That seems to be a clear indication that border enforcement can work. Operation Hold the Line started near El Paso in 1993. The city is very safe, relatively, because the crossings are spread out away from the enforcement areas. The border is still, for all intents and purposes, open. The areas where the crossings occur are diverted to other areas. Good for El Paso, not so good for many other places.
Pickups stolen here used for immigrant smuggling, authorities say
Dozens of trucks taken from Austin parking lots have been recovered in South Texas.
By Tony Plohetski
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Monday, December 14, 2009
[snip]According to Austin police statistics, the theft of Ford trucks in the past two years has outpaced Chevrolets and Dodges, which also remain popular among thieves. This year, the F-250 model has been stolen more than the F-150 or F-350.
Although they are placing more attention on the truck thefts, Austin police said the pickups represent only a fraction of the nearly 1,600 vehicles stolen since April 1.
Honda Civics and Accords continue to be the most popular car among Austin thieves, who strip them and resell their parts, police said.
Brownsville Police Chief Carlos Garcia, chairman of the Texas Automobile Burglary and Theft Prevention Authority, said he began hearing from other police departments about the increase in thefts of certain trucks, particularly F-250s and F-350s, for human smuggling a couple of years ago.
Those departments were applying for state grants to pay for special operations to combat the thefts, Garcia said.
He said more populated areas probably have been targeted because stolen trucks can be more difficult to spot among thousands of other vehicles. He said that in some cases, thieves can get hundreds of miles away before the trucks are reported stolen.
“It is widely accepted and widely known that these trucks were targeted,” Houston police Lt. Scott Dombrowski said. “If you had a Ford F-250 and it wasn’t locked, they were stealing the heck out of them. And even if they were locked, they were still stealing them.”
According to Houston police statistics for September, the most recent data available, 172 Ford trucks were stolen in that city, about 110 of which were Ford F-250s and F-350s. The department did not have statistics on how many were linked to human smuggling.
In South Texas, law officers started seeing an increase in the number of Ford pickups stolen from other cities and used for smuggling a couple of years ago.
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/2009/12/14/1214trucks.html