Posted on 06/04/2007 12:47:26 PM PDT by TheDon
I am sure glad that it is not my job to implement this seal the border directive. All the slack laws who live on the border and bitching about every aspect and the paleocons preferr a Ming Dynasty solution. Whew!
[I think you have that exactly backwards: the physical barrier, once completed, will cost less on an annual basis to maintain than no fence with the “virtual” setup which requires an agent going out and physically capturing every single person who the high-tech system detects as crossing the border.]
The annual maintenance costs of somebody walking a physical barrier closely enough every day to find where it’s been cut, then dispatching a repair crew to weld the hole shut, or fill in the tunnel, or whatever, would be hugely expensive. Unless border patrol agents happen to actually be watching when somebody uses a hole, they won’t find it without actually walking the fence.
Compare that to a pole with equipment every few miles. 98 feet tall, not easy to mess with, and constantly monitored so you immediately know if it has been messed with or is otherwise not functioning.
If somebody crawls through a hole in a physical fence, they have to be tracked down and captured just as with the virtual fence. As far as what is done with them after capture, why would that be any different, whether they are caught crossing by electronic surveilance or crawling through a hole ? Aren’t people that are caught multiple times imprisoned and not just turned loose into Mexico ? Why would they risk that any more frequently just because there is no physical barrier ? Caught and imprisoned is the same either way, right ?
I agree that a physical barrier would be a good thing, but it can be cheap like bundles of that “slinky-style” razor wire, as long as the surveilance exists to spot people attempting to create holes in it. Without surveilance, a physical fence is not going to do much good because holes are too easy to create and too hard to find. The combination would be cheaper and more effective than a more formidable physical barrier alone.
It would be “embarrassing” for the Mexican government not to respond to “video evidence” of bad guys crossing the border?
That is one of the most naive statements I’ve read on here in a while.
INTERNET TOUGH GUY ALERT :)
Your speculations in theory as to how a fence might be easily overcome have already been tested with the triple fence constructed south of San Diego.
Results have been excellent.
“Back then, Border Patrol agent Jim Henry says he was overwhelmed by the stream of immigrants who crossed into the United States illegally just in that sector.
“The first fence, 10 feet high, is made of welded metal panels. The second fence, 15 feet high, consists of steel mesh, and the top is angled inward to make it harder to climb over. Finally, in high-traffic areas, there’s also a smaller chain-link fence. In between the two main fences is 150 feet of “no man’s land,” an area that the Border Patrol sweeps with flood lights and trucks, and soon, surveillance cameras.
“Here in San Diego, we have proven that the border infrastructure system does indeed work,” Henry says. “It is highly effective.”
“Rancher Carol Kimsey, who lives in a valley near the Pacific Ocean on the U.S.-side of the fence, says the border barrier has improved the quality of life in the area.
“It was pretty seriously bad,” she recalls of the prefence days. “They were tearing up everything. They’d just go through fences. They didn’t care.””
SAN DIEGO FENCE PROVIDES LESSONS IN BORDER CONTROL
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1610988/posts
Really ? It is pretty rare that video of violent drug-runner crossings is seen today, isn’t it ?
The Mexican government gets a lot of mileage out of insisting the crossings are just “migrants” — poor people looking for a better life. And a lot of Americans have bought into that image. Watching video of armed men shooting across the border won’t affect their opinions ?
The Mexican government will do what is in it best interest — which means doing its best to maintain the appearance of law and order. That is a lot easier to do when news broadcasts and YouTube aren’t showing endless videos of gunmen apparently roaming free and firing across the border.
Somebody is going to cross 9 miles of rough terrain in 30 seconds ? I would say more like two hours. During which time they will be spotted and intercepted.
It doesn’t take 5 minutes to defeat a fence. It takes 1 minute about 30 times to create an invisible hole in a fence that will never be found without closely walking and testing the integrity of that fence. A hole that will take 5 seconds for someone to slip through.
