How many people needed to properly patrol US-Mex border? (1 Viewer)

[Little-Acorn]

How many people are actually needed to patrol the southern border properly? At least until we get a GOOD fence/wall/whatever built, that stops most immigrants and lets the patrollers zero in on the few with the resources to get through it? It will take time to get that built, of course, so how many new patrollers (troops, Minutemen, etc.) would it take to shut down most traffic?

Having flown patrols for the Minutemen, I may be able to hazard a guess, though I am by no means any kind of expert. Placing a team of two people every quarter mile would be a good start. In some wide-open desert areas they might spread thinner, in some rocky or heavily populated areas they might be a little more concentrated, but that's a good starting average.

That's 24 hours a day, of course, which really means you have to have three two-man teams working 8-hour shifts, every 1/4 mile. Six people per quarter mile, times four quarters in a mile is 24 people per mile. Times a roughly 1,900 mile border, is about 45,000 people we need for border protection.

That's just the people actually manning the fence line, of course. More for admin, vehicle maintenance, road maintenance, fence maintenance once it's built. Figure a total of around 50,000 people, as a round number. (I know, I didn't include weekends, vacation, sick time, etc. - those will add even more.)

Now here's a math problem for you. Take whatever number Bush actually announces tonight (Monday), and divide it by 50,000. That will give you an estimate of the fraction of need, he is actually meeting. Then try to figure out if he is planning to make his number match the 50,000 number later... or if he makes no mention of it.

Results should be interesting... and will be a measure of how serious he actually is about enforcing our immigration laws. Remember that those laws say that NO ONE can come into the U.S. without a visa.

 

[Scarecrow Akhbar]

How many people to effectively patrol the border? Now? Immediately?

A couple dozen. Plus two or three airforce pilots experienced in the deployment of self-implanting land mines, plus one mail man to deliver a note to Fox that we're exercising our freedom under Article XVI of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo

"Each of the contracting parties reserves to itself the entire right to fortify whatever point within its territory it may judge proper so to fortify for its security."

And then we hire a crew of mexicans to hang signs evern twenty miles or so informing their countrymen of what lays on the north side of the border. Then Mexico won't be able to complain that we didn't excercise due care in this unnecessary curtesy.

Once the land is mined, we:

1) Fly a few Predator drones, armed, along the border, and shoot invaders.

2) Use those drones to find invaders and call in helicopters full of armed nasties to deal with them rudely.

3) Tethered blimps are a damed cheap means of using solar power to permantly establish large area coverage without expensive permanent personal expenses.

But land mines are damned cheap, and a damned effective deterrent, I must say.

 

[Jay R]

Are you confining the question to the current situation, or a permanent deployment? Right now your estimates sound about right, and that would make for a costly deployment. Once a full barrier is constructed rather than attempting to put boots on every 1/4 mile of the border it would be easier to have regularly spaced border posts operating a surveillance system. Then keep personelle at those posts stationed as a rapid response force. Of course you still have to build that barrier, did Bush commit to that? I haven't seen the speach yet.