MESA — Seventy miles of new fence along the U.S. border with Mexico should be finished by Sunday, completing the first phase of a plan to add 370 miles of new barriers by the end of 2008, officials said.
Most of the new fence is in Arizona, the busiest state for illegal immigration into the United States. “Our goal for this year was to get 70 miles done by Sept. 30 — and we’re there,” said Brad Benson, a U.S. Customs and Border Enforcement spokesman.
Fencing has been built near the Arizona border towns of Douglas, Naco, Sasabe, San Luis and Yuma, and along the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range. Besides the 58 miles built here, 3 miles went up in New Mexico and 9.2 miles in California.
The fencing should go a long way toward convincing skeptical voters that the government is concerned about border security, said Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz. He said some people said the fence never would be built.
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“And when the American people hear that, they say, ’Aha, that just shows that the administration isn’t serious,”’ Kyl said.
The fence design varies, but all is built of heavy metal and designed to prevent pedestrians from entering the country.
In most places, the fence is about 15 feet high and extends more than five feet below ground, Benson said.
The cost was not immediately available, he said, but overall the fence was budgeted at $3 million per mile.
The money will be wasted if a guest worker system isn’t created, said Roberto Reveles, a Phoenix advocate for immigration reform.
“The truth of the matter is people who cross the desert don’t want to cross the desert. They would rather have the government issue, in a timely fashion, a work permit,” Reveles said. No matter how many miles of fence are built, the pull of jobs will lead people to circumvent the fence, he said.
The new construction pushes the total amount of fencing along the international border to about 145 miles, Benson said. That’s about 7 percent of the border from San Diego to Brownsville, Texas. The president’s overall goal is to build 700 miles of new fence.
Kyl said other measures are going to be needed to cut illegal immigration.
A 2006 study by the Pew Hispanic Center estimated that as much as 45 percent of the total illegal immigrant population legally entered the county on visas but stayed beyond their expiration.
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