BREAKING: Basically Non-Existent US-Mexico Border Fence is "Basically Complete"

Just like the $14 trillion national debt is "basically paid off."

This must mean we can begin working on this moat with alligators project that Obama and his Republican Straw Men have apparently been discussing.

After all, even a basically complete 700-mile fence can't seal 2,000 miles of border.

Obama said today in El Paso. . . “They wanted more agents on the border. Well, we now have more boots on the ground on the southwest border than at any time in our history. The Border Patrol has 20,000 agents — more than twice as many as there were in 2004, a build up that began under President Bush and that we have continued. They wanted a fence. Well, that fence is now basically complete.”

Five years ago, legislation was passed to build a 700-mile double-layer border fence along the southwest border. This is a promise that has not been kept.

Today, according to staff at the Department of Homeland Security, just 5 percent of the double-layer fencing is complete, only 36.3 miles.

Via Weasel Zippers.

Cross-posted.

Thinking Outside The Box

US city plans moat to keep out migrants

· Yuma goes back to basics as hostility to fences grows
· Environmentalists back plan for Mexican border

There have been virtual fences, real fences, increased patrols and night-vision cameras. Now the latest initiative by the US to seal its increasingly porous border with Mexico harks back to one of the oldest approaches: dig a moat. City officials in Yuma, in south-western Arizona, have come up with a scheme to create a "security channel" along the nearby border by reviving a derelict two-mile stretch of the Colorado river.

"The moats that I've seen circled the castle and allowed you to protect yourself, and that's kind of what we're looking at here," Yuma county sheriff Ralph Ogden told the Associated Press. The scheme would see engineers dig out a two-mile stretch of a 180-hectare (440-acre) wetland known as Hunters Hole.

Once a haven to anglers, ducks and the Cocopah Indians, the area is now a thicket of tamarisk, forgotten shoes and old cars providing cover for smugglers and border crossers. But under the plan, all that would change. The banks of the river would be replanted with native cattail, bulrush and mesquite, and wells would supply water to the wetlands as well as to a 20-metre-wide, three-metre-deep channel that would run the length of Hunters Hole.

With the replenished river marking the frontier, would-be border crossers would have to scale a 4.5-metre levee - built with the earth excavated from the riverbed - cross a 120-metre-wide marsh and then ascend another levee on the northern side of the wetlands.

"In order to restore Hunters Hole, we're going to have to secure it," a border patrol agent, Carlos Dominguez, told the High Country News. The moat plan has won broad local backing, unlike other border security schemes which have angered environmentalists and land-owners.

In Texas, more than 100 landowners have resisted government efforts to build a fence across their land. Environmentalists also launched a lawsuit to block fence construction on the border in Naco, in eastern Arizona. However, the department of homeland security is under a strict timetable to build 670 miles of new fencing by the end of the year. With failed efforts to build a virtual or electronic barrier, attention has again focused on a physical barrier.

As well as illegal immigration, the desolation of many border areas has attracted criminal activity. The 23-mile stretch of the Colorado river that runs along the Mexican border near Yuma has seen two murders since 2004 and 250 armed robberies in the last two years. "It's in the United States, but it's become a no-man's-land, an area where bodies were dumped, where people and drugs were smuggled over the border," said Ogden.

Backers of the Yuma plan - more than 30 local groups, including the border patrol and the city's elected officials - hope that Hunters Hole will mimic the model of another local wetland that was rescued from dereliction and crime and now provides bicycle paths and fishing.

"What you are building is a moat, but it's bringing the life and the wildlife back," said Ogden. "It doesn't take much brainpower to build a 12-foot high fence around something, but this is unique."


Via The Guardian

UPDATE: Hot Air links. Thanks!

UPDATE II: The Jawa Report links. Thank you, Dr. Rusty!

Egypt's New Citizens?

Gazans Breach Egyptian Border Again
RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) - Hamas-backed militants driving bulldozers knocked down more fortifications Friday along the Gaza-Egypt border - a brazen challenge to Egyptian riot police, who abandoned their positions after attempting to reseal the frontier using human chains, dogs and water cannons.

Militants in black clothing, some of them masked, stood atop a bulldozer as it knocked down concrete slabs under the watchful eyes of Hamas security officials, who turned a blind eye and were later seen patrolling on the Egyptian side of the border.

Thousands of Palestinians flooded into Egypt, pushing through several openings as Egyptian troops retreated to their bases on the other side of the border. Palestinians positioned cranes next to the border and lifted crates of supplies into Gaza, including camels and cows.

Hamas, after blasting open the border wall earlier in the week, offered further proof Friday that it simply cannot be ignored - driving home in no uncertain terms that a high price will be paid by anyone who seeks to shape Gaza's border arrangements without the militants' consent.

The day's events also underscored a great dilemma faced by Egypt: if it acts forcefully against the Gazans, it could anger its own people, who are sympathetic to the Palestinians' plight. But if it does nothing, it risks infiltration by Islamic militants.

Earlier Friday, Hamas gunmen fanned out along the Gaza side of the border, attempting to create order. For the first time since the border wall was torn down in a series of blasts on Wednesday, Gaza's Hamas rulers deployed their most elite forces to contain the rowdy crowd.

Hamas is clearly seeking to flex its muscles ahead of a potential new border agreement with Egypt that the militants hope will help end a 2-year-old blockade imposed by Israel and the West.

The group called for a three-way meeting among Hamas, Egypt and the Fatah movement of President Mahmoud Abbas to try to come up with a new border arrangement for Gaza.

"If the leadership in Ramallah refuses this call, we will not stand idle until the siege overruns life in Gaza," Hamas said in a statement.

The border breach provided a significant popularity boost to Hamas, which can claim it successfully broke through the closure that has deprived the coastal strip of normal trade and commerce.

[...]

Read it all at AP News/MyWay

Certain people in the State Department are trying to make sense of it all.

At least they have their priorities right.

Previously: Israel to Egypt: Take Gaza, It's Yours and Border Crisis Deepens