. In northern Mexico, less immigration means less business. Border towns like Agua Prieta, long known as a departure point, have gone from bustling to windblown. Taxis that ferried migrants to the mountains now gather dust. Restaurants and hotels, like the sunflower-themed Girasol downtown, are practically empty. On one recent afternoon, only 3 of the 50 rooms were occupied.
"In 2000, we were full every day," said Alejandro Rocha, the hotel’s manager.
New research from the University of California, San Diego, shows that crime is now the top concern for Mexicans thinking of heading north. As fear keeps many migrants home, many experienced border guides, or coyotes, have given up illegal migration for other jobs.
In Tijuana, across the border from San Diego, one well-known coyote is now selling tires. In Nogales, the largest Mexican city bordering Arizona, power has shifted to tattooed young men with expensive binoculars along the border fence, while here in Agua Prieta — where Mexican officials say traffic is one-thirthieth of what it once was — the only way to get across is to deal with gangs that sometimes push migrants to carry drugs.
It is even worse in Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Tex. Just standing at the border fence brings out drug cartel enforcers demanding $300 for the right to pass. Migrants and the organizations that assist them say cartel lieutenants roam the shelters, looking for deportees willing to work as lookouts, earning $400 a week until they have enough to pay for passage north.
"I was thinking about doing it, too," said Daniel, looking down. "But then I thought about my family."
American law enforcement officials say the matrix of drugs, migration and violence has become more visible at the border and along the trails and roads heading north, where more of the immigrants being caught carry drugs or guns — making them more likely to flee, resist arrest or commit other crimes.
"There’s less traffic, but traffic that’s there is more threatening," Mr. Jimarez, the border agent, said.
Larry Dever, the sheriff of Cochise County, Ariz., which sits north of Agua Prieta, agreed: "The guys smuggling people and narcotics now are more sinister."
His county, 6,169 square miles of scrub brush, ranches and tiny towns in the state’s southeast corner, has been an established crossing corridor since the mid-1990s. Since 2008, the police there have tracked every crime linked to illegal immigrants, in part because state and federal officials frequently requested data, treating the county as a bellwether of border security.
Indeed, when a Cochise rancher named Robert Krentz was killed in March 2010 after radioing to his brother that he was going to help a suspected illegal immigrant, the county quickly became a flash point for a larger debate that ultimately led to SB 1070, the polarizing Arizona bill giving the police more responsibility for cracking down on illegal immigrants.
Yet, crime involving illegal immigrants is relatively rare (5 percent of all local crime, Sheriff Dever said). Mostly it consists of burglaries involving stolen food. And, public records show, in 11 of the 18 violent crimes linked to illegal immigrants over 18 months, immigrants were both the victims and attackers.
This is not the portrait given by Republican border governors, including Rick Perry of Texas, a presidential candidate who recently said that "it is not safe on that border." But while Mexican drug cartels have increased their presence from Tucson to New York — sometimes engaging in brutal violence after entering the country illegally — Americans living near the border are generally safe.
A USA Today analysis of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California in July found that crime within 100 miles of the border is below both the national average and the average for each of those states — and has been declining for years. Several other independent researchers have come to the same conclusion.
But the border is not safe for people crossing or patrolling it. The number of immigrants found dead in the Arizona desert, from all causes, has failed to decline as fast as illegal immigration has, while assaults on Border Patrol agents grew by 41 percent from 2006 to 2010, almost entirely because of an increase in attacks with rocks. The heightened risks have stimulated a debate: Has the more aggressive approach — bigger fences, more agents and deportations — contributed to, or diminished, the danger?
Sheriff Dever, lionized as an "illegal immigration warrior" by immigration opponents, says that increased enforcement has made Americans safer and should continue until his neighbors tell him they are no longer afraid.
But some immigration advocates contend that the government’s approach is too broad to be effective. "We have to really separate out the guy who is coming to make a living with his family from the terrorist or the drug dealer," said Peter Siavelis, an editor of "Getting Immigration Right: What Every American Needs to Know."
Home Is Where the Children Are
Deportations have muddled that delineation. In a recent line of deportees piling off a bus on the San Diego side of a metal gate leading to Tijuana, all were equal: the criminal in prison garb with the wispy goatee; the mother averting her eyes; and longtime residents like Alberto Álvarez, 36, a janitor and father of five who said he was picked up for driving without a license.
