Migrants and Smugglers Won’t Be Stopped by Donald Trump’s Wall, Ranchers Say
The solution favored among ranchers is infused with a fatalism that nothing will change — government being government, and the cartels always one step ahead — so why bother. But here it goes:
Intensive, round-the-clock patrols along the border are required for a fence or wall to work; otherwise, those determined to cross will always find a way. But, they argue, if you have boots on the ground, you will have no need for anything so beautiful as the Great Wall of Trump.
.. 262 miles of border — there were 63,397 arrests in the 2015 fiscal year, compared with 10 times that in the 2001 fiscal year.Paul Beeson, the patrol’s chief agent for the Tucson sector, attributes the drop to an increase in officers and tactical equipment, an improvement in the Mexican economy, and the fencing erected along the border about a decade ago.
.. But Mr. Ladd and other ranchers say there has been an unsettling swap: fewer migrants, but many more drug traffickers... “They don’t have to move their product today,” he says of the cartels. “They can move it tomorrow. They can sit and watch, and they do that. Watching us. Watching us watching them.”.. “Nothing seems to work, because we keep buying what they bring to sell,”