Bad Fences Make Bad Neighbors

While Congress debates tougher immigration laws, including one proposal that would make many immigrants felons, resistance has erupted across the country in unprecedented demonstrations of citizens and visitors, legal and illegal immigrants. In warehouses, packing plants, construction sites and restaurant kitchens all over the United States, the word is: ICE crackdown, as Immigration and Customs Enforcement begins stiff application of existing immigration laws. The call on Spanish-language radio stations and televisions is: Take to the streets to protect our rights to live and survive. Huge marches are planned for May 1, International Workers Day, in every major U.S. city.

President Bush has publicly promoted a guest worker program and called massive deportation "unrealistic," but when he's not on the podium, he's already expanding an immigration plan that's not so immigrant-friendly.

With Bush's approval, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has ordered new and expanded programs on the frontier in Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and internally at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and its Office of Detention and Removal (DRO). Their 2007 budget request seeks ten times more funding for detention and removal than it does for employer violations and apprehension.

The respective fates of 12 million undocumented residents in the United States, 7 million workers and their employers hang in the balance of questions before Congress: Where to focus the enforcement effort? How best to document the undocumented? How to secure the borders of their states?

The centerpiece of the request is a new Secure Border Initiative (SBI) and a privatization plan for border protection called SBInet. Chertoff and his Deputy Secretary Michael Jackson claim that SBInet will secure the borders like never before.

Internally, ICE's Office of Detention and Removal will enjoy the biggest increase as DHS tried to achieve a stated goal of reducing the illegal immigrant population by 10 percent each year. Some highlights [PDF] from the DHS 2007 $44 billion request: $4.7 billion in enforcement funds, a nearly half-billion-dollar increase in detention and removal capacity alone. The employer violation and apprehension piece of the plan includes a mere one-tenth of the funding as Detention and Removal at $47 million. The Secure Border Initiative gets a half-billion: $100 million for technology, $50 million for fencing and other physical barriers in Arizona, $30 million for more fencing in San Diego.

What will the new infrastructure, technology, personnel look like on the ground? For one, there will be a fence. An acquisition plan for physical fencing and "smart fencing" to cover 700 miles has been ordered by DHS, confirms Clayton Church at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Fort Worth District. Many more miles of virtual fence in remote and rural environments: ground radar, infrared cameras, unmanned aerial vehicles for detection followed by integrated apprehension operations from 1,500 more border patrol personnel in the southwest region alone. Physical fencing will be completed and reinforced in urban areas like San Diego-Tijuana, Las Cruces-El Paso-Juarez. Vehicle barriers in remote desert zones will force migrants to walk greater distances.

But while the fence will certainly cost a lot of money and force migrants to walk even greater distances, there's no evidence it will be effective. Apolonia Arellano, 35-year-old restaurant worker from Fresnillo, Zacatecas, has crossed the Rio Grande into the United States on three occasions. Asked by AlterNet how her compatriots will respond to more fencing, she said they're accustomed to walking three days and two nights carrying a jug of water and a couple of oranges. "If it takes an extra night or day to get around a new barrier, that's what we'll do."