As US-Mexico border tightens, smugglers raise their game

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NACO, Arizona (Reuters) - 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.

As the U.S. government pushes ahead with an unprecedented security buildup along the porous Mexico border in this presidential election year, profit-hungry Mexican drug and human smugglers the length of the line are raising their game.

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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.

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Illegal entrants have long used branches to rub out their tracks -- in an old technique borrowed from the Apaches. Some have turned to gas-powered leaf blowers to thwart agents tracking, or "sign cutting," for them on roads running parallel to the border.

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Other scams include smugglers taking their shoes off and hopping rock-to-rock in a bid to leave no tracks; putting their shoes on backward to try to confuse pursuers, and even attaching boards studded with horseshoes to pass as animals.

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In addition to special compartments in car tires, gas tanks and door panels to hide drugs, U.S. Customs and Border Protection inspectors at ports of entry in New Mexico and west Texas recently found marijuana submerged in jars of jalapeno pickles, stuffed into mattresses and even hidden in Christmas holiday candles.

At crossings in California, meanwhile, inspectors in recent years have found a child smuggled inside a sealed papier-mache pinata doll, illegal immigrants crammed inside vehicle seat covers, and, late last month, two Mexican women smuggled in a pickup trucks' engine compartment through Calexico, Calif..

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080309/us_nm/...er_smugglers_dc

[Jason-Sasha 1]

Hmph. Pretty crafty illegals! I think we should allow media networks to set up stationary cameras along the border. I think it would make for some entertaining reality TV. Ooooh! Better yet. webcams. Stationed every 100 yards or so atop water canons. And for a fee internet users could pay for water and control their own water canons through their wecam connection. Yes. I think this would be a successful venture. The border gets patrolled easily and the government makes money in the process. Win, win situation.

[Niels Bohr 72]

It's not the illegals that concerns me. It's the drug dealers.

[Jason-Sasha 1]

It's not the illegals that concerns me. It's the drug dealers.

Yes, you are correct. I was joking of course, but yes, the drug dealers are the real problem.

[mawilson 2,133]

There's a solution.

[Ban Hammer 13,360]

mines.

[eric&gen 0]

Need some snipers to shoot there azz on site.

[HAL 9000 96]

Just make a damn reality TV show to solve the problem.

[Ban Hammer 13,360]

Just make a damn reality TV show to solve the problem.