"Look, I’ve been in the U.S. 18 years," he said, slinging a backpack over his Izod shirt. "Right now, my children are alone, my wife is alone caring for the kids by herself — they’ve separated us."
During the immigration wave that peaked around a decade ago, deportations often meant something different: many deportees had not been in the United States for long; they were going home.
But now that there are fewer new arrivals, the concept of home is changing. Of the roughly 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States, 48 percent arrived before 2000. For the 6.5 million Mexicans in the United States illegally, that figure is even higher — 55 percent, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. There are now also 4.5 million American-born children of unauthorized immigrant parents.
Experts on both sides of the debate say this large group of rooted immigrants presents the nation with a fundamental choice: Either make life in the United States so difficult for illegal immigrants that they leave on their own, or allow immigrants who pose no threat to public safety to remain with their families legally, though not necessarily as citizens.
Steven A. Camarota, a demographer at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, said the government should revoke automatic citizenship for children born to illegal immigrants, and seize assets from deported illegal immigrants so they have fewer incentives to return.
President Obama, having made no progress on getting his legalization plan through Congress, has instead been trying to make enforcement more surgical. Under the new guidelines, officials will use "prosecutorial discretion" to review the current docket of 300,000 deportation cases, suspending expulsions for a range of immigrants.
Several factors prompt "particular care and consideration" for a reprieve, including whether the person has been in the United States since childhood, or is pregnant, seriously ill, a member of the military or a minor, according to a June memo that initiated the change.
The issue of "whether the person has a U.S. citizen or permanent resident spouse, child or parent" appears in the memo’s secondary list of factors to consider. But it is not clear how broadly leniency will be applied. Repeat crossers are given a special black mark, and the administration has already deported hundreds of thousands of minor offenders, despite claiming to focus on "the worst of the worst."
Several Democratic governors and law enforcement officials are particularly angry about Secure Communities, a program to run the fingerprints of anyone booked by the police to check for federal immigration violations. A large proportion of those deported through this process — 79 percent, according to a recent report by the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University — were low-level offenders, often arrested for traffic violations.
Administration officials dispute that, saying the ratio of serious criminals is increasing, and that ultimately they must enforce immigration law against all violators. They have mandated that the program be used nationwide by 2013.
Mexico’s border cities offer a portrait of what that could mean. Nearly 950,000 Mexican immigrants have been deported since the start of fiscal 2008. And in Tijuana — a former hub for migrants heading north, which now receives more deportees than anywhere else — the pool of deportees preparing to cross again just keeps growing.
Maria García, 27, arrived here after being deported for a traffic violation. She said she had spent six years living in Fresno, Calif., with her two Mexico-born sons, 11 and 7. She was one of many who said that without a doubt, they would find their way back to the United States.
"They can’t stop us," she said.
The constant flow of deportees has become a growing concern for Mexican officials, who say the new arrivals are easy recruits, and victims, for drug cartels.
One former deportee was arrested this year for playing a major role in the deaths of around 200 people found in mass graves. In Tijuana, a homeless camp at the border has swollen from a cluster to a neighborhood, as deportees flow in, many carrying stories of being robbed or kidnapped by gangs who saw their American connections as a source for ransom.
Minutes after he arrived, Mr. Álvarez, the janitor, said he was worried about surviving — "you’re playing with your life being here," he said. But his twin sons would turn 2 in a few weeks, and like many others, he said that no matter how he was treated in the United States, he would find his way back.
"I feel bad being here, I feel bad," he said. "I’ve got my kids over there, my family, my whole life. Here" — he shook his head at the end of his first day in Tijuana — "no."
A version of this article appeared in print on October 3, 2011, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Crossing Over, and Over.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/03/world/americas/mexican-immigrants-repeatedly-brave-risks-to-resume-lives-in-united-states.html?_r=2
October 2, 2011
by Damien Cave
AGUA PRIETA, Mexico — "My wife, my son — I have to get back to them," Daniel kept telling himself, from the moment he was arrested in Seattle for driving with an expired license, all the way through the deportation proceeding that delivered him to Mexico in June.
