The Border Patrol calls Yuma Sector the "wild, wild West." Smugglers moving drugs or people up from Mexico love this desolate region of Arizona south of Interstate 8 and west of the Andrade Port of Entry in California. Here, on Jan. 19, Border Patrol agent Luis Aguilar was run over and killed trying to stop drug traffickers.
Border Patrol agents had spotted a Hummer and a Ford F-250 pickup crossing from Mexico into the U.S. about 20 miles west of Yuma. As Aguilar was laying spike strips to blow the smugglers’ tires, the Hummer driver struck and killed him. Both vehicles sped back across the border into Mexico.
That won’t happen again. This border segment, crossing the Imperial Sand Dunes south of where Aguilar was killed, is now blocked by a steel curtain. Granite Construction Co. built 56 miles of fence this year. A recent photo shows the fence winding across the dunes, nailing shut this smugglers’ corridor.
"As you can see, it will never be the same," said Ronald Colburn, deputy chief of the Office of Border Patrol. "It’s a beautiful sight. I see victory."
This is just one section of more than 600 miles of border fence being completed for the Department of Homeland Security by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Engineering and Construction Support Office (ECSO).
It is the biggest project ever executed by ECSO. Two border barrier programs, Pedestrian Fence 225 (PF 225) and Vehicle Fence 300, face a congressional completion deadline of Dec. 31. While ECSO may be based in Fort Worth District, the enormous scope and tight timetable received Corps-wide support.
"We had to go from project inception all the way to project closeout in a year-and-a-half on $1.2 billion worth of work," said Todd Smith, PF 225 program manager in Fort Worth.
The ECSO office has only 60 employees, but for the border fence project it reached out across the country to build a virtual team of 500-plus Corps employees.
"We had to reinvent every aspect of the way we deliver projects," Smith said of the challenge. "There really is no ‘business as usual’ anywhere within the fence program. We had to continuously challenge people working in the program to think outside the norm and not fall into the old comfortable ways of doing business."
For the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the ECSO-delivered fence is one part of the personnel, technology, and infrastructure mix it needs to halt illegal crossings.
"Roads and fence are infrastructure. When we gain that proper balance we really see where our effectiveness goes up," said Jason Ciliberti, a supervisory Border Patrol agent.
The Border Patrol reports that the fence is already deterring illegal border crossings. Fresh numbers show a sharp decline in border apprehensions in the Yuma Sector. Apprehensions in the 125-mile corridor plunged from 37,992 in fiscal 2007 to 8,363 in fiscal 2008 – a 78 percent drop. Marijuana seizures have fallen 40 percent from 49,429 pounds in fiscal 2007 to 29,858 pounds in fiscal 2008.
Under the Secure Border Initiative, 14 miles of pedestrian fence and 42 miles of vehicle fence are being built in the Yuma Sector. Construction was 59 percent complete as of Nov. 14, and the crews were still racing to meet the Dec. 31 deadline.
Plugging Smuggler’s Gulch gap
The Border Patrol also has high hopes that another Corps-led project at the border’s Pacific Ocean terminus in San Diego County will pay similar dividends.
ECSO is executing $59 million in contracts along a rugged border tract that abuts heavily urban Tijuana. New roads, lighting, and double fence lines will be installed. Scrapers are filling in a deep canyon. Three miles of fencing will be erected.
One focus is Smuggler’s Gulch, a notorious geographic feature five miles inland that has long been a haven for illegal border crossings.
"Historically, there has been more illegal smuggling activity in the area that includes Smuggler’s Gulch than any other place in the country," said Daryl Reed, Border Patrol spokesperson for San Diego Sector.
The San Diego Border Patrol reports yearly apprehensions here have been as high as 200,000 to 300,000 with narcotic seizures of several tons. Over time, tens of thousands of criminal aliens previously removed from the U.S. have re-entered through this area. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, it is one of the busiest areas in San Diego for apprehensions of special-interest aliens.
As of Nov. 3, 56 percent of the construction work has been completed, according to ECSO’s Jason Price, project manager in the San Diego Sector.
There had been no infrastructure to speak of to prevent border crossing in Smuggler’s Gulch. Heavily vegetated coastal bluffs and canyons made continuous border surveillance and access impossible. Switchback roads north of the border were the only Border Patrol access to the canyon walls. Inclement weather impeded access.
The cut-and-fill work will move 1.3 million cubic yards into the south end of the canyon to provide agents continuous access to the entire canyon. It will include an all-weather patrol road north of the immediate border, a secondary enforcement fence north of the patrol road, and another road north of the secondary fence. This will allow agents to contain most illegal activity between the border and the secondary fence to quickly address fence breaches.