Siege on border:
Costly fortifications fail to deter immigrant flow
Daniel González and Susan Carroll
The Arizona Republic
June 19, 2005
It's a simple idea: Make it tougher to cross the
U.S.-Mexican border illegally and fewer migrants will try to sneak in.
For 12 years, the
It hasn't worked. In that same time, illegal immigration from
Instead of thwarting illegal border crossings, the Southwestern border has
simply become an expensive obstacle course that hundreds of thousands of
migrants successfully overcome each year, more than ever relying on professional
smugglers.
Drawn by plentiful jobs in this country and driven by a scarcity in their own,
the migrants are being fenced in by the tighter border security that was
supposed to keep them out in the first place.
Consider:
• Since 1993, when the federal government began its major push to secure
the borders, annual spending on border enforcement has gone from $480 million
(adjusted for inflation) to $1.4 billion, most of it for the Southwestern
border.
• The Border Patrol's ranks along the 1,950-mile Southwestern border have
swelled to more than 9,700 agents from 3,389 agents.
• Towering steel fences, sensors and cameras are in place to make crossing
difficult and daunting. Agents are equipped with helicopters, Humvees,
hovercrafts, ATVs and fixed-wing aircraft to patrol the vast expanse.
• About 1.14 million arrests were made on the Southwestern border last
fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, an average of one undocumented
immigrant arrest every 30 seconds.
"We feel we have become extremely effective in border enforcement,"
said Mario Villarreal, spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
On the surface, that appears to be true.
But by other measures, illegal immigration has only gotten worse.
The number of undocumented migrants from
Legal immigration from
The undocumented-immigrant population in the United States shot up to the
current 11 million from about 6 million in 1997, fueled largely by illegal
immigration from Mexico, according to the Pew Hispanic Center and the Center
for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California-San Diego.
Hundreds of people keep dying in trying to cross the Southwestern border. Last
year, 330 migrants lost their lives in the crossing. The tally was up from the
266 migrant deaths logged by the Border Patrol in 1998, the first year the
agency began keeping track, though down from the record 383 who died in 2000.
And in 1993, the year the border strategy kicked off in
"The current border crisis has been years in the making, but it now
appears to have reached a critical mass," Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said June
7 in congressional testimony. He called the U.S.-Mexican border situation
"catastrophic."
There is no question that
fortifying the border with more agents, aircraft and technology has made it
less porous.
Beefed-up Border Patrol operations sharply reduced illegal immigration through
But although more money and manpower curtailed illegal immigration in some
places, it simply was rechanneled to more remote desert and mountain areas. The
squeeze in border towns from the east and west has turned
The tighter controls also mean more and more migrants have turned to
professional smugglers, or coyotes.
In 1993, crossing the border was so easy, most migrants didn't bother with a
smuggler. Those who did paid only a few hundred dollars.
"It used to be your friend or uncle would smuggle you in. Now, it's in the
hands of the professionals," said Deborah Meyers, border policy expert at
the Migration Policy Institute,a nonpartisan think tank in
And in the cat-and-mouse game that plays out thousands of times a day along the
border, the professionals have helped tip the balance in favor of the migrants.
"One clear consequence of the fact that a higher percentage of migrants
are using coyotes is that more and more of them are able to get through
because they are making professional-assisted crossings," said Wayne Cornelius, director of the Center for
Comparative Studies at UC-San Diego and one of the nation's foremost
experts on Mexican immigration and border enforcement.
Take
Those days are gone.
With so much at stake, migrants
make repeated attempts to cross the border. The Border Patrol would not say how
many of the 1.14 million arrests last year were of people caught multiple
times.
But officials acknowledged that many of those who are caught and returned to
And again. And again.
One recent Monday, Brauilio Benitez Serno was arrested on his second attempt to
make it across the desert outside
The 19-year-old from
"Everybody said it would be hard," he said. "I still have
hope."