Nothing would deter him from crossing the border again. He had left his hometown at 24, he said. Twelve years later, he spoke nearly fluent English and had an American son, a wife and three brothers in the United States. "I’ll keep trying," he said, "until I’ll get there."
This is increasingly the profile of illegal immigration today. Migrant shelters along the Mexican border are filled not with newcomers looking for a better life, but with seasoned crossers: older men and women, often deportees, braving ever-greater risks to get back to their families in the United States — the country they consider home.
They present an enormous challenge to American policy makers, because they continue to head north despite obstacles more severe than at any time in recent history. It is not just that the American economy has little to offer; the border itself is far more threatening. On one side, fences have grown and American agents have multiplied; on the other, criminals haunt the journey at every turn.
And yet, while these factors — and better opportunities at home — have cut illegal immigration from Mexico to its lowest level in decades, they are not enough to scare off a sizable, determined cadre.
"We have it boiled down to the hardest lot," said Christopher Sabatini, senior director for policy at the Council of the Americas.
Indeed, 56 percent of apprehensions at the Mexican border in 2010 involved people who had been caught previously, up from 44 percent in 2005. A growing percentage of deportees in recent years have also been deported before, according to Department of Homeland Security figures.
For the Obama administration, these repeat offenders have become a high priority. Prosecutions for illegal re-entry have jumped by more than two-thirds since 2008. Officials say it is now the most prosecuted federal felony.
President Obama has already deported around 1.1 million immigrants — more than any president since Dwight D. Eisenhower — and officials say the numbers will not decline. But at a time when the dynamics of immigration are changing, experts and advocates on all sides are increasingly asking if the approach, which has defined immigration policy since 9/11, still makes sense.
Deportation is expensive, costing the government at least $12,500 per person, and it often does not work: between October 2008 and July 22 of this year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement spent $2.25 billion sending back 180,229 people who had been deported before and come back anyway. Many more have returned and stayed hidden.
Some groups favoring reduced immigration say that making life harder for illegal immigrants in this country would be far more efficient. They argue that along with eliminating work opportunities by requiring employers to verify the reported immigration status of new hires, Congress should also prohibit illegal immigrants from opening bank accounts, or even obtaining library cards.
"You’d reduce the number of people who keep coming back again and again," said Bob Dane, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform. The alternative, says Doris Meissner, the country’s top immigration official in the mid-1990s, is to accept that illegal immigrants like Daniel "are people with fundamental ties to the United States, not where they came from."
"Our societies are so deeply connected," Ms. Meissner said, referring primarily to the United States and Mexico, the main source of illegal immigrants. "And that is not reflected at all in policy."
The administration acknowledges that immigrants like Daniel are rooted in the United States and typically have otherwise clean criminal records. But under its new plan introduced in August — suspending deportations for pending low-priority cases, including immigrants brought to the United States as children — repeat crossers are singled out for removal alongside "serious felons," "known gang members" and "individuals who pose a clear risk to national security."
Administration officials say they are trying to break the "yo-yo effect" of people bouncing back, as mandated by congress when it toughened laws related to illegal re-entry in the 1990s.
But some experts argue that this commingling actually undermines security. After a decade of record deportations, critics argue, it has become even harder to separate the two groups that now define the border: professional criminals and experienced migrants motivated by family ties in the United States.
"If you think drug dealers and terrorists are much more dangerous than maids and gardeners, then we should get as many visas as possible to those people, so we can focus on the real threat," said David Shirk, director of the Transborder Institute at the University of San Diego. "Widening the gates would strengthen the walls."
Crime and the Border
The border crossers pouring into Arizona a decade or two ago were more numerous, but less likely to be threatening. David Jimarez, a Border Patrol agent with years of experience south of Tucson, recalled that even when migrants outnumbered American authorities by 25 to 1, they did not resist. "They would just sit down and wait for us," he said.
Over the past few years, the mix has changed, with more drug smugglers and other criminals among the dwindling, but still substantial, ranks of migrants.
The impacts are far-reaching. In northern Mexico, less immigration means less business. Border towns like Agua Prieta, long known as a departure point, have gone from bustling to windblown. Taxis that ferried migrants to the mountains now gather dust. Restaurants and hotels, like the sunflower-themed Girasol downtown, are practically empty. On one recent afternoon, only 3 of the 50 rooms were occupied.
