Posted on 03/10/2008 9:58:14 AM PDT by kiriath_jearim
NACO, Arizona (Reuters) - When U.S. authorities raised a tall curtain of steel through this tiny Arizona border town to prevent people crossing illegally from Mexico, the smugglers on the south side were ready.
Using blowtorches and welding gear they burned a rectangular gate in the barrier large enough to drive a truck through, then they sealed it with a padlock to use it at their leisure, border police say.
As the U.S. government pushes ahead with an unprecedented security buildup along the porous Mexico border in this presidential election year, profit-hungry Mexican drug and human smugglers the length of the line are raising their game.
Border police are encountering ingenious and often simply brazen attempts to foil security at both the ports of entry and empty spaces along the nearly 2,000 mile (3,200-km) border by human and drug smuggling organizations.
"The more fencing and the more manpower that they see, the bolder the smugglers are becoming," Border Patrol agent Dove Haber said as she stood by the tall steel wall in Naco, which is patched most days by a busy repair team.
"Before we had the amount of technology and manpower and infrastructure that we have, they were able to operate with some impunity, and they don't want to see that change."
CARS FLYING THROUGH THE AIR
Illegal immigration is a hot topic in the United States, and both presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John. McCain and Democratic Party rivals Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton pledge to secure the porous Mexico border.
The difficulties involved in actually doing so were made clear last week when Ralph Basham, the commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said the government might be unable to meet a timetable to gain "operational security" over the border by 2011.
Ongoing measures to erect 670 miles of new fence on the border are credited with helping to cut arrests to some 870,000 last year from 1.1 million. Nevertheless, smugglers are trying and, in many cases succeeding, in breaching every kind of barrier thrown in their paths.
Sturdy steel posts have been sunk in the ground in many areas to stop vehicles crossing north, although drug traffickers have responded by building elaborate vehicle ramps to drive cars over the top, border police say.
"It's like the old show 'The Dukes of Hazzard,' cars flying through the air," said James Jacques, a supervisory Border Patrol in San Diego, Calif.
Illegal border crossers are also routinely beating pedestrian barriers using ladders tailor-made in clandestine Mexican workshops, border police say, while others have used screwdrivers to try to clamber over new 14-foot tall, steel-mesh barriers designed to deny handholds.
One such attempt was foiled. "It took the man a while, and by the time he got to the top, we were waiting for him," said Andrew Patterson, a Border Patrol agent in Yuma, Arizona.
YARD BLOWERS AND HORSESHOES
Crossing over the line in remote areas can be straightforward, although the challenge for smugglers and illegal immigrants is to disguise their tracks as they trek north over soft, sandy trails. Here, too, they are proving ever more resourceful, Border Patrol agents say.
Illegal entrants have long used branches to rub out their tracks -- in an old technique borrowed from the Apaches. Some have turned to gas-powered leaf blowers to thwart agents tracking, or "sign cutting," for them on roads running parallel to the border.
"One smuggler we caught would cross two, six, ten, 15 people in a group, and every time he crossed a road, he would blow out their 'sign' with the yard blower," Jacques told Reuters in an interview.
Professional smugglers have for years also wrapped their feet in carpet offcuts or strips of foam to try to slip north without a trace, and have laid boards and ladders to cross dirt roads monitored by the Border Patrol.
Other scams include smugglers taking their shoes off and hopping rock-to-rock in a bid to leave no tracks; putting their shoes on backward to try to confuse pursuers, and even attaching boards studded with horseshoes to pass as animals.
"They think it looks like hoofs," agent Haber said of this scam, which proved unsuccessful. "But the stride of an animal and a human are not the same. A horse would be having to take a lot of very, very small steps to look like a human."
JALAPENOS AND SKIN GRAFTS
Smugglers are not only adapting to tougher security in the empty spaces of the border, they are using a seemingly endless variety of wiles to try to beat detection as they pass through the ports of entry, some of them new, many of them recycled.
In addition to special compartments in car tires, gas tanks and door panels to hide drugs, U.S. Customs and Border Protection inspectors at ports of entry in New Mexico and west Texas recently found marijuana submerged in jars of jalapeno pickles, stuffed into mattresses and even hidden in Christmas holiday candles.
At crossings in California, meanwhile, inspectors in recent years have found a child smuggled inside a sealed papier-mache pinata doll, illegal immigrants crammed inside vehicle seat covers, and, late last month, two Mexican women smuggled in a pickup trucks' engine compartment through Calexico, Calif..
As controls tighten, criminals slipping over the line have also tried to thwart digital scanners linked to immigration and law enforcement databases by burning off their fingerprints, smearing with them superglue, and even, in the case of one man, having them surgically replaced with skin from their feet.
"It's an ongoing battle," said CBP spokesman Brian Levin. "I used to say I thought I had seen everything, but there's always something new."
