As border tightens, smugglers raise their game

By Tim Gaynor

NACO, Arizona (Reuters) - When U.S. authorities raised a tall curtain of steel through this tiny Arizona border town to prevent people crossing illegally from Mexico, the smugglers on the south side were ready.

Using blowtorches and welding gear they burned a rectangular gate in the barrier large enough to drive a truck through, then they sealed it with a padlock to use it at their leisure, border police say.

As the U.S. government pushes ahead with an unprecedented security buildup along the porous Mexico border in this presidential election year, profit-hungry Mexican drug and human smugglers the length of the line are raising their game.

Border police are encountering ingenious and often simply brazen attempts to foil security at both the ports of entry and empty spaces along the nearly 2,000 mile (3,200-km) border by human and drug smuggling organizations.

"The more fencing and the more manpower that they see, the bolder the smugglers are becoming," Border Patrol agent Dove Haber said as she stood by the tall steel wall in Naco, which is patched most days by a busy repair team.

"Before we had the amount of technology and manpower and infrastructure that we have, they were able to operate with some impunity, and they don't want to see that change."

CARS FLYING THROUGH THE AIR

Illegal immigration is a hot topic in the United States, and both presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John. McCain and Democratic Party rivals Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton pledge to secure the porous Mexico border.

The difficulties involved in actually doing so were made clear last week when Ralph Basham, the commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said the government might be unable to meet a timetable to gain "operational security" over the border by 2011.

Ongoing measures to erect 670 miles of new fence on the border are credited with helping to cut arrests to some 870,000 last year from 1.1 million. Nevertheless, smugglers are trying and, in many cases succeeding, in breaching every kind of barrier thrown in their paths.

Sturdy steel posts have been sunk in the ground in many areas to stop vehicles crossing north, although drug traffickers have responded by building elaborate vehicle ramps to drive cars over the top, border police say.

"It's like the old show 'The Dukes of Hazzard,' cars flying through the air," said James Jacques, a supervisory Border Patrol in San Diego, Calif.

Illegal border crossers are also routinely beating pedestrian barriers using ladders tailor-made in clandestine Mexican workshops, border police say, while others have used screwdrivers to try to clamber over new 14-foot tall, steel-mesh barriers designed to deny handholds.

One such attempt was foiled. "It took the man a while, and by the time he got to the top, we were waiting for him," said Andrew Patterson, a Border Patrol agent in Yuma, Arizona.

YARD BLOWERS AND HORSESHOES