Lets give the hombres an E for effort on this. Some of these are
pretty clever considering...
As border tightens, smugglers raise their game By Tim Gaynor
Sun Mar 9, 7:22 PM ET
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 ****ous 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 ****ts 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 ****ous 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
Crossing over the line in remote areas can be straightforward,
although the challenge for smugglers and illegal immigrants is to
disguise their tracks as they trek north over soft, sandy trails.
Here, too, they are proving ever more resourceful, Border Patrol
agents say.
Illegal entrants have long used branches to rub out their tracks -- in
an old technique borrowed from the Apaches. Some have turned to gas-
powered leaf blowers to thwart agents tracking, or "sign cutting," for
them on roads running parallel to the border.
"One smuggler we caught would cross two, six, ten, 15 people in a
group, and every time he crossed a road, he would blow out their
'sign' with the yard blower," Jacques told Reuters in an interview.
Professional smugglers have for years also wrapped their feet in
carpet offcuts or strips of foam to try to slip north without a trace,
and have laid boards and ladders to cross dirt roads monitored by the
Border Patrol.
Other scams include smugglers taking their shoes off and hopping rock-
to-rock in a bid to leave no tracks; putting their shoes on backward
to try to confuse pursuers, and even attaching boards studded with
horseshoes to pass as animals.
"They think it looks like hoofs," agent Haber said of this scam, which
proved unsuccessful. "But the stride of an animal and a human are not
the same. A horse would be having to take a lot of very, very small
steps to look like a human."
JALAPENOS AND SKIN GRAFTS
Smugglers are not only adapting to tougher security in the empty
spaces of the border, they are using a seemingly endless variety of
wiles to try to beat detection as they pass through the ****ts of
entry, some of them new, many of them recycled.
In addition to special compartments in car tires, gas tanks and door
panels to hide drugs, U.S. Customs and Border Protection inspectors at
****ts of entry in New Mexico and west Texas recently found marijuana
submerged in jars of jalapeno pickles, stuffed into mattresses and
even hidden in Christmas holiday candles.
At crossings in California, meanwhile, inspectors in recent years have
found a child smuggled inside a sealed papier-mache pinata doll,
illegal immigrants crammed inside vehicle seat covers, and, late last
month, two Mexican women smuggled in a pickup trucks' engine
compartment through Calexico, Calif..
As controls tighten, criminals slipping over the line have also tried
to thwart digital scanners linked to immigration and law enforcement
databases by burning off their fingerprints, smearing with them
superglue, and even, in the case of one man, having them surgically
replaced with skin from their feet.
"It's an ongoing battle," said CBP spokesman Brian Levin. "I used to
say I thought I had seen everything, but there's always something
new."
(Re****ting by Tim Gaynor; Editing by Eddie Evans)
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