Justice's Wall

Fencing out the "illegals"

China's despotic Emperor Ch'in Shih Huang-ti (221-206 B.C.) ordered up a wall in 214 B.C. to keep out fierce barbarian invaders. The Roman Emperor Hadrian completed one in northern England in A.D. 136 to hold the marauding Picts at bay. Now the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service has decided to build its own border monument along sections of the boundary between Mexico and California and between Mexico and Texas. The invading foe: an estimated 1 million Mexicans who cross illegally into the U.S. each year.

The 10-ft.-high fence is intended to wall off two sections, totaling 12.68 miles, of the 1,950-mile U.S.-Mexican border that are most frequently crossed by illegal immigrants. The first is a 5.98-mile stretch from the Pacific Ocean, across Dead Man's Canyon and Washer Woman's Flats to Airport Mesa near Chula Vista, Calif; the second, 6.7 miles of border running along the American side of the Rio Grande through downtown El Paso.

The U.S. wall will be the latest in fence technology: a 6-in. concrete base surmounted by 4 ft. of galvanized steel grating and 6 ft. of tightly woven chain links. Said George Norris, Houston manager for Anchor Post Products, Inc., which will build the fence for $2,015,000: "It's the heaviest construction I've ever seen on a fence." Because the grating is razor sharp, Norris added, anyone climbing the fence barefoot would "leave his toe permanently embedded in it."

Whether the fence will actually keep out illegal immigrants is an open question even to Norris. Said he of the immigrants: "They'll run cars through it or put a cutting torch to it." Or simply walk around it. Mexican Americans regard the fence as insulting. Said Vilma Martinez, president of the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund: "With all due respect to Robert Frost, good fences do not make good neighbors." -

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