Given a high enough profit for breaching a fence, nothing short of deadly force may be effective as a deterrent
Oh...but then...I forgot...our government prosecutes its own officers for using their firearms in the commission of their sworn duty.
I guess it's up to the citizens then.
This is an invasion. They are bringing in drugs, crime. disease, and destruction. They are raping and killing our citizens and bankrupting our infrastructures. Can someone please tell me how this is not a war?
“Can someone please tell me how this is not a war?”
“Using blowtorches and welding gear they burned a rectangular gate in the barrier large enough to drive a truck through, then they sealed it with a padlock to use it at their leisure, border police say.”
This is a good example of the open contempt that Mexico has for US immigration laws, our Border Patrol and our country.
This won’t stop until we start shooting to kill and patrolling with unmanned aircraft equipped with hellfile missiles.
Make it a felony to enter the USA other than throu a valid port of entry. Won't need a fence.
The government WON’T secure the borders and allows criminal illegal aliens to sue citizens who try it and take all their property..
WHAT IS AN ARMY? (The invasion of the USA)
From The US Border Patrol
http://www.usborderpatrol.com/Border_Patrol901_10.htm
Immigrant Effects, Part 10 (all 10 parts are amazing!)
The United States of America spent over forty years defending itself against a terrible foe. That foe was the Soviet Union.
The United States built 70,000 nuclear weapons of 65 different types to protect ourselves from a Soviet army of two million men. That two million man army was composed of Christians (the govenment leaders were definately not Christian) who were responsible for fine art, fine music, the first man in space and rockets to the moon.
What makes up an army? An army is made of men between the age of 15 and 35.
What comes across our border by the millions each year? Men between the ages of 15 and 35.
Afghan drug lords are now teamed with Mexican drug cartels to flood our cities with heroin. In Mexico, this Muslim Connnection to the drug cartels has brought beheadings to the streets of border towns. Many Mexican cities are now surrounded by Mexican Army troops and tanks — all to quel the violence. The city of Tijuana had its entire 3,000 man police force disarmed and replaced with Mexican Federal Troops.
What we have below are two images. One is of an enemy we fought tooth and claw for seventy years nearly bankrupting our country. The other we today invite across our border with welfare, free medical care, and more. The centers of many American cities are now controlled by MS-13 and others of the most violent gangs in America’s entire history. These gangs want to kill police and federal agents to rise in reputation among their own kind. Our prisons are now filled with a violent criminal class never seen before anywhere on earth.
In all of the 70 years of the Soviet Union — including the years of the proxy war of Vietnam.— they killed fewer Americans in total than Mexican Illegal Aliens do inside this country in a single year.
http://towncriernews.blogspot.com/search?q=What+is+an+army%3F
This is perfect...set up several snipers and an anti-tank missile system in the nearby hills overlooking this "convenient" crossing. Next time the smugglers come to use this route, show them what risk they take by invading our country.
It's currently a felony to transport cocaine into the US. Doesn't mean people have stopped doing it.
Now, if by making it a felony this results in each and every citizen being authorized to use deadly force to stop the commission of the felony, then it might do something useful
Would you respect a neighbor who took no actions to stop you as you repeatedly trespassed causing substantial damage each time? Would you respect a neighbor in which many in the household cheered your every attempt to trespass? Would you respect a neighbor in which some in the household assisted you in trespassing? They are just laughing at us.
“Fences are ineffective if there is no penalty for attempting to breach them Given a high enough profit for breaching a fence, nothing short of deadly force may be effective as a deterrent”
Even towers with machine guns and land mines between razor wire won’t stop them.
It already is. They aren't prosecuted because we don't have enough jails to hold all of them.
This is an invasion. They are bringing in drugs, crime. disease, and destruction. They are raping and killing our citizens and bankrupting our infrastructures. Can someone please tell me how this is not a war?
And where is Candoleeza Rice in all this?
Let's ask the Council on Foreign Relations, they're the professionals in such things.
I was under the impressin that you could use deadly force to prevent and/or stop a felony.
I don’t think it is a felony, I think it is a misdemeanor. Note the word think.
Depends on the felony. Deadly force to stop a rape, robbery, or murder, yes. Deadly force to stop somebody from signing a fraudulent income tax return, I don't think so
I'd like for it to be explicit in the law that somebody coming across the border with any sort of weapon be considered an armed invader, to be engaged on sight by any member of the Militia of the United States
While many would object to that, I would not be one.
And it would last as long until the first women and children got blown up. I don't think we're going to act like the Soviet Union with KAL-007 and shoot first and ask questions later.
Just like the assumed risk the passengers on KAL-007 took? I think that having control of the border is a good thing, but all these internet tough guy proposals are just silly.
The two don’t compare.
There were no obstacles to getting on KAL007 and the passengers had on control of their flight path. There were no warning signs.
People have some control over whether or not they climb fence or cut through it. And the consequences of entering a space marked *DANGER MINEFIELD* should be obvious to every one.
And if we don’t get tough they will never take us seriously.
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