Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Ariz. – Two-hundred miles of vehicle barriers made of concrete, steel poles and train tracks are being erected across the Southwestern desert to thwart smugglers trying to bring illegal immigrants or drugs into the country in vans, sport utility vehicles and trucks.
Smugglers commonly drive people and marijuana over the Mexican border, using roads that have been illegally cut across remote sections of the vast desert.
At Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Chief Ranger Fred Patton said the fortifications along 29 miles of the park’s southern boundary, completed last summer at a cost of $14 million, have been effective.
“It’s eliminated the vast majority of the vehicular smuggling that was taking place before,” Patton said. “We still get some, but comparatively, it’s not anywhere close to what it was.”
The obstructions include bollards, or concrete-filled steel poles poking out of the ground at staggered heights; railroad rails welded horizontally onto concrete-reinforced steel posts; and X-shaped rail barricades weighing up to 1,400 pounds.
Already, about 80 miles of vehicle barriers are in place along the U.S.-Mexico border. Authorities look to have a total of 200 miles of barriers in place, mostly in Arizona and New Mexico, by the end of next year.
Authorities concede the vehicle barriers won’t deter people on foot, whether illegal immigrants or backpacking drug runners.
Smugglers and other criminals can still circle around the Organ Pipe barriers to the east and west and drive in through other isolated stretches of the border, or they can drive up to the barrier from the south and unload their contraband into other vehicles on the north side of the barrier, Patton said.
Others say an emphasis on physical structures overlooks a big source of the problem.
Benjamin Johnson, director of the Washington-based Immigration Policy Center, which advocates comprehensive immigration reform, said that half the country’s illegal immigrants entered legally and then overstayed their visas.
