Burning Atlanta

Sorry, I've been dragging ass today and haven't seen much I'd like to comment about, even this.

Reuters

The El Paso barrier -- two parallel chain link fences over 15 feet in height spaced 30 feet apart along the bed of the Rio Grande -- helped cut the number of illegal border crossers and curbed crime in the city, residents say.

The barrier has no barbed wire and includes several formal breaks, one where a freight train crosses from Ciudad Juarez, in Mexico, another to give access to the river bed, and is watched around the clock by border police spaced at intervals along the line.

But without 24-hour monitoring, as well as the stadium flood lights, and the directional cameras linked to a central control room manned by National Guard troops, the El Paso fence would be little deterrent.

"Along this stretch, the fence in itself doesn't stop anyone, but it does slow them down and gives us time to react. Those extra seconds are vital, and that's what a lot of people don't realize," said agent Jose Cisneros.

"You don't just put up a fence and say that is the end of it."

Reuters' correspondents witnessed two men crawl through the shallow, muddy Rio Grande and up the bank through the shaggy undergrowth on the U.S. side. There they climbed over the first fence, waded through a concrete irrigation canal and squeezed through a gap under the second fence, before running across the busy highway and into El Paso, where they were arrested.

"Whenever they think an agent is distracted or a camera is down, the smugglers tell the aliens to go for it," Romero said, highlighting the need for vigilance and rapid response for the fences to be effective in this urban strip.

"We are talking 10 to 15 seconds from the edge of the Rio Grande to the housing complex on the other side of the highway," he added.

A new single layer of steel mesh fence 10-13 feet tall stretches out across the rugged, high plains deserts and grasslands on either side of the small town of Naco, Arizona. The Border Patrol credits it with contributing to a fall in arrests, but some residents say it has done little to stop illegal immigrants.

In two recent visits to the area, Reuters correspondents found an improvised wooden ladder and stretches of garden hose used to scale the barrier, along with dozens of pieces of clothing and rucksacks apparently tossed by illegal border crossers as they breached it. 

"It's so easy to climb that I've seen two women that were pregnant, I've seen several women in their sixties and all kinds of kids between five and ten years old climb over it," Ladd said, as he leaned on a section of the steel mesh fence that stretches like a rusted veil westward toward the rugged Huachuca Mountains.