Word: desertic
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Viewed from a Black Hawk helicopter 1,000 feet up, there's no sign of the Mexican border in this southwest corner of Arizona's Sonoran Desert. No line in the sand. No fence. Not even a road. Yet it's clear we are flying over a major international thoroughfare. Hundreds of shiny footpaths and tire tracks weave through the desert below, where the temperature on the ground routinely reaches 115? F in the summer. You need to drink a gallon of water an hour to survive in heat like that, and the illegal aliens and smugglers who pounded these...
...Border Patrol agents who monitor this vast, remote area from a lone outpost called Camp Desert Grip are skeptical that a fence could be a practical solution here. Speaking before the Secure Fence Act was passed, Stephen Johnson, who runs the place, points out that Hunter's fence will cost at least $37 million to build and will be difficult to maintain. When the fence is cut - and it definitely will be cut, says Johnson - it would be costly to repair, given the absence of roads in the region. Walls are better suited to urban areas, where you have only...
...Agents at Camp Desert Grip favor more eyes: cameras, sensors, ground radar, helicopters and dune buggies, so that word gets out that anyone who comes this way will be arrested. With current sensing equipment, fewer than half of the 11,000 entries detected so far this year were apprehended. More eyes would mean more arrests and at a reasonable cost, says Johnson. A camera tower costs about $600,000 and can see three miles in every direction...
...Border Protection Commissioner Ralph Basham, to see this area for himself. Faced with the vast terrain, Basham seemed convinced a fence was not the answer. But another thought dawned as he looked down on shimmering black lava fields below. "If they're willing to go through 80 miles of desert in this heat, you can't do much to stop them...
...mention human rights in the country are as foreign a concept as ice is to a desert, according to the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in Korea...