Border Security

            The Arizona Republic published an opinion piece entitled, "Border Security is Only a Part of [the] Solution" regarding Arizona's border with Mexico. When I began to read this article I expected it to be an argument of how Arizona's borders need to be secured against the Mexican immigrants who want to take over America- or something of that nature, but I was wrong (until the very end at least). The article begins with the following statement, "even though the vast majority of those who cross the border illegally are simply migrants in search of work or attempting to join family members, they are led by criminal smugglers who are violent and devious. There are also drug smugglers and common criminals crossing that line. There is potential for terrorists to exploit a porous border. With rising cartel violence in Mexico, the need to secure the borders is even more evident" (2010).
          The author continues through explaining how border security has in fact increased and provides statistics of how in the fiscal year of 2010, the Customs and Border Protection budget increased from 5.4 billion dollars when it was first created to eleven billion dollars. According to Matt Chandler of the Department of Homeland security, there has been an eighty percent increase in border patrol agents along the southwestern border since 2004.
          According to the Yuma Border Patrol, they have achieved "operational control, [which is] the ability to detect, respond and interdict illegal border penetrations- or in other words, to maintain overall situational awareness to respond quickly to threats as we detect them incoming- i.e., a group of illegal border crossers, drug traffickers, etc." (2010). The Yuma Sector is 126 miles long and aside from some mountaintops, is completely fences, "from 25-foot steel walls to triple-layer segments separated by sandy no-man's zones that are stripped of vegetation and patrolled by agents in vehicles" (2010).
          Although there have been great strides in protecting the border- as stated by the author of this publication, there really is not any way  of knowing if the human smugglers simply diverted to other Arizona routes. The author also states that the Tucson Sector is more attractive for human and drug smugglers due to the fact that it has a more direct route than Yuma to Phoenix, as well as the fact that Tucson itself is a distribution hub.