Devices to Save Lives at Border Unveiled

The Immigration and Naturalization Service on Thursday unveiled an array of new measures and high-tech devices to heighten security and safety along some of the most porous and dangerous stretches of the U.S.-Mexican border.

The changes focus on the Imperial Valley, which has become an increasingly popular but perilous crossing point since a crackdown on illegal immigration closer to the Pacific Ocean.

Key elements of the federal government’s new strategy include deployment of hovercraft and horseback units to patrol the All American Canal; stepped-up helicopter surveillance; extended testing of nonlethal pepper ball launchers, and installation of six “rescue beacons” in the desert outside Yuma, Ariz.

The beacons are 30-foot-tall towers designed to emit a distress signal and capped with a strobe light that can be spotted five miles away.

A metal plate posted at the base advises migrants in English and Spanish: “If you need help, push red button. U.S. Border Patrol will arrive in 1 hour. Do not leave this location.”

Many measures will target the Imperial Valley, a region crisscrossed by irrigation waterways including the swift-moving All American Canal, where 17 people have drowned since Oct. 1.

The systems were announced by INS Commissioner James Ziglar during a tour of U.S. Border Patrol operations in Tucson and Yuma, and Calexico and San Ysidro in California.

“These latest steps represent a major breakthrough in the ongoing effort to make the southern border safer for the people of both nations,” he said.

Ziglar also announced an unprecedented agreement between the United States and Mexico to establish an “intelligence cell” in the El Centro area with a mission of helping identify, arrest and prosecute migrant smugglers on both sides of the border.

“We are particularly excited about the joint resolve to combat migrant smuggling,” Ziglar said. “Those who put migrants’ lives in harm’s way should be on notice that we will not allow the border to be a barrier to justice.”

The new measures aim to meet the needs of the border patrol at the outset of the busiest season for rescues. The efforts focus on areas where migrant deaths and rescues remain relatively high, compared to other border locales where casualty rates have been declining.

For example, the most frequent cause of death in the Imperial Valley’s El Centro area is not heat, but drowning in the 80-mile-long All American Canal.

“It can look awfully placid and cool on a hot day,” said INS spokeswoman Virginia Kice. “But even powerful swimmers have trouble negotiating its fierce undertow, and its banks are made of cement and slippery.”

The pepper ball launchers, which will allow officers to respond to rock-throwing migrants with nonlethal force, will be dispatched to Border Patrol forces in Tucson and El Centro.

In the San Diego sector, where the devices were introduced last July, they have been deployed on 28 occasions, and discharged eight times. In all cases, the incidents ended without injury to agents or migrants, authorities said.

Ziglar said five additional helicopters--some capable of carrying up to nine people--and eight pilots will be dispatched along the border between Tucson and El Centro on a temporary basis beginning in June.

They will arrive, however, at a time when immigration officials are crediting tougher security tactics for a sharp decline in the number of people being detained while trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.

From Oct. 1 to April 28, the Border Patrol caught 518,812 people trying to cross the 2,000-mile-long international line, immigration authorities said.

That is a 34% drop from the same period the year before, when 786,099 were caught. It was the largest decline in eight years.