We Need More Than Virtual
- Posted by Justin Higgins on February 23rd, 2008 in
We've made some strides in fighting illegal immigration recently. One of the major developments is that the fight for enforcement has gone local. Now, we're seeing the beginning of the implementation of the virtual fence. See-Dubya blogs about it on Hot Air:
Chertoff said the virtual fence already is working.
On Feb. 13, an officer in a Tucson command center — 70 miles from the border — noticed a group of about 100 people gathered at the border. The officer notified agents on the ground and in the air. Border Patrol caught 38 of the 100 people who tried to cross illegally, and the others went back into Mexico, said a Homeland Security official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he isn’t authorized to speak publicly.
See-Dubya points out that a 38% success rate isn't exactly the best. He also points out that they need an actual fence in addition to security cameras and flyovers from drones. If the White House needs a real fence, so does our border.
Why is the border wall
Why is the border wall bypassing the wealthy and politically connected?
The Texas Observer found some problems with the border wall:
As the U.S. Department of Homeland Security marches down the Texas border serving condemnation lawsuits to frightened landowners, Brownsville resident Eloisa Tamez, 72, has one simple question. She would like to know why her land is being targeted for destruction by a border wall, while a nearby golf course and resort remain untouched.
Tamez, a nursing director at the University of Texas at Brownsville, is one of the last of the Spanish land grant heirs in Cameron County. Her ancestors once owned 12,000 acres. In the 1930s, the federal government took more than half of her inherited land, without paying a cent, to build flood levees.
Now Homeland Security wants to put an 18-foot steel and concrete wall through what remains.
Brownsville landowner Eloisa Tamez
While the border wall will go through her backyard and effectively destroy her home, it will stop at the edge of the River Bend Resort and golf course, a popular Winter Texan retreat two miles down the road. The wall starts up again on the other side of the resort.
“It has a golf course and all of the amenities,” Tamez says. “There are no plans to build a wall there. If the wall is so important for security, then why are we skipping parts?”
http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=2688