The high smugglers fees would seem to be a deterrent to most cash-poor
migrants. But relatives already working in the
In a January survey of 603 people from Jalisco and Zacatecas, two
high-migration states in
Ninety-two percent said they made it into the
Only 8 percent failed to get in and went home.
Most also said they knew crossing the border had become harder and more
dangerous. Sixty-four percent knew someone who had died trying. Still, nearly
half said they planned to try again in 2005.
Only 20 percent of those who didn't plan to try cited tougher border
enforcement as the main reason.
"We've got a revolving door at the border, and what we've done by spending
all this new money on border enforcement is speed up the revolving door,"
Cornelius said.
Fortifying the border is
supposed to keep undocumented immigrants out. But, instead, it has hemmed many
in.
In the past, when border enforcement was more lax, undocumented immigrants
tended to be men who shuttled between jobs in the
Now, once they get across, more undocumented immigrants stay out of fear they
will be caught on another attempt and to make the high smuggling fees worth
their while. Migrants are more likely to arrange for their families to cross to
join them in the
"They don't want to risk coming back and forth," said Belinda Reyes,
a social sciences professor at the University of California-Merced. She
co-authored a 2002 study that said the economic rewards of a job in the
Undocumented migrants who shuttled between
The longer migrants stay, the more likely they are to settle permanently in the
Aguayo, 30, who jumped the fence at the border in
He is now married to a woman who also is an undocumented immigrant from
"If there wasn't so much border security, I would return. But the reality
is my life is here now," Aguayo said.
The tougher border security is one of the main reasons the number of
undocumented immigrants residing in the
"This is a logical consequence of making it more costly and more dangerous
to come and go across the border," Cornelius said. "The strategy has
really been a powerful stimulus for family reunification on the
Of course, not all undocumented immigrants sneak across the border. Some enter
the country legally using tourist and other types of temporary visas and then remain
in the country as "overstays" after their visas expire.
But the "vast majority" of undocumented Mexican immigrants sneak
across the border, said Jeffrey Passel, a demographer at the
The federal government does not track visa overstays by country. In January
2000, there were roughly 2.3 million people residing in the country who had
overstayed their visas, according to congressional auditors.
In 2000, Doris Meissner, then-Immigration
and Naturalization Service commissioner, acknowledged that the Southwestern
border strategy had one major "unintended consequence": the growing
number of deaths.
The strategy was based on deterrence, and the Border Patrol built walls and saturated
popular border cities with agents, figuring the mountains and deserts would act
as natural barriers. But the strategy underestimated just how determined
migrants would be, and the federal government found itself confronted with a
growing death toll as smugglers led more and more people through
In 1998, the agency launched its Border Safety Initiative and created
search-and-rescue squads, hoping to reduce the growing number of
exposure-related deaths. Under pressure from human rights groups, the Border
Patrol for the first time agreed that year to keep track of deaths along the
border and counted 28 in the state.
Last year, the agency counted a record 172, although a review by The Arizona
Republic, based on data from medical examiners and foreign consulates, put
that total much higher, at 219.
Experts say fortifying the border has not worked because it
ignores the "job magnet" in this country and the lack of good jobs
south of the border.
"The forces that are driving people out of
Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a
Federal immigration officials rarely investigate employers. When they do, their
priority is to combat terrorism, major smuggling and criminal operations. From
1995 to 2003, the number of businesses fined for immigration violations
declined to 909 from 124.
"It's a fantasy that the Border Patrol alone can solve the problem,"
Krikorian said.
Political leaders are starting to recognize that a broader approach is needed
to deal with illegal immigration.
President Bush has called on Congress to adopt a temporary-worker program. In
May, Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., introduced a
bipartisan bill that aims to improve border security but also increases
temporary-worker visas and gives undocumented immigrants a chance at legal
residency.
Kyl and fellow GOP Sen. John Cornyn of
Theirs would require workers to leave the
Any kind of immigration reform, however, faces a fierce battle in Congress.
In the meantime, the government keeps pouring more money into tougher border
enforcement.
And the migrants keep coming.