"In 2000, we were full every day," said Alejandro Rocha, the hotel’s manager.
New research from the University of California, San Diego, shows that crime is now the top concern for Mexicans thinking of heading north. As fear keeps many migrants home, many experienced border guides, or coyotes, have given up illegal migration for other jobs.
In Tijuana, across the border from San Diego, one well-known coyote is now selling tires. In Nogales, the largest Mexican city bordering Arizona, power has shifted to tattooed young men with expensive binoculars along the border fence, while here in Agua Prieta — where Mexican officials say traffic is one-thirthieth of what it once was — the only way to get across is to deal with gangs that sometimes push migrants to carry drugs.
It is even worse in Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Tex. Just standing at the border fence brings out drug cartel enforcers demanding $300 for the right to pass. Migrants and the organizations that assist them say cartel lieutenants roam the shelters, looking for deportees willing to work as lookouts, earning $400 a week until they have enough to pay for passage north.
"I was thinking about doing it, too," said Daniel, looking down. "But then I thought about my family."
American law enforcement officials say the matrix of drugs, migration and violence has become more visible at the border and along the trails and roads heading north, where more of the immigrants being caught carry drugs or guns — making them more likely to flee, resist arrest or commit other crimes.
"There’s less traffic, but traffic that’s there is more threatening," Mr. Jimarez, the border agent, said.
Larry Dever, the sheriff of Cochise County, Ariz., which sits north of Agua Prieta, agreed: "The guys smuggling people and narcotics now are more sinister."
His county, 6,169 square miles of scrub brush, ranches and tiny towns in the state’s southeast corner, has been an established crossing corridor since the mid-1990s. Since 2008, the police there have tracked every crime linked to illegal immigrants, in part because state and federal officials frequently requested data, treating the county as a bellwether of border security.
Indeed, when a Cochise rancher named Robert Krentz was killed in March 2010 after radioing to his brother that he was going to help a suspected illegal immigrant, the county quickly became a flash point for a larger debate that ultimately led to SB 1070, the polarizing Arizona bill giving the police more responsibility for cracking down on illegal immigrants.
Yet, crime involving illegal immigrants is relatively rare (5 percent of all local crime, Sheriff Dever said). Mostly it consists of burglaries involving stolen food. And, public records show, in 11 of the 18 violent crimes linked to illegal immigrants over 18 months, immigrants were both the victims and attackers.
This is not the portrait given by Republican border governors, including Rick Perry of Texas, a presidential candidate who recently said that "it is not safe on that border." But while Mexican drug cartels have increased their presence from Tucson to New York — sometimes engaging in brutal violence after entering the country illegally — Americans living near the border are generally safe.
A USA Today analysis of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California in July found that crime within 100 miles of the border is below both the national average and the average for each of those states — and has been declining for years. Several other independent researchers have come to the same conclusion.
But the border is not safe for people crossing or patrolling it. The number of immigrants found dead in the Arizona desert, from all causes, has failed to decline as fast as illegal immigration has, while assaults on Border Patrol agents grew by 41 percent from 2006 to 2010, almost entirely because of an increase in attacks with rocks. The heightened risks have stimulated a debate: Has the more aggressive approach — bigger fences, more agents and deportations — contributed to, or diminished, the danger?
Sheriff Dever, lionized as an "illegal immigration warrior" by immigration opponents, says that increased enforcement has made Americans safer and should continue until his neighbors tell him they are no longer afraid.
But some immigration advocates contend that the government’s approach is too broad to be effective. "We have to really separate out the guy who is coming to make a living with his family from the terrorist or the drug dealer," said Peter Siavelis, an editor of "Getting Immigration Right: What Every American Needs to Know."
Home Is Where the Children Are
Deportations have muddled that delineation. In a recent line of deportees piling off a bus on the San Diego side of a metal gate leading to Tijuana, all were equal: the criminal in prison garb with the wispy goatee; the mother averting her eyes; and longtime residents like Alberto Álvarez, 36, a janitor and father of five who said he was picked up for driving without a license.
"Look, I’ve been in the U.S. 18 years," he said, slinging a backpack over his Izod shirt. "Right now, my children are alone, my wife is alone caring for the kids by herself — they’ve separated us."
