Illegal Border Crossing Architecture: Faux Fences & Ramps

Where the 600 miles of fencing are already up, along the borders of California, Arizona and New Mexico, “smugglers and illegal immigrants continue to breach the fencing that is up, forcing Border Patrol agents and contractors to return again and again for repairs,” the Wall Street Journal noted Wednesday. “The smugglers build ramps to drive over fencing, dig tunnels under it, or use blow torches to slice through. They cut down metal posts used as vehicle barriers and replace them with dummy posts, made from cardboard.”

Cardboard or Concrete?

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.

A modified pickup truck with extendable ramps stands idle a few yards to the south of the fence marking the U.S. and Mexico border near Campo, CA.

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.

Border Patrol agents seized hundreds of pounds of marijuana valued at almost three-quarters of a million dollars from a truck that was driven over the border on metal ramps.