By Kenneth J. Theisen, 10/28/06
On October 26th, President Bush signed the Secure Fence Act, a bill authorizing 700 miles of double-layer steel fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border. This is part of a continuing attack on immigrants in an attempt to make the southern border impassable and deadly. And as usual the regime justified it as part of the war on terrorism. In signing the bill, Bush declared that this is “an important step in our nation’s efforts to secure our borders.” But this bill will result in the deaths of thousands of immigrants.
This is just the latest in a series of measures instituted this year
by the Bush regime to deter immigrants from coming to the U.S. The
U.S.-Mexican border already has 106 miles of fence, but the new law
requires fencing along five segments of the 1,952-mile border,
including the entire Arizona border and about 200 miles of the border
in Texas. The bill also provides for additional roads, vehicle
barriers, and additional Border Patrol checkpoints. It authorizes
additional electronic surveillance tools, including unmanned aerial
vehicles, ground-based sensors, satellites, radar coverage and
cameras.
This legislation is addition to a bill signed earlier this month by
the president which appropriated $1.2 billion for border fencing and
barriers and “other forms of tactical infrastructure and technology.”
Earlier this year, the President also deployed the National Guard to
the border to support the Border Patrol’s 12,000 agents. The National
Guard has been building and repairing roads, fences and vehicle
barriers along the border.
Also in September, the Department of Homeland Security, as part of
its Secure Border Initiative Network gave a contract to Boeing Co. to
construct a “virtual fence” along all 6,000 miles of the U.S. border in
the north and in the south. The Boeing “fence” will have cameras and
radar mounted on a network of towers and connected to a computer
tracking system.
These new efforts by the administration will cost more lives and
likely not significantly deter immigration. In 2005, the border patrol
caught 1.2 million immigrants crossing the border. Officially 473
migrants died in 2005 while crossing the US-Mexico border, the most
since the Border Patrol began tracking such deaths in 1999. As barriers
are erected immigrants are forced to cross the border at more dangerous
points such as rivers, mountains, and deserts. Immigrants drown,
freeze, and die of thirst. The 473 are only the bodies found. No one
knows how many were undiscovered.
The regime knows that lives will be lost as a result of its
enforcement efforts at the border. An INS document of a few years ago
describes the San Diego sector of the border as follows, “The eastern
52 miles of the Sector…is marked by steep mountains, deep canyons,
thick brush, and the absence of urban infrastructure and transportation
facilities. The steep mountainsides, canyon walls, large boulders, and
dense vegetation make travel slow, difficult, and dangerous, and lack
of food, water, and transportation compounds the challenges faced by
travelers. The eastern portion of the Sector also experiences extreme
temperatures, ranging from freezing cold in the winter to searing heat
in the summer that can kill the unprepared traveler.” Nevertheless
barriers were erected to force immigrants into this terrain by the
Clinton administration.
As far back as 1999, legal organizations filed a petition with the
Organization of American States (OAS). It asserted that the U.S.
violated human rights with its implementation of Operation Gatekeeper,
a smaller effort to erect barriers along the border in California urban
areas. It charged that, “…the United States has organized and
implemented its immigration and border control policies in a way that
has knowingly and ineluctably led to the deaths of an ever increasing
number of immigrants seeking to enter the U.S. to obtain jobs or family
reunification. Operation Gatekeeper has steered this flow of immigrants
into the harshest, most unforgiving and most dangerous terrain on the
California-Mexico border.”
These much earlier and smaller efforts have led to thousands of
immigrant deaths. How many more will die as a result of the expanded
fencing and militarization of the border by the Bush regime? We should
not wait to find out. One more death is unacceptable. We need to drive
the regime from power now.