During the immigration wave that peaked around a decade ago, deportations often meant something different: many deportees had not been in the United States for long; they were going home.
But now that there are fewer new arrivals, the concept of home is changing. Of the roughly 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States, 48 percent arrived before 2000. For the 6.5 million Mexicans in the United States illegally, that figure is even higher — 55 percent, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. There are now also 4.5 million American-born children of unauthorized immigrant parents.
Experts on both sides of the debate say this large group of rooted immigrants presents the nation with a fundamental choice: Either make life in the United States so difficult for illegal immigrants that they leave on their own, or allow immigrants who pose no threat to public safety to remain with their families legally, though not necessarily as citizens.
Steven A. Camarota, a demographer at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, said the government should revoke automatic citizenship for children born to illegal immigrants, and seize assets from deported illegal immigrants so they have fewer incentives to return.
President Obama, having made no progress on getting his legalization plan through Congress, has instead been trying to make enforcement more surgical. Under the new guidelines, officials will use "prosecutorial discretion" to review the current docket of 300,000 deportation cases, suspending expulsions for a range of immigrants.
Several factors prompt "particular care and consideration" for a reprieve, including whether the person has been in the United States since childhood, or is pregnant, seriously ill, a member of the military or a minor, according to a June memo that initiated the change.
The issue of "whether the person has a U.S. citizen or permanent resident spouse, child or parent" appears in the memo’s secondary list of factors to consider. But it is not clear how broadly leniency will be applied. Repeat crossers are given a special black mark, and the administration has already deported hundreds of thousands of minor offenders, despite claiming to focus on "the worst of the worst."
Several Democratic governors and law enforcement officials are particularly angry about Secure Communities, a program to run the fingerprints of anyone booked by the police to check for federal immigration violations. A large proportion of those deported through this process — 79 percent, according to a recent report by the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University — were low-level offenders, often arrested for traffic violations.
Administration officials dispute that, saying the ratio of serious criminals is increasing, and that ultimately they must enforce immigration law against all violators. They have mandated that the program be used nationwide by 2013.
Mexico’s border cities offer a portrait of what that could mean. Nearly 950,000 Mexican immigrants have been deported since the start of fiscal 2008. And in Tijuana — a former hub for migrants heading north, which now receives more deportees than anywhere else — the pool of deportees preparing to cross again just keeps growing.
Maria García, 27, arrived here after being deported for a traffic violation. She said she had spent six years living in Fresno, Calif., with her two Mexico-born sons, 11 and 7. She was one of many who said that without a doubt, they would find their way back to the United States.
"They can’t stop us," she said.
The constant flow of deportees has become a growing concern for Mexican officials, who say the new arrivals are easy recruits, and victims, for drug cartels.
One former deportee was arrested this year for playing a major role in the deaths of around 200 people found in mass graves. In Tijuana, a homeless camp at the border has swollen from a cluster to a neighborhood, as deportees flow in, many carrying stories of being robbed or kidnapped by gangs who saw their American connections as a source for ransom.
Minutes after he arrived, Mr. Álvarez, the janitor, said he was worried about surviving — "you’re playing with your life being here," he said. But his twin sons would turn 2 in a few weeks, and like many others, he said that no matter how he was treated in the United States, he would find his way back.
"I feel bad being here, I feel bad," he said. "I’ve got my kids over there, my family, my whole life. Here" — he shook his head at the end of his first day in Tijuana — "no."
A version of this article appeared in print on October 3, 2011, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Crossing Over, and Over.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/03/world/americas/mexican-immigrants-repeatedly-brave-risks-to-resume-lives-in-united-states.html?_r=2
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Incomplete smuggling tunnel found in vacant Calexico store
Imperial Valley Press
August 27, 2011
By CHELCEY ADAMI
CALEXICO — Patrons went about their normal business Friday in the old Vons shopping center on Second Street, unaware that Mexico’s pervasive drug business had set up shop in their midst.
A large piece of drilling equipment and an incomplete drug-smuggling tunnel were discovered Thursday afternoon inside the long-closed supermarket, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced.
The tunnel didn’t yet reach into Mexico, whose border fence is easily visible from the store’s front entrance.
Calexico residents working at the neighboring businesses in the shopping center said they hadn’t seen any unusual activity recently.
