The U.S. Homeland Security Department is hell-bent on slapping up as many miles of walls and fences along the border as it can before the year’s out. It’s a Congressional mandate, the agency says, requiring them to build 300 miles of wall and 370 miles of vehicle barrier before December.
But maybe Congress should have a brief primer in U.S.-Mexico border history to see how these walls have worked in the past. Let me tell you, the history of walling off this place is not pretty nor has it ever proven to be particularly useful.
Of course, I’m screwing things up even before I begin, the spokesman tells me when I call to talk about the wall.
“It’s not a wall, it’s pedestrian fencing,” he said.
Hmm, alright. Anyway you want it, I guess. This is the same federal agency that released a 21-page report in March 2006 instructing its customs agents how to distinguish a bolt from a screw, after all. So sure. Pedestrian fencing.
These walls have become the focal point for every debate in the nation about illegal immigration.
Barack Obama voted to put up the 670 miles of wall. So did John McCain. And I haven’t heard any of the other candidates for president ask too many smart questions about the walls. In fact, every single candidate seems to believe that walls are the cure-all for all our immigration woes.
And to a certain extent they are. They’ll satisfy the loudest voices, those whom, I’d wager, have never seen the U.S.-Mexico border. Silence the brash and the rest of us will calm right down, I suppose the thinking goes.
But take a look at what these walls accomplish when it comes to narco-trafficking.
Here’s Sandalio Gonzalez, the former special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s El Paso office, speaking before Congress in 2003:
“Before the World Trade Center disaster in September of 2001, an estimated 90% of the illegal drugs coming to the U.S. were smuggled through the international ports of entry,” he said.
Yet El Paso was the focus of an intense U.S. Border Patrol effort that started in 1994 called Operation Hold the Line. The basic idea was to station an agent every quarter-mile or so, each one standing in sight of the next. The operation was about as close as shoulder-to-shoulder enforcement as you can get.
In San Diego, Operation Gatekeeper launched the same year, and by 1995 had extended a wall from the Pacific Ocean 66 miles to the east.
Of course, in El Paso, the Feds had Amado Carrillo Fuentes to deal with. While in San Diego, it was the Arellano Felix family. Despite these walls, these two organizations remained the most powerful drug cartels to control the border.
If Gonzalez is to be believed, when it came to narcotics trafficking, the walls were of no consequence. And it wasn’t because the stuff was going around those walls of men and steel, either. It was the ports, it’s always the ports.
Take a look at this Pew Hispanic Center survey from May 2006:
“As much as 45% of the total unauthorized migrant population entered the country with visas that allowed them to visit or reside in the U.S. for a limited amount of time. Known as ‘overstayers,’ these migrants became part of the illegal population when they remained after their visas had expired.”
Nearly half of somewhere around 10-12 million people, and that’s data from two years ago. My guess is it’s only grown since then.
Go back a little further, to little Naco, Ariz., 1919. Fearing that the Mexican revolution would spill over into the U.S., 5,000 National Guard troops were stationed along the border in what was then Camp Newell; the first border wall.
Some things never change.
So history shows us that these pedestrian fences, walls, or sheets of steel landing platform have never made a bit of difference in border security.
Unless, and maybe this is what really matters, one aspect of border security is peace of mind. In that case, these walls are going to calm the voters down.
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