Tucson, Arizona  Tuesday, 5 December 2000

ARIZONA DAILY STAR
http://www.azstarnet.com/star/today/001205borderwall.html

Jim Davis / Staff

Border Patrol agents weld steel landing mats to poles to extend the barrier east of Douglas. Motion sensors, cameras, towers and lights also are being added.

A new mobile observation post includes cooling, various night-vision devices and communications equipment.

DOUGLAS - Border agents are welding panels of military-surplus landing mat together to extend the steel wall separating the United States and Mexico.

It's simply the most visible effort to harden the border along Southeast Arizona - the United States' hottest spot for illegal crossings - before January.

The Border Patrol expects a post-holiday flood of illegal entrants, despite a recent drop in arrests here.

A team of 20 soldiers arrived yesterday to improve border roads, work begun last month by another team of National Guardsmen.

Beyond the 12-foot-high steel barrier, the Border Patrol is also reinforcing its fortifications of remote motion sensors, video and infrared cameras, sky towers and high-intensity lights that extend for more than 10 miles east and west of Douglas.

When the work is done, border walls will be two miles longer at Douglas and a mile longer at nearby Naco, about 100 miles southeast of Tucson.

Near Naco, eight new camera towers are strung along the railroad right of way between Bisbee Junction and the San Pedro River. And just as in Douglas, the border at Naco is illuminated by generator-powered portable lights placed strategically in areas most heavily used by smugglers.

Overhead, a growing fleet of Border Patrol helicopters is flying almost constantly along the border near the two communities.

The Border Patrol has also announced that the number of agents assigned to the Douglas-Naco corridor will grow by about 300 by year's end, bringing the total to nearly 1,000 agents. That's more than 60 percent of the total for its Tucson Sector, which covers all of Arizona except Yuma County.

The agency also continues to rotate in an average of 150 agents a month to the Arizona border from San Diego and other sites.

Tucson Sector Chief David Aguilar said he's trying to crank up the pressure on smuggling organizations and shut down illegal entries through the Douglas-Naco corridor.

That's the favored crossing spot in the Tucson Sector, the busiest stretch of border in the country. It had more than 616,000 illegal-entrant apprehensions last fiscal year, up from 470,000 in the previous year.

The end of the Christmas season in early January traditionally starts the busiest time of year for the Border Patrol. The normal northbound job- seekers are joined by thousands of Mexicans returning to the United States, where they live illegally, after holiday visits with their families.

Last January, 70,000 illegal entrants were detained in the Tucson Sector, including nearly 3,000 arrested on Jan. 12, the record for a single day.

The buildup might be making a difference already, however. Throughout the Tucson Sector, apprehensions are down about 7 percent since October compared with the same period last year. The drop is much higher in the Douglas area alone.

"Right now, as we speak, the apprehension rate is down by 34 percent in the Douglas Station, but the more important thing is we have expanded our area of coverage by 125 percent and we are continuing to expand," Aguilar said.

He said the overall level of activity - a measure that includes apprehensions, illegal entrants turned back or deterred, and estimates of the number of illegal entrants that got away - has declined by
90 percent to 95 percent in the city of Douglas.

"A year ago, people were pouring over the fences, and now you can sit there for literally hours and not see anything. That is the basis of our strategy, reducing that flow," Aguilar said.

The combination of agents and technical resources has reduced illegal entries substantially in residential Naco, and pushed them about 15 miles west of Naco along the San Pedro River near Palominas.

The Palominas area was the scene of a shootout between suspected drug traffickers and Border Patrol agents in October and has become the latest flash point in the border enforcement effort.

Aguilar said he wants every possible resource applied to achieving "manageable control."

"The faster the Border Patrol is able to bring control to the border, the faster that smugglers will no longer have free play of the border and smuggling of every type will be reduced - that includes drugs."

* Contact Ignacio Ibarra at (520) 432-2766 or at nacho@primenet.com.