Navy Seabees Tapped for Fence-Repair Duty : The Border: The Pentagon will send units to shore up the tattered fence along the U.S.-Mexico frontier in a continued effort against drug smugglers.

The tattered, hole-ridden U.S.-Mexico border fence is due for a face lift, courtesy of Navy Seabees.

Construction units based at the Naval Amphibious Base, Coronado, will be deployed soon along the border in San Diego, government authorities say. Their mission: shore up the sagging fence, now crossed daily by hundreds of undocumented immigrants heading north.

They will join California National Guard units, which are improving roads in the border area in an effort to assist enforcement efforts by U.S. border guards.

Both military initiatives are aimed primarily at reducing drug smuggling, but U.S. immigration authorities say the bolstered fence and improved border-area roadways also will deter undocumented border-crossers.

The existing fence poses little barrier to smugglers and immigrants. A chain-link fence stretches for about 7 miles east from the Pacific Ocean; some sections have been ripped out or pounded to the ground. A raised, braided cable--designed as a barrier to vehicular traffic--marks much of an additional 8 miles of border, but the cable is in disrepair and there are many gaps where there is no barrier.

But immigrant advocates have questioned whether a so-called “Tortilla Curtain,” fixed or not, will turn back people fleeing poverty and warfare.

The Navy presence is the Pentagon’s latest foray into the nation’s anti-drug offensive. U.S. armed forces are increasingly providing support to civilian law enforcement, a trend that has broad support in Congress but one that has troubled many civil libertarians.

The Seabees, according to congressional officials, will be placing heavy-duty metal panels--designed for use as mats on provisional aircraft landing fields--as reinforcement along the existing border barrier.

The U.S. Border Patrol, which maintains the barrier, has been using the surplus landing-pad material for more than a year in the San Diego area. Authorities say it has met some success: No one has successfully cut through it, although many people have climbed over it and some have dug under in their zeal to cross the border.

“They certainly haven’t been driving through it,” said Ted Swofford, Border Patrol supervisory agent in San Diego, which is the busiest zone along the almost-2,000-mile-long U.S.-Mexico border.

So-called “drive-throughs” long have been a problem in the border zone, particularly in the flat grasslands of the Otay Mesa area. A U.S. plan to dig a ditch in that area was withdrawn last year after critics likened it to a new Berlin Wall.

The Seabee unit, known officially as the Amphibious Construction Battalion 1, probably will be ployed within the week, possibly by Friday, according to U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Coronado), who has pushed for greater use of the military in anti-drug efforts along the border. His district includes the entire 150-mile-long California-Mexico border.

“The fence along the border is in rags,” Hunter said in a statement.

The Seabee unit and the Border Patrol will determine whether the troops will be armed, said Col. James Sutherland, a spokesman for Joint Task Force 6, the El Paso-based arm of the Pentagon that coordinates military involvement in anti-drug efforts along the southwest border.