I would say a physical fence without constant surveilance — not patrols, even 5 minute ones — is useless. Both physical fence and virtual fence together are necessary, but of the two components, the surveilance would be the more effective.
Define “inexpensive”. To repair almost any hole would require thousands of dollars in manpower to dispatch equipment and workers to the site to be repaired. People could do damage in minutes that would tie up your work crews for a whole day to repair. You would never be able to keep up.
And “inexpensive” monitoring equipment can’t “see” more than a few hundred feet, and motion activated cameras still cost a few hundred dollars per unit. Sensor wires in a fence alone would just give a false sense of security — it would be easily defeated by jumpering across the broken area. Seismic, motion, or vibration sensors alone would all be useless due to wind and wildlife hitting the fence.
So at a few hundred dollars per camera mounted right to the fence, every two hundred feet, you are talking about $15,000 per 3 mile stretch. Those cameras also mean you now need electrical power all along that fence — and video cable — which could be cut and blind how large a section of fence ? Your fence would be a lot more expensive than the minimal pyramid-of-razor-wire barrier that I would pair with the virtual fence.
The resulting level of surveilance doesn’t come close to providing the 9 mile depth of coverage that the virtual fence does.
If you can actively patrol a three-fence area and also maintain surveilance, then that’s good. That’s also just a 19 mile area. Have you seen the videos of people dragging acetylene cutting torches up to that fence and cutting holes in it ? Or all the news video of Mexicans lifting up sections that have been cut loose and slipping into the “no man’s land” ?
Can you build and man that over a 2,000 mile stretch of border ? What is the cost in manpower, fuel and vehicles to patrol such a fence so every spot is checked every few minutes ? The cost to maintain such a high level of manpower as well as initial construction cost would be very high. I think you could accomplish the same thing with a simple razor-wire pyramid and the towers that spot people and send agents to intercept them. Three thousand people — working anywhere — could monitor 1,000 virtual fence tower systems around the clock with treble overlap since they have a 9 mile view. Then you don’t need border agents patroling back and forth constantly, but only going where a spotter directs them.
It just sounds like the most efficient and effective solution is a cheap physical barrier and really good surveilance and border patrol response.
Is it cheaper:
1. once the triple fence has been built, to to maintain and patrol the triple fence, or
2. to have no physical barrier to speak of but with elaborate high tech surveillance and enough manpower and vehicles everywhere to catch someone coming across the border unimpeded?
I believe the first will be clearly cheaper on an ongoing basis, after the fence is built. That’s an empirical question, which we apparently disagree on.
And the critical factor is, since it is cheaper IMO on an ongoing basis, it will be easier to get the politicians to keep up the funding for maintaining and patrolling the triple fence, than it will be for the politicians every year to appropriate the higher cost of no barrier but the high-tech surveillance and immediate response manpower stationed everywhere for the second option.
My fence would have a moat... and the sharks in the moat would have frikkin’ laser beams on them.
In the 11 years that she and her husband Richard have owned the historic ranch, Schultz said they've never had a break-in or had an illegal immigrant step foot on the ranch without asking permission.
The presumption is that they give the permission, and perhaps even profit from their 'visitors', which is why they are against the towers?
Works for me.
2,000 miles of concrete fence ? I think that would be cost prohibitive. My comment about jumpering out a sensor wire was assuming a metal fence. Even so, tunneling under a concrete fence without setting off seismic sensors is no big deal, while repairing it — filling in the hole on both sides of the fence and replacing the cameras and other sensors destroyed is a big expense in manpower.
You think a few bullets from a mile away are going to do more damage than a few thousand bucks to something at the top of a 98 foot tall tower ?
Did the article even mention how much the electronics package costs, including the cameras and radar gear ? I doubt it is $200K. Not unless the government is doing another “$1,000 toilet seat” procurment deal.
[Uhhhhh... they don’t respond now. Maybe you should check out some of the actions of the Mexican consulate and learn their views on US border enforcement.]
Are there regular TV news reports with video of drug runners shooting their way across the border ? I can’t recall seeing any recently.
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