July 4, 2005

With Congress's Blessing, a Border Fence May Finally Push Through to the Sea

IMPERIAL BEACH, Calif., June 29 - The Border Patrol truck lurches along a rutted road paralleling the Mexican border and comes to a stop on a mesa above Smuggler's Gulch, a 300-foot-deep gully that has been a prime route for bandits, border jumpers and raw sewage from Tijuana to Southern California for more than 150 years.

Michael D. Hance, a supervisory Border Patrol agent and a 17-year veteran of the border wars in the San Diego sector, hauls his considerable frame from the driver's seat and peers at the network of switchback dirt roads running down the gully and up the other side.

The roads are a nightmare for Border Patrol officers and a huge advantage for the border crossers who slip through here every night. The solution, Mr. Hance says, is to cut down the hillsides and use the dirt to fill a portion of the bottom of the gulch, creating a 90-foot-wide roadway across the top that can be fenced and lighted and patrolled 24 hours a day.

"At some point in time we have to have an enforcement zone here," he said. "There's a problem at the border, and it needs to be fixed. Ignoring it is not going to make it go away."

Since 1997, the Border Patrol has been building a barrier wall extending 14 miles inland from the point along the coastline where Mexico and the United States meet. It started as a 10-foot-high wall made of military surplus steel landing mats used for aircraft in Vietnam. Over the years, the wall has been supplemented by a second fence made of steel mesh, with a lighted roadway between the two fences that is constantly monitored and patrolled by Border Patrol vehicles.

But 3.5 miles of the project remain to be completed, and Smuggler's Gulch is the most vulnerable spot along that span between the ocean and the San Ysidro border station, five miles inland. The Border Patrol wants desperately to complete the last section, but has been stymied until now by environmental and regulatory roadblocks.

This spring, as part a military spending bill, Congress gave the Border Patrol a green light to complete the fence, essentially pre-empting the state laws and federal environmental regulations that opponents had used in court to stall the project.

The act left some state officials powerless, and fuming.

"You cannot build that thing in that way and be consistent with California's coastal protection law," said Peter Douglas, the executive director of the California Coastal Commission, one of the most outspoken opponents of the border fence. "The exemption based on the so-called terrorist threat is a backdoor way of achieving what they couldn't do legally. Now I guess in the name of security from terrorism, you can do anything you want. It is a monument to the politics of fear."

Mr. Douglas and other environmental foes of the project object to the scale of the wall along its entire length and its impact on land forms, vegetation and wildlife. But they are particularly opposed to the Border Patrol's plans for Smuggler's Gulch, which involve shaving off the tops of two mesas and moving 2.2 million cubic yards of dirt to create the roadway.

Opponents say that not only would such a project alter the landscape, it would also create a huge problem of silt buildup in the Tijuana River Estuary, which runs from the gulch northwest to the Pacific shore. The estuary is a federally protected wetland and wildlife refuge that is home to a number of endangered bird species, including the light-footed clapper rail, the California least tern, the least Bell's vireo and the American peregrine falcon.

Michael A. McCoy, a veterinarian and an officer of the Southwest Wetlands Interpretive Association, said the Smuggler's Gulch project would denude large areas of hillside, allowing silt and sand to drain into the estuary, essentially choking the life out of it. Dr. McCoy said that his group and others fighting the Border Patrol did not object to a single well-policed fence along the border but that they were trying to stop the large earth-moving project the government proposes.

"They say their job is to protect the American public, and I'm sure it is," Dr. McCoy said as he walked along a trail through the estuary. "But environmental laws protect the welfare, health and interests of the people of the United States as well."

He said the erection of the primary barrier beginning in 1997 had a decidedly favorable impact on the estuary. Before the fence went up, tens of thousands of Mexicans streamed across the undefended border, trampling the marsh grasses that were the habitat of the birds, leaving garbage in the area and even eating eggs from the birds' nests.

"The fence stemmed that kind of destruction," Dr. McCoy said. But he said that a double or triple fence, with all the rearranging of the land involved, would do more harm to the environment than it was worth as a deterrent.

The project divides the area's Congressional delegation as well. The primary sponsor of the barrier is Representative Duncan Hunter, a San Diego Republican and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Representative Bob Filner, a Democrat, represents the district that includes the border and is a staunch opponent of the project, at least as currently designed.

Mr. Filner said the border fence would take $50 million to complete, money better spent elsewhere defending the border.

"It ain't worth the cost," he said. "It's just a rip-off of the environment and the taxpayer."

He said he was particularly incensed by the provision in the recent law that exempts the border project from state and federal environmental, safety and labor laws. He also said the law was based on what he called the specious argument that international terrorists were using the Mexican border as a means of access to the United States. "I have never been told that somebody suspected of terrorism has been arrested along that border," Mr. Filner said.

But Mr. Hunter, who has been agitating for tighter security along the border for more than a decade, said the fence was necessary to protect the security of the nation. "There's just no sense in having that big a hole just a few miles south of the biggest naval base in the country," he said.

"Security concerns should override what I now consider to be frivolous opposition to this project," Mr. Hunter said. "I think it's time to move ahead and get this thing built."

The San Diego border fence has undeniably reduced the illegal traffic across the border in the southwest corner of California. In the early 1990's, the Border Patrol apprehended an average of 500,000 illegal border crossers a year in the San Diego sector, representing half of all apprehensions along the entire 2,000-mile border with Mexico. Last year, the total was 138,000.

But as the traffic in San Diego has decreased, there has been an exponential rise in crossings in the Arizona desert, a far more hazardous route, as immigrants have sought a less fortified path. In 1997, before construction of the San Diego barrier, the Border Patrol recorded 129 deaths among illegal immigrants. Since then, the average has been close to 400 deaths a year, largely attributable to the more dangerous routes through the desert and mountains of Arizona and eastern California.

"The fences themselves have simply diverted the flow," said Wayne A. Cornelius, director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego. Professor Cornelius said his research showed that 92 percent of Mexicans seeking to enter the United States illegally eventually succeed.

"Bottom line," he said, "there is no evidence that fences per se been an effective deterrent. They have helped to jack up smugglers' fees and forced crossings into more remote and dangerous spots."

Fences, Professor Cornelius said, "are simply a symbolic show of force."