SAN DIEGO COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Fencing With a Larger Problem

Anyone who believes that fences alone--no matter how formidable--will solve the drug and immigration problems along the U.S.-Mexico border can learn a lesson from the plight of the once sleepy border towns in East San Diego County.

For decades, rural communities like Tecate, Campo and Boulevard coexisted peacefully with the international border, marked in the area only by a four-strand cattle fence. But the completion of perhaps the toughest barrier yet--12 miles of solid steel mat fencing that stretches from the Pacific Ocean to Otay Mountain--has succeeded in reducing border problems in the west mainly by dumping them in the east.

So far this fiscal year, Border Patrol officials in San Diego report that cocaine confiscations have increased from 700 pounds to 7,000 pounds compared to last year. And marijuana seizures are up from 13,674 pounds to more than 38,000 pounds. Most of the increase occurred in the Campo station area, which begins just east of where the new fence ends.

In a region once best known for goat herders and recluses, more than 4,500 pounds of marijuana has been seized in the last two weeks alone. Similarly, illegal immigration--up a modest 7% sector-wide--has jumped 21% in the Campo area.

Certainly anything that bolsters international drug enforcement efforts along the border is welcome. And in the wake of the Temecula tragedy, we are particularly pleased to see such efforts concentrated at the border itself.

But law enforcement alone won’t work. Until economic disparities also are addressed--most notably in the North American Free Trade Agreement--even the strongest fence will relocate more border woes than it resolves.