How can lack of a fence be justified given the drop in crime in San Diego post-fence, and the need elsewhere?

• By Cali Shaye
• Legalize Marijuana
• 13 years ago
• 5

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-border19aug19,1,4630356.story?track=rss

“Even more brazen have been several kidnappings of 50 to 100 immigrants by rival cartels, which hide them in stash houses in and around Phoenix until families pay a ransom. One captive’s face was burned with a cigarette, another person nearly suffocated in a plastic bag. A woman was raped. Fingers have been sliced off and sent back to families with demands for money.”

“Anthony J. Coulson, assistant special agent in charge of the DEA in Arizona, said records indicated that cocaine and heroin seizures may end up twice as high as last year. Marijuana seizures are increasing 25%. Nine months into the current fiscal year, he said, his team had already seized more pot than all of last year. “And 2006 was a record year,” he said.

In the Tucson sector alone there has been a 71% increase in marijuana seizures over the last fiscal year, with the Border Patrol reporting 648,000 pounds confiscated since October.

In the Phoenix suburb of Scottsdale, Arpaio said, a cartel operative was openly selling heroin to high school students. “He was getting 150 calls a day on his cellphone,” the sheriff said.
The DEA believes 80% of the methamphetamine in the United States is coming from labs in Mexico, which were set up after police raids shut down many of the labs in the U.S.

In Dallas, police are dealing with the deaths of 21 high school students from “cheese heroin,” a mixture of Mexican heroin and over-the-counter cold medicine. A hit sells for $2 to $5. Several arrests of dealers have been made; now officials are bracing for the coming school season.

“It’s a small packet,” said Lt. Tom Moorman of the Dallas Police Department. “They can carry it in a pack of gum. Very, very small.”

Antonio Oscar “Tony” Garza Jr., the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, has issued repeated notes to the Mexican government. Last year he sent an advisory to American tourists that “drug cartels, aided by corrupt officials [in Mexico], reign unchecked in many towns along our common border.”
A House subcommittee on domestic security has investigated the “triple threat” of drug smuggling, illegal border crossings and rising violence, and it found that “very little” passes the border without the cartels’ knowledge.

The panel found that cartels send smugglers into the United States fully armored with equipment — much of it imported to Mexico from the United States — including high-powered binoculars and encrypted radios, bazookas, military-style grenades, assault rifles and silencers, sniper scopes and bulletproof vests. Some wear fake police uniforms to confuse authorities as well as Mexican bandits who might ambush them.”

That is just a few excerpts from just one article. Before you decide the fence is a bad idea, why don’t you look into the problem, and the impact having a fence has had in San Diego?
SAN DIEGO FENCE: “In 1996, Congress approved a double-layered fence – with a steel fence as the primary layer, and an anti-climb fence as the second layer – for 14 miles along the border of San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico.

The fence has produced some improvement in the area, according to a Congressional Research Service report in 2005 that said illegal alien apprehensions along the fence region dropped from 202,000 in 1992 to 9,000 in 2004.

Meanwhile, vehicle drive-throughs in the region have fallen from between six to 10 per day before the construction of the fence to four drive-throughs for the entire year of 2004. Crime in San Diego dropped 56.3 percent between 1989 and 2000, according to the FBI Crime Index.”
SAN DIEGO FENCE: “In 1996, Congress approved a double-layered fence – with a steel fence as the primary layer, and an anti-climb fence as the second layer – for 14 miles along the border of San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico.

The fence has produced some improvement in the area, according to a Congressional Research Service report in 2005 that said illegal alien apprehensions along the fence region dropped from 202,000 in 1992 to 9,000 in 2004.

Meanwhile, vehicle drive-throughs in the region have fallen from between six to 10 per day before the construction of the fence to four drive-throughs for the entire year of 2004. Crime in San Diego dropped 56.3 percent between 1989 and 2000, according to the FBI Crime Index.”

http://www.crosswalk.com/news/11553363/
AND MORE ON THE NEED: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-border19aug19,1,4630356.story?track=rss