The era of protecting the U.S. border with fortifications came to fruition under former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat. Flashback to the 1990s: Nightly, under cover of darkness, hundreds of migrants pushed north from Tijuana into the United States, unfettered, nothing to stop them except handfuls of Border Patrol agents. The busy freeways filled with migrants running between cars until they made it to refuge in suburban San Diego neighborhoods.
What could Clinton do to protect the border region from being overrun? If you said, “Build a ten-foot high steel barrier!” you are correct. If you said, “Hire thousands of additional Border Patrol agents!” you are also correct. Technology in the form of motion sensors and night vision cameras followed. Under the Clinton-approved “Operation Gatekeeper,” illegal entries fell off by 75 percent in that fence-fortified border region.
As the New York Times reported in September 1995:
But human traffic did not stop in the San Diego area. It pushed 14 miles east to where the border fence abruptly ended at the foot of the Otay Mountains and continued to move east as enforcement efforts stepped up. The operational cost for the first year of Gatekeeper exceeded $45 million. This equates to $72 million in today’s economy to hold traffic back from that fourteen miles of fence line.
The 14-mile fence ended at the foothills of Otay Mountain. Border Patrol agents called this area the “End of the Fence.” Years later, as a Border Patrol agent, I patrolled the fence area and the Otay Mountains. I’m a witness to how the fence worked, pushing traffic east, where agents awaited.
The 10-foot high fence worked, while allowing for a sporadic fence jumper, an over-watching Border Patrol agent in a night-vision-equipped vehicle spotted most of these jumpers allowing for the immediate apprehension by ground agents, many nights myself included.
The southwest border is nearly 2,000 miles long. A fence or wall cannot cover that whole area, not every square inch, nor can thousands of Border Patrol agents cover that same area, even if equipped with the most state-of-the-art technology available. Common sense dictates to use every method to fortify the southwest border to prevent unfettered access by those searching for economic migration or those seeking to cause harm. A fortification to push or funnel traffic to areas that can be monitored by the latest technology and for Border Patrol agents to make apprehensions is needed. Just ask the agents on the ground.
The journey across the porous border is not without danger, and thousands of migrants perish crossing the border. The Border Patrol recognized this and created the Border Patrol Search, Trauma, and Rescue unit. BORSTAR’s mission is to rescue injured agents and migrants in distress; thousands of migrants since its inception.
If you have never been to the southwest border, it is roughly the same length of Interstate 95, running from the Canadian border in Maine 1,919 miles south to Miami. Critics can say a wall or fence cannot possibly stretch that long, and that we should simply hire more agents and cover the entire area with technology. Proponents say the federal government should spend billions and billions of dollars to build an unencumbered wall more than 1,900 miles long.
Those of us that worked the border say those solutions need to meet in the middle. Erect fences in areas of frequent traffic, cast overhead drones with infrared technology, deploy updated ground-sensing technology, triple the resources of the BORSTAR unit to rescue migrants in distress, and finally, double the size of the Border Patrol to account for attrition and to enhance ground-enforcement efforts.
How can the general public have a grasp of the border reality? Until this border crisis is controlled, perhaps we need daily tweet by President Trump to provide more awareness. For example, “Yesterday the Border Patrol seized 700 pounds of cocaine at a place where there was no barrier, according to Customs and Border Protection.” Clear facts provided by the agents protecting our homeland on the ground, on our border, sent directly to Trump. Just the facts.
Jason Piccolo (@DRJasonPiccolo) is a former Border Patrol agent, ICE special agent, and DHS supervisor. He is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and author of Unwavering: A Border Agent’s Journey from Hunter to Hunted.