Some businesses were asked by authorities to close Thursday as the investigation continued.
Rocio Perez of Calexico said in Spanish that normally it’s very peaceful in that shopping center. Knowing that activity like this was occurring nearby makes it seem more dangerous, she said.
Bernardo Mendoza of Brawley was shopping in the center Friday. He said in Spanish he wasn’t surprised about the tunnel and that it often happens near the border.
Calexico resident Melissa Villalobos speculated that it would be easy to construct the tunnel at night since all the shopping center’s stores close after 7 p.m. or 8 p.m.
Signs on the vacant store say “Baja Bikes” and “Coming soon.”
The 4-inch diameter tunnel found inside the store extends about 100 yards.
“The use of pipeline tunnels is one of the newest approaches being employed by drug-smuggling organizations,” an ICE press release stated. “The narrow passages are lined with PVC pipe, and the drugs are smuggled through.”
The agency’s Homeland Security Investigations agents were still gathering evidence Friday.
The tunnel was found after a city of Calexico hazardous materials unit responded to reports of a possible gas leak at the location, the ICE press release explained.
After discovering the equipment and tunnel, local authorities told U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations agents. Mexican law enforcement was also notified.
“This discovery again shows the Mexican cartels’ growing desperation in the face of heightened border security,” El Centro ICE HIS Assistant Special Agent in Charge Ricardo Sandoval said.
“Frustrated by our defenses, they’re literally going underground, but we’re thwarting them there as well,” Sandoval said. “That’s owing to the extraordinary ongoing enforcement efforts involving the agencies here and in Mexico.”
Authorities have found more than 10 smuggling tunnels in the area around Calexico and Mexicali during the last four years, according to ICE.
http://www.ivpressonline.com/news/ivp-incomplete-smuggling-tunnel-found-in-vacant-calexico-store-20110827,0,4212105.story
August 27, 2011
By CHELCEY ADAMI
CALEXICO — Patrons went about their normal business Friday in the old Vons shopping center on Second Street, unaware that Mexico’s pervasive drug business had set up shop in their midst.
A large piece of drilling equipment and an incomplete drug-smuggling tunnel were discovered Thursday afternoon inside the long-closed supermarket, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced.
The tunnel didn’t yet reach into Mexico, whose border fence is easily visible from the store’s front entrance.
Calexico residents working at the neighboring businesses in the shopping center said they hadn’t seen any unusual activity recently.
Some businesses were asked by authorities to close Thursday as the investigation continued.
Rocio Perez of Calexico said in Spanish that normally it’s very peaceful in that shopping center. Knowing that activity like this was occurring nearby makes it seem more dangerous, she said.
Bernardo Mendoza of Brawley was shopping in the center Friday. He said in Spanish he wasn’t surprised about the tunnel and that it often happens near the border.
Calexico resident Melissa Villalobos speculated that it would be easy to construct the tunnel at night since all the shopping center’s stores close after 7 p.m. or 8 p.m.
Signs on the vacant store say “Baja Bikes” and “Coming soon.”
The 4-inch diameter tunnel found inside the store extends about 100 yards.
“The use of pipeline tunnels is one of the newest approaches being employed by drug-smuggling organizations,” an ICE press release stated. “The narrow passages are lined with PVC pipe, and the drugs are smuggled through.”
The agency’s Homeland Security Investigations agents were still gathering evidence Friday.
The tunnel was found after a city of Calexico hazardous materials unit responded to reports of a possible gas leak at the location, the ICE press release explained.
After discovering the equipment and tunnel, local authorities told U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations agents. Mexican law enforcement was also notified.
“This discovery again shows the Mexican cartels’ growing desperation in the face of heightened border security,” El Centro ICE HIS Assistant Special Agent in Charge Ricardo Sandoval said.
“Frustrated by our defenses, they’re literally going underground, but we’re thwarting them there as well,” Sandoval said. “That’s owing to the extraordinary ongoing enforcement efforts involving the agencies here and in Mexico.”
Authorities have found more than 10 smuggling tunnels in the area around Calexico and Mexicali during the last four years, according to ICE.
http://www.ivpressonline.com/news/ivp-incomplete-smuggling-tunnel-found-in-vacant-calexico-store-20110827,0,4212105.story
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)