TIME MAGAZINE ON THE BORDER FENCE

The latest Time has a story titled “Illegals in the Line of Fire Thousands of illegal aliens are walking through one of the military’s most important live-fire training grounds. Will building a fence stop them?”  Click here to read the story. The story reports that Border Patrol agents who monitor this vast, remote area from a lone outpost called Camp Desert Grip are skeptical that a fence could be a practical solution here. Speaking before the Secure Fence Act was passed, Stephen Johnson, who runs the place, points out that Hunter’s fence will cost at least $37 million to build and will be difficult to maintain. When the fence is cut — and it definitely will be cut, says Johnson — it would be costly to repair, given the absence of roads in the region. Walls are better suited to urban areas, where you have only seconds to stop someone coming over, say Johnson and other agents. In remote areas like the Goldwater Range, where agents have days to track down interlopers, maintaining fences seems wasteful. “People want to take what works in San Diego and apply it out here,” Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar said in June. “It won’t work.”

KJ