From the banks of the Rio Grande in Texas to San Diego, Calif., the rising border fence between the United States and Mexico is as divisive politically as it is physically.
In Arizona, the so-called “ground zero” of illegal immigration, rages a debate as raw and unyielding as the Sonora desert sun. Over half of all illegal immigrants cross the border in Arizona. Passions run deep. Through the cacophony of voices ó those of human rights activists, vigilantes and religious and political leaders ó pervades a note of common discontent.
Even Glenn Spencer, an adamant and vocal supporter of the border fence, has expressed criticism. Spencer founded the American Border Patrol, a civilian group with no connection to the official U.S. Border Patrol, in 2002 to monitor activity on the border. The fence, he says, isn’t going up fast enough.
“Chertoff promised 150 new miles of border fencing finished by the end of September,” Spencer said at a press conference in September at a public square in downtown Tucson. “Of that, they have 17 miles.”
Spencer spoke in front of a carefully arranged display of enlarged maps of the border, an unmanned aerial vehicle and a Hummer hulking not-so-subtly in the shadows of the waving palm trees. He said his team of volunteers had collected data and images that prove the construction of the border fence is far behind schedule. Charismatic, Spencer held his audience’s rapt attention.
“That’s what Congress said: put it in. That is what the Senate said: put it in. That’s what the president signed: to put in. That’s what the people want: put it in. What are they doing? Nothing,” Spencer challenged.
Since 2006 and the passage of the Secure Fence Act, which authorized the construction of 700 miles of fencing along the U.S. border with Mexico, American Border Patrol has been tracking the pace of border fence construction using aerial photography, video and computer mapping. Spencer himself is a licensed pilot and said he often flies the length of the border to survey the fence’s progress.
Spencer and his entourage, an ex-sniper in a bulletproof vest and another man, tall and handsome with a pirate mustache, looked every bit their part: radical frontiersmen, hard-line cartographers on a politicized mission heavy on bling ń high-tech accessories such as night-vision goggles, thermal cameras, the works.
“We were the first to get live footage of border intruders,” Spencer said.
But, Spencer maintained, American Border Patrol is not a political group, just concerned civilians.
“It is stunning, just stunning when you see how wide open this border is,” he said.
Spencer said he blames the Office of Homeland Security ó the very institution charged with improving border security ó for the delay and use of what he calls shoddy materials.
“We’re the ones who three times smuggled a simulated weapon of mass destruction across the border … these guys did, at night,” Spencer said, pointing to the two American Border Patrol volunteers nearby. “Right over there … right up to the courthouse. We videotaped the whole thing.”
The group is known for illustrative public spectacles like smuggling fake nukes across the border and high-tech knowledge garnered with exotic equipment such as unmanned aerial vehicles. And the American Border Patrol’s strategy resonates with many Americans ó and their fears. Among those are conservative ranchers, who are angry about migrant traffic through their lands.
As a nonprofit organization operating solely on donations, Spencer said they have had success with fundraising.
Spencer and the American Border Patrol assume the premise that a fence will deter migrants. Spencer cited a congressional report about the San Diego border fence.
“The double fence produced a stark decrease in apprehensions at the Imperial Station checkpoint ó 95 percent,” Spencer said, holding up the report for everyone to see.
He acknowledged that people were still, however, finding ways to climb over, under and around the fence.
“Well, if you put the fence from San Diego, Calif., to Brownsville, Texas … well,” Spencer trailed off, allowing the much-invoked image to sink in with his audience.
“We’re (American Border Patrol) going to be building simulated fences on our ranch,” he said. The American Border Patrol owns a 100-acre ranch near the San Pedro River in Arizona.
American Border Patrol has publicly acknowledged collaboration with Jim Gilchrist, leader of the Minuteman Project, and Chris Simcox and his group, Minutemen Civil Defense Corps. These groups advocate constructing a border fence or implementing vehicle barriers along the full 2,000 miles of the border.
Now, the standing border fence is mainly located at prime urban crossing areas.
Several weeks after Glenn Spencer’s American Border Patrol press conference and 60 miles further south, a man from Chiapas, a region in southern Mexico, sits beside the border.
He is on the Mexican side of the border and has just been deported. Although he’s crossed many times before, he says this time it was harder. Like always, he tried to cross the border in the desert, but the U.S. Border Patrol detained and deported him.
The man says he will try again because he has a job waiting for him at a window factory in Chattanooga. It’s a place he’s worked before, so he hopes to cross successfully and return to work.
Chiapas, Mexico, is beautiful, he says, but there is no work. That’s why he has traveled back and forth to the United States for a long time, alternating between spending a few years with his family and a few years working in Chattanooga. Now, like always, he wants to work and then safely return to his family in Chiapas.
He sits with clear view of the border at dusk near the humanitarian aid tent where volunteers have given him food. On the road nearby, cars are lined up and waiting to cross into the United States before the Nogales Mariposa Port of Entry closes for the night.
“Life can be lonely up there. The job pays well, but a friend of mine lost his leg at that factory,” he says. “He went home with nothing.”
The man has a kind face and a humble countenance. He is small of stature; hardly the scheming nemesis of Glenn Spencer’s invasion scenario. He is low on energy, visibly weary in the face of the hundreds of U.S. Border Patrol vehicles, radar towers, unmanned aerial vehicles and heat sensors amassed against him. And then there’s the desert: sweltering, waterless and deadly.
The man says he won’t use a paid guide, or “coyote,” but the crossing has become harder and more dangerous. Where he once had to walk only two days to cross, now he walks five.
“If I make it this time, I will work for a few years and it will be the last time,” he says. “I hope I will never have to go back.”
Coming Sunday: A tale of a migrant’s journey.