Family gatherings at border to become casualty of US crackdown

Wendy Castro of Tijuana, Mexico, showed her 9-month-old son, Aaron, to family members at Border Field State Park in California. Such meetings will soon be halted by a fortified barrier. (Ashley Surdin/ Washington Post)

BORDER FIELD STATE PARK, Calif. - Each face would be overlaid with the rusted chain links of the US-Mexico border fence, but Jorge Ibarra snapped the photos anyway.

There was his cousin, holding up her baby boy for the family to see. There was his aunt, wiping her eyes under the shade of her parasol. And there was his grandmother, her face filled with joy as she touched her daughter's fingertips through the fence.

Ibarra, 17, of National City, Calif., shot the family photos on a recent Sunday afternoon here, where the 2,000-mile line separating the United States and Mexico reaches the Pacific Ocean. For years, Mexican American families have flocked to this beachside park to meet and feed loved ones through the modest openings of the fence.

But the days of such reunions are numbered. Starting this month, construction of a more fortified barrier along the southern edge of the park and the three miles to the east will begin as part of the federal government's crackdown on drug and document smuggling, illegal crossings, and violence in the surrounding area.

Two 15-foot-high fences will flank the current one, creating a 90-foot-wide tract for a paved border patrol road and stadium lights, according to Angela de Rocha, a US Customs and Border Patrol spokeswoman. The gap will transform the gatherings here, preventing touching and close conversation. With only distant glimpses to offer, it may mark an end to many, if not all, such visits.

"We don't know when they're going to do it," said Ibarra, standing with his sister, mother, and nephews. "So we've been trying to come every weekend."

The $60 million construction project makes up the western portion of the San Diego Border Infrastructure System, a 14-mile, federally mandated barrier that dates to 1996. Representative Duncan Hunter, Republican of California, secured funding for the fence and thousands more Border Patrol Officers to combat rampant smuggling of illegal immigrants and border gangs who raped, robbed, and murdered along portions of this border north of Tijuana.

Some construction was completed, cutting the numbers of illegal immigrants, bandits, and drug smugglers who traversed the border, Hunter said.

But until this year, litigation has delayed construction of these three miles. Environmental groups opposed flattening terrain by lopping the tops off two mesas and pouring 5.5 million cubic feet of dirt into a canyon known as Smuggler's Gulch, an area prone to narcotics smuggling.

In 2005, when Congress gave Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff the power to waive all regulations that govern border construction, the project was cleared to proceed.

A newly erected mesh enclosure in the 418-acre park has squeezed visitors into a smaller space, sending them down to the beach or a small strip on a bluff. Most prefer the bluff near the 1851 border monument, the Italian marble obelisk that marks the end of the Mexican-American War and Mexico's ceding of the land that now forms the southwestern United States.

This is where visitors come now, against the backdrop of Tijuana's Bull Ring, with umbrellas or folding chairs slung under their arms. They bring photo albums. They share updates.

But the scene is not as harmless as it looks, said Lloyd Easterling, assistant chief with the Border Patrol. Drugs and false documents are passed through the fence's holes - holes that are repeatedly repaired and sliced open - while thieves cross illegally to burglarize nearby communities.

Easterling said agents are compassionate toward visitors and families. Many have relatives of their own living in Mexico, he said. But with smuggling and assaults increasing, he said, securing the border is necessary.