(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-03-03 15:53

Every day, agents in El Paso face off against Mexican people smugglers who form groups to wait on the banks of the Rio Grande in broad daylight and wait for a moment to storm the fence, and sprint the few yards (meters) to the streets of El Paso.

"While in the countryside they cross under coverage of darkness. In the city, they wait until daylight so they can blend into the city population," Border Patrol agent Joe Romero told Reuters reporters during a recent tour of the area to see the barrier in action.

Reuters' correspondents witnessed two men crawl through the shallow, muddy Rio Grande and up the bank through the shaggy undergrowth on the US side. There they climbed over the first fence, waded through a concrete irrigation canal and squeezed through a gap under the second fence, before running across the busy highway and into El Paso, where they were arrested.

"Whenever they think an agent is distracted or a camera is down, the smugglers tell the aliens to go for it," Romero said, highlighting the need for vigilance and rapid response for the fences to be effective in this urban strip.

"We are talking 10 to 15 seconds from the edge of the Rio Grande to the housing complex on the other side of the highway," he added.

SCALED BY PREGNANT WOMEN

As new barriers -- including single, double and triple layered pedestrian fences and lines of hefty steel posts sunk into the ground to stop vehicles -- carve out over hundreds of miles (kms) of borderlands amid political pressure for an end to illegal immigration, not all stretches of fencing are proving to be as effective.

A new single layer of steel mesh fence 10-13 feet tall stretches out across the rugged, high plains deserts and grasslands on either side of the small town of Naco, Arizona. The Border Patrol credits it with contributing to a fall in arrests, but some residents say it has done little to stop illegal immigrants.

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In two recent visits to the area, Reuters correspondents found an improvised wooden ladder and stretches of garden hose used to scale the barrier, along with dozens of pieces of clothing and rucksacks apparently tossed by illegal border crossers as they breached it.

Local rancher John Ladd said some 300 to 400 illegal immigrants continue to clamber over the new steel barrier flanking the southern reach of his farm for some 10 miles (16 km) each day, as an effective combination of technologies and manpower remains elusive.

"It's so easy to climb that I've seen two women that were pregnant, I've seen several women in their sixties and all kinds of kids between five and ten years old climb over it," Ladd said, as he leaned on a section of the steel mesh fence that stretches like a rusted veil westward toward the rugged Huachuca Mountains.

"They're getting some help, but when you put it in perspective, its pretty amazing to have a nine-month pregnant woman climbing over that son of a gun, and thinking that this is going to be the answer to solve our immigration problem."

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