Hi-Tech Fence from Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific

Rep. Duncan Hunter, a California Republican who chairs the House Armed Services Committee, has proposed building two parallel steel and wire fences with a lighted strip in between running from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific coast. But Mexico will fight the proposal to fortify part of the U.S.-Mexico border with a high-tech wall according to Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez.

President Bush pledged last week to step up the use of unmanned flying drones, fences and technology to tighten border security. “I guarantee the U.S. government that (a wall) will not stop migrants. What will happen is they will climb over it or burrow underneath,” Derbez said. “The solution is an agreement to permit legal migration, secure and ordered.”

President Vicente Fox said this week he would keep fighting for a migration reform that could benefit millions of Mexican fruit pickers, waiters and janitors in the United States.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said a wall running the length of the border would cost too much and did not make sense for desert areas.

Source: Reuters, Dec. 1, 2005

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