Burning Atlanta

This is a good sign and totally predictable. We know that there's no way to keep out every illegal or drug runner but we also know that as security tightens they become more desperate. So, the degree of desperation is a fair barometer of how well our security is working. HOWEVER, let us not forget that our government has no serious intention of securing the border.

Bust them

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.

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. I've mentioned this before. One effort that has the most impact is cutting off jobs. The pro-illegal lobby hates to admit that the laws in Oklahoma and Arizona are having an impact. They prefer to blame the economy for an exodus of illegals. AND I have no doubt that the fed will claim credit for a reduction in crossers when, in fact, it's the enforcement coming from the states. No reason to jump the border when there are no jobs waiting for them.

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. I've posted some pics of how the drug runners have built elaborate portable ramps for their vehicles to cross over the "fence."