Word: bordered
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Something's Working Two years ago, Yuma Sector was the busiest jurisdiction in the entire border patrol. This 118-mile (190 km) stretch of border in western Arizona and eastern California was a well-known gap through which people and drugs flowed north while guns and money went south. The harsh desert on either side was crosshatched with smugglers' roads, trampled by the footprints of thousands of "walkers," some of whom dropped dead from thirst. In the city of San Luis, Ariz., so-called banzai runs were a near nightly occurrence. Scores of people would gather on the Mexican side...
...Homeland Security (DHS) promptly started hiring posthole diggers. DHS aims to complete more than 650 miles (roughly 1,000 km) of barrier by the end of the year, built in sections by National Guard units and private contractors. That represents only about one-third of the U.S.-Mexico border; on the other hand, the fence clearly delineates, for the first time, a frontier that was previously just a four-strand cattle fence at best...
...fence goes up every week in Arizona and California, mile after mile of posts and plates and screens and rails marching across sun-blasted deserts and up rugged, rock-strewn hillsides. No one seems able to keep track of it all. Even agents of the newly reorganized Customs and Border Protection (CBP) department find themselves coming upon sections they've never seen before. The work is less advanced in New Mexico and stalled in Texas, where fierce local opposition has delayed construction--a coalition of border-town mayors and chambers of commerce has sued DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, alleging...
...hard to describe how unwelcoming the western Arizona border is. The budget for replacement tires for Yuma Sector's four-wheel drives is $10,000 per week. Nearly every living thing either is venomous or has spines--or both--as we discovered when we spent two days at a CBP outpost called Camp Desert Grip. While exploring an ash-blackened waste of extinct volcanoes near the dead heart of the Sonoran Desert, we came across one of the many graves alongside a trail known as the Devil's Highway. Lava stones on the cindered earth spelled out 1871. Undisturbed...
Critics complain that the fence is funneling migrants into a life-threatening desert, and they may be right, because while the area is difficult to reach from the north, on the Mexican side, Highway 2 parallels the border within sight of the U.S. It's tempting to catch a ride out here and start walking. Indeed, so many people have died or approached death in the Sonoran Desert that the CBP has installed radio beacons with flashing lights on them for walkers in distress to summon help. A more primitive sos is also common: a creosote bush set on fire...