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Dispatch From the Mexican BorderWhy the security fence will never be built.

By Eliza Barclay
Posted Monday, Feb. 19, 2007, at 2:21 PM ET

(Continued from page 1)

DHS would also likely have to wrestle with local land owners, as well as the National Park and Forest Services, who manage many parcels of land adjacent to the border where new sections of fence could be built. "There are sure to be a lot of 'Not in my backyard' interests along the border, and the government will run up against permit issues with private landowners and tribal leaders," said Rey Koslowski, a professor of political science and public policy at the State University of New York at Albany.

Prohibitive costs may be another crucial factor. Already, homeland-security watchdogs like the DHS inspector general's office are grumbling about underestimates for the Secure Border Initiative Network (SBInet), a high-tech DHS plan to transform border control through technology and infrastructure. In September, DHS announced it was awarding the primary $2.5 billion SBInet contract to Boeing. Boeing is building a string of 1,800 towers and associated sensors along the borders with Mexico and Canada. The towers will be equipped with cameras and motion and heat detectors linked to computers in the Border Patrol's control room and mobile vehicle units. The initiative also calls for more Border Patrol agents. In November 2006, the inspector general's office said that SBInet could cost as much as $30 billion, nearly 15 times the original estimate. (No firm estimate has ever been available for the cost of the 700-mile fence, but the San Diego portion alone has cost upward of $74 million so far.)

But even as the plan to build the fence looks shaky, few disagree that increased enforcement could be part of an effective plan to deal with the chaotic situation at the border. The Border Patrol claims that recent advances in manpower and technology have discouraged would-be migrants from crossing illegally into the United States from Mexico—quantified by an 8.4 percent decrease in apprehensions between 2005 and 2006. And in the first four months of fiscal year 2007, arrests of illegal immigrants from along the southern border have dropped 27 percent compared to the same period in fiscal 2006. They have also seized more drugs: The agency grabbed 1.3 million pounds of marijuana in 2006, up 13 percent from 2005.

But the Border Patrol has acknowledged that "effective control" of the entire border remains far out of reach. The agency aims to control 345 miles by the end of 2007 and the whole thing in five years.

Some experts worry that new barriers would only encourage would-be crossers to find other ways to get across—for instance, by using forged documents or by hiding in vehicles and crossing at legal crossing points. "Barriers make it more difficult to cross, of course," said Koslowski. "But more barriers between the ports of entry will drive people through those ports; they will figure out more clandestine ways of hiding."

For Francisco, the smuggler, business will continue as usual, as long as there's good money to be made transporting people and drugs across the border. And as a friend of Francisco's commented, "El desierto es todavía bien grande, gracias a Dios." The desert is still very big, thank God.

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Eliza Barclay is a writer based in Mexico City. She contributes to Fortune, Wired News, and the Houston Chronicle.
Photograph of U.S.-Mexico border fence by Spencer Platt/Getty Images.
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