Questions raised about wisdom of erecting a fence on Otay Mountain
people to descend to make arrests.
The lack of fencing did not seem to be a problem, said then-U.S. Border Patrol spokesman Richard Kite, interviewed in a 2006 article in the Arizona Daily Star. At Otay Mountain, “you simply don’t need a fence. It’s such harsh terrain it’s difficult to walk, let alone drive,” Kite said. “There’s no reason to disrupt the land when the land itself is a physical barrier.”
The agency said it changed course after reevaluating conditions in the area. Daryl Reed, a current Border Patrol spokesman, said strategies are in constant flux depending on quickly shifting migrant flows and smuggler activity. “As we continue in our mission, we’re always reevaluating situations,” Reed said. “We’re always going to adapt and change.”
One analyst suggested that pressure from Congress to complete about 700 miles of fence led federal officials to approve some questionable projects. “There’s no question that there’s tactical justification for certain fencing, but when you set up a target like that, it inevitably means that they’re going to build fencing where the tactical justification is weak, and this sounds like one of those places,” said Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Others doubted that border authorities would spend resources in an area that did not need it. “If there were other better places to build fencing, then I’m confident the Border Patrol would build it there,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies.
When the federal government broke ground last year, environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, said the project would damage the Otay Mountain Wilderness. Portions of the fence and the 5-mile access road lie in the federally protected area.
Marosi writes that the federal government, trying to expedite construction of border fencing, waived more than thirty environmental laws in 2008, including the Wilderness Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act and others that environmentalists said applied to the Otay area.
Contractors had to cut roads, remove boulders, bulldoze hillsides and remove about 530,000 cubic yards of rock to build the Otay fence, which consists of steel posts 4 inches apart topped with metal plates.
It is not clear whether the fence has been a deterrent. Since the barrier’s completion in October, illegal activity has declined and there have been few signs of people trying to cut or breach the fence, authorities say. “Having this fence here is definitely going to slow them down. … It increases our probability of catching them,” said Conlin, the Border Patrol spokesman.
Others say the fence’s effectiveness has not been truly tested because fewer immigrants have been attempting to cross anywhere on the border due to the economic slowdown (“U.S. Illegal Immigrant Population Declines,” 10 February 2010 HSNW). The funding, they said, could have been better spent hiring more agents or building infrastructure in other areas.
When the economy improves, the mountain will once again draw immigrants, fence or no fence, said Pedro Rios, director of the American Friends Service Committee in San Diego. “It seems to me, if someone is able to climb the mountains in the Otay Wilderness, a 15-foot wall will not make a difference,” he said.
