SAN DIEGO -- A handful of people huddle along the busy Ensenada Highway on the Mexican side of the fence, peering through holes in the steel curtain that marks the U.S. border. They wait and watch.
In the distance, 12 miles away, is a postcard view of the city of San Diego. The Coronado Bridge stretches across blue waters, and the skyscrapers of downtown pierce the sky -- all just an opportunity and a short sprint away. On the U.S. side of the fence, a Border Patrol agent in a Jeep Wrangler stares back.
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"They're waiting for the agent to not be paying attention. Then they make a run for it," Tomas Jimenez said. "It only takes seconds." Jumping the first fence is no great physical feat. But scaling the second fence -- angled to prevent people, not vehicles, from crossing -- is more of a challenge.
But down the road is a much more inviting passage for illegal immigrants and, the government fears, for terrorists, drug traffickers and human smugglers: a 3 1/2-mile gap where the secondary fence has yet to be completed.
With recent revelations by the Department of Homeland Security that al Qaeda operatives are looking to the Mexican border as a way to infiltrate the United States, federal officials have hastened efforts to close off the final stretch between Otay Mesa and the Pacific Ocean, in a canyon known as "Smuggler's Gulch." They contend that the area is a national security risk.
But environmentalists say completing the project, which they have battled for years, will devastate the protected marshland and delicate habitats of the Tijuana Estuary and endanger rare plants and animals.
The House recently approved immigration legislation, introduced by Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), that includes provisions to complete the fencing -- and gives Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff almost total authority to sidestep environmental and labor laws in the process.
"Maybe this was acceptable in the pre-9/11 days that we would have allowed this to be tied up in knots for years. But in the era of global terrorism, we just can't wait around forever to get these things done," U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Robert C. Bonner said. "It's an absolute need."
J. Robert Shull, a senior regulatory policy analyst with the government watchdog group OMB Watch, said that the Homeland Security Department already has the authority to circumvent environmental laws in the name of national security, and that President Bush could order the project built even if a court delays it. He said the legislation would open the way for additional projects that are harmful to the environment.
"It originated with the intent to close up the fencing at Smuggler's Gulch, but what's written is so much bigger than that," he said. "It's completely unnecessary. It's mind-boggling."
Built with recycled-steel landing mats donated by the military, the primary fence runs a jagged line along the southern U.S. border, about 10 miles from the Pacific Ocean to Otay Mesa, an inland section of San Diego. The second fence, built of concrete with the angled top, runs a parallel line about 130 feet away, creating a lane where Border Patrol agents can close in on illegal immigrants.
Government's Plan
To close the gap in the second fence, a little less than three miles inland from the Pacific Ocean, Border Patrol officials plan to level off several of the mesas that surround the area and backfill the half-mile-wide canyon known as Smuggler's Gulch to create a 175-foot earthen berm. A second fence and an all-terrain patrol road would be built there.
Along with installing remote cameras and underground sensors, Border Patrol officials say, completing the second fence and adding a third chain-link fence would enable them more flexibility in allocating manpower to secure the border.
Dislodging 442,000 truckloads of earth from the area to fill the canyon in the ecologically sensitive area would result in flooding and erosion, overwhelming the protected marshlands and habitats of the Tijuana Estuary below, said Jim Peugh of the San Diego Audubon Society. The San Diego fairy shrimp and two wetlands birds -- the California gnatcatcher and the light-footed clapper rail -- could be in jeopardy, he said. Damage done by the construction and grading could last for decades.
