More on the Border Fence: Protecting National Security?

Reuters reports that building a fence to try to secure the U.S. border with Mexico is impractical and would simply lead illegal immigrants to cross elsewhere, according to former Customs and Border Protection agents and other experts. Former U.S. Customs agents who have hunted drug traffickers in the mountains and deserts of around the Arizona border said the new barrier would be defeated by the rugged terrain. “You can’t build a wall across the mountains of southern Arizona, as much of the terrain is inaccessible even on foot,” veteran agent Lee Morgan told Reuters as he stood near the proposed route of the fence, east of the town of Douglas. But analysts warned it would have a limited impact on security. “It may work to curtail crossings in the immediate area it has been built, but it won’t stop illegal immigration,” said Doris Meissner, senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington. “Experience has shown that traffic will shift to other parts of the border” where there is less vigilance, added Meissner, a former commissioner at the now defunct U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. She cited previous policing operations in the 1990s which secured heavily crossed urban stretches of the border in El Paso, Texas, and San Diego, California, but drove determined migrants out into remote desert areas to cross. “The draw for illegal immigrants is the availability of employment in the United States, and that is not being addressed by this fence,” she said. Click here for the full story.

KJ