Enlarge Photo The end of the line: A Mexican federal police officer on the border as it meets the Pacific Ocean. TIJUANA, Mexico -- We drove the rental car to the end of the line, where the border fence disappears into the Pacific Ocean, and there we found a cadre of Mexican federal agents. They were just hanging, like tourists taking postcard pictures. The beach town is called Playas de Tijuana, and it looks like a more colorful, more dodgy version of Imperial Beach to the north. The seaside neighborhood has traditionally been popular with the upper class of TJ, which includes both managers of assembly plants and some well-to-do narcos. On the U.S. side, the Border Patrol earlier this year closed Friendship Park to make way for the new triple fence. The park plaza was dedicated by First Lady Pat Nixon back in the 1970s as a symbol
TECATE, Mexico -- The migrant shelter named in honor of the Virgin of Guadalupe is spotless, though the men who come are dusty. Their clothes are streaked with sweat, their hands and faces burned by sun, scratched with thorns. They look as if they have been wandering the desert. The free meal they eat is simple but wholesome. The nuns serve beans, cactus, boiled eggs. The men take second and third helpings. The nuns console their guests, but it is not easy. “You see them very sad, for they have with no illusions left, and I believe they feel like losers,” said Sister Maria Elena. The men are ashamed because they have failed. A few years ago, migrants heading north would stop at the shelter in Tecate, where the big Mexican brewery is, for a night or two before they crossed illegally into the United States. They were hopeful,
MEXICALI, Mexico -- This used to be a swell city for binational cantina crawling, but the violence of the drug war has quieted the nightlife down. The tourists are spooked. Still, the locals are keeping the lights on. We swing by the Plaza de Mariachis, where dozens of bands have pulled their vans up to curb to await customers looking to hire some musicians to make a party. Manuel Delgado of Los Zorros tells us “the town is dead.” We ask where we might hear some music, especially the ballads about drug lords, and he points us to La Conga. The intersection of Mexico and Reforma in Mexicali is a lively spot. There’s El Miau-Miau (The Meow Meow), a strip joint; El Leon de Oro (The Golden Lion), an “antro” club, which is the Mexican twist on a disco; and a dubious establishment called Kaoz. The bars keep changing
Enlarge Photo A newly constructed tower in the "virtual fence." SASABE, Arizona -- After years of frustration, controversy and delay -- and some maddening technological glitches -- the first link in the federal government’s new $6.7 billion “virtual fence” is being erected here along the border. We visited a newly constructed detection tower, out in the middle of Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge. Contractors were still plugging in the off-the-shelf components. The concept is simple. The execution is not. A previous test of the virtual fence concept was so plagued with snafus that the Department of Homeland Security scrapped it and announced a “do over.” “We created a set of expectations that were unreasonable, and unfortunately it didn’t work as well as we would have liked,” says Mark Borkowsky, director of the project in the Customs and Border Protection agency. According to Borkowsk, this is the basic idea: In
