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A combination of factors, including new vehicle barriers and pedestrian fences, more Border Patrol agents, stepped-up prosecution of illegal border crossers, and a sluggish U.S. economy, have combined to drive down the number of undocumented immigrants apprehended by Border Patrol agents. Fewer apprehensions means fewer illegal immigrants are attempting to cross the border.
Deming-based Border Patrol agents, who used to pick up scores of undocumented immigrants each day, are catching only about four a day now, said supervisory agent James Acosta.
"It's helped immensely," said agent Terrance Kranz, a Deming station field operations supervisor, of the new barriers and fences. "It gives the element of time back to the agents."

Fences abutting ports of entry prevent illegal crossers from quickly reaching residential areas where they can more easily disappear.

Over the last year, contractors have erected about 12 miles of new pedestrian fence, with sections running east and west of the Santa Teresa port of entry and on either side of the Columbus port of entry. Those projects have brought the total amount of pedestrian fence, which typically stands about 15 feet high, to about 15 miles in New Mexico, according to Customs and Border Protection.
In a measure of how much things have changed, while ranchers on New Mexico's southern border used to complain about the need for more fencing, at a meeting of a border task force in Deming on Dec. 10 ranchers raised concerns that federal contractors' trucks running to and from the border were damaging unpaved roads and that road grading has caused erosion problems.
"Good idea, bad plan," bootheel rancher William Hurt said of the border security projects.
Kranz said he considered such complaints a "sign of success."

"We've just had a lot of fence to build in a short amount of time," Kranz said.