America Builds A 649 Mile Long And Tall Fence, Spending $2.3 Bn. To Ward Off Illegal Migrants, Local Texans Skeptical

When it comes to protecting its own borders from illegal immigrants, the United States of America considers a big imposing fence to be in an indispensable deterrent. But the locals are highly skeptical.

The federal government has so far spent $2.3 billion to a build a long fence between the U.S. and Mexico. By long, we mean a mind numbing 649 miles long. The fence is majorly built of steel and designed to help control the illegal movement of people and contraband.

The U.S Government even has an official name for the fence, perhaps to justify the spending. It chooses to call it “tactical infrastructure”. Interestingly, the Border Patrol claims the fence works and has labeled the fence, ‘Pedestrian Fence 225’. However, the citizens of South Texas aren’t convinced and have an amusing, though insulting name for the fence. They call the ‘tactile infrastructure’; ‘boondoggle’ (work or activity that is wasteful or pointless but gives the appearance of having value).

Doesn’t the fence work in keeping the illegal immigrants away from the U.S soil? The fence is perhaps for a show of force, rather than serve any practical purpose, claim the residents, who have gotten used to the immigrants stealthily making their way across the border. Furthermore, these residents do not see the ‘illegals’ as criminals or degenerates and choose to treat them as human beings. Texans regularly put out water and food in ice chests for the struggling souls.

According to local resident 86-years-old Pamela Taylor, the immigrants have a very simple migratory pattern,

“They paddle across the river, walk across the road, hide in the cotton plants and wait for the smuggler’s car to show up. Then they pile in, drive through a yawning gap in the border fence and away they go.”

By ‘yawning gap’, she was referring to fact that ‘the wall’ isn’t contiguous. It’s 54 miles of fencing in 18 individual sections. The idea was to erect the wall mainly where cities and towns touch the border, to force illegal crossers into more rural areas where border agents have a tactical advantage, confirmed Robert Duff, chief of operational programs in the Rio Grande Valley Sector of the Border Patrol,

“Our objective is to work the area on our terms. Ideally, you want to push the traffic where it’s easier for us to work. And that’s going to be away from the metro areas, where the vanishing point is very short, to where we’ve got more of a response time”

But Ramon Garcia, county judge of Hidalgo, the most populous county in the region, is highly skeptical. According to information obtained from public records, the ‘Pedestrian Fence’ cost $6.5 million per mile. Keeping aside the cost, a fence does not seal a border nor does it make trespassing impossible, feel Texans.

Perhaps Border Patrol’s Robert Duff had the most interesting retort to the “tactical infrastructure”, “They built an 18-foot wall and people came with a 19-foot ladder and people just crossed right over the top. So I think a fence can only be so tall,” he said