U.S. Erects Vehicle Barrier in Smuggling Hot Spot on Mexican Border

A group of Mexican children playing outside in the hot desert sun stared at the U.S. soldiers on the other side of the border as they erected miles of steel barriers just a few feet north of the children’s shanties.

Too young to understand what was going on, the children soon shuttled off back into the dusty streets of Palomas, Mexico, leaving the soldiers to their work.

“The illegal activity is unmanageable here,” said U.S. Border Patrol chief agent Richard Moody, as he waved at the children while driving down a barren dirt road along the border. “We’re trying to stay ahead of it so it won’t get out of control.”

Drug and immigrant smuggling has become so rampant in the small New Mexico border town of Columbus and in neighboring Palomas that the U.S. Army has been called in to erect barriers along a 13-mile stretch of border from the port of entry to the mountains west of town.

The 4-foot-high barriers are designed to stop vehicles from illegally entering the United States or fleeing back into Mexico when chased by law enforcement agents, but won’t affect pedestrian traffic.

The barriers in Columbus, and a three-mile stretch being put up to the east in Santa Teresa, are the first to be used in New Mexico. The $700,000 vehicle barriers, also used in Arizona and California, were funded almost a year ago by Congress. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began construction May 22. The soldiers in Columbus don’t carry weapons and are protected by Border Patrol agents.

Moody describes the situation along the border as a balloon being squeezed from both ends.

Border Patrol crackdowns to the west in Arizona and to the east in Texas have pushed illegal activity to remote desert outback areas along the New Mexico-Mexico border.

Using a network of trails and footpaths that run all along the border, the smugglers can drive or walk into the United States without using legal ports of entry. When spotted, they can easily flee back into Mexico, where U.S. authorities can’t chase them.

Moody is chief of the agency’s Deming sector, which patrols 54 miles of border in southwestern New Mexico. His sector has seen a 25% increase this year in drug trafficking and illegal immigration, making it the second busiest behind Douglas, Ariz.

“Right now, Deming is one of those hot spots,” Moody said. “We know that because the [smugglers] who tried to enter through Douglas are now being caught here. They say, ‘We’re crossing here because it’s harder there.’ ”

The community of Douglas has become a border flash point. Armed posses of ranchers have rounded up illegal migrant workers and clashed with smugglers who were entering the United States unimpeded.

The Border Patrol has sent scores of agents to Douglas to quell the crisis growing among ranchers and migrants, most of whom are headed to the interior to seek work, and to shore up much of the undemarcated border.

Moody doesn’t want vigilante justice in his sector, so the Border Patrol is beefing up security there.

Besides the vehicle barriers, the sector has put up surveillance cameras along the border, plans to almost triple its staff of 90 agents, and is moving into new headquarters in Deming, about 30 miles north of Columbus.

But ranchers and farmers in Columbus say they are losing patience. Many feel they are besieged on their own land.

“To an extent, this is one of the areas in years that hasn’t been shut down,” said Ralph Johnson, whose 3,000 acres of ranch and farmland run right up to the border. “On this line it’s pretty damn scary. It’s kind of a war out here.”

Johnson, who has lived in Columbus for his entire 73 years, said ranchers and farmers in the area are concerned about the dramatic rise in smuggling and illegal immigration on their property. But they haven’t taken up arms like their counterparts in Douglas--yet.

“The only difference between the ranchers here and over there is we haven’t rebelled yet and [gone] after them,” said Johnson, who, along with other ranchers, wants the military to stay and patrol the border. “We’re leaving it up to the Border Patrol.”

At the Deming headquarters, Moody popped in a surveillance tape from the desert cameras showing agents chasing a vehicle down one of the numerous dirt roads crossing into the United States, not far from where the children watched the soldiers.

The suspected smuggler hits the gas, jumps a break in the road put up by a rancher, and in seconds is back in Mexico. Chase over.

Palomas Mayor Pedro Alvillar fears that the fleeing smugglers may eventually kill one of the many Mexican children who play along the border. Dozens of buildings, including modest three- and four-bedroom homes, abut the line.

Alvillar recalled one chase where smugglers crashed into the elementary school after fleeing from U.S. authorities. Because of that incident, he said, he believes the barrier will protect people in this town of 9,000.

“I think it’s going to avoid a tragedy in the future,” said Alvillar, who watched the construction from the balcony of his two-story home. “I think in the future it will avoid the danger of these vehicles escaping from one side to the other and causing an accident.”

Both Alvillar and Columbus Mayor Kenneth Riley drove down to the construction site to express their support for the barrier, with the troops just a handshake away on the U.S. side.

Although Riley approves of the vehicle barrier, which would also help his local police force of three officers, he said a solid wall along the border would be divisive.

The Border Patrol concedes the vehicle barrier probably will just push the problem into another area.

“There are always new avenues that smugglers will find,” said agency spokesman Doug Mosier. “It’s a constant game of adjustment and deploying resources where they are most needed.”

Johnson, the lifelong rancher, has seen smugglers outsmart some of the country’s most high-tech surveillance equipment. It’s no wonder he doesn’t put much faith in the barrier.

“It will stop vehicular traffic until they tear it down or build a ramp over it,” he said. “It will just push it west. And it won’t help the walk-throughs.

“We need the Army down here. We need something.”