Border securityVideo shows women climbing U.S.-Mexico border fence in less than 18 seconds
The United States has spent millions of dollars — the barrier costs taxpayers on average about $4 million per mile — to build a fence along portions of the U.S.-Mexico border; a new video shows two women climbing the fence’s concrete-filled steel pipes in less than eighteen seconds
Video capture of the 18-second climb // Source: hispanicallyspeakingnews.com
On Monday we reported that DHS has canceled the ambitious virtual fence project which was supposed to used advance surveillance technology to monitor the U.S.-Mexico border (“DHS pulls plug on virtual border fence project,” 17 January 2011 HSNW).
It appears that the more old-fashioned fence being built along the border is not much good, either. Less than eighteen seconds – this is how long it took two young women to climb a U.S.-Mexico border fence that costs millions of dollars in taxpayer money.
Fox News reports that in a video shot by filmmaker Roy Germano, two women show how easy it is to reach the top by climbing the fence’s concrete-filled steel pipes in less than eighteen seconds.
The video — which asks the question “Is it worth the expense?” — was shown to an immigrant advocate who acknowledged that the portion of fence in question is poorly designed. The barrier costs taxpayers on average about $4 million per mile of border fence, according to the station.
“Huge amounts of money being poured into this, and we haven’t really seen progress,” Houston immigrant advocate Cesar Espinosa told the station.
“We need to have a combination of high technology predator drones. We need additional manpower along the border, and then where appropriate we need to build these double-layered secure fences to actually secure the border,” Espinosa said.
Bob Price, of U.S. Border Watch, called the video “misleading” in an interview with MyFoxHouston.
“If that’s what we are spending our money on, I would say that’s right, but that’s not what was called for in the Secure Fence Act,” Price said.
The 2006 Secure Fence Act called for a double-layer fence and motion detectors, but the project has been dying a slow death.
Price pointed to another online video that shows portions of the border fence that are properly built — and have effectively reduced border crossing by as much as 95 percent.
